Bony - 06 - The Bone is Pointed

by Arthur W. Upfield

  “It’d be no use. He won’t let me stay with him.”

  Blake hurried back to the office to answer a telephone sum­mons. He stepped smartly, for the load that had ridden him since he had written his letter to Superintendent Browne was now lifted. “Your action commended” sounded good. To his surprise he heard the voice of Old Lacy when he answered the call.

  “Good day-ee, Sergeant. No, I’m not up. The leg is still ironed in plaster and the women won’t leave me alone. The lad has put an extension of the phone through to my bedroom so’s I can talk to the hands and shake ’em up. How’s Bony?”

  “No better, Mr Lacy. He’s becoming very weak.”

  “Has he still got the pains in his kidneys and where his liver ought to be?”

  “Yes, gets them bad at night. He can’t sleep, and then when day comes he won’t, saying he mustn’t let up on his work.”

  “Humph! Well, he’s got plenty of guts, that feller, I must say. I’ve been thinking about him a lot, and I’m getting damned worried. You remember when you came out here and I told you that a man suffering from the Barcoo sickness wouldn’t get pains where he’s got ’em?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, as I said, I’ve been thinking and worrying a lot about Bony. I don’t believe he’s got the Barcoo sickness. I think he’s been boned by some of those Kalchut blacks. Stands to reason that having killed Jeff Anderson, as I’ve always thought, they would try to prevent anyone from sheeting the crime home to them. Bony being a half-caste gives them a pull.”

  Blake raised the old argument of the triumph of education over such superstition.

  “Education makes no difference, except that the boning takes longer to accomplish, Sergeant. Either he’s being boned or he’s being poisoned. The blacks would even do that, even poison the water when he was away from camp. I’m voting for the boning, anyway. He will have to clear out. There’s nothing else for it. If he doesn’t the bone will finish him. You’d better report his condition and advise his removal if he won’t go.”

  “Yes, I suppose that is what had better be done,” agreed Blake, and added: “Miss Lacy been talking it over with you?”

  “Well, yes, she mentioned that one day she met Bony and he told her his condition was something like the effects of being boned. She’s a bit worried, too. Now, look here. You being under Bony in rank, and probably not wanting to inter­fere, what if I write to Brisbane and tell ’em what we sus­pect?”

  “Might be a good idea,” conceded Blake, thoughtfully.

  “All right! I’ll write to-day, now. The lad is flying to town this afternoon with the mail. I’m sorry to have to do it, but we can’t let Bony die in trying to clear up what most likely will never be known. So long!”

  “How’s the old leg?” Blake managed to get in before Old Lacy could hang up.

  “What’s that? Oh, the leg! Gives me jip. They’ve got it hoisted to the roof, and the women won’t let me move. Lin­den says I’ll be here for weeks yet.” There was a throaty chuckle. “The quack wanted me to go to the hospital where he’d have me under his eyes, but I’m not havin’ any. When a man’s got to leave his home he can leave it in a box. I’m staying here so’s I can keep a tally on things. I’m a long way from being dead or disinterested in my job.”

  “There’s nothing like keeping cheerful to live long,” Blake said, himself cheerful.

  He arrived at the Karwir boundary gate a few minutes be­fore twelve o’clock. This place of meeting had had to be aban­doned because of Bony’s increasing physical weakness. Blake drove on towards Karwir another mile and took the branch track to Green Swamp. Three miles from, the main road he came to the southern edge of the southernmost depression on which stood the corner post where the netted barrier ran north for two miles to turn east again opposite Bony’s tent camp. By now Sergeant Blake’s car had laid a trail over the several depressions and the narrow sand-banks separating them, and to-day when he sent the machine across each depression it was not unlike driving through lakes of water, so heavy was the mirage. The car’s tracks on the wide, flat depressions were barely discernible, but they could be seen crossing the sand­banks that appeared like a distant shore.

