The Bone is Pointed

by Arthur W. Upfield

  Adhering to the trunk of that solitary tree Bony had discovered the wisp of green cable silk.

  It was now the second afternoon following that on which Young Lacy had brought out the gear and assisted Bony to make this new camp. Throughout the preceding day Bony had hunted for aboriginal spies and had found none. From the fence round to Green Swamp, he had examined the claypan ribbon fronting the dunes, hoping to pick out on the surface traces of one or more tracks made by The Black Emperor when it rained six months before. During the first part of the second day he and the dogs had ranged over adjacent Meena country, examining sand-dunes and flat lands. Bony had found no further clue; but still he was certain that this area of country could provide him with all the pieces of the jig-saw puzzle if only he could delve beneath the surface laid by the rain and the wind and the heat of the sun.

  After breakfast he had been violently sick, and for lunch he had been satisfied with a few plain biscuits and a pannikin or two of tea. Feeling now a little better, he decided again to examine that solitary mulga-tree. Before, he had been reluctant to spend time here lest he should betray his interest to those watching spies.

  When he climbed over the barb-top barrier, the dogs followed, refusing to remain in the camp shade despite the heat of the day. The mare standing in the improvised yard near the camp raised her head to watch, but soon began again to doze, grateful for the spell from work.

  Bony came to a standstill before the tree. Yes—there was the faint dent on the bark he had made with his thumb-nail to mark the exact place where he had found the wisp of cable silk. On a former visit to this tree he had walked round and round it for several minutes without seeing anything to arouse his interest. And now as though the trunk were the hub of a wheel, line of vision a spoke, and himself a section of the rim, Bony again slowly circled the tree a bare two feet from it. Finding nothing abnormal when making a general examination of the straight trunk, he decided to look for clues in support of his theory of the wisp of cable silk.

  It was not until he had closely examined the base of the trunk for several minutes that Bony decided that an area of faint discolouration, in the centre of which was a curved line some two inches long, was a bark bruise. Any man with less bush erudition than Bony would never have seen the mark, and would certainly not have guessed what had made it—the heel of a man’s boot. It was immediately below his own mark where the wisp of cable silk had been.

  Twenty minutes later he discovered another bruise, this one being opposite the mark made by his thumbnail and some sixty-two inches from the ground. It extended half-way round the trunk and was about five inches wide. Bony sighed his triumph before turning to the bored dogs to whom he said:

  “We progress, my canine friends. To-day we have taken a further step, a confident step. I have now proof of my theory of what happened to Anderson, the theory that I built up from the wisp of cable silk. From this side of the fence a party of aboriginals doubtless saw Anderson riding down the slope of the sand-dune on the other side of the fence. Probably insults were passed over the barrier, and then, enraged, Anderson jumped from his horse, neck-roped it to a fence post, leapt the barrier and rushed about the blacks intending to whip them.

  “Remembering what their race had suffered at his hands, they declined to be whipped and decided to give him the father of a hiding. There was a fierce struggle until the white man was knocked unconscious. He was dragged to this tree. One of the blacks went to the horse and removed a stirrup-leather; with it Anderson was made a helpless captive, the long strap being passed round the trunk and his neck and buckled where his hands could not reach it. The wound made on the tree by the strap is approximately sixty-two inches up from the ground, because Anderson was a six-foot man and his knees were slightly relaxed.

  “On regaining his senses, Anderson faced his enemies, one of whom had his whip with the green cable silk cracker. Probably they told him what they were going to do. The fellow with the whip made a trial cast to learn its exact length, and the silk cracker smacked the trunk above Anderson’s head. After that the flogging began in earnest, and continued until the captive again became unconscious. His body slumped downward and he was hanged by the strap.

  “Yes—that’s about how it happened, Hool-’Em-Up and you, you imitation bull terrier. An ugly affair altogether. Now we’ll give the trunk of this tree another overhaul. We’ll examine the bark square inch by square inch just in case it has caught anything else on its raised and serrated edges.”

