The Barrakee Mystery

Chapter Fourteen

Bony’s Imagination

BONY RECLINED with his back against one of the trestles supporting the first boat to be repainted. All the old paint had been burned and scraped off, and the boat, lying keel uppermost, appeared like an old hen whose feathers have all dropped out. He sat in the sun, smoking a cigarette, and looking with vacant eyes at the border of gums on the farther bank of the river.

By his side lay a slab of cement-hard clay, dark grey in colour, and about a foot square. That morning he had cut it carefully out of hard ground near the garden gate.

To ordinary eyes there was nothing of interest about that slab of dry clay. To ordinary eyes there was no mark on it until they had gazed for a long time at its flat surface. Then might vague perception dawn of a series of opposing curves, very faint and irregular in impression.

Bony’s eyes, however, were not ordinary. He saw here on the flat surface a clear impression of a man’s left boot.

Over all that vast area of Australia not broken up by the plough the ground is an open book for those who can read. The history of the wild is written there. Reptiles and animals cannot live without making and leaving their mark. Even birds must alight sometimes and register themselves by their tracks.

The reader of the open book gains proficiency only bypractice, and his final expertness is limited by his eyesight. The habit of observation is the first essential, knowledge of the natives of the wild thesecond, and reasoning power the third. Whilst the first and third essentials make a white man an efficient tracker, the second essential, combined with supervision, makes the black man an expert tracker. And, through his black mother and his white father, Bony possessed the three essentials, plus abnormal vision; which was why he was a king of trackers.

His keen eyes saw impressed on the piece of clay that which only the microscope and the camera would reveal to the white man. A freak of Nature had preserved it from the rain that had fallen after it had been made, for it was the only track left.

The depth of the curves proved that the imprint had been made after three or four points of rain had fallen and slightly moistened the surface. The succeeding rain had not been prolonged sufficiently-and the gauge at the homestead proved that the quantity had been twenty-eight points-to dissolve the surface into sufficient mud to flow into the indentations. Why that single track had been preserved was because the surface of the clay on which it had been made was absolutely level. Thus gravitation had not caused mud to flow there as it had done on all surfaces not absolutely level.

To Bony’s keen vision and reasoning was due the revelation that the person wearing a No. 9 boot who made the impression stood on that spot two or four minutes after the thudding sound that evidently killed King Henry reached Dugdale. And, allowing half a minute for the killer to make sure of his work, two minutes and three seconds were necessary for him to walk rapidly away from the corpse, across the billabong, to the place where he left the solitary track. Bony had walked it, and timed the walk.

The wearer of a No. 9 boot, therefore, was in the vicinity of the murder at the precise moment the deed was done. If the wearer had not actually struck the blow, he had been within seventy-three yards from the place where the blow had fallen.

It was a clue, certainly, towards the elucidation of the crime. Bony was intensely happy. For a whole week he had searched when opportunity offered for that possible track. And, knowing that a No. 9 boot is generally worn by a person of twelve stone and over, by a quick process of elimination the finger of fate pointed to three persons-Clair, John Thornton and Martha the gin.

Within twenty-four hours of his arrival Bony had noted the boot size of every person on his list, other than Martha. He knew that John Thornton’s boot size was No. 8, and he knew, too, that Clair’s was No. 9. That afternoon he had ascertained that Martha’s elastic-sided riding boots also were the man’s size No. 9.

Clair or Martha had made that track, and Clair or Martha was within seventy-three yards of King Henry when he met his death.

Bony had become great friends with the black cook, and had watched his chance to borrow her boots, with which he made an impression on a prepared piece of clay. The Research Department at Headquarters would tell what even Bony’s hawk eyes could not see. With camera and microscope the original track and the rough cast would be examined to discover if there were identical marks or not on both. If there were, proof that one and the same boot made them would be established. If not, then it would be necessary to apply the same process to Clair’s footwear, and on some pretext or other Clair must be brought in from his pumping job, since it was not advisable for Bony to go out to the Basin.

Regarding Clair, too, the half-caste had sent a letter to a friend of his living in the district where roamed that tribe of blacks whose bygone chief, a super-wrestler, had hugged two men at once to death.

To Bony the case afforded mental exhilaration. Because the rain had wiped out the letters and words stamped on the ground, Bony cried blessings on the rain. It was not now a humdrum case where good tracking only was required. To clear up the case successfully demanded inductive reasoning of a high order, and this mental activity was infinitely preferable to the physical labour of moving about. Moreover, it was beautifully restful to sit there in the sun and merely think. One need not even think if one did not wish. There was tomorrow, and there were the days following tomorrow when one could think. Yes, to the devil with thinking! So Bony slept.

How long he did sleep he never would say, although he knew precisely by the position of the sun when he fell asleep and its position when he awoke. He was awakened by a masculine cough, but the process of his awakening was confined to the quiet opening of his eyes. Before him, sitting on an oil-drum, was the smiling Ralph Thornton.