  When he had crossed the northernmost of the depressions and was moving over the flat land towards the towering dunes of sand at the edge of which smoked Bony’s fire before the white tent, two dogs came racing to welcome him. They barked frantically about the car until it stopped a little dis­tance from the fire.

  Detective-Inspector Bonaparte was sitting on an empty petrol case in the shade of one of the two cabbage-trees. As Blake alighted from the machine, he rose to his feet, drew water from the nearby iron tank, and carried the billy to the fire. Bony looked an aged man. His body was bent. His face was a travesty, the cheeks being sunken, the eyes lustreless, the mouth a fixed grin. Only the voice was unaltered.

  “Good day, Sergeant,” came the soft tones and pure accent. “It is good of you to come out this hot day.”

  “Oh, the heat’s nothing. I’m used to it. How’re you feeling to-day?”

  “Not good, Sergeant. Another bad night. I have just awak­ened from an uneasy sleep. I felt work beyond me this morn­ing, but we will get to it again this afternoon. Anderson lies near here, I am positively sure. He cannot be beyond a mile away. As I told you yesterday, I have only to find his grave and then my investigation is complete.”

  “Righto! We’ll get on with the burrowing among those dunes after lunch. I’ve brought out some milk and the wife says I’m to try you with some coffee. Think you could eat a little? What about a nice thin slice of ham and a lettuce salad?”

  “I couldn’t eat, Blake. The coffee I will try. Kindly convey my thanks to Mrs Blake. Say to her that I should like to accept her delicacies, but I fear to do so. I’ve been keeping off the brandy as much as possible, too, especially during the day. Spirits depress me, and I cannot afford to be mentally de­pressed just now.”

  Blake had milk heating in a saucepan.

  “Old Lacy rang up just before I left,” he said, trying to speak lightly. “The old man had the telephone extended to his bedroom, and he’s happier now that he can ring up his over­seer and stockmen. I’ll bet the nurse and Miss Lacy aren’t having too easy a time with him.”

  “No, he would be a bad patient. How goes his leg?”

  “Oh, just going on the same. Time is the only very impor­tant part of the cure. Old bones won’t knit fast, you know. He told me he was worried about you. It seems that the girl and he have been talking a bit, and the old man now believes that you haven’t got the Barcoo sickness but have been boned by the blacks.”

  “Indeed!”

  “Yes. It appears you put the idea into Miss Lacy’s head that day you met her coming back from Meena. I’m thinking she knows something about the boning and why it was done.”

  “I have thought that, too. I told her I felt much like a man who was boned in order to let her know I suspected it. What makes you think she knows all about it?”

  Blake related the gist of Diana’s conversation with him and with Mrs Blake.

  “It seems to us that she wanted to impress us with the danger of your pegging out here alone, and she suggested that I should report your illness to headquarters so that they would insist on your retiring from the case. She seems anxious to get you out of the way, and now she has told Old Lacy what you said about feeling like a boned man, and she’s urging him to write to headquarters.”

  “Really, Blake, that is too much,” Bony exclaimed. “Am I to be prevented from completing my case by the very man who wrote to headquarters so often insisting that the investiga­tion be begun?” Blake’s ears were shocked by the terrible laughter. “I can just hear and see Colonel Spendor when he receives Old Lacy’s letter. ‘Damn and blast Bony! He rebelled against my orders. He’s got himself boned by the blacks, or is up against some other tomfoolery, and now he can stew in his own juice. He’s sacked and he has resigned, and now he can go to the devil. Wri
te to Lacy and tell him that he’s got his detective and he can damn well keep him.’ That’s what Colonel Spendor will say when he receives Old Lacy’s letter.”

  “Still, Miss Lacy’s interest in your position appears to indi­cate that—”

  “She knows of the boning,” Bony carried on. “That’s no news. I know it, and I know she would like very much to have me removed by force in case I solve this mystery before I die. Oh, I’ve got them all cut and dried. I know as much about the killing of Anderson as though I had witnessed it, but what they did with the body I don’t know and cannot think. My brain won’t work.”

