Powder of Bark
DESPITE the heat of the day, Sergeant Blake wore his uniform when he drove his car to meet Bony at the Karwir boundary gate. With his red face, grey hair and short clipped moustache, he appeared less at home in a motor-car than he would have been on the back of a horse on parade.
Almost exactly at twelve o’clock he braked the car before the white painted gate near which he saw Bony’s horse neck-roped to a shady tree; Bony himself was standing beside a fire in the shade cast by two robust cabbage-trees. The Sergeant turned off the track and parked the machine in the shadow of a mulga.
The appearance this day of Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte shocked Sergeant Blake. Bony appeared less well-favoured than the usual half-caste stockman, and was obviously not his former smiling self. Without a preliminary greeting, Bony said:
“So Old Lacy telephoned you my message. I didn’t think he would forget. Fill your own billy and make tea. We can talk as we eat.”
“Good idea!” Blake agreed. “But what’s happened? You look shaken by something or other.”
The smile that came to Bony’s face was forced.
“It is nothing,” he lied. “A touch of the sun. I am taking two aspirin tablets with my tea. Did you see Young Lacy’s plane?”
“Yes. He was having trouble and landed at Pine Hut to adjust the carburettor, so he said. The ground south of the hut is quite good enough to make a landing there.”
“Indeed! What time did you arrive there?”
“Half an hour back. Eleven-thirty. I stayed with him for ten minutes.”
Bony dropped half a handful of tea into the water boiling in his quart-pot and let it boil for ten or twelve seconds before he removed it from the fire. Blake, sitting squarely on the ground, regarded the water in his billy, slowly stirring.
“The plane passed me shortly after ten,” Bony said thoughtfully. “Young Lacy would have landed about ten-fifteen. You arrived there at eleven-thirty, so that Young Lacy had then spent an hour and a quarter adjusting the carburettor. Was he still fiddling with it when you left?”
“Oh no! They flew off to Opal Town before I left,” Blake replied, wondering at Bony’s extraordinary interest. He was, too, most uncomfortable in his tight-fitting tunic, and, when Bony suggested its removal, he took it off with a sigh of relief.
“I wonder why Young Lacy flew over this road to Opal Town instead of direct. Coming this way would add several miles to the journey.”
Blake offered no comment. He failed to understand what possible implication lay behind the observation.
“Is there a telephone instrument at this Pine Hut?” inquired Bony.
“Yes. Pine Hut belongs to Meena Station. There was often one or more black stockmen stationed there, but not since the dry season began.”
“Then there is communication with Meena homestead. Would one be able to raise Opal Town from Pine Hut?”
“No. The line is a private one, extending only between the hut and the homestead.”
“O! When you reached Pine Hut, what were theLacys doing?”
“Young Lacy was putting away tools, and the girl was sitting on a case in the shade of the short veranda fronting the hut.”
“From my memory of Opal Town,” Bony said slowly, “if Young Lacy flew direct from Karwir he would pass over the police station before landing, would he not?”
“Yes, that’s so,” agreed Blake. “He often does that-comes direct. Goes over the same way on his return flights.”
“Now, I should like to know why he came this way. Do me a favour. I want your car to take me to this Pine Hut. You remain here and finish your lunch and look after my horse. I’ll not be long away.”
Before the Sergeant could speak, Bony was walking across to the car. It was a new machine and Blake was thankful when the detective drove it expertly to the track and expertly changed gears.
“Blest if I can understand him,” Blake said aloud. He listened to the dwindling hum of the engine for several minutes until it faded into the silence of the quiet day. He again heard it, like the drone of a distant bee, an hour later, and when Bony rejoined him he said, a little huffily:
“Satisfied that my description of the telephone is correct?”
“My dear man, I didn’t doubt your veracity. What I wished to ascertain was if Miss Lacy had rung up Meena homestead.”
“Did she?”
“Yes, she did. Her tracks on the earthen floor below the instrument indicate that she spoke for some considerable time to someone at Meena.”
“There appears nothing out of place in that,” argued Blake. “Remember, they were forced down there. Miss Lacy naturally would occupy the time by talking with Mrs Gordon, or the son.”
Bony sighed in his old mocking manner. He said:
“Without doubt, Sergeant, you are right. I am a wicked and suspicious detective, looking for evil where evil doesn’t exist.” Abruptly the cloud came back into his face, and he asked: “Tell me. Have you ever heard of a fellow named Horace?”
“Horace! Yes, Horace Maginnis keeps the pub in Opal Town.”
“I mean the Roman Horace, the philosopher and poet.”
