LITMIR.BIZ

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young fellow, obviously a horseman, who sat on Bony’s right and who was Tilly’s “boy”, Harry West, wanted to know if Dreyton had seen a piebald mare with a colt running at heels. Bill the Cobbler, an old man without a hair to his head, wished to know if Dreyton was feeling fit enough to write a letter for him to a “widder wot’s blackmailing me down in Adelaide”. Young-and-Jackson, so named because the famous hotel of that name in Melbourne was the only building he remembered seeing during his rare visits to that city, wished to know if Dreyton had seen Dogger Smith and “’Ow’s that old pioneer getting along?”

      Beneath their questions was restraint. Dreyton could feel it. He nodded recognition to Bony, who was smiling happily. No one mentioned Mabel Storrie. Harry West asked if Dreyton would take a ticket in the station sweepstake on the Melbourne Cup.

      “I don’t believe in sweepstakes,” snarled Hang-dog Jack.

      “Then why did you buy two tickets?” demanded the organizer.

      “I don’t believe in ’em, all the same.”

      “What do you believe in?” asked Bill the Cobbler.

      “I don’t believe in nothing,” argued the cook as though he enjoyed arguing.

      “Not even beer?” mildly inquired Young-and-Jackson, blinking his green eyes rapidly.

      “Not even in beer—at sixpence a small schooner.”

      The scowl on the cook’s face was terrific. It amazed even Bony. With deliberate unconcern, Hangdog Jack lit an ancient pipe and casually blew smoke into the soup saucepan. Bony was thankful that the first course was past.

      Chapter Seven

      The Book Of The Bush

      Mounted-Constable Lee and Bony sat facing each other across a small table wholly covered with untidy piles of documents which were partially weighted with sand particles. From the ceiling a suspended oil lamp provided a kind of illuminated passage up which spiralled tobacco-smoke. The time was 9.50 p.m., and the room was that designated as the police station office.

      “I don’t envy you your walk to town tonight,” stated the uniformed policeman. When Bony smiled, but did not speak, he added, “And I envy you less your walk back to Wirragatta.”

      “Being a still night, there was, and is, no need for nervousness,” argued Bony, his ready smile revealing his white teeth, his eyes now almost black. “Have you been informed of the departure of any plainclothes men from Broken Hill?”

      “No. I don’t expect any notification. Simone will probably be assigned to this last case, as he is in possession of the details relating to the other two.”

      As he slowly expelled tobacco-smoke, the detective intently regarded the big but lean man who now was frowning.

      He said, “What has aroused your dislike of this Sergeant Simone?”

      Lee hesitated before answering this question, but when he did he spoke deliberately.

      “Simone is a bully. He tries to bully me. He knows that my wife is a Carie woman, and that she would hate to leave here were I transferred. He knows that my wife’s father is a semi-invalid, and that her mother is bedridden. He tells me in his sly, slinking manner that I am too popular and that popular policemen are no good to the Force. Knowing that he has us under his thumb, he makes full use of our parlour, and even drops cigar-ash all over the carpet. That riles my wife and annoys me. If I squeak he’ll pull strings higher up. Then again, as I said the other day, he’s not the shadow of a detective outside a city slum area.”

      “A rather impossible person.”

      “You’ve said it, sir—Bony.”

      “Well, well, if he comes, he will probably amuse us. If he does not amuse, you and I can send him back to Broken Hill, where, doubtless, he is appreciated. Officious policemen always amuse me for a little while. There is something so naive about them. Simone will certainly want a statement from me as a suspicious character camped within a quarter-mile of the scene of the third crime. Pick up pen and write, my dear Lee, to my dictation. Statements are such necessary documents, you know, to officious policemen.”

      Lee stared fixedly at this most unorthodox detective from Brisbane, suspecting sarcasm. Then he smiled grimly when he found a pen, the end of which revealed much savage biting. In his breast-pocket was the document signed by his own State’s Police Commissioner, instructing him to render every assistance to Detective-Inspector Bonaparte. Already he sensed that he and his wife had a powerful ally against the hated Sergeant Simone, and this was balm laid to his outraged soul.

      When Bony’s statement had been taken down and signed and initialled by him, the detective said, “Now we can await the gentleman from Broken Hill without mental disturbance. You will not inform him who and what I am, and he will not know. Later we may discuss him again. Meanwhile, please give me your attention and keep secret everything I say now and hereafter.”

      Constable Lee already had forgotten this extraordinary man’s colour. Already he was blinded by the forceful personality of this half-caste who had passed through a university, had risen to high state in his profession—from a police tracker to an inspector—and of whom even he had heard whispers of fine successes.

      “Have you prepared that list of persons resident in and near Carie for the last three years?” Bony asked.

      Lee proffered several sheets of paper, saying with gratification, “I completed the list just before you came in.”

      “Ah! The name of every one is here? Yours? Your wife’s?”

      The other’s face took to itself a deeper tint.

      “Well, I didn’t think——” he began.

      “I must add you both,” Bony murmured. “Now … here are the names of some seventy people who have been living here over the period in which two persons were murdered and a third nearly so. If you have not omitted anyone from these lists, other than the two I have just added, then the criminal’s name is beneath my hands.”

      Bony rolled yet another cigarette. There were occasions when he was a chain-smoker.

      “I feel pretty sure, Lee,” he went on when he had struck a match, “that this case will interest me profoundly, and exercise a brain liable to become lethargic with mundane and sordid murder and other crimes. This strangling series is most promising, and I can find even more pleasure in it, as poor Mabel Storrie is now recovering.

      “It may be that the person who attacked her is not the murderer of Alice Tindall and Frank Marsh, but someone who copies his methods. We must not lose sight of this possibility. At this early stage, I think that the same person committed all three crimes. Having perused Simone’s reports when in Sydney, and allowing for his magnification of his difficulties in order to save face, I do not wonder at all that he failed. Here in the bush he would be quite out of his element. But, Lee, here in the bush I am well within mine.

      “Simone, without doubt, has been trained to discovering clues in the form of revolvers and knives, bloodstains and finger-prints. He has experience in keeping his ear to the ground for criminal whispers, and is facile in putting together information received in the hundred and one thieves’ kitchens of any city. I have been trained to use my maternal gifts to see what you white men fail to see on the pages of the Book of the Bush. In that book men and animals, birds and insects subscribe their essays. Added to my inherited maternal gifts are those inherited from my white father. I see with the eyes of a black man and reason with the mind of a white man, and in the bush I am supreme.

      “In this bush Simone found no clues. That is not surprising to me. There were no common clues for him to find: most of the uncommon clues remain for me to discover. They are written indelibly in the Book of the Bush on certain pages relative to these crimes I have yet to read. Remember, Lee, that although some men sneer at me on account of my mid-race, I am superior to the blacks because I can reason, and superior to many white people because I

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