Arthur Upfield - The Bone is Pointed

“Was hoping you were going to stay the night, Bony,” he said, before clambering out stern first. Then, when he had reached the horse’s side and was resting a great hand on its neck: “I was looking forward to a pitch with you. What’s taking you away?”

“Duty, Mr Lacy. I called at the homestead to inspect Anderson’s whips again. Miss Lacy provided a delightful luncheon. Now I have to get back to work without having the pleasure of spending the evening with you, because my chief has written to the effect that if I have not reported back at headquarters by to-morrow I shall be sacked.”

“Sacked! Sacked!”

Bony smiled with his face only and nodded impressively.

“I was given a fortnight to investigate this case-as though I could complete it in two weeks. Now, because I have not given it up and reported as instructed, my chief is angry and threatens the sack. Of course, Mr Lacy, I shouldn’t dream of giving it up until I have concluded it to my own satisfaction.”

“Of course you wouldn’t,” agreed the old man, his eyes gleaming. “And don’t you worry about the sack. I’ll have something to say about that, if it happens. How are you fixed for rations and horse feed at the hut?”

“Plenty of everything, thanks. Oh, but if you could send out some meat.”

“Right! I’ll send it to-morrow. That do?”

“Very well. And by the way, would you lend me your microscope? I’d take great care of it. I may want it. I hope I shall.”

“Yes, too right! The lad can fly it and the meat out some time to-morrow. Anything else, now?”

“No, I think that will be all.”

The old man smiled in his grim manner and stepped back from the horse.

“Don’t you let your boss take you away from here until you can tell us what happened to Jeff Anderson,” he urged. “And don’t you worry about getting the sack. I can make things jump around down in Brisbane when I want to.”

He went backward into the car, slammed the door and waved a hand-a man whom age could not dominate nor men subdue.

Bony was further delayed, this time for half an hour, by an ant battle, so that when he arrived at the boundary gate he saw beyond it Sergeant Blake and his car. The Sergeant had been asked to leave Opal Town half an hour after the chairman of the bench. Blake straightened up from the task of making tea, two dogs tethered to trees having announced the arrival of the horseman.

“So you managed the dogs, Sergeant?”

“They’re pretty rangy and only good for chasing rabbits,” Blake said, doubtfully.

“They will suit my purpose.”

“Your trouble will be keeping ’emwith you.”

“Presently you will see how I make a dog stick closer to me than a poor relation. You know, Blake, when making my report on the termination of this case I am going to give you an excellent notice.” The Sergeant grinned with quick pleasure. “If there is a man I like better than a good colleague it is a man with a swift perception of the needs of the moment. You have the gift of making good tea when tea is to be valued like a costly gift.”

The smile faded from the weather-beaten face, and the short grey moustache settled again into its official angles. Bony, having brought the cup of his quart-pot, filled it from the billy and helped himself to the sugar in the Sergeant’s tin. Blake fell to loading his pipe and watching Bony manufacture cigarettes. He offered no comment about perception of the needs of the moment.

“This case is becoming increasingly interesting,” Bony said, with a slight pause between each word. “Assigned to this case, any one of the world’s great investigators would have become hopelessly bushed, literally and practically. It is an investigation to be successfully conducted only by me, on several counts. I am, of course, familiar with drawing-rooms, but they are not my natural background. This world of the bush is my background, my natural element. The bush is like a giant book offering to me plain print and the language I understand. The book is so big, however, that I require sometimes a great deal of time to find in it the passages interesting me at the moment. And finally, as I think I have told you, time is my greatest asset; without it I am as ordinary men.”

“The last day of your leave is up to-morrow, isn’t it?”

“I am not concerned about that, Sergeant. Official action taken in Brisbane is of less importance than a recent development here at Karwir. Do you know what this is?”

Before Sergeant Blake Bony set on the ground the ball of gummed cigarette stubs he had found beside him when he awoke that morning. Blake peered down at the gum ball, then gingerly took it up the better to examine it.

“No, I don’t know what it is,” he admitted.

“The latest development in this case has deprived me of my greatest asset, the unconsciousness of the value of time. Patience is a great gift, Blake, the greatest. Unfortunately neither Colonel Spendor nor my immediate chief, Superintendent Browne, has that gift. The Colonel, like all self-important big business men, constantly yells for results. I give results, but in my own way and in my own time.

“ ‘Report!’ they yell, like babies yelling for a bottle of milk. Am I to report every other day that I did this and did that, that I found a certain track here and a wisp of cable silk there? That a crow gurgled like a man being strangled, and that one night someone left at my side a ball of gum and cigarette ends? That I began work at such and such a time in the morning and left work at such and such a time?”

Blake was astonished by the rising anger in the voice of this man, usually so calm. He noted that anger did not make the voice louder in volume.

“When I am on a case nothing outside interests me. I don’t work for so many hours a day. I work all day, every minute I’m awake. The Commissioner has sacked me before, in his own way, and I have reinstated myself, in my own way. This time, however, the Commissioner means business, thinking that he can bring me to heel, as I will presently show you I can bring those dogs to heel. As you say, to-morrow is my last day. And you know I could not reach Brisbane by then, even if I wanted to-which I don’t.

“Sack me, would they! I-don’t-think! I won’t wait to be sacked like an errand boy. Here, I have an envelope! It will do fittingly for the occasion. Now watch me sack myself. I’m finished with the Department that I’ve served so well. Here’s my resignation. I write it on the back of an envelope. Take it, Sergeant. Mail it for me to the Chief Commissioner.”

Blake was forced to accept the split-open envelope on which Bony had written his resignation. Bony’s outburst had made him uncomfortable, a sensation that was increased when the half-caste raised his knees and pressed his face between them. Quite deliberately, Blake dropped the resignation into the fire. Presently Bony lifted his head to stare beyond the fire at the dozing horse standing in shadow.

“Yes, I have been deprived of the exercise of my greatest gift, unconsciousness of time, infinite patience. Neither Browne nor the Commissioner could deprive me of that; they could not rivet to my legs the irons of limitation.

“Look all about you, Sergeant. You see but a fraction of a great area of land in which eight months ago a man was destroyed and buried. I know, approximately, where he was killed; but as yet I don’t know where he was buried and by whom. I have to find where he was buried, who buried him, who killed him-within the next three weeks, at the longest a month. I may be able to extend the limit to six weeks, but I gravely doubt it. I may not need six weeks, or even three weeks, but the time limit is now my master. Because it has never before been my master I have always succeeded. Now that it is my master I may well fail for the first time. What do you make of the ball of gum in which are embedded a mass of my discarded cigarette ends?”