Arthur Upfield - Murder Must Wait

“From Albury Divisional HQ. Five are being sent. I’m going to suggest to Yoti that he assign you and at least three of the men for prevention of further infant abductions. Alice has gone to the hospital to see what opportunities a baby-thief has there, and it will be up to you to place your men. If you will take care of the babies left in Mitford, that matter will be lifted from me.”

“I’ll certainly do everything possible.”

“I know you will. How is friend Marcus Clark?”

“Dr Nott had him shifted to the hospital at the Settlement this morning. Said he’d be all right out there, as Dr Delph takes in the Settlement and visits there every other day.”

“I haven’t met Delph. What’s your opinion of him?”

“One of those men who seems to be too energetic on a hot day. Always on the go. Well liked by men. The women say he’s a dear.”

Essen departed and Bony passed to his dressing-table and pensively unwound a hair from the bristles of his hairbrush. Taking it to a shaft of sunlight, he studied it for a full moment before putting on his hat and also departing.

Despite Alice McGorr’s private opinion of his rate of progress, and despite the visit to Mitford by the Chief of the CID, who held the same opinion, Bony was wholly satisfied with his methods. As with many an assignment he had undertaken only when the police team work had bogged, so with this one. He had begun with an unobtrusive study of the people concerned by this series of baby thefts, and was now at the stage when the criminals were beginning to unmask themselves. Presently, and it might well be soon, he would prod the nest and watch the infuriated ants unmask a little faster.

Team work, Alice had suggested, was always good. It wasn’t, always. It was often very good when applied to a city crime bearing the hallmark of the criminal’s methods, or the criminal’s fingerprints, and assisted by informers. It was when a crime yielded no such leads that team work folded up and he, the half-caste detective, was asked to investigate by officials who secretly hoped he would fail, that in his failure they themselves would be excused.

When Bony entered the Library he felt almost gay, a mood not generated by the prospect of success but by the many little facts and clues already garnered. He was, too, delighted by the latest item, the fact that Fred Wilmot, the official Police Tracker, had been following him from the Police Station, and was idling behind a remover’s van as he stepped into the Library.

Mr Oats, the librarian, welcomed him with friendly naivete.

“Sit down, Inspector. What is it this time?”

“Well, chiefly your recent robbery, Mr Oats. Constable Essen who is looking into it has run against several difficulties, and I thought I might be able to help him out. I don’t suppose you know, by repute, of course, any art collector who would be tempted to buy your stolen aboriginal picture?”

The librarian gently shook his silvered head.

“An art collector would be less likely to be interested in that rock slab than, say, the curator of a museum, and I know no curator so unscrupulous, even if he had the money, which, recalling my own salary, I’m sure he wouldn’t have to spend!”

“Can you recall the picture to mind? Do you think you could sketch it, from memory?”

“I’ll try, but don’t expect to see the work of an artist.” Mr Oats drew a pad forward and took up a pencil. “Let me see, now. There was a general line near the bottom, a horizontal line running like this. Wait a bit, I’m wrong. The line wasn’t exactly horizontal but slightly curved, and on the line was a figure carrying something like a bag, something like… You remember the boys’ comics? Pictures of Bill Sykes carrying away a huge bag of swag? Peculiar figure, too. It had an emu’s head and tail. Well, that seemed to be what the figure was doing in the picture. At the top of the drawing were lines bending downwards which could be meant as clouds, and between these clouds and the ground there’s what looks like a tree. The tree is in front of the striding man, and at the foot of the tree are little things, I could never make out what.”

Mr Oats passed the sketch to Bony, who thought he could draw much better.

“Professor Marlo-Jones,” went on the librarian, “says it is his opinion that the clouds above are heavy with rain, and that the figure represents an old man who, in the far days of the Alchuringa, came up out of the ground and threw rain-stones all about to make the clouds drop the rain.”

Bony studied the sketch.

“May I keep it?” he asked.

“Yes, of course.”

“It was drawn in ochre… white and yellow?”

“Yes.”

“Not gypsum?”

“Well, that I could not be sure about. It looked like white ochre, I think.”

“It needn’t be important, Mr Oats.” Bony lit a cigarette. “I’ll have the sketch copied and circularised, and someone might report having seen the slab of rock. By the way, what was the colour of the rock?”

“Purple brown, Inspector. Desert sandstone, I think Professor Marlo-Jones said it was. It comes from a very wide area of Central Australia. I suppose the colour of the rock is why red ochre wasn’t used in the drawing.”

“Probably. I would like to know why it was stolen. The theft might have been a cover-up for something more valuable. Have you checked over the other museum pieces?”

“Nothing else was taken,” replied Mr Oats. “We haven’t very much here, as you know, and it didn’t take us long to be sure on that point. Like you, I can’t understand it.”

Standing, Bony looked down upon the rough sketch. Mr Oats couldn’t be sure, but he felt rather than saw that Bony was smiling.

A Chat with Mr Bulford

THEBELLat the private entrance to the Olympic Bank was rung at seven minutes after four, and on opening the door Mr Bulford found Bony standing on the wire mat. Revealing no surprise he smiled his greeting and retreated in invitation to enter.

“Please go on up, Inspector. I must lock the parlour door.”

“That is where I would like to chat, Mr Bulford,” Bony countered, and turned to enter the bank chamber and thence to the manager’s office. Mr Bulford might have been a junior clerk, when he sat diffidently in his managerial chair behind the ornate desk.

“Are you aware that anyone outside your private entrance can hear when you are engaged on the telephone in this room?” Bony asked.

Mr Bulford was instantly alarmed.

“No, I didn’t know it,” he replied. “I am apt to speak loudly because the damned instrument has had it and ought to have been axed long ago. That’s just too bad.”

“It isn’t possible to distinguish words, Mr Bulford. The point concerning this fact is that, knowing when you were engaged on your telephone, the people who stole your infant son were able to carry through a simple plan.”

The manager paused in the act of lighting a cigarette, his brows raised above hazel eyes now brightly alert.

“There were three people engaged in abducting your son,”proceeded Bony, who then outlined the actions of each participant to conform to pre-arranged timing. “You can see for yourself that when you stand before your antique telephone your back is to your office door. Seated now at your desk, you can see clearly to that side door or private entrance. Only when you were at the telephone could anyone enter the hall unseen and mount the stairs, descend with the child and leave the building while the confederate continued to engage you in conversation. You agree that this theory is feasible?”

“Feasible, yes,” Mr Bulford stroked his clipped moustache with the end of the cigarette, and the lazily friendly voice had the pleasing quality of the tiger’s purr.