Arthur Upfield - The Bone is Pointed

“Ladies first! Miss Lacy, will you kindly give us your opinion on these two hairs?”

“I hardly think my opinion will count, Mr Bonaparte, but I cannot refrain from looking at them.”

“Thank you. As a matter of fact, Miss Lacy, I am relying on your feminine powers of colour matching.”

Silently the men stood regarding the girl’s shapely back while she peered through the instrument. She appeared to take quite several minutes in her examination, but the period was much less. Then she said:

“They look alike to me.”

This was Old Lacy’s verdict. Blake was much less sure, and his opinion was backed by Young Lacy. Bony demanded a full five minutes for his investigation; then he turned to face them, his brows contracted by a slight frown.

“They are not from the same head,” he said slowly. “I grant you the great difficulty in judging the colour of those two hairs. The colour of that taken from the tree, however, is lighter than that of the hair just taken from the brush. This difference could be attributed to the bleaching action of sunlight on the hair found on the tree. The difference is so slight, however, that we cannot accept colour as a basis for judgement. The difference I observe between those two hairs lies in their size or thickness. The hair taken from the tree is smaller than that taken from the brush, it is finer. You will see that the hair taken from the brush is coarse. The hairs have come from two men, not one. I may have to send them to Brisbane for a more expert examination which I feel sure will bear out my opinion. Take another glance at them and note the difference in size. In colour both hairs are light-brown, but with a slight difference in shade.”

Blake examined the hairs and agreed with Bony concerning their difference in size. Diana stated that their sizes were equal, to which her father agreed. Young Lacy could not be positive.

“Well, we must await the expert’s opinion,” Bony told them. “My opinion is that not Anderson but another man was secured to the tree, and the hair of that man’s head was similar in colour to Anderson’s.”

“That being so, d’you think Anderson tied a fellow to the tree and flogged him?” asked Young Lacy.

“I don’t now know what to think,” Bony admitted. “It is all most puzzling. I must examine the tree again, and follow certain theories I have evolved from the examination of the hairs. Excuse me.”

Turning his back upon them, he carefully replaced the hair found on the mulga-tree in its envelope marked Exhibit Three, and into a second envelope to be marked Exhibit Four he placed several hairs taken from the brushes. After that he became obviously anxious to depart from the homestead.

Old Lacy wanted him and the Sergeant to stay the evening, and, when he begged to be excused, the old man insisted that he take a bottle of brandy and a bottle of vinegar in which to steep sliced potatoes as a cure for the Barcoo sickness.

“Well, what do you think of the threeLacys?” inquired Bony, when they were on their way back to the boundary gate.

“The old man was quite at sea about the hairs, and a little disappointed that you seemed confused by their difference,” replied Blake. “Did the hairs really confuse you?”

“No. I wanted to avoid refusing to answer questions. What of Young Lacy and the girl-their reactions?”

“The girl seemed to be suffering strain. Young Lacy was merely interested. Miss Lacy seemed to dislike you.”

“Why?”

“Well, maybe-”

“She doesn’t dislike me by reason of my birth. She dislikes me because she fears me,” asserted Bony. “There is a distinct difference of shade in those two hairs, and yet she said they were alike. In one respect I am not at all disappointed that those hairs are not alike, that they both did not come from Anderson’s head. Anderson was not the man tied to the tree, but Anderson flogged the man who was tied to it, and that man had hair much like Anderson’s. John Gordon’s hair is light-brown, is it not?”

Blake frowned, then nodded slowly.

“I believe that now I could give a logical outline of what happened that afternoon of rain six months ago,” Bony said, breaking a long silence. “There is, however, a further step I must take to prove that Gordon was tied to the tree. If he was not, then we must look for another man. It is strange how an investigation will sometimes hang fire for weeks, then suddenly be rushed forward by one small and not so very important clue. This evening you have seen me throwing a spanner into the theoretical machine I built up. I may have something further to say to-morrow evening when you come out.”

Rising Winds

AT the Karwir homestead breakfast was at eight, permitting Old Lacy to meet the homestead hands outside the office and give them his orders for the day, then to talk for ten minutes by telephone to the overseer at the out-station.

TheLacys met at the breakfast table set out during the hot summer months on the long south veranda. As was ever the case, Old Lacy was in a hurry, though there was rarely necessity for haste.

“I’m going out to take a squint at Blackfellow’s Well,” he announced, serving from a dish of lamb’s fry and bacon. “Fred says he’s noticed that the shaft has got a bad bulge half-way down. Due to earth slip, or a tremor, I suppose. Knew a well once that got like a corkscrew inside a week. Might have to get another well sunk at Blackfellow’s. No might about it. Will have to sink one, just because this dry season we need all the spare cash for feed for the sheep! Shouldn’t have any sheep on the place! You coming out with me, my gal?”

“Well, I was thinking of running in to Opal Town,” Diana replied, reluctantly. “Shopping, you know.”

“Oh, all right! I’ll take Bill the Better. He can drive and lay bets that we’ll find Fred down the well. Cheerful lad, Bill the Better. Anyway, he can go down the shaft and report. Fred’s like me, stiff in the knees. How about you, lad? Want to come?”

“Sorry, but I’ve got a deal of book work to do. Those returns for the Lands Department,” answered Young Lacy. “It’s funny about the ’phone. It’s working all right now. I rang up Phil Whiting just before I came over from the office.”

“Must have been a stick or something on the line that the wind has blown off,” commented Old Lacy. “I couldn’t raise a thing when I wanted to get through to Mount Lester last night.”

Diana herself saw to her father’s lunch basket, and saw, too, that it was packed on the old car used for the run work. She gave Bill the Better the usual instructions how to make tea weak enough to prevent the squatter from having indigestion for a week. The old man liked tea jet-black.

At nine o’clock she was on the road to Opal Town, driving her own smart single-seater. The day gave promise of being gusty and dusty and altogether unpleasant. Already the mirage water, gathered over claypan and depression, appeared not to have its usual “body,” to be attenuated, unreal. The sky was stained by a dull-white, high-level haze that, unable to defeat the sun, gave to its rays a peculiar yellow tint. Before half-past nine, she reached the boundary gate.

For miles she had steered her car in the wheel tracks last passed over by the car owned and driven by Sergeant Blake. Getting out to open the gate she saw, bush girl that she was, the small boot marks made by Bony when he had opened the gate to permit them to pass through from Karwir country. It was when beyond the gate that she saw the larger imprints made by the Sergeant, and on both sides of the fence there were many imprints of dogs, how many dogs she was unable to decide. These tracks mystified her, for Young Lacy had not thought it worth while to mention Bony’s acquisition of dogs. There was much else to interest Diana Lacy. She examined the temporary camp used by Bony and the Sergeant when they met every evening.