The message was stamped with John’s impulsiveness, a quality that annoyed Bony, who had his career at heart. He was at the time so impulsive that he was unable to write a clear message. Thecontents of the second envelope was a letter signed by Colonel Spender, Chief of the Queensland Police Force. Without preamble, the typed part ran:
Please curtail your leave and return at once. Important case out at Cunnamulla requires your services. Suit your abilities. Must be undertaken.
Below the signature, in the Colonel’s handwriting, was this:
For God’s sake come back quick. Every fool here falling down on his job. Can’t succeed in convicting common drunks. I’m the only policeman among the damned lot of them.
[Initialled amid scattered blots] G.H.S.
The image of Colonel Spender’s choleric face and his violent manner that so adequately disguised a generous heart flashed on Bony’s brain, causing him to laugh softly. The letter was dated. 11th November, two days after Bony had met John Muir in Perth. By now the Western Australian detective would have explained the Burracoppin case to the Colonel and have been energetically cursed for introducing it to the half-caste.
The third letter was from his wife, the last paragraph reading:
I hope that you are enjoying your holiday. The long train journey would have been too much for me, and you have always wanted to see Western Australia. Have you met John Muir by now?-John is very nice, isn’t he? He will never grow old; always will he be a rampageous boy. Is that the right word?
Bony’s smile was softer now and his eyes were faintly misty. His wife, a mission-reared half-caste like himself, possessed those splendid maternal qualities of gentleness, sympathy, and deep understanding. Twenty-two years married and sweethearts still, there never had been a moment’s anger or distrust. Where no white man, and no black man either, would have understood Bony or Marie, their understanding of each other was perfect.
The next morning the detective decided to take a day off and pay a visit to Merredin to investigate the source of Mr Jelly’s telegrams. Accordingly he boarded the guard’s van of the nine-forty-five goods train.
At the Chicago of Western Australia (a flourishing centre and the railway terminus for several branch lines) Bony inquired his way of a small boy and eventually entered the police station, where he found Sergeant Westbury seated at a plain deal table.
“Good day! Good day!” jerked out the senior officer at Merredin, heaving his bulk upwards and outwards to seize a chair and place it invitingly near him. “Pleased to see you-pleased to see you.”
The screwed-up eyes regarded Bony like the naked points of blue steel rapiers.
“I am taking a day’s holiday from manual labour,” Bony explained gravely. “I dislike manual labour intensely. It may be suitable for the white men, but I am not wholly white. Have you made any progress with the dossiers I asked for?”
“Slowly-slowly. Had to take care; take care. Have ’emhere, but not complete”.
Taking the sheets, Bony quickly sorted them and learned what had been painstakingly gathered. Landon had been born at Northam, Western Australia, in 1901. He joined theA.I. F., 7th August 1918, and was discharged 19th July 1919. In May 1923 he joined the Police Force and was dismissed the following year for trouble with a woman. After that he worked in the mines about Kalgoorlie until he went to work for George Loftus in 1927.
“So Landon was in the Force?”
“Yes. Mason-D. S. Mason-was here yesterday. Says he remembers Landon. Smart man-promising-mad on women-women his downfall. I heard the other day in Burracoppin that he’s a sheik around there!”
“Undoubtedly he is a sheikh with the ladies,” assented Bony. “Yet there appears nothing against him. What was the trouble with the woman when he was in the Force?”
“Maintenance.”
Mrs Mavis Loftus-so the dossier stated-was born at Cobar, New South Wales, in March 1902, of pastoral people. Her career, as far as the sergeant had ascertained, had been uneventful. She married Loftus at Cobar, 2nd May 1924.
Leaning back in his chair, Bony pinched his lower lip reflectively. The dossiers were barren of important information. It seemed as though he had figuratively reached a high and blank wall over or round which there was no possible way.
“Know anything?” asked the sergeant wistfully.
“Nothing,” Bony confessed.
“No reports from South Australia, either, but that don’t mean that Loftus didn’t keep hid on a boat when at Adelaide and went on to Melbourne-Melbourne.”
Bony smiled frankly at the perspiring sergeant.
“He did not go to Victoria. He did not leave this State.”
“How do you know, how do you know?”
“I know by the same reason or agency that permits your good wife to know you have been in a hotel.”
Westbury broke into a roar of laughter, saying when he could:
“Then you must be right. Loftus must be in Western Australia. My missus is always right; always right.”
“We are both of us always right, sergeant. Now, does it chance that you are friendly with the postmaster?”
“It does.”
For four seconds Bony studied the other’s red and jovial face. He wanted to know how much Sergeant Westbury was really governed by that brain-stunning material, red tape. When he spoke it was with deliberation, for much might hang on it.
“I am going to ask you to grant me a favour. I want you to give me a letter of introduction to the postmaster telling him who and what I am requesting him, firstly, to keep my identity a secret, and, secondly, to oblige me in a little matter I will make clear to him. If he will oblige I shall be saved much trouble and time which would have to be expended to gain what I want through official channels. There are occasions, sergeant, when the official manner of doing things makes me intensely annoyed. Will you write the introduction-and remain dumb?”
“Certainly-certainly. And no questions asked.”
“You are a man of perspicacity.”
“Eh?”
“Of intelligence, sergeant.”
Sergeant Westbury beamed-and wrote the desired introduction.
Having read what Westbury had written, the postmaster gazed searchingly into Bony’s smiling countenance. Within his private office he said:
“What is it I can do for you?”
“Show me the telegram lodged at this office for transmission to Mr Jelly of South Burracoppin before 17th November. That is all.”
The official was absent in the main office for ten minutes. When he returned he carried the desired telegraph form. Bony read:
“Come Perth.”
On the reverse side, in accordance with post-office regulations, was written in a bold hand the name and address of the sender:
“Miss Sunflower Jelly. South Burracoppin.”
“Thank you,” Bony said courteously, and walked out to the street.