Bony Is Called In
SINCE IT was twenty minutes to five on Sunday morning when Bony slipped into his bed at the Rabbit Department Depot, he made no attempt to rise in time for breakfast at the boarding-house, even though the meal was not served until nine o’clock. When he was awakened it was five minutes to eleven, and the man who awoke him was one of the last he expected to see.
“A log of wood is playful compared to you,” Mick Landon said cheerfully. “Did you intend to sleep all day?”
“I certainly feel like it,” Bony replied, at once mentally alert. “I don’t know what time you went to bed, but I do know that it was a quarter to three when I got back.”
“You were lucky. It was after four o’clock when I turned in. We were late fixing up about the dance. And there’s been some queer goings on out at Mrs Loftus’s farm. I took a shot at a feller.”
“You took a shot at a fellow?” Bony echoed, reaching for tobacco and papers. “Did you kill him?”
“No. But I winged him. Look here, Bony-somebody told me that you did tracking for the Queensland police once. Would you do Mrs Loftus a favour? She’s almost scared to death. Will you come out with me now and have a look round for the fellow’s tracks? It’s not serious enough to report to the police.”
“Well yes, I could do that,” Bony assented slowly. “I could go out after dinner.”
“We want you to come out now. Mrs Loftus got me to drive the car in.”
The detective feigned hesitation, although he felt electrified by this turn of the case. Then:
“All right. While I shave and dress describe these queer goings on you mentioned.”
“In the first place,” began Landon easily, “some time last night someone played what at first seemed a practical joke. When Sawyers, who took a crowd of Burra dancers to Jilbadgie, took the crowd home this morning he was stopped at the empty garage by all the town cows, six or seven horses, and umpteen dogs all walking around and sniffing at the place. Being dark and everyone tired out, they didn’t take much notice, but this morning a Snake Charmer was passing, and beside the stock walking round outside he could hear a lot of dogs barking and snarling inside. When I came in I didn’t turn down the garage road, and I thought it strange that several dogs, a couple of horses, and a lot of rabbits were messing about at intervals along the road right from Mrs Loftus’s farm.”
“It appears that the joker laid a trail, probably of aniseed,” Bony said reflectively, “I remember it being done once in Queensland.”
“I think there is more in it than a joke,” Landon went on. “They ran the trail from Mrs Loftus’s farm right to the garage and inside it. A lot of dogs that followed it, including the three out at our place, were allowed inside the garage and locked up there.”
“The traillaid as far as Mrs Loftus’s farm?” asked Bony.
“Yes, it was. After what happened later I think the trail was not laid for a practical joke. If it was aniseed they used it must have been terribly strong. Why, there were rabbits nosing along the farm track when I came out.”
“What makes you think it was not a practical joke?”
“Because the house was burgled while we were at the dance. We got home to find the house upside down, as it were, the furniture moved about, drawers opened, the beds turned up. Strangely enough, Mrs Loftus could find nothing missing, and what the burglars hoped to find she cannot imagine. They were still prowling about after we reached home.
“Mrs Loftus and Miss Waldron slept together because they were so upset, and I determined to sit up on a kind of guard. After pretending to go to bed I got my rifle and sat just outside the door of my tent. Sure enough, half an hour after, I saw a man sneaking across to the house from the cart shed. I fired a shot at him, but in the dark only winged him, and he got away.”
“Looks to me like a police job,” Bony said quietly. To which Landon countered with:
“Well, it is and it isn’t. Since George Loftus cleared out I’ve almost run the place for Mrs Loftus. She has come to rely on me to a great extent. She thinks, and I agree with her, that it is no ordinary burglary. We think that it was Loftus who came back-knowing that we all would be at the dance-to get something important, although Mrs Loftus can’t think what it is he wanted. Not being able to get it, or being disturbed by our return, he hung about waiting for a second chance.
“Mrs Loftus is dead frightened, but she doesn’t want to go to the police about it. I remembered hearing that you are good at tracking, and we thought it best, in order to create no more scandal, to ask you to pick up his tracks and find out where he came from and has gone to.”
At this point Bony turned round from the mirror before which he was brushing his fine black hair, to say tentatively:
“Suppose the burglar’s wound is serious? Suppose he has perished through loss of blood and I find him? That would have to be reported to the police. It would be a police matter.”