“Oh! Yes, I’ve heard of him. He was a slave or something wasn’t he? Kind of raised himself in the community.”
“That was he. Horace once said, or wrote, I forget which: ‘No matter whether you are high born or low born, there is a coffin waiting for you.’ ”
“Eh!” ejaculated the astonished Blake.
“Horace wasn’t quite correct, Sergeant. Not all men, low born or even high born, are destined to be buried in a coffin. Have you got a new tracker?”
“Yes.”
“What’s his name?”
“Malluc.”
“Young?”
“No. Malluc’s getting on in life.”
“Sack him.”
“What for?”
“For the reason that at this time an elderly aboriginal is a dangerous man to have hanging about a police station. If you cannot get a young man, do without a tracker until I have completed this investigation.”
Blake’s eyes became big.
“If you say so. But what’s the reason? Why don’t you take me more into your confidence?”
Almost casually Bony examined the keen face and the frosty eyes. Blake was a typical outback police administrator of a huge district. He was naturally stern, and skin-bound with red tape. When Bony spoke, his face was transformed by a winning smile.
“I’d like to take you fully into my confidence,” he said, earnestly. “There is a lot to be said in favour of confidences, but I don’t know where this particular investigation is going to lead me. I intend, of course, to follow it to the end, to find out what became of Anderson, who killed him, if he was killed, and how and why he was killed. You knew the man and his record. You know all the people who knew him. And, Sergeant, as I have said, I don’t know where the investigation into his disappearance is going to lead me.”
This somewhat vague generalization merely perplexed Blake.
“Still-” he objected, and then stopped.
“I would be, indeed, grateful for your assistance, Sergeant,” Bony said. “We belong to different branches of the Force, and we unite only on one point, that of making justice swift and sure. I will confide in you to a certain degree, but not wholly because I don’t know the end of the case. I may need you more as a human being than as an official colleague. Did you bring any letters for me?”
“I did. Sorry! I forgot them.”
Blake leaned back to reach for his tunic, and from a pocket produced two letters. Bony first opened one addressed in handwriting.
“From my wife,” he said, looking up. “She tells me that she and our boys are all well and busy with their respective careers. They live just out of Brisbane, at Banyo, you know. Superintendent Browne has been out there. He told my wife that I was expected back at headquarters on the seventh of the month. He said, too, that Colonel Spendor is very angry because I did not report, and that this time the Colonel intends taking drastic action concerning my disobedience. Browne asked her to write urgently and plead with me to return at once. I like Browne although he does not understand me; he persists in his belief that I am a mere policeman-if you will excuse me, Sergeant. And now for this official letter. I will read it to give you an insight into what I have to put up with.”
Blake wanted to smile and dared not. Secretly he was a rebel against the authority that kept him roped to a place like Opal Town. Bony began to read the typescript he had withdrawn from the long official envelope:
Ninth October-Prior to your assignment it was made clear to you that the exigency of the Department required you to report back not later than October the seventh. Former latitude extended to you could not in this instance be granted. Therefore, as from the seventh instant you are granted leave of absence without pay until October the twenty-first. Should you fail to report for duty on or before that date, the Chief Secretary will be advised to terminate your appointment.
Blake’s face was serious.
“Better report on time,” he said. “You have only six days of your leave left.”
“But, my dear Blake,” argued Bony, becoming at once grandiloquent. “If I had thrown up my investigations at the orders of headquarters, how many of them should I have successfully finalized? Why, about three per cent. The Commissioner has sacked me at least five times for refusing to relinquish an investigation. Then, I have had to give a detailed explanation and get myself reinstated without loss of pay. Since this present investigation will not be concluded in time to permit me to report on the twenty-first I shall again be sacked, and again have to trouble myself to get reinstated. One would think that no successful investigator of crime would have to suffer such pin-pricks. However, we will forget it. Did you make any further progress with the inquiry into the local sale of green cable silk?”
Again Blake wanted to smile but dared not.
“A little,” he replied. “Whiting says that he has not sold green cable silk to theGordons for a very long time, and that he doesn’t remember ever having sold cable silk, green or any other colour, to theMackays. What’s the strength of this cable silk?”
“The tensile strength?”
“No. You know what I mean.”
“I will tell you that, and several other things, for I think I could rely on you should the necessity to do so ever arise. I found a wisp of green cable silk adhering to the trunk of a tree at about the height of a man’s head. It was detached from the cracker of Anderson’s stockwhip, and I think it was so detached when he was about to thrash a man as he once thrashed Inky Boy. Immediately afterwards he was killed.
