Читать книгу The Bone is Pointed - Arthur W. Upfield - Страница 9

Old Lacy

Bony and Sergeant Blake stood beside the latter’s car at the edge of flat country half a mile north of Opal Town, country which had been cleared and levelled by Old Lacy’s men to make a landing ground for the Karwir plane. From this point the town was hidden by a range of low sand-dunes through which wound the little-used track.

“This Young Lacy,” Bony said, “is he a reliable flier?”

“Most. Holds his ‘B’ licence. When he failed to enter the Air Force he wanted to join the flying staff of a commercial company, but the old man persuaded him against it. I think the young fellow stays at home only because his father is growing old. The old man has a lot to commend him, you know. I think I can hear the plane coming now.”

“Yes, it’s coming. I can see it. By the way, give that tracker of yours his marching orders. He is too dangerous a man to have hanging round a police station.”

“Dangerous?” Blake echoed. “I’ve found him willing enough and reliable.”

“Perhaps Abie will consent to return,” suggested Bony. “Anyway, exchange Wandin for a much younger man. A young man won’t know so much about magic and uncomfortable things of that kind. Ah, quite a smart machine!”

The silver-painted aeroplane landed with hardly a bounce, and, with the propeller ticking over, it was expertly taxied to a halt within fifty yards of the car and facing the light wind coming from the west. Young Lacy jumped to the ground, ignoring the step inset in the fuselage immediately behind the near-side wing. Bony watched him striding towards them, noted the red hair when the airman snatched off his helmet, and instantly liked the open cheerful face. Before reaching them, Young Lacy shouted:

“Good day, Sergeant! How’s the spotted liver this afternoon? I’ve been sent to pick up Inspector Bonaparte.”

His clear hazel eyes gazed about and beyond Bony on whose face was painted a hint of a smile. It was obvious that Young Lacy was looking for a white man, and Sergeant Blake made a noise from way down in his throat.

“In the departmental records, Mr Lacy, I am listed as Inspector, Criminal Investigation Branch,” Bony said gravely. “Actually, of course, I am not a real policeman, but being a family man I have no hesitation in accepting the salary. My name is Napoleon Bonaparte.”

During this somewhat grandiose self-introduction Young Lacy’s eyes opened wide and the cheerful smile gradually gave place to an expression of bewilderment. Sergeant Blake offered an observation.

“Inspector Bonaparte’s reputation is to be envied, Mr Lacy,” he said stiffly. “He mayn’t be a real policeman, but he’s a real detective right enough.”

“Oh—all—yes, of course! Pleased to meet you, Inspector Bonaparte. Boorish of me to be so dense,” Young Lacy hastened to say. “I was expecting to see a bull-necked, flat-footed bird with jangling irons in his pocket. The old man will be disappointed.”

“Indeed! Why?”

“He’s waiting to receive the detective I was expecting to find waiting here. He’s dreaming dreams of taking him out into the bush and losing him. Still, I’m glad to meet you and not the other kind.”

“And I am most happy to make your acquaintance, Mr Lacy,” Bony said warmly. “I mean it more especially after having watched you fly that machine. I’m not air-minded, you see. The last time I went up was several years ago with Captain Loveacre.”

“Loveacre! You know Loveacre, eh! I last met him—why, red wine and laughing eyes! I remember Loveacre telling me about you and your Diamantina case. He called you Bony.”

“He would, Mr Lacy. Everyone does. I wish you would, too.”

“Bony it is, then. I’m Young Lacy to all hands. And now we are friends, what about getting home? The old man will be waiting with all his little sayings ready saved up.”

Young Lacy stowed the suitcase, assured himself that the second helmet was securely on Bony’s head and Bony himself safely strapped into the rear cockpit.

“So long, Blake!” he called when he had taken his position at the controls. “Don’t forget to remember me to Mrs Blake.”

The throttle was opened, the engine roared to drown the Sergeant’s reply and make him skip back to the car away from the dust. A short even run and the ground was slipping away from under, and into view sprang the township, to fall into the centre of a great green and brown disk. Bony saw the road to “outside” winding away to the eastern horizon, another road curving this way and that far to the north, and a third road lying like a snake’s track from the town to where the sun was destined to set. He wrote with a pencil on a spare envelope:

“Kindly follow the road to Karwir. I want to see Pine Hut on Meena. Fly low, please.”

He thrust the note over Young Lacy’s shoulder. The pilot took it, read it, and, glancing back, nodded. With the stick held between his knees, he also used the envelope to pencil a note:

“Will fly low, but it will be bumpy. Might make you sick.”

On seeing Bony shake his head and indicate with a hand his desire to be flown nearer the ground, the pilot sent the ship sharply down to follow the track snaking westward. The earth was painted with a crazy pattern of greens and browns, green scrub and brown sand-dunes. Only the road possessed continuity, now plainly marked by the shadows lying in the deep wheel-ruts on soft sand, now faintly limned by putty-coloured ribbons made by the wheels of motors crossing cement-hard claypans.