  Going to ground, Bony began to circle the tree. He took it in successively higher layers until at last he came to stand on his feet. An hour was spent thus, his eyes small and steady, his brows knit and the whole of his mind directing his eyes. And when he stood before the mark he had made with his thumbnail, he brought his eyes close to the bark several inches below the mark. Then quickly he moved his head to either side and squinted diagonally across the place, for only now and then when the soft wind moved it, did the light fall glintingly on a human hair. Like the silk it was caught fast by the bark.

  “So—another—step—we—take—to-day!” he cried so loudly that the dogs rushed to jump up about him. “We find a hair of the man who was strapped to this tree, doubtless caught by the bark as he made a frantic effort to escape the whip lash. It is light-brown in colour, and, I should say, two inches in length. Anderson’s hair was light-brown. There in that single hair, to be seen only when light strikes upon it at an angle, is the final brick of the building of my theory. I’m lucky, I’ll not deny. It is the only tree within many yards. It is not a smooth-skinned leopardwood-tree, but a mulga-tree, the bark of which is rough and hard. Nero, and Wandin, and Malluc—you scoundrels—as Dryden wrote, beware the fury of a patient man.”

  Bony successfully detached the hair and imprisoned it within a cigarette paper which he placed in an envelope, later to be marked Exhibit Three.

  “Oh yes, we now know that Anderson was strapped to this tree and flogged with the whip he himself used to flog Inky Boy,” Bony remarked to the dogs. “There he hung suspended by the stirrup-leather. Then what happened? What happened then? Why, the blacks had to conceal the body. They must have been confident before they killed Anderson that John Gordon was riding away from the Channels with a mob of sheep, but even so they must have seen the danger to themselves in the possibility that Gordon might return to the locality in search of other sheep. Thus they would not have carried the body away to another place.

  “They would have done one of two things. With pointed mulga sticks they would have dug a grave out there in that soft, flat ground. Or they would have carried the body up among the dunes and buried it at the foot of the eastern slope of one of them, knowing that the prevailing westerly wind would push the dune farther and farther over and on it. Ah—yes—I can see a lot of manual labour in front of me.”

  For two hours the menace of the boning had been banished from Bony’s mind, and, calling the dogs, he climbed back over the fence to his camp and put on the billy to boil for tea. He was elated by his discoveries, and hope burned brightly that he would complete his case before physical illness mastered him. At long last he possessed a lead. He had correctly placed sufficient pieces of the puzzle to enable him to see almost the entire picture.

  At six o’clock, when Sergeant Blake reached the boundary fence, he found Bony waiting with the tea newly made, the mare neck-roped to a tree and the dogs tethered to other trees. Bony’s eyes were bright, but his cheeks were a little sunken and his lips appeared to be much thinner.

  “How’s things?” asked the policeman.

  “I was sick again this morning,” replied Bony. “However, I managed a few biscuits for lunch, and I am feeling much less depressed because I have made several important discoveries.”

  “Good! Let’s have some dinner. I’ve brought it. The wife says that if I won’t get home in time for dinner, then I must take it with me. There’s cold beef, a salad and an apple pie with cream.”

  “What a feast!
” Bony exclaimed. “My bread is rock-hard, the meat has become fly-blown, and the cow has bolted.”

  Blake set the food out on a square of American cloth, and Bony, tempted, ate while he told about his work that afternoon.

  “Anderson’s hair was light-brown, wasn’t it?” he asked.

  Blake nodded, saying:

  “It was. And he always wore it fairly long.”

  “Still, Sergeant, it has yet to be proved that the hair I found attached to the bark came from the head of the missing man,” argued Bony. “Er—excuse me. I am very sorry. It is an insult to your wife’s excellent cooking.”

  He hurried away to the trees and Blake heard him retching. It was the Barcoo sickness all right, or was it? The previous evening when they had eaten at this place, Bony had done this very same thing. As Blake well knew, the Barcoo sickness strikes quickly and without warning, and if this was the Barcoo sickness then its following so closely on the boning was an extraordinary coincidence.