“The situation of the tree indicates the approximate locality where Anderson was killed-always assuming he was killed. It might well have been he who was tied to the tree trunk and flogged to death with his own whip. I have been prevented from making a minute examination of the tree trunk, and the locality, by the constant surveillance maintained by one or more aboriginals who have adopted the blood and feathers method of leaving no tracks. Do you think you could get me two dogs?”
“What sort of dogs?”
“Mongrel cattle dogs for preference. I must become a huntsman. Could you bring me out two?”
“Yes, I could borrow them from the butcher, I think. When will you want them?”
“I’ll let you know. In a day or so. By the way, how long have you been stationed here?”
“Eleven years. Ten years too long.”
“I have been instrumental in having two senior police officers stationed in outback districts promoted to eastern districts. If you want a thing done, remember always go to the wife of the man who can do it. Who was the officer stationed here before you?”
“Inspector Dowling, now stationed at Cairns. He was here eight years.”
“Oh. He won’t do. Find out for me who was stationed here thirty-six-seven-eight years ago. The officer at that time is certainly now retired, but he may not be dead. If he is alive, get in touch with him, and ask him if he remembers an Irish woman, probably cook, employed at Karwir. Got that?”
“Yes.”
“Then that will be all to-day. Have the two dogs ready to bring out here when I call for them. Be discreet.”
For some time after Blake had left, Bony squatted beside his lunch fire smoking the eternal cigarettes. Now and then he moved to ease his legs, but not once since the policeman had left him did he look up or about. He knew, because his scalp and back informed him of it, that he was being watched, and he thought he knew the position of the watcher by the constant chattering of two or three galahs in a tree somewhere beyond his horse.
He was well aware that to pursue the watcher amid the close cover provided by the mulga forest would be fruitless, and that a search for his tracks would also be fruitless. Squatted there in the shade cast by the cabbage-trees, he was assailed by temptation. He was probably facing grave danger to his life; and he knew that there could be no possible reflection on his career if he at once threw up this case and obeyed the order to return to Brisbane. By refusing to abandon this investigation, he might well be dismissed from the service, for on former occasions when he had disobeyed a similar order the Chief Commissioner himself had added the threat of dismissal in his own handwriting. There was nothing personal in the typewritten communication he had just received.
Yet he knew he would never succumb to the temptation. Pride was his weapon; his reputation his armour. He would go forward even if he lost his official position, even if he lost his life. Once he failed to solve a case, once he was conscious of failure, it would be the beginning of the end for him. And for Marie, his wife, and for the boys, too. For they and he owed rank and social standing only to his invincible pride.
This day he was very different from the man who walked the earth as Detective-Inspector Bonaparte. Within Bony’s soul constantly warred the opposing influences planted therein by his white father and his black mother, and according to external influences of the moment, so did the battle favour one side or the other. To the fact of his alliance with the aborigines he had blinded Colonel Spendor, many of his colleagues, and many people like theLacys and theGordons. But he had not blinded these Kalchut blacks. They knew him, knew that never with the hammer of pride and the file of success would he break the racial bond. Their blood flowed through his veins. Their beliefs and their superstitions were implanted in the very marrow of his bones, and all his advanced education could not make him other than what he was.
And now his soul was swiftly becoming ruled by his mother and her people, the rule hastened by the Kalchut tribe. Their shadow had fallen upon him, a half-caste, when it would have failed utterly to touch a white man. A white man would never have suspected himself of being watched and tracked by people who were never seen and who left no sign of their movements on ground that showed the imprint even of scorpions.
Yes, they could kill him as it seemed certain they were about to do. They could demand his body and take it. He could never be free of the blood, never escape them. Ah-but he could! He could escape them before they struck. He could return to Brisbane, and there rant and rave at being ordered to return and so claim that he was officially prevented from successfully completing this case. Yes, he could do that. But he himself would know it for an excuse. Defeated by fear, within six months he and his would become bush nomads. Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte would indeed become poor old Bony. Better death than that. Compared with that what would be death?
His unseen trackers had retrieved his discarded cigarette ends, because they had once been one with his person. No longer was his trackers’ attitude towards him a negative one. They had resolved on action. They, or someone who controlled them, determined to deal with him, to remove him because he was dangerous. And he, being what he was, was open to receive their magic with which they would kill him.
They were preparing to point the bone at him.
The act of pointing the bone was, of course, merely a theatrical show, having a psychological effect both on the bone-pointers and the victim. The power to kill lay not in the outward show but in the mental willing to death conducted by the executioners. Bony knew that the pointing bone could be used by any male member of nearly all the Australian tribes, but its success in killing depended on the mental power of the pointers. If the victim could conquer inherited superstitions, and then if his mind were stronger than the minds of the bone-pointers, he might escape death long enough for his relations to find out who was pointing the bone and at once exact vengeance.