A wire fence rushed to meet them and passed under them. Bony knew, by his study of Blake’s wall map, that it was the Opal Town Common fence, and that now they were flying over Meena Station. It was quite a nice little property, though not to be compared with the big runs like Karwir. He would have to visit the Gordons, and Nero and his tribe, too. Nero would be sure to interest him, because, of course, by now Nero would have had word of his flying to Karwir.

At the average altitude of six hundred feet, Young Lacy sent the machine over the winding road. Little brown and white dots away to the north represented grazing cattle. The road was behaving erratically, falling away and swinging upward to them as the machine entered air pockets, passed through them, and rose again when propeller and wings bit into the air.

Only a few minutes of this and then the iron roof and the windmill of Pine Hut flashed up above the horizon and slid swiftly towards them. The sun glinted on the revolving fans of the mill, and, striking the water in two iron troughs, made of it bars of gold lying rigidly on a light-brown cloth. As though the mill were the hub of a wheel, four fences radiated from it, their thin straight lines quartering the carpet of earth. The road junction was easily discernible—that to the west connecting Meena homestead with Opal Town, the road to Karwir turning widely to the south to enter a mulga forest extending over the rim of the world.

The sun swung sharply round to Bony’s right shoulder when the machine turned to follow the southward road to Karwir. No smoke rose from the chimney of the hut below them. No dogs moved. There were no horses in the yards down there, or human beings to wave at the passing plane.

Fascinated by the speed with which the road unwound to thrust the scrub trees towards and under the machine, Bony was unconscious of time. He saw cattle lying in the shade beside the road. Now and then he saw a running rabbit, and noted how the rodents appeared to be chased by tiny balls of red dust. Sometimes he saw the thin thread of the telephone wire stretched from tree to tree.

Now the trees thinned to terminate in a clearly defined line. The machine began to cross a wide ribbon of grey and barren land bordered on its far side by an irregular line of coolabahs, in which no foot of wood is straight. The coolabahs passed under, and again the machine crossed a wide ribbon of treeless and bare grey ground, to be met with another line of coolabahs. A third grey ribbon of bare ground was crossed before the machine again flew above massed trees bordering the everlasting road. They had passed the Channels stated by Sergeant Blake and shown by the wall map to extend from Meena Lake to Green Swamp.

Two minutes after crossing the Channels, there appeared far along the road a white blob that magically resolved into a painted bar-gate. It was the gate that darted towards them, not they towards the gate. Beyond it stretched a thin, dark line, to cross, in the far distance, a blue-grey crescent rising above the rim of the world. It was the fence crossing the plain to Karwir, the fence separating Green Swamp Paddock from North Paddock. It was rule-straight, but the road skirting its east side continued to curve like the track left on sand by a snake.

What made Bony look to the westward when the machine passed over the boundary fence, instead of to the right to observe Green Swamp Paddock that seemed to be so important to his investigation, he could not recall. As the gate passed beneath the plane, he saw the netted and barb-topped barrier lying like a knife blade along the centre of a rule-straight brown sheath dwindling to a point some three miles away.

For only a half-second did he see this cut line and the fence, but, during that fraction of time, he saw, about three-quarters of a mile westward of the gate, a white horse standing in the shade of a tree on the Karwir side of the barrier. Opposite this horse, on the Meena side of the barrier, stood a brown horse, also in the shade cast by a tree. Both animals were saddled, and appeared to be neck-roped to their respective trees. Stockmen chance-met and enjoying a gossip, Bony surmised.

The machine now was flying along the seemingly endless fence towards the homestead beyond the plain already sliding to pass beneath them. It appeared like strands of black cotton knotted at regular intervals, the knots being the posts. The plain folded away mile after mile to the clean-cut horizon west and south and east. Behind them, the mulga forest was drawn over the swelling curve of the world.

The miles were being devoured at the rate of two a minute. Down there on that road loaded wagons drawn by bullocks once moved at two miles to the hour.

The horizon to the south grew dark, darker still, to become saw-edged with tops of tall trees, the bloodwood trees bordering the creek against which stood the Karwir homestead. Tall and taller grew the trees like a row of Jack’s beanstalks, and at their feet straight-edged silver panels resolved into the iron roofs and walls of buildings. The fans of three windmills caught and sent to the oncoming plane the rays of the sun. Dust rose from toy yards constructed of match sticks, yards containing brown and black ants and two queer things that were men.

With interest Bony gazed down upon the big red roof of the homestead itself, noting the orange-trees almost surrounding the building, the trees themselves surrounded by what appeared to be a canegrass fence. They passed over a narrow sheet of water, another line of bloodwoods, and now a little to the left stood the corrugated iron hangar beyond which was the spacious landing ground. A few seconds later they were on the ground, once more earth-bound. The yawning front of the hangar opened wide and wider to receive its own as Young Lacy taxied the machine into it. Then came abruptly an astounding silence in which lived a very small voice.

“There you are, Bony. We have arrived,” announced Young Lacy.

“And to think that twenty years ago one would have had to travel that road on a horse or in a buckboard,” Bony said, smiling down at Young Lacy who first reached the ground. The cheerful young man accepted the proffered suitcase and waited for Bony to join him.