“If you saw him run, as I did, you would know that he wasn’t seriously wounded,” Landon said. “I am not nervous on that score. What we want to do is to find out what his game is. There is someone in it with him, too. He must have had someone to help him, because one man couldn’t have run the trail and burgled the place.”
Dressed now, Bony sat on the edge of the table and rolled his second cigarette. Regarding Mick Landon, he could not but admire the man’s capacity for cool lying. Without the slightest betrayal he had stated that the burglar had upset the furniture when Bony had done nothing of the kind, and he had said he had shot the prowler with a rifle when Bony knew he had fired a revolver.
It occurred to him then to proceed slowly. Believing Landon to be a dangerous man, knowing that a man will commit a crime to cover a crime already committed, he wondered if this invitation to the farm was to be the prelude to a regrettable accident. Or were they genuinely anxious to have the affair cleared up, desirous to know if really it was George Loftus that Mick Landon had shot?
“If you argue that it was George Loftus who burgled the place,” Bony said slowly, “then I have found a flaw in it. If it had been Loftus it would not have been necessary for him to decoy away the dogs, because he knew them, and they would know him.”
“Then who the hell was it?” Landon demanded with sudden heat.
“Not I. I can assure you that I’m not wounded.”
“Of course it wasn’t you. What would you want to burgle the place for? It must have been Loftus, or it might have been someone he sent. He could have sent someone, couldn’t he? Any old burglar would have pinched the several silver photo frames and some jewellery Mrs Loftus left in a drawer.” Bony wondered which drawer. “Anyway, let’s go. You might be able to pick up tracks. Mrs Loftus will be glad to give you dinner.”
“Very well,” Bony agreed. “Drive along to Mrs Poole’s place. I must tell her I shall not be in for dinner. We can have a look at the empty garage, too.”
Landon made no bones about consenting to this procedure. When he stopped the car outside the boarding-house they found Mrs Poole at the shop entrance and Mr Poole seated on a fruit case below the shop-window. Farther along the street a number of men and a small crowd of children were gathered outside the empty garage, shouting with laughter at two horses and several cows walking up and down the road sniffing at the trail. Mr Poole was most cheerful. The eternal cigarette drooped from beneath his drooping moustache.
“The missus says I played that joke,” he said in his tired voice. “What Iwants to know is, how could I?”
“Joe!” Mrs Poole snapped. “You’re getting a bigger liar every day. I said nothing of the sort.”
“Perhaps not. But you thought it.”
“I’ll tell you what I am thinking, if you like.”
“I like,” stated Mr Poole submissively.
“I think it’s about time you chopped some wood.”
“Wood! If itain’t wood, it’s the cow; and if itain’t the cow, it’s Mrs Black,”sneered Mr Poole, brazenly winking at Bony. “Why don’t you think of nice-sounding words like love and moonlight and-and beer? If it wasn’t the blank wood, or the blanker cow, or the blankest Mrs Black, it would be the treble blank fowl that’s got to be plucked.”
Bony laughed delightedly. Even Landon laughed before saying: “Well, we must be getting on.”
“Yes, I just wanted to tell you, Mrs Poole, that I shall not be home for dinner,” the detective explained.
Mr Poole pulled himself to his feet by clawing at the shop-window frame. He said, almost wailing: “Well, for ’eaven’ssake, be home for tea. We got to down the monotony somehow.”
Bony chuckled again as they slid away, leaving husband and wife laughing at them and contradicting the cat-and-dog life that their constant bickering would induce one to suppose that they led.
The crowd at the garage cheered when Mick Landon almost collided with a cow which refused to be driven away by a red-faced stout woman whom Bony knew to be Mrs Black. Along the wide, straight road leading to the old York Road were two horses, a dog, several cows, and a number of rabbits, all sniffing at the trail which there ran along the centre of the road. From the turn to the rabbit fence gate they met a horse and passed several dogs.
“Have your farm dogs gone home?” Bony asked.
“They went back along the trail when they were let out of the garage. Got home when I was about to leave, so I tied them up. Just in time, too, to shut the gate on three cows. If it wasn’t for the cursed burglary, I’d appreciate the joke of that trailed decoy. The bird who put it down knew his onions.”
