Arthur Upfield: No footprints in the bush

Engaged with writing letters, a distant murmur of voices distracted his attention, directed his gaze through the fly-netted window, across the garden of lawn androse beds, past the old man who was attending to the sprinklers, beyond the fence and downward to the plain where the road disappeared among a growth of tobacco bush. With impatience he clicked his tongue, attempted to continue his writing, failed, and again gazed with greater interest at the large party of aborigines advancing up the road to the homestead.

They were still half a mile away, and again clicking his tongue McPherson used long-distance spectacles the better to understand the unusual excitement. Now he could distinguish individuals, could see walking in front of the crowd Chief Burning Water and beside him a smaller man who was wearing stockmen’s clothes.

This man the squatter did not know. He observed that an aborigine following the stranger carried the stranger’s swag, and so unusual was a stranger on foot in this Land of Burning Water that he replaced the spectacles in the case and with a cutter proceeded to slice from a plug sufficient tobacco to fill a pipe.

Thereafter he waited, obtaining satisfaction from the speculation the rare advent of a stranger provided. Now he could see the stranger’s features with the naked eye, and abruptly he frowned so that his face wore a scowl. Quite still in his chair, he watched the entire party skirt the garden fence and so pass beyond his radius of vision to the clear space eastward of the house.

The scowl vanished when the stranger passed the window on the office veranda, from which he called in soft tones:

“Is anyone there?”

“Come in!” McPherson snapped.

Bony entered the office, to stand just within the fly-netted door. McPherson swung his body in the swivel chair quarter-circle to stare at the stranger. His grey eyes never once blinked as they took in every detail of Bonaparte’s dress, every feature of his face.

“Good day!” he said.

“Good day! Mr McPherson?”

“Yes.”

The affirmation was more than acknowledgment. There was stiff inquiry in it, the uncompromising attitude of the powerful towards the unknown.

“My name is Napoleon Bonaparte,” he explained. Deliberately he made the ensuing pause. Then, as though it were an afterthought barely worthy of mention, he added: “I am a detective-inspector of the Queensland Criminal Investigation Branch.”

The statement was sufficiently startling to make the grey eyes blink. It did not, however, affect the voice.

“Oh! You don’t look like a police inspector.”

“A detective-inspector,” Bony corrected. “May I sit down?”

“Eh… what!”

“I suggest that you invite me to be seated.”

“Oh-ah-yes, certainly. Take that chair. Put the hat and whip on the desk.”

“Thank you.”

A rising tide of red blood deepened the tanned complexion of the squatter. He felt he had been reproved for lack of manners, and this he did not like. A detective-inspector indeed! Silently, he watched Bonaparte manufacture a cigarette and light it; watched the spent match being placed in the neatly halved and beautifully carved emu egg-shell which served as an ash tray. And then the stranger’s clear blue eyes were regarding him.

“I have been in the Queensland Police Force for twenty-two years, Mr McPherson,” Bony said, calmly. “I have ranked as inspector for twelve years. Having been asked to conduct an investigation into matters unusual in the Land of Burning Water, matters such as the murder of two stockmen, it was my intention to arrive incognito. Events which have occurred today, however, have resulted in a change of mind.”

“Looks as though Sergeant Errey is too damned interfering,” McPherson said, harshly. “I can myself deal with the stockmen affair and other annoyances.”

“Quite so,” Bony agreed.“Annoyances, yes. The killing of aboriginal stockmen is more serious than an annoyance. The somewhat prolonged hostility between the Wantella tribe and the wilder Illprinka blacks has become more than an annoyance to certain public bodies.”

“Well, I wish the societies and the police would leave me and my blacks alone to deal with what are our affairs and what I have said are annoyances. My father dealt with many in his time. We are not here living in a flash city, or even within reasonable distance of any police controlled township. My station nowhere joins settled country, as you probably know. Out here a squatter has to be a law tohimself. He finds yelling for a policeman is useless, when the nearest policeman is almost a hundred miles away and worked to the bone doing things which are not true police work.”

“Still, the times are different from those of, say, twenty years ago,” argued Bonaparte.

“The times here are no different from what they were when by father settled here eighty years ago,” flashed McPherson. “The trouble among the blacks is their affair, and they can look after it. The theft of my cattle is my affair, and I can attend to that. When the wild blacks who killed my two stockmen are caught they can be handed over to Sergeant Errey. There is no cause for a detective-inspector to come out here to investigate what’s plain and above-board.”

“Still, those public bodies I mentioned are persistent,” Bony pointed out, smiling slightly. “I have here an official communication addressed to Sergeant A. V. Errey, and others whom it may concern. In the circumstances I will open it. It introduces me to Sergeant Errey and others. It gives specific instructions, and it is signed by the Chief Commissioner of Police for South Australia, who has borrowed my services.”

The letter was accepted and read by McPherson. He appeared to take longer than was necessary, but other than anger no emotion was betrayed by him. Without comment the letter was passed back to Bonaparte.

“You must have met Sergeant Errey on the road.”

“Was that him driving the coupe car?”

“Yes. He left here about twelve, taking with him a black to Shaw’s Lagoon for further questioning.”

“Indeed! Any other passenger?”

“Only Mit-ji, a Wantella man.”

“Sergeant Errey had been out here several days, had he not?”

“Yes, ten days to be accurate. He’s a keen man, and he came to go into the matter of the murdered stockmen. Drove the car to a hut forty miles out on the run and from there took to horses.”

Bonaparte lit his third cigarette. Then:

“Did he say if he was at all successful in his investigation?”

“I think he hadhope that way, but he was fairly close-mouthed. How did you come to miss him on the road?”

Almost unconsciously McPherson’s attitude was changing. He was beginning to recognize in Napoleon Bonaparte those qualities Bony had in a flash of time recognized in Chief Burning Water. There was growing in the squatter’s mind a conviction that the stranger was all he said he was, and all that was said of him in the undoubtedly genuine letter signed by a Chief Commissioner of Police.

The change was evident not only in McPherson’s voice. It was revealed by changing poise. He was becoming cautious.

“I will come back to Errey in a moment,” Bony said, quickly, and added with notable deliberateness: “Who out here owns an aeroplane?”

“Who-”

McPherson paused to stare at the stranger to the Land of Burning Water; then his gaze passed to beyond the window.

“An aeroplane! Why, I know of no one who owns an aeroplane. Why?”

Bony’s agile mind sought for truth, and found it. This man did not know who owned an aeroplane, but the question created the belief that some particular person could own an aeroplane.

“I have become interested in an aeroplane; fast, a monoplane, painted a uniform silver-grey, and flown by an expert. It came from the west; it returned to the west. What stations are in that direction?”