Arthur Upfield - The Bone is Pointed

“Good day, Sergeant,” came the soft tones and pure accent. “It is good of you to come out this hot day.”

“Oh, the heat’s nothing. I’m used to it. How’re you feeling to-day?”

“Not good, Sergeant. Another bad night. I have just awakened from an uneasy sleep. I felt work beyond me this morning, but we will get to it again this afternoon. Anderson lies near here, I am positively sure. He cannot be beyond a mile away. As I told you yesterday, I have only to find his grave and then my investigation is complete.”

“Righto! We’ll get on with the burrowing among those dunes after lunch. I’ve brought out some milk and the wife says I’m to try you with some coffee. Think you could eat a little? What about a nice thin slice of ham and a lettuce salad?”

“I couldn’t eat, Blake. The coffee I will try. Kindly convey my thanks to Mrs Blake. Say to her that I should like to accept her delicacies, but I fear to do so. I’ve been keeping off the brandy as much as possible, too, especially during the day. Spirits depress me, and I cannot afford to be mentally depressed just now.”

Blake had milk heating in a saucepan.

“Old Lacy rang up just before I left,” he said, trying to speak lightly. “The old man had the telephone extended to his bedroom, and he’s happier now that he can ring up his overseer and stockmen. I’ll bet the nurse and Miss Lacy aren’t having too easy a time with him.”

“No, he would be a bad patient. How goes his leg?”

“Oh, just going on the same. Time is the only very important part of the cure. Old bones won’t knit fast, you know. He told me he was worried about you. It seems that the girl and he have been talking a bit, and the old man now believes that you haven’t got the Barcoo sickness but have been boned by the blacks.”

“Indeed!”

“Yes. It appears you put the idea into Miss Lacy’s head that day you met her coming back from Meena. I’m thinking she knows something about the boning and why it was done.”

“I have thought that, too. I told her I felt much like a man who was boned in order to let her know I suspected it. What makes you think she knows all about it?”

Blake related the gist of Diana’s conversation with him and with Mrs Blake.

“It seems to us that she wanted to impress us with the danger of your pegging out here alone, and she suggested that I should report your illness to headquarters so that they would insist on your retiring from the case. She seems anxious to get you out of the way, and now she has told Old Lacy what you said about feeling like a boned man, and she’s urging him to write to headquarters.”

“Really, Blake, that is too much,” Bony exclaimed. “Am I to be prevented from completing my case by the very man who wrote to headquarters so often insisting that the investigation be begun?” Blake’s ears were shocked by the terrible laughter. “I can just hear and see Colonel Spendor when he receives Old Lacy’s letter. ‘Damn and blast Bony! He rebelled against my orders. He’s got himself boned by the blacks, or is up against some other tomfoolery, and now he can stew in his own juice. He’s sacked and he has resigned, and now he can go to the devil. Write to Lacy and tell him that he’s got his detective and he can damn well keep him.’ That’s what Colonel Spendor will say when he receives Old Lacy’s letter.”

“Still, Miss Lacy’s interest in your position appears to indicate that-”

“She knows of the boning,” Bony carried on. “That’s no news. I know it, and I know she would like very much to have me removed by force in case I solve this mystery before I die. Oh, I’ve got them all cut and dried. I know as much about the killing of Anderson as though I had witnessed it, but what they did with the body I don’t know and cannot think. My brain won’t work.”

Blake stood up from brewing the coffee. He said:

“Well, it appears to me that finding a body in this country after it has been planted six months is too much to hope for. It is harder than going through a haystack to find a needle.”

“It is no more difficult than going through a haystack for a needle with an electro-magnet,” Bony objected. “The extent and variety of the country doesn’t matter. The time factor is of little account. My mind ought to be the electro-magnet in attracting the body of Anderson. Failure to discover the needle cannot be credited to the amount of hay or the littleness of the needle. It is my mind that fails, and my mind fails because it is upset by the boning. The object of the boning is to drive me away, but the object it has actually achieved has been to blunt my mental power. Without Anderson’s remains to prove that he is dead, all my work amounts to nothing, all the clues I have discovered are valueless.”

“Well, what about giving it up and returning at a later date when you have recovered your health?”

“We have so often argued the matter, Sergeant, that you begin to weary me. I will not give up. I have explained why I dare not give up. Once I let go my pride in achievement I become worse than nothing. This coffee is delicious. If only I can keep it down.”

“Sip it slowly,” urged Blake.

Four minutes later Bony was dreadfully sick. Blake held him, himself shaken by the terrible convulsions. He carried the emaciated body into the tent and laid it on the stretcher, and had almost to use force to persuade the detective to drink a stiff tot of raw brandy. Bony’s breath was painfully laboured and his face distorted by pain.

“ ‘May the bones pierce your liver and the eagle’s claws tear your kidneys to string,’ ” quoted the sick man, slowly and softly. “The bones keep thrusting through my liver and the eagle’s claws keep clamping on my kidneys. They stop my breathing, the eagle’s claws.”

“Lie quiet,” Blake entreated.

“That I mustn’t do. I must not give in.”

“Lie quiet for five minutes,” Blake said firmly.

Slowly the laborious breathing eased. The lids covered the blue eyes that once reflected the virile mind of a virile man in the prime of life. When was that, considered Blake? Only a week or two ago. Thank God, Browne was on his way by now. And when he had taken this wreck away the Kalchut blacks would be dealt with. By gad, he would deal with ’em. ’Bout time they were split up and civilized and the magic knocked out of them.

“Your five minutes are up, Sergeant,” Bony said, unsteadily. “I mustn’t give in. I think I want to smoke a cigarette. It’s a good thing the boning doesn’t stop the ability to smoke.”

“Have a drop more brandy?”

“No. I’ll be all right now. I should not have succumbed to temptation, but the coffee smelled delightful.”

Despite Blake’s urgings to remain on the stretcher Bony rose and walked shakily to the petrol case. Blake helped himself to more coffee and loaded and lit his pipe.

“Success in crime investigation, Sergeant, depends on the ability of the investigator to put himself into the mind of the criminal,” Bony said, after a few minutes of silence that emphasized the stillness of the day. “Supposing you had seen Anderson riding down from the dunes that day it rained, and that after an argument you killed him. What would you have done with the body?”

Blake pondered before replying:

“I think, like you, that I would have taken it to the side of a sand-dune that looks like a wave about to crash on a beach and there at the foot of it I would have scooped out a hole and pushed the body in, knowing that the next wind would push the dune farther over it.”

“Wouldn’t you have seen the rain falling, the sky promising more rain, and known that when the sand of the dune was wet it would be a long time before the wind exerted its power over it again?”