“Had a good nap?” he asked.

“I was thinking out a problem,” Bony lied. “It has ever been my misfortune that I cannot sleep in daylight.”

Ralph laughed at the glibly-spoken double falsehood.

“Is your name Napoleon Bonaparte?” was his second question.

“Those were my baptismal names. But”-solemnly-“I call myself Bony.”

“Well, Bony, are you acquainted with a lady named Martha?”

“I have that pleasure.”

“Then it will interest you to know that Martha is looking for you with a waddy in her hand,” said the grinning youth. “She says you stole her No. 9’s.”

“The human mind is always liable to delusions,” Bony murmured. And then, seeing Ralph look curiously at his clue, he added blandly: “That piece of clay contains my problem.”

“Ah! And the problem is-”

“The problem is a difficult one, because it requires imagination to study it and to find a solution,” explained the half-caste, picking up the slab of clay and holding it carelessly, knowing theunlikeliness of the young man’s observing thebootprint. “In this lump of matter,” he went on, “we hold a universe. Let us in imagination crush it to fragments and separate a fragment from the mass.

“Here we fall back on facts, for on examining our fragment we find that it is composed of atoms. Separating one of the atoms, we see before us a solar system-sun, moon and planets.

“Behold, then, established facts, reality, truth. Behold now Bony’s sublime imagination. The ordinary human mind is limited. It clings to facts, measurements, and scales. My mind rises above all three. At the bottom of the scale-the human scale made by the human mind-we have the atom, a miniature solar system, invariably in close proximity to countless other solar systems. At the top end of the scale we have our vast far-off solar system and our immeasurable universe. But perhaps you are not interested.”

“I am. Please go on.”

“Well, then, listen attentively,” commanded Bony, a reincarnation of Plato talking to his students. “You may deride imagination, but imagination rules the world, the universe. I have shown you the bottom and the top of our scale-our average human scale. I will now show you that Bony’s mind recognizes no scale, no limit. My imagination invents a super-super-microscope, and with super-instruments takes up one of the planets in the atom and sees a world composed of yet smaller atoms-atoms from a world within an atom which forms part of our world.

“My sublime imagination invents a telescope which ranges beyond and out of our universe, and I see that our solar systems are but neighbouring atoms, the whole comprising, let us say, a stick of wood on a greater world. I see, too, a man walking towards the inert stick of wood, and the time he takes to move each of his feet is a million of our years, our little whizzing years. The man lays down his swag. He is thirsty. He wishes to boil his billy. And, casting around for fuel, he picks up the stick of wood whereinis our world, our solar system, our universe, and with other sticks of wood starts a fire. Time to him is eternity to us; time to us is eternity to the atoms in this lump of clay. Half a million of our years expire whilst he draws a match across his match-box. The fire catches the wood, our universe; and soon we are gone, turned into floating gas.

“The Bible says: ‘In the beginning.’ We think it means the beginning of our world. Even Bony’s imagination cannot conceive the Beginning, or the End.”

The lad was gazing at the half-caste with rapt interest. Bony noted his intelligent face, and smiled; and when Bony smiled one lost sight of his colour and saw only a calm, dignified countenance lighted by dark-blue eyes, whose far-seeking gaze bespoke, at times, the visionary. The man’s egotism was simple, almost unconscious. His mind was high above the average human standard, and he was honest enough to take pride in the fact.

“Where did you learn all this?” Ralph asked.

“In books, in men, and animals, in sticks of wood and lumps of clay, in the sun, moon, and stars,” Bony told him. “My imagination, as I have said, is without limit; but there are very severe limits to my knowledge. Still, should I live another thirtyyears, those limits may be widened a little.”

“My mother tells me you are keen on Napoleon,” Ralph said.

“Your mother, sir, is a good woman. She sees goodness where goodness is found. Naturally, she would find it in the Emperor. ‘Honour thy father that thy days may be long, but honour thy mother that thy soul may live for ever!’ I honour neither my father nor my mother.”

“And why not?”

“Because they did not honour me. My mother was black, my father white. They were below the animals. A fox does not mate with a dingo, or a cat with a rabbit. They disobeyed the law of the wild. In me, you see neither black nor white, you see a hybrid.”

“Oh, I think you are too hard on yourself,” Ralph objected.

“Not a bit,” Bony replied. “I am what I am. I am not ashamed of it, because it is not my fault. But I feel sometimes as if black and white are at war in me, and will never be reconciled.”

They looked at each other silently for a while. Then Ralph said, in his frank way:

“I think I can imagine your feelings, Bony. But, though you bear marks of your people’s guilt, they have at least bequeathed you a fine brain, and I think that a great brain is the greatest gift a man can have.”

Bony smiled once again. Then he said, in a lighter tone:

“Plenty of grey matter is an asset, isn’t it?”