“Too right,” Bony agreed colloquially. “The fellows in Queensland scooped every dog and cat out of town and kept them prisoners in an old house two miles away. They undertook to find the lost animals at sixpence apiece.”
“You in Queensland long?”
“Born there. Went to school in Brisbane.”
“How did you come to be working in Western Australia?”
“I made a good cheque on ahorsebreaking contract and took the opportunity I long wanted to see the West. I came to Adelaide by train andthem took the mail plane. Foolishly I didn’t book my return passage when I had the money. I went broke. Got tight one night, and someone relieved me of my last two tenners.”
“So you got a job with the Rabbits.”
“Yes. Met a fellow who said I might get a job with the Rabbit Department. After a little trouble I found the office and the chief. Asked for a job and was sent up here that night.”
“Wonderful!”
“What is?” asked Bony blandly.
“You gettinga job like that. You don’t appear to know your luck.”
“Well, I suppose I was lucky in a way.”
“In a way!”Landon echoed. “It was only a few months ago that they put off three-quarters of the staff on account of the depression. There are two of the old hands doing nothing in Burra today.”
“Well, well,” Bony said smoothly. “One of them will have a chance soon. I’ve almost saved my fare to Brisbane.”
Arriving at the farm gate, Bony got down and opened it, closing it again after the car had passed through. When they pulled up in front of the house Mrs Loftus came out to meet them.
“I am so glad you have come, Mr Bony,” she said sweetly, offering him her hand. “Please come in. We are just going to sit down to a late breakfast.”
Gone was Mrs Loftus’s cynical aloofness. She accepted Bony on full equality, inviting him to enter her home with a nervous little laugh and many apologies for the untidiness of the living-room caused by the burglar. Turning from the stove with a dish of bacon and eggs in her hands, Miss Waldron smiled brightly and expressed the hope that he had not eaten breakfast.
Bony could see no alteration of the furniture, the heavy articles occupying the same positions they had done when he had paid his secret visit. Door and windows were opened wide, the window blinds drawn to minimize the glare. Above the conversation rose the hum of the curious blowflies attracted by the scents of the meal.
“You had quite an adventure last night,” the detective said when all were seated at the table.
“Yes. We were so frightened,” Mrs Loftus told him with a wan smile. “We were thankful enough when day dawned. I feel horribly tired, having had barely four hours’ sleep.”
“I am sure I shall sleep well tonight,” Miss Waldron said in more cheerful tones.
“Tonight you need not be nervous, for that man won’t come back again,” Landon assured them with laughter.
Miss Waldron shivered. “I hope not,” she said, adding when she turned to the detective: “Do you think you will be able to track the wretch?”
“I have no fear of failure,” he replied egotistically, and then proceeded to lie with the calm assurance of Landon. “My mother was wonderfully adept in the art of tracking, and she trained my gift of observation, inherited from her.” Bony could not remember seeing his mother at any time in his life. “To see marks on the ground of the passage of some living thing that no white man can see does not depend entirely on vision. A blackfellow will see a track which the white man wouldn’t see through atelescope, because he does not understand what his unaided eyes show him. The lubras are better trackers than the men, for the men are less energetic as food foragers, and, therefore, less practised.”
“Is it correct that you have worked for the police?” inquired Mrs Loftus.
“On several occasions,” he replied frankly, his teeth flashing in a smile. “Yet they are hard masters, although the pay is good. I don’t like working for them. They are too suspicious. Because they cannot see so well the little tale-telling marks, they think, when a tracker faults, that he is lazy or is playing a game of his own.”
“Tell us one of your tracking adventures, Mr Bony, will you?” Mrs Loftus entreated. “Let me fill your cup first.”
“Thank you. Your coffee is delicious. If I bore you, tell me to stop.” Bony leaned back in his chair, idly stirring his coffee. “The most remunerative work given me by the police was related to theMetters case. You might remember it. No? Well, in nineteen twenty-four a little girl was horribly murdered on a farm fifty miles west of Toowoomba, Queensland. I happened, at the time, to be in Brisbane, and quite by accident a detective officer met me in Queen Street. To shorten my story, I set off when the price of my services was fixed at sixty-five pounds and expenses paid, because they get all the praise for the work a black tracker does for them.