  “Rotten luck,” he said when Bony returned.

  “You’ve said it, Blake. I quite enjoyed the meal.”

  Bony helped himself to tea, added milk from the bottle Blake had brought, but did not take sugar.

  “As I was saying,” he continued, “we have yet to prove that the hair I found caught up by the bark of that tree came from Anderson’s head. Fortunately, we have an excellent chance of proving it. The Karwir people have never disturbed Anderson’s room, and, when there the other day, I noticed that his comb and brushes contained several of his hairs. As I have the microscope, will you run me in to the homestead?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Then we’ll get along. For a detective I am going, this evening, to be communicative. I will invite the Karwir people to be present when we examine under the microscope the tree-caught hair, and a hair from one of Anderson’s brushes. I want you to observe carefully the reaction of each member of the Lacy household. Say nothing. Note and tell me afterwards what you observe, if anything. Now let’s go. The animals will be safe enough.”

  Half an hour later the car was braked before the gate in the canegrass fence, and Blake followed Bony to the door in the long south veranda where they were welcomed by Old Lacy himself.

  “Why, Bony, it’s you! Hullo, Blake!” he boomed.

  “Good evening, Mr Lacy,” Bony said in reply. “Sergeant Blake came out to see me this afternoon, and I have persuaded him to run me in. I can now personally state my regret at the destruction of Green Swamp hut. It must have been due to my carelessness.”

  Old Lacy stood aside from the doorway.

  “Go in! Go in! Don’t let the firing of that hut worry you. It was past time that I built another out there, and save for a few rations the only articles of value in the place were a crowbar and a couple of shovels. Hi, there, Diana! Is there any dinner left? Here’s two visitors.”

  Bony hastened to assure Old Lacy, and Diana who appeared from the house dining-room, that he and the Sergeant had dined, and he was about to state the reason for the call when the squatter commanded them to sit down and have a peg. Never a drinker, Bony sipped a glass of whisky and soda with real gratitude.

  “You’re not lookin’ too well, Bony,” observed their host.

  “No, I am not well. I have a touch of the Barcoo sickness.”

  At once Old Lacy was concerned, saying:

  “That’s bad. Not many complaints worse than that. Chlorodyne and brandy’s about the only thing for it, with a feed now and then of potatoes steeped all night in vinegar. You must take some out with you, unless, of course, you’d care to camp here a few days.”

  “You are more than kind, and I should like to accept your suggestion; but this case is at last moving and I may complete it more quickly than I anticipated.”

  “Ah—ah! That’s good. What have you found? Anything important?”

  “It may be of great importance,” Bony replied cautiously. “You will remember that I told you I found a wisp of green cable silk, believed to have come from Anderson’s whip cracker, caught by the bark of a tree. To the bark of that same tree I have found a human hair still clinging after all these months. It is of the same colour as Anderson’s hair, but we cannot be certain that the hair I have found came from his head until we compare it with one known to have come from it. I have brought the microscope, and I suggest we all go over to Anderson’s room to compare the hair I found with one taken from his brushes.”

  With remarkable agility Old Lacy sprang to his feet. Blake rose next and then Bony before Diana Lacy. After his first bow of greeting, he had not looked at her, and now he stood aside to permit her to pass on behind her father.

  “We’ll soon decide the matter,” remarked the old man. “If the hair you found is Anderson’s, what will it prove?”

  “That he was tied to a certain tree and flogged with his own whip.”

  “I thought it was something like that. Those damned blacks treated him to the medicine he gave to that loafer, Inky Boy,” the old man said triumphantly, triumphantly because his own baseless theory promised to become fact.

  The girl, Blake and Bony, halted outside the door of Anderson’s room in the office building while the old man entered the office for the key.

  “Yours must be an extraordinary interesting profession, Mr Bonaparte,” she said, tonelessly.