Once the bone was pointed at him, Bony, his escape from death would depend on his ability to resist the minds willing death long enough for him to finish his job and return to Brisbane where the white men’s influences, plus the service of a hypnotist, would free him of the magic.
A light, cold finger ran its tip up Bony’s spine and touched the roots of his hair. The pointing bone had killed thatDieri man away at the back of Lake Frome. Bony’s mind recalled the fellow’s terror-stricken face on which was written the awful knowledge of his doom. Five days he had lived before he died in convulsions-the eagle’s claws buried in his kidneys and the bones piercing his liver and heart. There had been that half-caste just over the southern Queensland border, he who had run away with a chief’s favourite lubra. A pointed stick had been aimed at him, and he had taken two months to waste away to death despite a white doctor, a squatter and his wife, and Bony. The doctor had said it was the Barcoo sickness.
Bony’s eyes closed. Doubtless it was the heat of the afternoon or, perhaps, the smoke of the fire. Or was it? Bony’s subconscious mind urged him to stand up, urged him to race to his horse and ride like the wind to Opal Town to hire a car to take him to the distant railway. He ought not to feel the need to sleep. He never slept during the daylight hours. He should not want to sleep now when his mind was so occupied with this case, and so influenced by the menace crowding close.
Was the idea of sleep being suggested to his mind?
For five or six long minutes Bony fought the demon of panic, while his motionless body rested on his heels. Little beads of moisture glistened on his broad forehead and at the corners of his mouth. His will eventually beat down the panic. Now he knew that he could and would pretend to submit to the suggestion to sleep. Uncertainty in the immediate future would be unbearable.
In simulation Bony rose to stretch his arms and to yawn. He made a little hole in the soft sand of the ground to take his hip and settled himself so that he lay on his left side facing the horse, his head resting on his left forearm and his right hand tucked away under his body, the fingers firmly curved about the butt of his automatic pistol. His eyes partially closed, and his mind at work countering the suggestion to sleep, he maintained a steady watch on the dozing horse, while listening to the chattering galahs.
The minutes passed in slow procession. The invisible birds screamed once and then flew to another tree to continue their chattering in which now was certain anger. Then the horse awoke to toss her head, then to stand without movement and to stare at a point beyond Bony’s range of vision.
Slowly now she began to move the angle of her head, and to Bony it was obvious that she was watching something moving, something that was approaching him. Then he saw it. A tall black figure slowly became detached from the trunks of a tree standing in shadow. The man was entirely naked save for the masses of feathers about his feet.
It was Wandin. His hair was glued with clay and encircled with a ring fashioned fromcanegrass. He carried no weapon, neither waddy nor spear. He carried, like any one might carry a saucer filled with tea, a curved piece of bark. When he entered the sunlight Bony saw clearly his face fixed by the expression of hatred, his eyes alive like black opals.
How carefully he carried the piece of bark in his right hand! It might have been filled to the brim with liquid, but, as Bony knew, it contained not liquid but powder. Without sound, the aboriginal drew near and nearer to the recumbent man so sorely tempted to shoot with the weapon he kept hidden beneath his body. What Wandin was going to do could be prevented now, but not for always. What he did not achieve now another would achieve in the future.
And so Wandin came to stand close to Bony. His right hand carried the bark over Bony’s body and tilted it so that the powder fell in a mist upon him. That Bony continued inactive, that he did not spring to his feet and shoot down this sorcerer carrying out a further step in the boning, said much for the half-caste’s courage and power of will. He began to tremble when Wandin retreated, but gave no sign that he was awake.
So the blacks had been tracking him for weeks, and intuition had again served him well. The Kalchut were behind the disappearance of Jeffery Anderson, and knowing Bony to be a danger to them, they were preparing to remove him.
Well, they could get on with their boning. He would fight it with all the strength of his mind, and again he would triumph over his aboriginal ancestry as he had so often done before. He would put on the armour of the white man and carry the weapons of mockery and cynicism. By the shade of the Little Corporal himself! Was he a savage? Was he an ignorant nomad of the bush? Was he a child to suffer palpitation of the heart because a black ghost had appeared in broad day? Was he a mental weakling to suffer evil born in lesser minds, to be frightened away from this absorbing investigation by the mental power of a people free of the curse laid upon Adam?
He pretended to awake. He sat up, stared about, scrambled to his feet and gathered sticks with which to replenish the fire. He knew the worst now, and now he felt strong.