Extracting Information
CANUTE, KINGof the remnants of a past civilization, had the game sewn up. Not for him a crown wobbling on an uneasy head. Not for him financial worries, domestic worries nor the problem of ‘keeping up with the Joneses’. Like his ancestors, Canute knew all the secrets of living without heart disease or stomach ulcers.
This afternoon he reclined at ease on an old bag spread in the shade of a wattle, and chewed tobacco. A small boy was shooing away any stray ant, and the chief lubra was baking yabbies caked with mud and buried in hot ashes. It was a beautiful day, in dark shadow; a wonderful existence for a man. It would have remained perfect had not a remembered voice said:
“Take a little palaver with me, Canute.”
The King sat up, drew his feet under his thighs, grunted his displeasure. The little boy ran off to the lubras now standing amazed that the big-feller policeman had entered camp without their awareness of his approach.
“We have yabber-yabber, eh?” suggested Bony. “You tell Murtee and that old fellow who is your eyes, and the other old men. Then we all yabber-yabber, eh?”
Canute shouted, and from various deep shadows men stretched and yawned, belched and muttered, momentarily froze on seeing the visitor squatting beside their Chief, and obeyed the order. The visitation was accepted as a tribal affair, and the King was led to his throne and his advisers grouped themselves about him.
The case brought by Bony the previous day was still there, and he seated himself and again, with slow deliberation, fashioned a cigarette, lit it, and stared at each man in turn. There was Canute, heavy from easy living, grey of hair and beard, still powerful, probably still under seventy. There was his eyes, a very old white-haired and white-bearded man named Beeloo, who was a human lath and crippled, but mentally on top. There was Murtee, the Medicine Man, about forty years old, savage of aspect, still savage in mind, his tongue pierced and his body carved with flints, as befitted the holder of such office. Finally, there were six other men, all older than sixty. Not one had attended a whitefeller school.
“Youtellum those wildabos go back to camp?” Bony asked; and Canute nodded, on his face a sullen expression, ill-fitting his normal jovial nature.
“You smoke for them again, and you all be sorry,” threatened Bony. “Which feller not go walkabout up to the Neales? Come on now, you tell pretty quick.”
“All blackfeller went walkabout that time,” declared Canute.
“You cunning feller, eh? Which blackfeller come back quick; come back look-see Mrs Bell lying dead outside kitchen door?”
“No blackfeller do that,” replied Murtee.
Bony expelled smoke, gazed at chattering finches in the tree above, deliberately inhaled and again blew smoke in a thin blue line. Ebony idols regarded him with shuttered eyes.
“I look-see find Yorky and Linda. You say big-feller policeman no find Yorky and Linda. I say you know all the time where Yorky and Linda are camped. You say: ‘Go to hell.’ Now I go crook. Whitefeller law is more strong than blackfeller law. What for you not tell the lubras and the young men where Yorky and Linda are camped? What for you all cunning fellers like this? Mrs Bell wasn’t a lubra. Yorky isn’t a blackfeller. Linda is a white child. Nothing to do with blackfeller law. You tell, eh?”
No movement. No speech. Graven images in human flesh. Bony persisted.
“One blackfeller stayed in camp that time you go walkabout, or he came back pretty quick. He went to homestead. He saw Mrs Bell dead on ground. He saw the blood mark on her back. It was like this.” With a stick Bony drew the mark of interrogation. “He wait here till you all come back from the Neales. He didn’t send up smoke about Mrs Bell because he knew Mr Wootton and the men thought all blackfeller off on walkabout. Okee! All right!
“You all come back on trucks, perhaps. I don’t know properly. But, when Canute and Murtee come back, that blackfeller who stayed in camp and saw Mrs Bell told about her, and showed Canute the mark on Mrs Bell’s back. He held Canute’s wrist like he’s doing now, and made Canute see that mark. You, Beeloo, was blackfeller who saw Mrs Bell dead. Well, you now tell me about Mrs Bell all dead, eh?”
Not the flicker of an eyelid.
“Okee! All right, you-all! You know big old red-gum, your treasure house? I find magic churinga stones, and head bands, and magic Kurdaitcha shoes, and pointing bones. I find all them. What you-all say to that?”
That defrosted them. Murtee leaped to his feet, stumbled when Bony’s automatic was directed to his paunch.
“Sit down, Murtee. You-all sit down. Feller that gets up till I say so is pretty quick dead. I am big-feller policeman. Whitefeller law. You try fight whitefeller law you get shot pretty damn quick. You listen.
“You Orrabunna fellers all finish. I took away the treasure, the pointing bones, everything. I lock ’emup. Black-feller law no good any more.”
The loss of their tribe’s treasure was devastating. Minus their magic stones, their precious heirlooms of human hair, their ancient dilly-bags, and the all-powerful-with-magic pointing bones, they were divested of family, of tribe, of origin, almost of being. As Bony had said, without command of their treasure they were as nothing. There sat the whitefeller law. Death looked at each from that pistol, and now all protection from the white and the black laws was withdrawn from them. They were naked, defenceless against their enemies that had been kept at bay by generations of forebears with and by that hoarded treasure.
It was a body blow that Bony hated to deliver, and not for an instant would he have done so, had it not been for Linda Bell. Those shuttered eyes, the stubborn minds, were barriers not to be surmounted by bribes, threats, persuasion, argument, or even physical punishment.
“I have other pointing bones,” snarled Murtee. “I kill you. Short time, long time, I kill you.”
Bony puffed cigarette smoke, lifted his upper lip in a magnificent sneer.
“Wind, Murtee. Strong-feller wind. Pointing bones I took, more powerful than your other pointing bones. I point the bones back at you. You die slow time, long time. Then you-all die.”