  “Sometimes, Miss Lacy. There’s a lot of routine work, however, in every case. Perhaps the most interesting part of an investigation is provided by clues such as human hairs, fingerprints, tobacco ash and the manner in which a man wears out his boots.”

  Old Lacy emerged from the office, followed by his son who cheerfully greeted the callers, and, the door having been unlocked and thrown open, they trooped into the room that had not been occupied for six months. One open door of the wardrobe revealed suits hanging within. On a hook beside the window were Anderson’s several whips. The bed was made, but red dust lay lightly on the coverlet. On the chest of drawers were the missing man’s toilet articles arrayed before a wide mirror.

  “Now, I’ll set up the instrument and we’ll see what we see,” Bony said quietly, and the others stood back without comment. “Could we have the office petrol light?”

  Young Lacy hurried out to the office. Through the single window the glory of the departing day tinted their faces with scarlet, giving soft russet tints even to Bony’s black hair as he manipulated the microscope set upon the dressing chest. The lamp was placed beside it, pumped and lit, and the red oblong within the window frame became purple. Having arranged side by side between two plain glasses the hair he had found adhering to the tree and one he took from a hair brush, Bony adjusted the mirror and focused the instrument.

  “Ladies first! Miss Lacy, will you kindly give us your opinion on these two hairs?”

  “I hardly think my opinion will count, Mr Bonaparte, but I cannot refrain from looking at them.”

  “Thank you. As a matter of fact, Miss Lacy, I am relying on your feminine powers of colour matching.”

  Silently the men stood regarding the girl’s shapely back while she peered through the instrument. She appeared to take quite several minutes in her examination, but the period was much less. Then she said:

  “They look alike to me.”

  This was Old Lacy’s verdict. Blake was much less sure, and his opinion was backed by Young Lacy. Bony demanded a full five minutes for his investigation; then he turned to face them, his brows contracted by a slight frown.

  “They are not from the same head,” he said slowly. “I grant you the great difficulty in judging the colour of those two hairs. The colour of that taken from the tree, however, is lighter than that of the hair just taken from the brush. This difference could be attributed to the bleaching action of sunlight on the hair found on the tree. The difference is so slight, however, that we cannot accept colour as a basis for judgement. The difference I observe between those two hairs lies in their size or thickness. The hair taken from the tree is smaller than that tak
en from the brush, it is finer. You will see that the hair taken from the brush is coarse. The hairs have come from two men, not one. I may have to send them to Brisbane for a more expert examination which I feel sure will bear out my opinion. Take another glance at them and note the difference in size. In colour both hairs are light-brown, but with a slight difference in shade.”

  Blake examined the hairs and agreed with Bony concerning their difference in size. Diana stated that their sizes were equal, to which her father agreed. Young Lacy could not be positive.

  “Well, we must await the expert’s opinion,” Bony told them. “My opinion is that not Anderson but another man was secured to the tree, and the hair of that man’s head was similar in colour to Anderson’s.”

  “That being so, d’you think Anderson tied a fellow to the tree and flogged him?” asked Young Lacy.

  “I don’t now know what to think,” Bony admitted. “It is all most puzzling. I must examine the tree again, and follow certain theories I have evolved from the examination of the hairs. Excuse me.”

  Turning his back upon them, he carefully replaced the hair found on the mulga-tree in its envelope marked Exhibit Three, and into a second envelope to be marked Exhibit Four he placed several hairs taken from the brushes. After that he became obviously anxious to depart from the homestead.

  Old Lacy wanted him and the Sergeant to stay the evening, and, when he begged to be excused, the old man insisted that he take a bottle of brandy and a bottle of vinegar in which to steep sliced potatoes as a cure for the Barcoo sickness.

  “Well, what do you think of the three Lacys?” inquired Bony, when they were on their way back to the boundary gate.

  “The old man was quite at sea about the hairs, and a little disappointed that you seemed confused by their difference,” replied Blake. “Did the hairs really confuse you?”