“I reached the scene of the crime three days after it had been committed. The child had been murdered in a small block of uncleared timber. She was returning from school, following a path through the timber as she had done for several years, and it was obvious that the killer waited hidden there. It was a most shocking affair altogether, and, apart from the money, I determined to get him.
“I can understand and have a little sympathy for theman who kills whilst influenced by alcohol or passionate anger, but I have none-and no normal person could have any-for a person who cold-bloodedly plans such a crime against an innocent girl. The murderer in this instance made no effort to conceal his tracks till he reached a main road two miles away. Once there he kept close to the crown of the road, where the wheels of passing traffic would obliterate his tracks.
“I had to examine every foot of eleven miles of one side of the road and seven miles of the other side before I found where he had left the road in his socked feet. In his socks he walked fifteen miles, taking every advantage of hard surfaces and several watercourses. It was ten o’clock in the morning when I started, in company with three mounted policemen, and it was six o’clock that evening when I pointed out to them the murderer’s hiding place.”
“Where was he hiding?” simultaneously demanded the women.
Bony, looking from one to the other, laughed softly, a little triumphantly, for he had captured their interest. His gaze fell to his plate, on which he began to butter a piece of bread.
“WhenMetters saw us crossing his paddocks he barred himself into his house, which, like this one, had only one door. He was armed with two rifles, and not only refused to surrender, but threatened to shoot anyone who went in to arrest him.
“Many of the neighbours came in their cars. A cordon was drawn round the house which at night was illuminated by the headlights of motor-cars. The fifth dayMetters rushed out, firing a rifle and killing one man before he was shot dead.”
“How dreadful!” exclaimed Mrs Loftus.“Didn’t the police give the man a chance so that he might stand this trial?”
“I think it was as well he was shot dead,” Bony said quietly. “At the time he came out there were more than two hundred very angry men, and only seven policemen, surrounding the small house. Police reinforcements were on their way. The crowd knew that. They wanted to fire the house. Metters knew it was but a matter of time before the crowd would burn his place down, and that when he did run out and was not killed the crowd would throw him back into the flames. When he was killed the police were hustled away until it was established that he was really dead. It would be impossible to imagine a more disappointed crowd.”
“Dreadful!” murmured Mrs Loftus.
“It was a pity they shot him dead,” her sister said fiercely. Turning to her, Bony said:
“I believe that the utmost penalty the fool law inflicts on the killers of little children is ridiculously disproportionate to the enormity of the crime. Not being a Christian, I am not swayed by sickly sentiment. However, I have read your Bible and believe in the Old Testament’s statement of justice so aptly condensed into the phrase, ‘An eye for an eye.’ To accompany the painless death of such a monster with legal and religious ceremonial is but to mock the little victim’s cries for justice and vengeance. I am uncertain that vengeance belongs wholly to God. The torturers of little children should be pegged down on an ants’ nest.”
“Oh!” whispered Mrs Loftus, her face white, her eyes staring.
“So they should,” Miss Waldron said with emphatic agreement.
“Cruelty will be stamped out only by cruelty,” was Bony’s opinion.
“And yet the cruelty of theMiddle Ages did not prevent crime,” Landon pointed out.
“Soft-hearted leniency hasn’t diminished crime,” Bony returned swiftly. “The tortures of theMiddle Ages were crude, and men were then better able to stand pain than they are today. The discovery of anaesthetics has made us increasingly sensitive to pain. Man, a few years ahead, will faint when he cuts his finger.” Bony was quite calm when he made these statements. Pushing back his chair, he got to his feet, when he said: “If you will excuse me, I will run over your burglar’s tracks. I would like you ladies to remain in the house so that you will not confuse them. If you accompany me, Landon, please keep behind me always.”
Outside the house he asked:
“Can you tell me precisely where you stood when you fired at the man?”
“Yes,” Landon assented. “I was about four yards west of that broken-down grindstone. I fell over it when I was running after him.”
“Good! Now, please, don’t talk.”
Walking to the grindstone, the half-caste saw the tracks left by Landon wearing slippers. He saw, east of the grindstone, the tracks of a man coming from the cart shed, turning abruptly eastward, where he staggered, saving himself with his hands, and then turning to the edge of the stubble paddock. The prowler had come from the direction of the main road and had returned to it after he was shot.
