Arthur Upfield - The Bone is Pointed

The pupils of her eyes were mere pin points when she drove on to Opal Town. The lines about her mouth tended to straighten out its delightful curves. Her mind was flooded with questions, and in her heart was a vast unease.

Where had that man obtained the dogs? Why did he have them with him? He had not got them from Karwir, and as far as she knew he had not gone to the township. Sergeant Blake must have brought them out. Why? Hardly for company.

If the wind failed to reach gale strength before it moved round to the south, that man would read her own tracks, read in them her interest in him and his dogs. What eyes he must have to have found that tiny fibre of cable silk and the hair attached to the bark of one tree out of countless numbers of trees! And now he knew that the hair he had found had not come from Anderson’s head. And he had let her understand that he suspected it had come from John Gordon’s head.

This extraordinary half-caste seemed to be growing bigger and bigger, or was it because he was occupying an increasingly large space in her mind? In all her twenty-odd years Diana Lacy had had her way with men. She looked upon men, the nice men, as having been especially born to amuse her, to grant her wishes, to make the wheels of her life go round. Only one man had she ever found a little difficult-her father, in whom she suspected volcanic depths. Only one man she feared, and she had come to fear him quite recently-this strange man from the Criminal Investigation Branch. She ought, she was sure, to despise him for his birth, to regard him as she had always regarded half-castes, as unfortunate people, but, well, not quite nice. And she was angry with herself, and angry with him that his personality made it impossible for her to despise him.

Her feminine instinct informed her that Mr Napoleon Bonaparte was “a nice man,” not unlike a white man a little too deeply tanned by the sun. She did not fear him, physically. Physically he attracted her. She liked his face. She liked the way he smiled. She liked his eyes that were so blue and candid and friendly. It was his mind that she feared. He was the first man she had ever met who had demanded from her and received, recognition of his mental superiority.

All men she had come to look upon as subject to her feminine charm and wit, even her own father. No man had ever rebelled against her rule until this Bonaparte man had arrived. He conceded her charm, and this she had been quick to see. He would have paid tribute to her wit had she not from the first withdrawn herself from him. But not for a moment had he admitted any inferiority on his part. Her world had been calm and safe and sure before his arrival at Karwir. He had come to find out certain things and, despite her, he had found out certain things, and he would go on finding out other things-if the Barcoo sickness did not force him to give up.

Stopping the car outside Pine Hut, Diana remained seated, lighting a cigarette and quietly smoking while she carefully examined the building for sign of a chance swagman in occupation. No smoke rose from the iron chimney. The door was latched. She had noted the tracks made by Blake’s car passing by along the road. There certainly were no tracks of dogs about this place.

The wind was carrying little dust eddies across the wide, clear, flat area of land stretching away from the front of the hut, and it sang in small high notes about the building, but she was confident, when stepping to ground, that it was not sufficiently strong to prevent ample warning of the approach of a car.

Oh, she knew the place well enough! Countless times had she stopped her car here to spend half an hour talking to John Gordon. To-day she was hoping desperately that she would hear his voice and not the voice of his mother saying that John was away out on the run and would not be home till late.

Before entering this one-room stockman’s house, she surveyed its interior from the open doorway. There was the usual dust on the long table and the form flanking it. The usual sheets of newspaper littered the floor and unburned, charred wood rested on top of the white ash in the wide hearth. There, affixed to the wall just inside the door, was the telephone instrument with its small shelf for the writing of notes. There was dust on this shelf and on top of the box, the dust in which she had been charged with drawing little crosses.

Diana’s face flamed. She knew she never had drawn crosses, and she knew that Bony knew she had never drawn crosses. Every time she thought of that luncheon she felt like shedding tears of vexation. To think that he could so successfully spring that on her, so take her by surprise that she was helpless to deny it-she a woman of the world and over twenty. His open suggestion of her secret meeting with John she had, of course, valiantly and resolutely defeated, but she had gone down like a simpleton before his crafty flank attack.

No, there was no defeating that mind behind the bright blue eyes. She believed what he had told her about his never failing in an investigation. A man with a mind like that could not fail. He wouldn’t fail here at Karwir-unless the Barcoo sickness conquered. All that could be done was to retreat, to delay revelation, to smother up still further the thing that time should have successfully buried for ever.

Diana twirled the handle protruding from the box affair and lifted the horn monstrosity to her ear. No voice interrupted the song of the wind. Replacing the horn she rang again, and again lifted the horn to her ear. Only the song of the wind reached her. It came humming along the wire. It came in through the door in shrill cadences.

It was now that she saw the discolouration on the earth floor immediately below the instrument, and with sudden suspicion she raised the little clasp and pulled the front back from the box. Within, the two glass cells lay wrecked.

Without haste, her mind governed by a strange fatalistic calm, she stepped from the hut, latched the door after her, and walked to her car, there to sit and put a match to another cigarette. As her father sometimes said: there was nothing for it but hard smoking.

So he had broken the cells to prevent her from ringing up Meena! He knew it was John she had met on the boundary fence. He knew she had talked to John that day her brother flew her to Opal Town. Now he guessed that the hair he had found on the tree trunk had come from John’s head. He had only talked about those hairs to lure her into another trap, knowing that she would try to communicate with John to tell him about the hairs. Well, she had fallen into the trap, as he would well know, because she couldn’t wipe out the tracks like the blacks could. He knew she would try to tell John not to leave his hair on his comb and brushes or towels. Well, she wasn’t beaten yet. She would go to Meena to tell John in person.

Down went the toe of the fashionable shoe to stamp hard on the starter button. The engine purred into life, and she swung the machine round to take the track to Meena homestead. The road was like a snake’s track. She accelerated across theclaypans and the hard areas of grey ground. She was forced to brake hard before reaching the sandy areas, fearful of a skid much worse than any produced by a slippery road. Twice she was stopped by a gate.

Mary Gordon came hurrying to meet her from the direction of the cow shed. She was carrying a heavy bucket of milk, her spare figure encased in a print frock and her head protected from the sun by a blue scarf.

“I heard you coming,” she cried excitedly to Diana. “John’s out, and I’ve been out all the morning watching the blacks drive rabbits into a yard. The fire will be dead, but it won’t take long to boil the kettle. I’ve got a new tin one that comes to the boil in a few minutes. I suppose you rang from Pine Hut and couldn’t get us.”