Livid fear mastered them, tautened every lip, tensed every muscle.
“We trade, eh?” said Bony softly.
Canute dashed drops of sweat from his forehead. Murtee seemed to shrink into himself. The ancient man shook, but his claw-like hand continued to grasp the Chief’s wrist.
“What trade? You say,” pleaded Canute, and Murtee shouted. He attempted to stand, but his neighbour hauled him down. It seemed that Murtee’s protest strengthened Canute, and the others nodded as though he could see their support.
“You tell about Yorky and Linda, I give back your magic treasure.”
“Okee, all right.”
“I give back your treasure and Murtee not point the bone at me, or any whitefeller.”
“Okee, all right,” agreed Canute; and the others, including Murtee, nodded agreement.
“You tell all about Yorky and Linda, and I get treasure from lock-up at homestead, pretty soon, quick, eh?”
“We seal it,” Canute said, and Bony drew on the ground between them two interlocking circles. The ceremony of the intermingling of blood followed, then Canute ordered the ancient who was his eyes to speak. His English was so light that a translation is given.
“I am a very old man, but still active about the camp. I could not go so far on walkabout as the Neales River. When the tribe went walkabout, I go bush. My heart is heavy. I am old and lonely. By and by I come back near homestead. I hear Mr Wootton shoot crow, and I say this is strange, because this day Mr Wootton he go to Loaders Springs. I sit down long time. Then I get up and look-see out over lake, and I see Linda and Yorky out there on walkabout.
“I think Mr Wootton gone off to Loaders Springs, and I go on to homestead see if Mrs Bell give me tobacco. I tell her the tribe left me behind, and I am lonely and my heart is heavy.
“When I come to homestead, I don’t see Mr Wootton. I don’t see any feller. Plenty of crows, though. I go round back of men’s quarters. No one there. All the men away. I see something on ground near kitchen door. By and by, I go over and see it is Mrs Bell. She’s lying on her stomach. She is dead. I see the blood on her back. Then I run like hell, and all day and the next day I see the mark of blood on her back. Long time I think I go bush. Then I know the tribe is back in camp and I come back, too. I tell Canute about Mrs Bell. I tell about Linda.”
“Did you see Mr Wootton’s car?”
“No.”
“Or the dust of his car on the way to town?”
“No.”
“You tell lies, eh? If Yorky and Linda walkabout on lake, whitefeller see their tracks,” taunted Bony.
“Yorky wear whitefeller Kurdaitcha shoes. Yorky follow dingo pad. Yorky not leave clear tracks. Whitefeller don’t think to look for Kurdaitcha marks on dingo pad.”
“Good! You speak true. What Yorky do out on lake? He go right over other side?”
“Might be he camp along little-feller sand dune.”
No matter how he probed this last statement, Bony made no further progress relative to this point. The curtain had been lifted just a little to reveal the purpose of that discarded case board he had found outside Yorky’s last camp. The white-feller’s Kurdaitcha shoes were certainly shoes for walking on mud. The ‘little-feller’ sand dune could be a tiny area of sandy-dry land in the sea of mud, the summit of a mountain in the mud sea, as the Pacific Islands are mountain tops rising above the ocean. The picture was clear enough, but the reality was to be questioned. Bony asked:
“Why didn’t you tell all this to Constable Pierce?”
The answer was good and sufficient. Canute said:
“Ole Fren Yorky white-blackfeller.”
“Now you, Beeloo, youtellum truth. You say no one at homestead that time you find Mrs Bell dead. Who did you see near the homestead?”
“Yorky and Linda.”
“Who else?”
“Saw horseman way up on rise.”
“Pine tree rise?”
“Other side of homestead. Long way ’way. Going like hell.”
“Who was he?”
“Don’t know. Long time. Long…”
“Could be a mile,” interposed Canute.
“What colour was the horse?”
“Not look. Much dust that day. Just horse and white-feller.”
“When you saw the horseman, where were Yorky and Linda?”
“Way out on the lake, like I told.”
They sat on the ground like so many squat idols on one side of two blurred circles, the circles representing the gulf between ancient and modern Man. There remained much to be explained. For instance, there was the crucial point of contact between Yorky and the aborigines during those periods when Yorky must have collected food.
Who met Yorky with the tucker? Had he to go to the camp for it? What had he told the aborigines of the motive behind the shooting of Mrs Bell? These questions yielded little save the impression that Yorky had given nothing away from which anyone, like Pierce or himself, might gain.
“Okee! All right! We finish trade, eh?”
Canute smiled with infinite relief.
“You come with me to homestead, Murtee. I give back your treasures.”
The two men walked the track to the homestead. Neither spoke a word. Bony’s mind was occupied with the horseman riding from Mount Eden long after Wootton had left for Loaders Springs. He wasn’t Arnold Bray, who was driving a truck that day. He was Bill Harte, or Eric Maundy, or Harry Lawton. If not one of these men… It had to be one of them.
Wootton was waiting in the doorway of his office, watching the approach of Murtee and Inspector Bonaparte. He saw Bony nudge the aborigine, frowned with perplexity when they both turned and skirted the house and walked up the rise to the pine trees. They stood there for a few moments during which Murtee indicated with out-flung hand a point on the long rise on the opposite side of the homestead.
Arrived at the office, Bony asked for the sugar sack from the safe. Before parting with it, he stood calmly staring into the dark inscrutable eyes of the Medicine Man.
“You big Medicine Man,” he said, adding: “I big-feller policeman. Perhaps you are not a cunning feller. Perhaps you just a bloody fool. I find out that Canute see blood mark on Mrs Bell’s back. Canute tell me about that blood mark. He tell me with dijeridoo. Perhaps you all bloody fools. Perhaps Yorky didn’t kill Mrs Bell.”