“I’ll come back to put the crate to bed,” he said. “Come on! The old man will be waiting to meet you. Be prepared to meet a lion. The dad’s got a lot of excellent points, but strangers find him a bit difficult. The best way to manage him is to refuse to be shouted down. To begin well with him is to continue well.”

Bony laughed softly, saying:

“Thank you for the advice. In the art of taming lions I have had long and constant practice. It seems that your father conforms to a type to which belongs my respected chief, Colonel Spendor.”

Young Lacy conducted the detective across a bridge spanning the creek, thence to a narrow gate in the cane-grass fence enclosing the big house. Within, he was met with the cool fragrance of gleaming orange-trees, and the scent of flowers in beds fronting the entire length of the fly-proofed veranda along the south side of the house. He followed Young Lacy up two steps, and stepped on to the veranda, linoleum covered and furnished plainly but with studied comfort. Standing before one of several leather-upholstered chairs was Old Lacy—a patriarch of the bush, with a pipe in one hand and a stock journal in the other. His feet were slippered. Gabardine trousers reached to a tweed waistcoat open all the way. His plain white shirt was of good quality, but he wore no collar and no coat. His hair was thin and as white as snow. His beard was thin and as white as his hair. There was power in the grey eyes, and character in the long Roman nose. No smile welcomed the detective.

“This is Detective-Inspector Bonaparte,” Young Lacy announced.

“Eh?” exclaimed Old Lacy, like a man who is deaf. Young Lacy did not repeat the introduction. Bony waited. To have spoken would have indicated weakness. “A detective-inspector, eh? You? ’Bout time, anyway, that that fool of a Police Commissioner sent someone to look into this murder business. Well, the lad will show you to your bunk.”

“Mr Bonaparte,” Young Lacy said with slight emphasis on the title, “can remain here with you, dad. No arrangements will have been made for Mr Bonaparte because Diana went out before I left for Opal Town, and I forgot to tell Mabel to prepare a room. I’ll get her to make a pot of tea, and then fix one of the rooms.”

“Humph! All right!” Old Lacy seated himself in the chair he had but recently vacated, and he pointed to another opposite. “Sit down there, Bonaparte. What are you, Indian or Australian?”

“Thank you.” Bony sat down, quite happily. “I am Australian, at least on my mother’s side. It is better to be half-Australian than not Australian at all.”

“How the devil did you rise to be a detective-inspector? Tell me that,” the old man demanded with raised voice.

With effort Bony restrained the laughter in his eyes, for he clearly understood that this baiting was a real man’s method of testing a stranger. Before him sat a man who, having conquered life by fighting all comers, detested weakness; one who, having fought all comers, continued to do so by habit. Calmly, Bony said:

“My career as a detective, following my graduation from the university at Brisbane, would take a long time to describe in detail. In this country colour is no bar to a keen man’s progress providing that he has twice the ability of his rivals. I have devoted my gifts to the detection of crime, believing that when justice is sure the community is less troubled by the criminal. That I stand midway between the black man, who makes fire with a stick, and the white man, who kills women and babes with bombs and machine guns, should not be accounted against me. I have been satisfied with the employment of my mental and inherited gifts. Others, of course, have employed their gifts in amassing money, inventing bombs and guns and gases, even in picking winners on a racecourse. Money, and the ownership of a huge leasehold property, does not make a man superior to another who happens to have been born a half-caste, and who has devoted his life to the detection of crime so that normal people should be safe from the abnormal and the subnormal individual.”

Into the grey eyes slowly had crept a gleam. When Old Lacy again spoke his voice was less, much less, loud.

“Damned if I don’t think you’re right,” he said. “I’ve known lots of fine blackfellers and more’n one extra good half-caste. I’ve known many white men who’ve made a pile and think themselves king-pins. And as for those swine dropping bombs on women and children, well, they’re less than animals, for even dingoes don’t kill their females and the little pups. Don’t mind me. I’m a rough old bushy in my ways and talk. I’m glad you came. I want to see justice done for what I think happened to Jeffery Anderson. You’ll be a welcome guest at Karwir, and you can expect all the help we can give. You’ll want that, after these months following Jeff’s disappearance.”

“Of that I am sure, Mr Lacy,” Bony asserted, conscious of the warm glow within him created by yet one more victory over the accident of his birth. “The lapse of time since Anderson was last seen will, of course, make my investigation both difficult and prolonged. I may be quartered on you for a month, possibly six months. I shall not give up, or return to Brisbane, until I have established Anderson’s fate and those responsible for it.”

“Ah—I like to hear a man talk like that. It’s the way I talk myself, although not so well schooled. Ah—put it down here, Mabel.”

The uniformed maid placed the tea tray on a table between the two men, then vanished through one of the house doors. Bony rose to say:

“Milk and sugar, Mr Lacy?”

“No sugar, thanks. Can’t afford it at my time of life. In fact, I never could.”

“Sugar is expensive, I know,” murmured Bony, taking two spoonfuls. “Still, aeroplanes and things are expensive, too.”

The old man chuckled.

“I think I am going to like you, Inspector,” he said.