  Blake stood up from brewing the coffee. He said:

  “Well, it appears to me that finding a body in this country after it has been planted six months is too much to hope for. It is harder than going through a haystack to find a needle.”

  “It is no more difficult than going through a haystack for a needle with an electro-magnet,” Bony objected. “The extent and variety of the country doesn’t matter. The time factor is of little account. My mind ought to be the electro-magnet in attracting the body of Anderson. Failure to discover the needle cannot be credited to the amount of hay or the little­ness of the needle. It is my mind that fails, and my mind fails because it is upset by the boning. The object of the bon­ing is to drive me away, but the object it has actually achieved has been to blunt my mental power. Without Ander­son’s remains to prove that he is dead, all my work amounts to nothing, all the clues I have discovered are valueless.”

  “Well, what about giving it up and returning at a later date when you have recovered your health?”

  “We have so often argued the matter, Sergeant, that you begin to weary me. I will not give up. I have explained why I dare not give up. Once I let go my pride in achievement I become worse than nothing. This coffee is delicious. If only I can keep it down.”

  “Sip it slowly,” urged Blake.

  Four minutes later Bony was dreadfully sick. Blake held him, himself shaken by the terrible convulsions. He carried the emaciated body into the tent and laid it on the stretcher, and had almost to use force to persuade the detective to drink a stiff tot of raw brandy. Bony’s breath was painfully laboured and his face distorted by pain.

  “ ‘May the bones pierce your liver and the eagle’s claws tear your kidneys to string,’ ” quoted the sick man, slowly and softly. “The bones keep thrusting through my liver and the eagle’s claws keep clamping on my kidneys. They stop my breathing, the eagle’s claws.”

  “Lie quiet,” Blake entreated.

  “That I mustn’t do. I must not give in.”

  “Lie quiet for five minutes,” Blake said firmly.

  Slowly the laborious breathing eased. The lids covered the blue eyes that once reflected the virile mind of a virile man in the prime of life. When was that, considered Blake? Only a week or two ago. Thank God, Browne was on his way by now. And when he had taken this wreck away the Kalchut blacks would be dealt with. By gad, he would deal with ’em. ’Bout time they were split up and civilized and the magic knocked out of them.

  “Your five minutes are up, Sergeant,” Bony said, un­steadily. “I mustn’t give in. I think I want to smoke a cigar­ette. It’s a good thing the boning doesn’t stop the ability to smoke.”

  “Have a drop more brandy?”

  “No. I’ll be all right now. I should not have succumbed to temptation, but the coffee smelled delightful.”

  Despite Blake’s urgings to remain on the stretcher Bony rose and walked shakily to the petrol case. Blake helped him­self to more coffee and loaded and lit his pipe.

  “Success in crime investigation, Sergeant, depends on the ability of the investigator to put himself into the mind of the criminal,” Bony said, after a few minutes of silence that emphasized the stillness of the day. “Supposing you had seen Anderson riding down from the dunes that day it rained, and that after an argument you killed him. What would you have done with the body?”

  Blake pondered before replying:

  “I think, like you, that I would have taken it to the side of a sand-dune that looks like a wave about to crash on a beach and there at the foot of it I would have scooped out a hole and pushed the body in, knowing that the next wind would push the dune farther over it.”

  “Wouldn’t you have seen the rain falling, the sky promising more rain, and known that when the sand of the dune was wet it would be a long time before the wind exerted its power over it again?”

  “Ah—probably I would,” agreed the policeman.

  “I think we have been wasting time among the dunes.”

  “Then Anderson must lie out on that flat, soft ground bordering the depression.”

  “Yes, he must,” Bony said. “And yet—— Try to see your­self standing somewhere near here, with the body at your feet, and the problem of its disposal hammering at your brain. You have been riding all day and you have no digging tools with you. All you have is your hands and the ends of sticks with which to make a hole.”

  “Why are you so sure that Anderson was buried here and not taken a good way away?” pressed Blake, as though he wanted time to conceive himself faced by such a dilemma.

