Arthur Upfield - The Bone is Pointed

“Someone must have taken it. Perhaps John found it in the bush somewhere.”

“But he would have said something about it last night when he came home. Unless he found it this morning, perhaps in the harness shed.”

Diana’s face had become strained and pale.

“What time was John to leave this morning,” she asked.

“What time? Oh, early. About six o’clock.”

“And you were away from before daybreak?”

“Yes. Why?”

“No one else was here? All the blacks were away at the rabbit drive?”

“All of them except Wandin. I saw him on my way back home. He was sitting before a little fire all by himself, and he looked like a praying mantis.”

“Then it must have been John who found the cover.”

“Yes, of course. There could be no one else. My, it’s going to be a nasty day. And here am I forgetting all about the tea.”

Diana drank her tea appreciatively despite her worrying thoughts, and afterwards the two women passed along to the short passage and entered John’s room. Determination overcoming her diffidence, Diana thoroughly searched the pillows and sheets for hair and found two on a pillow, while Mary took the brushes and the comb to the kitchen and burned every hair on those articles. Satisfied now that Mr Napoleon Bonaparte was checkmated, Diana put on her hat preparatory to leaving for the township.

“You needn’t tell John what we’ve done, dear, but you must watch his toilet things and his pillows in case that detective should come over. I don’t think he would dare to ask John directly for one of his hairs.”

“Don’t you worry, Diana,” Mary said, her mouth still grim. “I was nice to Mr Bonaparte when he came in your brother’s plane, and I’ll be nice to him again, but he’ll get nothing out of me.”

“I thought you would be sensible,” the girl said softly, and then hugged the older woman and kissed her with deep affection. “Tell John that the telephone jars at Pine Hut are somehow broken and want replacing. And I’ll meet him at the burnt tree on the boundary at eleven to-morrow morning. Don’t forget to tell him that, will you?”

“I’ll not forget. Good-bye, and leave me to do the fighting at Meena.”

Mary accompanied her guest out to the car, then stood watching it slide noiselessly away into the rising dust, the wind-hiss over the ground subduing the hum of the engine.

Diana had covered seven of the twelve miles to Pine Hut when she saw far ahead a horseman, also riding to Pine Hut. Not until she was close behind him did he hear the engine of her car. He reined his horse off the track and looked round. It was Bony.

He was riding to Pine Hut. He could have come from nowhere save the Meena homestead.

Seed Planting

DIANA stared through the red, dust-laden air at the man seated on the brown mare. She knew him to be Detective-Inspector Bonaparte, but he was in the light of day so changed in physical aspect as to astonish her. The previous evening she had seen him in the dull glow of departing day, and subsequently in the white light of the office petrol lamp, when he had looked both tired and indisposed. But this morning she could the better compare his appearance with what it had been that luncheon hour on the Karwir south veranda.

Though this man was her enemy, Diana’s feminine sympathy claimed her heart as she watched him lift his hat to her, then slide down from the horse’s back, and advance with peculiar gait, leading the mare.

She did not get out of the car. Switching off the engine ignition, she leaned a little over the sill of the door window. Somehow she thought of a Chinese lantern wind-blown in the morning after a night of gaiety. The lantern of this man’s personality, so clearly to be seen in his eyes, in his smile, had gone out. Debonair, suave, naturally courteous, she had known him. Now he stood within a yard of her, his eyes afire with a strange light, the wind ruffling his straight black hair, his hat still held in his left hand. He seemed to be smaller in stature, and it was as though the wind were swaying his body. Then he smiled, and that was the completing line in a caricature.

“Good morning, Miss Lacy!” he said, his well remembered voice still pleasing when she expected it to be harsh. Her own voice sounded small and distant.

“Good morning, Inspector. You look ill this morning. Is the Barcoo sickness as bad as ever?”

“I fear so. I have come to regard it as a competitor in a race. It and I race to the goal represented by the end of this investigation. Which will win is at present uncertain.”

“You certainly look very ill. Don’t you think you ought to see a doctor?”

“A doctor would say: ‘My man, because you have the Barcoo sickness, you must at once get away from the back country, and the medicine I shall prescribe will then defeat the cause of the malady.’ My own condition interests me much, for it is not unlike that of a victim to the pointing of the bone by wild aborigines. I saw a man die of being boned. He, too, was unable to retain food, and he told that nightly he had fearful dreams so that he could not properly sleep. In the end he died, after having complained of bones constantly being thrust into his liver, and his kidneys being constantly lacerated by the eagle’s claws. I am suffering pains in those organs.”

“But surely you don’t believe that your illness is due to the blacks having pointed the bone at you?” Diana said, her brows raised in incredulity.

“I have the Barcoo sickness, Miss Lacy. It is unfortunate, but I will not permit it to interfere with my work-yet. I trust you were more fortunate in your visit to Meena. There was no one at home when I called.”

Diana plunged recklessly:

“Why did you call?”

She could have bitten out her tongue after putting the unwarranted question, and she was still more furious when he replied politely and without hesitation:

“I rode over to return a mattress cover I found in the bush, knowing by the marked tag that it originally came from Meena. I expect the blacks required the feathers and took it without understanding they were committing a white man’s crime.”

“Oh!”

“They use feathers on their feet, you know, when they wish to escape an enemy by leaving no tracks-and to wipe out tracks that they do not wish to remain in evidence.”

The suggestion she ignored.

“Was it you who smashed the telephone jars in the instrument at Pine Hut?”

“No. Why should I do that?”

“I don’t know really. Our telephone to Opal Town was out of order, too, from eight o’clock last night to nearly eight this morning. You are such a queer man, and so many queer things have happened since you came to Karwir.”

“Indeed!”

“Yes, indeed! Little crosses made in the dust on the telephone instrument at Pine Hut was one of the queer things. I could not see any crosses there this morning when I stopped.”

“I wiped the instrument clean after I had observed them,” Bony countered gravely. “The dust there now has accumulated since I cleaned the instrument. So you didn’t notice any more crosses this morning?”

“I think I had better be getting along, Mr Bonaparte,” Diana said a little sharply, almost betraying herself by laughing. And then she sprang her little trap. “Did you find any of Mr Gordon’s hair at Meena?”

Now his eyes became as large as saucers.

“Mr Gordon’s hair! Why do you think I should be interested in Mr Gordon’s hair?”

“Just to compare some of it with the hair you say you found clinging to a certain tree.”

“Ah! Now why didn’t I think of that? Mr Gordon’s hair is light-brown, I am told. It is not dissimilar to that of the missing man. When I see Mr Gordon again I must ask him for one or two of his hairs and compare them under the lens of the microscope.”