Wet Shoe-Prints
EARLYTHEfollowing morning Bony returned the bicycle to the shop, and assuredhimself that no tracks of its tyres remained near the Police Station to be seen by Tracker Wilmot.
It then being too early for breakfast, he sauntered down Main Street and took the side road to bring him to the river. Here the river bank was under cut grass maintained by the Parks Department, and the road fronting the residences of the elite ran straight and level and broad to meet the sun. It was going to be another hot day, but there were no signs of wind strong enough to make Mitford unpleasant. The wind came from the north and whispered to Bony the secrets of a million years, tales of tragedy and of love, and of those Beings who created a paradise for the black fellow to enjoy, and then forgot about it and him.
The glorious colours of that paradise faded as the waters dried up and the winds came to scorch and wither and to braise the living with hot and faceted grains of sand. Men were compelled to use their minds to survive, which they did by the rigid application of two practices: the one, birth control, the other, elimination of the unfit.
So there was sustenance for the chosen, and the chosen remained loyal to the Creators of the Paradise, handing down from generation to generation the telling of history by word, by the dance, and the pictures on the walls of caves. And until the coming of the white aliens there was laughter and law in the land.
The first white man to set foot in Australia brought with him the Serpent from the Garden of Eden, when no longer was there in all the land law and laughter… only the slow progress of segregation into compounds and Settlements of the ever dwindling remnants of a race.
There was the Aboriginal Settlement supported by Christian Church and controlled by their representative, the purpose of the Churches to make amends, although but a fraction, for the evil done by the Serpent; the ambition of their representative to give back to the aborigine his traditions and his self-respect. Could that ambition be realised by encouraging the old practices only so far as approved by white law and when the white influence had brought the black fellow to a condition of spiritual chaos?
Here and there on the broad and placid plane of the river the currents came to the surface to smile at Bony, slowly crinkling like the dimples on a baby’s face, and the simile made him smile although his heart was heavy with foreboding of what he might exhume. Turning, he strolled back the way he had come, arriving at the Police Station to sniff the aroma of frying bacon and good strong coffee.
Yoti came in late, to receive a quiet rebuke from his wife.
“Sorry,” he said. “Been trouble at the Settlement, and I’ve been kept by the phone. You know anything about it, Bony?”
“I haven’t been near a telephone for days, Sergeant.”
“Good at skipping round logs, aren’t you?”
“Better than falling over them. What has happened?”
“Padre Beamer rang up to report that a Kurdaitcha visited the Settlement last night. According to the blacks, this monster stands twenty feet high, has two huge eagle’s feet, takes a fifty-yard stride, and draws noughts and crosses all over the place. I suppose it was from the blacksmith’s shop out there you got those filings and plaster of Paris?”
“It could be. What else did Mr Beamer complain about?”
“Seems that the blacks reckon the Kurdaitcha lives here in Mitford. He rides a bike and cramps his feet into number nine shoes. He wants me to go out there and look at the evil signs drawn on the ground, and chalked on benches and wall-boards and anvils and things, beside those terrible footprints.”
“Pleasant day for the trip, Sergeant. I’m sure Mrs Yoti would like to accompany you. She told me only yesterday that she seldom goes anywhere with you.”
Yoti snorted something about being too damned busy to go tracking a fool Kurdaitcha.
“Might have to send Robins, and he’s been on duty all night with Essen.”
“Not possible. I want to borrow Robins’s car for the afternoon. Anything on Mr Beamer’s mind?”
“Yes, most of the blacks are packing to go on walkabout. Got the wind up. Even Marcus Clark is yelling to be off, roaring for someone to bring him crutches. What in hell did you do it for?”
“Merely to watch what would happen,” Bony replied, chuckling. “And, of course, to create a diversion from my examination of the watch-mender’s bench.”
“Why that? You could have gone out there in daylight.”
“One must be subtle when dealing with a subtle people.” Bony passed his cup to be filled by Mrs Yoti, who was not pleased by her husband’s attitude. “You see, Sergeant, when we investigate a murder we can go straight to the scene, trample all over the place, shout to all and sundry, bring all the inventions of science to bear on the clues. Nothing done or left undone can possibly affect the murdered. I came to Mitford to find what had happened to a number of infants and, until otherwise proved, I must hope to rescue those infants alive. Homicide methods applied to the abduction of those babies, I am confident, automatically destroy all reason to hope.”
“And you think those blacks are in this baby-pinching racket?”
Yoti was almost glaring at Bony, and Mrs Yoti, standing by the stove, paused in the act of filling the coffee-pot.
“Yes. Possibly they are in this baby-pinching racket. It is also possible that you are in it, or Mrs Essen, or Dr Nott, or all of you. The vital objective is to find those babies.”
“I must agree with you, Inspector Bonaparte,” interjected Mrs Yoti, and, stoically, her husband proceeded with his breakfast.
“Mr Beamer can be placated, Sergeant,” Bony said a moment later. “Tell him that if a white man drew those figures, theabos would certainly know it and would not fly into a panic. It would seem that one of their medicine men has been up to mischief. Ask him to let us know if Clark goes with them, and later on find out how manyabos remain in camp and who they are. And I would like to know if the blacks all went away in oneparty, or split up into several parties, and which track, or tracks, they took.”
“All right! That’ll calm Beamer.”
“Of course,” murmured Bony. “There is no situation so difficult that it cannot be countered with diplomacy.”
“Chicanery!”
“The meaning of both words is identical. I presume you are intimately acquainted with the surrounding country?”
“Ought to be.”
“D’youknowif, say, within twenty miles of Mitford there is an outstanding unusual geological feature, such as rocks balanced on rocks and usually called Devil’s Marbles?”
“There are Devil’s Marbles not far off the track to Ivanhoe, twelve miles out from the river. You can’t miss them in daylight,” replied Yoti thoughtfully. “There are several deep caves in the cliff face where the river once took a sharp bend. Take the track to Wentworth. People atNooroo homestead will tell you where to go from there.”
“H’m! Now let us switch from geology to arboriculture. Is there up- or down-river a particularly large or aged red-gum?”
“No gum outstanding in those respects.”
“Is there a tree ortrees which seems to be an oddity out in the red soil country?”
“Yes, there is. About eleven miles from Mitford, the track to Wayering Station dips down into a shallow depression about two miles across. Almost in the middle of it is a solitary red-gum. It’s been burned by grass fire, struck by lightning, and still thrives.”
“Sounds promising. Anything else come to mind?”
“No-o. But I’d like to know what’s in your mind.”
Bony pushed back his chair and rose. Taking both the Sergeant and Mrs Yoti into the range of his gaze, he said softly:
“Dreams.”
He went out and they looked at each other silently, and silently Sergeant Yoti rose from the table and, without speaking, left for his office.
It was twenty minutes to ten o’clock when Bony entered the Library and studied the large-scale map of the district and surrounding country. Mentally he plotted the position of the Marbles, the solitary tree, the caves in the original bank of the river, and memorised routes and distances from Mitford. Thus engaged, he became conscious of the curator-librarian at his elbow.
“Good morning, Inspector. I looked into the records about that rock drawing and found that it was presented to the library… the original library it must have been… by a Mr Silas Roddy in the year