  “Because the men who killed him would know what every bushman knows—that no matter where a man may be, no matter how far he may be from human habitation, when in the bush he can never know when he will be met by someone. No, Anderson’s killers wasted no time in burying him, and ran as little risk as was possible. Here they could see to a great distance on all sides; and since there were more than one, one could watch from the summit of a dune while the other dug the grave.”

  “Could they have ridden across to the Green Swamp hut and got a shovel or even a crowbar?” inquired Blake.

  He did not see the faded blue eyes flash into momentary brilliance. When he did look at Bony, the dark lids hid the blue eyes.

  “One could have ridden over to the hut and brought back a shovel and even a crowbar,” Bony answered. “That seems unnecessary, though.”

  “Yes, I suppose so, when there’s so much soft ground available. How are you feeling now?”

  “A little better but I do not feel able to do any work. This afternoon we’ll just sit and talk, if you will be good enough to keep me company for an hour or two.”

  About the time that Sergeant Blake left Bony’s camp, Diana Lacy and John Gordon met some two miles westward of the bloodwood-tree on the Karwir boundary. Not since that day Bony arrived at Karwir had these two met, and this meeting had been delayed by Old Lacy’s accident, which had vastly added to the girl’s household tasks. Her increasing alarm at the reports of Bonaparte’s health had at last dictated an appoint­ment arranged through a discreet person in Opal Town.

  “Oh, John I’ve got so much to tell you and so little time to do it in, as I must be home by five o’clock,” Diana cried. “Let me go and please let me talk.”

  “Very well,” reluctantly assented her lover. “Let’s sit on that tree trunk over there in the shade. I’ve been wondering about you, aching for your kisses. Afterwards, I guessed why you didn’t turn up the day following your visit to Meena, but it was a fearful disappointment.”

  In the tree shadow they sat, John’s arm about Diana’s slim waist, her head resting against his shoulder, his lips caressing her dark hair. She told of Bony’s discovery of the piece of green cable silk, of the hair found on the tree trunk, the hair that had not come from the head of Jeffery Anderson. Then she told of her meeting with Bony after her last visit to Meena.

  “I gave the feather-filled mattress to Jimmy Partner,” Gor­don admitted. “I had to know what this detective was doing, and there were no birds on the lake to provide feathers for the blacks’ feet. They should have burned the case. I suppose they didn’t trouble even to obliterate the camp.”

  “Yes, that might be so, dear, but don’t you see, the In­spector found no one at home when he visited Meena. He went inside to place the mattress case on the end of the dres­ser. I’m sur
e he went into your room and took some of your hair from your brushes. That’s what he went there for. I could see that he suspected you when the microscope proved that the hair he had taken from the tree wasn’t Anderson’s. He must know by now that it wasn’t Anderson but you who was tied to the tree that day.”

  “We know that Bonaparte found the piece of cable silk,” Gordon said calmly, so calmly that Diana twisted her body in order to look at him. “After he got the dogs, the blacks were forced to keep well wide of him, but we know that he found marks on the tree trunk that interested him enor­mously. It doesn’t really matter what he finds and what he learns so long as he doesn’t find the body, and he won’t find that.”

  “But, dear——”

  “Supposing he has found sufficient on which to reconstruct the affair, what can he prove from what he has found? Nothing of any importance. He can’t prove that Anderson is dead. We know that he has been walking about all over the place, digging into the base of sand-dunes, and that some­times Sergeant Blake has been helping him. He knows he can’t do anything until he finds the body, and, as I have just said, he’ll never do that.”

  A silence fell between them for a little while. Then the girl sighed and said:

  “I wish I were not so worried about it.”

  “I’m not greatly worried about it, sweetheart,” Gordon told her. “I’m worried only about the possibility of Bona­parte putting in a confidential report that may affect the Kalchut in a roundabout manner. Neither mother nor I want to see official interference with them. That would mean their swift de-tribalization and inevitable extinction. No matter how kindly officialdom might deal with them, once they are interfered with it is the beginning of the end.”

  “But the time must come when——”