Arthur Upfield - The Bone is Pointed

“Now, Mr Lacy, you said that at four o’clock that afternoon you went out to the rain gauge and found in it fifteen points of rainwater. At what time that evening, do you think, had about half an inch fallen?”

“Ah-um!” The old man pondered. “What do you think, lad?”

“Well, it took almost two hours for fifteen points to register,” slowly answered Young Lacy. “I was working in the office late that day, I remember, and when I knocked off about half-past five I stood at the window looking at the rain and thought by sight of it, and by the noise it was making on the roof, that it was coming down harder. My guess is that fifty points registered about seven or half-past seven that evening.”

“Yes, lad, I think you’re about right,” Old Lacy agreed.

“Then,” began Bony, “if half an inch had fallen by seven o’clock, at seven o’clock The Black Emperor was just south of our imaginary line when he and his rider should have been home. To-morrow, or some other time, you might make inquiries to ascertain if someone in the district happened to register the rain at that hour. The important point I have to stress is this-when The Black Emperor left his tracks at the place just south of our imaginary line he did not have a rider on his back.”

The effect of this assertion on his hearers was peculiar.

Young Lacy stiffened in his chair and his eyes became big. Diana’s eyes became small, the pupils tiny circles of violet almost as dark as her eyebrows. Her lips straightened just sufficiently to make her mouth hard and to alter the cast of her face. Old Lacy, with emphatic deliberation, set his cup and saucer down on the arm of his chair and shouted:

“How did you find that out?”

Secretly delighted at the effect of his verbal bomb, Bony smiled at them in turn, and noted how the girl’s strained expression gave way to one of cool, impersonal interest.

“When people read of a blackfellow being employed by the police to track a criminal, they think that the black-fellow’s extraordinary ability is due to his naturally keen eyesight,” he said, delighting in keeping his audience in suspense. “Any normally good tracker has served an apprenticeship as long and as thorough as any white craftsman. He begins when a small child, when the lubras take him with them to hunt for food, and when success in the hunt depends on ability to track. Without that apprenticeship the blackfellow would be no superior to the white man who has lived his life in the bush.

“I began my apprenticeship after I left the university, when I went bush instead of continuing my studies, and my aboriginal mentors found me a good student because I had inherited the white man’s ability to reason more clearly and quickly than they. Theclaypans preserved the imprints made by The Black Emperor. Memory of that horse’s tracks seen that day I rode him, told me that the tracks on the claypan had been made by him. The outline of the tracks and their spacing satisfied me on that point. Depth, the sludge left in them, the angles of certain facets in conjunction with certain others, informed me what approximate amount of rain had fallen on theclaypans when they were made. And the manner in which the animal had made them showed that he carried no burden. It takes many years to make a university professor. How many years would it take to make the professor a tracker like me?”

“Loveacre was right when he told me you were a wizard at the game,” asserted Young Lacy. “It seems to me that the more you know about the blacks the less superior to them you feel. Gordon, over at Meena Lake, could write books about them.”

“Yes! I understand that he and his mother have been in close contact with them for years,” Bony said. “By the way, to-morrow being Sunday, would you be able to fly me over to Meena? I should like to discuss certain matters with Mr Gordon.”

“Certainly. No trouble at all,” agreed Young Lacy.

“Might be as well to ring Gordon,” suggested the old man.

“Yes. Suggest the middle of the afternoon,” Bony urged in support. “There is another matter. What became of Anderson’s effects after he disappeared?”

“They are still in his room,” answered the old man. “His room hasn’t been touched after it was tidied and the bed made the morning he rode away,” added Diana.

Bony’s expression indicated keen pleasure. He said:

“I should like to examine that room presently. He was, I am given to understand, remarkably facile in the use of the stockwhip. The stockwhip he carried with him that fatal day was never found. Was it the only whip he possessed?”

“Oh, no,” replied Young Lacy. “He owned several.”

“Where would they be now? In his room?”

“Sure to be-with all his other things.”

“Would you bring them here to me?”

Young Lacy at once left his chair. Diana began the movement to rise to her feet when Bony waved her back, saying:

“Eric can bring them, Miss Lacy. I suppose you have some embroidery silk in the house?”

“Yes. Why?” she asked.

Bony smiled at her, and Old Lacy, more often observing his guest than his daughter, failed to note her coldness in opposition to Bony’s sunny warmth.

“If you would be so kind as to bring me some-would you?”

“Yes. I have several hanks in my work-basket.”

“A matter of interest to me, Mr Lacy,” Bony began when the girl had left the veranda, “is that everyone thinks his or her walk of life is superior to others. For instance, I think that the detection of crime is the most important work of any. You, probably, think that raising cattle and growing wool is of the greatest importance. We all appear to fail in giving the other fellow credit for his success which, when all is said, is based only on the keen application to the job in hand. It puzzles me why the getting of coal should be considered so much less important than speaking in Parliament, that the position of secretary to a business man should be thought to be of little account compared with that of, say, the Governor-General. The secretary can be mentally superior to the Governor-General, and the coalminer can be of greater concern to the community than the statesman. That, of course, is by the way. Here are the stockwhips. Thank you, Eric.”

Bony accepted four whips varying in length, weight and age. The old man and Young Lacy silently watched the detective whilst he examined each in turn from the handle to the silk cracker neatly affixed to the end of the tapering leather thongs. He was thus engaged when the girl came out with her work-basket. From this examination, Bony’s gaze rose to the young man.

“I am sorry to give so much trouble this afternoon,” he said. “Is there such a thing to hand as a magnifying glass?”

“Yes, there is. And we have a microscope, too, if you would like that.”

“Well-no, not the microscope. The glass will be of use.” To Diana, when Young Lacy had left, Bony said: “Ah! The work-basket, Miss Lacy. Now what embroidery silk have you there?”

Without speaking, Diana brought from the basket several hanks of silk-white and black and several shades of blue and of red. These Bony examined for a full minute before looking up and smiling.

“If only the human brain could encompass all knowledge,” he complained with mock sadness. “Have you no green silk?”

“No. I never use green or yellow silk for my fancywork.”

“Hum! I asked that because I find on each of these four whips crackers made with green silk. Anderson, then, did not obtain his cracker-silk from you.”

“No.”

“I see that on the slip-over label on one of these unused hanks are the words ‘cable silk.’ It seems much coarser than that of the other hanks.”

“Yes, it is not used for embroidery work but for fancy knitting.”