Without speaking, Bony proceeded to investigate on behalf of John Muir. Pretending to follow a track, he circled the cart shed before crossing the short distance to Landon’s camp, which he also circled.
“Missed anything?” he asked the hired man.
“No. Did he go into my tent?”
“If he did, it was while you were at the dance. Your constant passage through the entrance has wiped out any tracks he might have left. But I think he did go into your tent.”
Slowly then the tracker walked to the dam, to find between the mullock banks a thirty-foot square of water fenced from the stock. A windmill raised water to a galvanized-iron tank on tall supports, from which it gravitated through pipes to the trough behind the stables and to the house.
Now southward walked Bony, passing the snarling dogs chained securely to their kennels of case boards, to a small shed containing superphosphate bags and other lumber. Fowls scratched in the shade. From that place he went on to the long haystack, and for the first time Landon offered a question.
“Did he come here?” he asked.
“He did,” Bony replied cheerfully. Bending forward, he pointed to the straw-strewn ground. “There is the mark of his right foot. Can’t you see it?”
“Be damned if I can!”
When he stood up Bony was smiling. Walking along one side of the stack, he noted the holes at its base where the dogs had scratched in the ground in search of coolness and the fowls had scratched to clean themselves. At the south end of the stack the shadow was longest, for the sun then was at the zenith. Here the detective paused to stand pinching his bottom lip.
“Did the fellow come here?” Landon demanded.
With his index finger Bony pointed at the ground.
“He passed along there,” he said, impatient at the other’s doubt; then impassive for a moment, a man sorely puzzled. Acockbird, perched on a pole leaning against the stack, crowed vigorously. The blowflies hummed like a harvester machine in a far paddock, anxious to remain in the deep shadow, swarming in the crevices among the straw.
Bony’s vacant stare became focused upon Landon. Landon’s mouth was a straight line, the lips drawn inward. His peculiar blue eyes were wide, expressionless, their gaze fixed on Bony’s face. Not a muscle of his face moved. It seemed almost that he waited. Bony said:
“I cannot understand the interest your burglar took in the dam, your tent, the superphosphate shed, and in this haystack. You know, it does seem that Loftus, if it were he, hoped to discover an object which might be outside as well as inside the house.”
Abruptly the detective moved away, walking direct to the house, where he was met by the anxious and curious women. He told them that the burglar had first visited the house and then had wandered about the homestead until he was shot.
Once again at the broken grindstone he followed the man’s real tracks to the edge of the stubble and at once began to zigzag across it. Seven times he pointed out to the interested Landon a drop of blood on yellow straw. Unable longer to see footprints on the broken and matted straw, the drops of blood few white men would have seen blazed the trail for Bony.
On the far headland of the paddock he again saw tracks, now crossing a narrow, iron-hard ribbon inside the rabbit fence, and now beyond the fence crossing the wider and grassier ribbon between farm fence and road. The tracks turned south along the main road, but Bony turned northward, walking up the long sand slope till he was about midway to the summit, when he stopped and turned to Landon, saying:
“Here your man climbed into a car. His tracks go no farther. He wore several pairs of socks over his boots. His size in boots is either seven or eight. He would weigh about eleven stone. It might have been Loftus had not the dogs been lured away.”
“It was George Loftus. He takes an eight boot.”
Bony laughed. “Have it your own way,” he said lightly.
“It must be Loftus. Who the devil else would come poking about and take nothing that we know? Anyway, Mrs Loftus will appreciate what you have done for her. Let’s go back for a cup of tea, and then I’ll take you to Burra in the car.”
“I will not put you to that trouble, Mick, thank you all the same. I’ll leave you here and walk back. I shall enjoy the walk. Convey my compliments to Mrs Loftus and to Miss Waldron, and thank them for me for that excellent breakfast.”
“Getting the car will be no trouble.”
“Really, I would prefer to walk,” Bony said with smiling finality. “I hope to meet you all someday soon. Perhaps at a dance. Aurevoir.”
They smiled at each other at parting as two dogs undecided whether to be friends or not. Bony, walking down thenorth slope to the old York Road, wondered about many things. He wondered why Mrs Loftus and her paramour were so perturbed by the theft of a candle; why they were so anxious to know who it was whom Landon had shot; why Landon had shot instead of first tackling the prowler; why he said he shot him with a rifle, and why he had not produced the rifle to back his statement.