Death of a Swagman. Arthur W. Upfield
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you mind telling me why you are so sure that Kendall wasn’t killed inside the hut?”
“I will tell you something, but not everything,” Bony said, smiling. “I discovered the fact from one of the photographs taken by the police photographer who accompanied Redman, the picture of the front of the hut.”
“I saw that one. I saw no evidence.”
“Neither did Redman. But I did. It is why I am here. ”
“But what ...?”
“One day I’ll show you the evidence in that picture, without which I would not have consented to undertake this investigation. You see. Sergeant. I have never permitted myself to stultify my brain with common murders. I pick and choose my cases, not for their simplicity but for unusual circumstances governing them. My superiors often argue about my attitude, and speak of discipline and matters which fail to interest me. Sometimes they threaten to sack me, and that interests me even less. Look at me. You see—what? Come, tell me.”
Marshall hesitated, and Bony continued:
“You see a half-caste, a detective inspector in a state police department. I was given the chance of a good education by a saint, the matron of a mission station to which I was taken when abandoned as a baby. I passed from a state school to a high school, thence to the Brisbane University, where I won my Master of Arts degree, and so proved once again, if proof is necessary, that the Australian half-caste is not a kind of kangaroo. But I had to conquer greater obstacles than social prejudice. I had to conquer, and still have to conquer, the almost irresistible power of the Australian bush over those who belong to it.
“You have been in the bush long enough to have felt that power yourself, and you are a white man. A similar power is exercised over seafaring men by the sea, but it is not so strong as this power of the bush. The only counter-power preventing me from surrendering to it is pride, with a capital P, and faith in myself. Without pride in my scholastic attainments and pride in my success as a crime investigator, the bush would have had its way with me. My record is unblemished by failure, and that is behind the faith in myself. Once I fail to solve a crime mystery, such as this Kendall case, I lose that faith in myself which holds me up with head high, and the great Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte becomes Bony the half-caste nomad.
“I will not consent to investigate cheap and tawdry crimes of violence, or lesser crimes, because my pride would be shamed, and also I have to avoid the fear of failure which might grow in me did I accept any and every assignment given to me by my department. Once I forget that I am a police inspector and a Master of Arts, I become Bony the half-caste, and the banshee of the bush would lure me back and down into its secret cave, to stand naked before it and to recognize it as my lord and master.”
There followed a period of silence which Marshall did not find to his liking. His long career as a policeman in the interior of Australia had made him au fait with the growing problem of the half-caste and the half-caste’s problems. He knew that they were invariably intelligent, and that it was their white fathers who were degraded and not their black mothers, members of what was originally one of the most moral races that ever walked this earth. He was aware, too, that these people were mentally capable of competing successfully with the white man—were they but given the chance.
“Kendall was killed and the bush concealed the tracks of his murderer from you and Redman and any other white man and black man who might try to wrest the secret from the bush. But it will not baffle me, because I am neither wholly black nor white. I have the white man’s reasoning powers and the black man’s eyesight and knowledge of the bush. The bush will give up its secrets to me.—I believe that someone is calling for you.”
The sergeant stood up. Both men heard the rapid footsteps approaching the lockup. Then Constable Gleeson appeared at the door.
“Mrs Fanning is over at the office, Sergeant,” he said. “She states that she went over to her father’s hut to take him a roasted joint and that he is lying on the floor. She says that there is blood on the floor under his head, and she thinks he is dead.”
“We’ll go along, Gleeson,” Marshall said, astonishingly unruffled. He turned to Bony, to see him with his two hands together and the finger tips touching his chin. He looked quite happy.
Chapter Three
The Book of the Bush
When Edward Bennett was found dead in his hut on the outskirts of Merino he was in his eighty-second year. In life he had looked but sixty, in death, according to the Merino undertaker, he looked—well, not peaceful.
He had retired from hard work at the age of seventy. His wife was dead. His only daughter, married to the Merino butcher, had said to her willing husband: “Father must come and live with us.” Old Bennett had snorted: “Be hanged if I will. I’m living in me own house.”
Old Bennett had built himself a two-roomed hut on the eastern edge of Merino, some few hundred yards north of the hall, which stood on the lower left-hand corner of the street. It faced over the vast area of country falling gently away toward the Walls of China, which appeared to be much higher than actually they were; and it was, therefore, less than a quarter of a mile from the post office, where the ancient battler had drawn his old-age pension.
“I expected it,” the doctor was saying. “Told him he was liable to drop dead any minute, and advised him to listen to his daughter and go and live with her.”
Bony did not enter the hut with the policemen and the doctor. To him, of primary interest was this open page of the Book of the Bush awaiting his reading. What had happened within the hut could be established by the three men who had entered it. What may have happened outside the hut no one of them could establish better than he.
The hut was built of four-gallon petrol tins cut open and nailed as sheets to the wood framework. The roof was of stouter corrugated iron. The building was enclosed by a brush-wood fence in which was only one low gate in the front. Inside the fence old Bennett had laid the rubble of termite nests, watered and tramped it level, and thereafter had kept it swept. It was almost cement-hard, and the tracks of no man would be registered upon it.
Outside the fence the ground was sandy and in places rippled like the sand left by the receding tide. From the gate the sandy path wound away towards the hall, which it skirted to gain the street, and on it were the old man’s tracks and those of his daughter, who was wearing rubber-soled canvas shoes.
No two persons walk alike. The gait of every human being varies from normal to when he is sick, and again when his mind is controlled by strong emotion. An aboriginal, on seeing the imprint of a naked foot, will seldom fail to name the owner of the foot that made it.
Following a request put forward by Bony, the police party had proceeded to the hut away from the path, and Bony, who walked after the three men, had automatically observed their boot prints on the ground. Until this case was concluded he would not fail to recognize the tracks made by those three men, as well as those made by Mrs Fanning, any more than he would fail to recognize their faces.
Marshall wore boots size nine. He walked with greater pressure on the back of his heels than elsewhere, and the toes were almost in alignment with the heels. The heel pressure denoted a man who had received rigorous training. The doctor’s toes were placed outward a little more than that of the average white man, and the greatest pressure was at the extreme tip of the toes, denoting an eager, easily excited mind. His stride was much shorter than that of the sergeant, indicating that he was a short man or fat. In point of fact he was shortish and tubby. Gleeson placed his toes slightly inward, with greatest pressure on the inside of the soles. His boot print could have been made by any stockman accustomed to much horse riding, but the regularity of his stride and directness of his walk indicated a man trained in a military camp—in his case the police barracks. His boot size was seven: the doctor’s size was eight.
The dead man’s tracks were on the path beside which were the holes made by the point of his stick. His tracks were all about the outside of the fence, to and from the wood heap and the office. There were, too, the tracks made by a heavy dog from