“Where do you come from?” demanded the voice.
Bony glanced to his left. The voice could have proceeded from the stout woman standing inside a wicket-gate into a thick hedge of lambertiana. She was shapeless in a sun frock, and from her wide shoulders a large straw sun hat was suspended by the ribbon about her neck. Her face was large and round. Her eyes were small and brown. At the corners of her mouth was a humorous quirk.
“Was there something?” asked Bony, who was an admirer of a famous radio comedian.
“Yes. Where do you come from? You’re not a River Murray contact. An oddity, yet true. A rarity, and yet not so rare. I find you most interesting. Where do you come from?”
“Madam, your interest is reciprocated,” Bony said, bowing slightly. “How much money have you in the bank?”
“What? ... Er ... Oh! I didn’t intend to be rude. Good education, eh! Good job, by your clothes.”
“Your continued interest, Madam, is still reciprocated. What is all this about? Who are you? What are you? How are you?”
The round and weathered face expanded into a smile. The large brown hands expressively gripped the points of the pickets. From behind her in the secluded garden a man said:
“Come here, dear. I wish to show you the pictures of bottle-trees in the Kimberleys. The magazine is very good this month.”
“A moment, Henry. I am confronted by a remarkable specimen not possibly belonging to the Murray Valley tribes.” To Bony: “Who am I? I am Mrs Marlo-Jones, Dip. Ed. What am I? A damned nuisance. How am I? Delighted to meet you. Come in and meet Professor Marlo-Jones. Chair of Anthropology, you know. Ex, or now retired.”
The gate was swung wide in invitation. When the invitation was wordlessly declined, the gate was swung shut. Behind this somewhat original woman appeared a giant of a man, a decided personage. Possibly seventy, he stood and acted as a man of forty. The grey eyes were young and full of light. Above the high, tanned forehead the thick hair was more dark than grey.
“Great Scott!” he said, loudly. “Good heavens! Where did you get it?”
Genuine curiosity kept Bony standing before these unusual people. He was startled that they could see him, know him as the branch he was from the maternal vine whose roots are deeper far than the deepest artesian bore in Australia.
“Lizbeth, you have offended this man,” rumbled the aged youth.
“Hope not, Henry. I want to be friends with him.”
“Of course, Lizbeth.” To Bony: “Please tell us who you are.”
“I am Napoleon Bonaparte,” conceded Bony.
“To repeat one of the questions you put to me, Mr Bonaparte, what are you?” asked the woman less belligerently.
“I am a detective.”
“You had to be,” she agreed. “Tracking would come naturally, like breathing. And your third question, I ask you. How are you?”
“Somewhat doubtful,” admitted Bony. “Since a moment or two ago. Now, if you will pardon me, I will attend to my own business.”
“Oh, don’t go yet,” urged the woman. “We’re quite sane, really.”
“I have never doubted that,” was the gravely uttered falsehood.
“Then do come in for a few minutes. I’ll make you a billy of tea, and I have some real brownie.”
Bony heard the car slide to a stop at the moment when he was undecided whether to be amused or angry by these persons’ persistent attitude of superiority. He saw the man look beyond him and gaily wave a hand to whoever opened the car door. Then he heard Sergeant Yoti say:
“Thought you’d like the car, sir.”
Amusedly Bony witnessed dawning astonishment in the woman’s eyes. The man said loudly:
“Please present us, Sergeant.”
Yoti regarded Bony, caught his slight nod of assent.
“Professor Marlo-Jones and Mrs Jones. Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, of the Queensland Police.”
Bony bowed. The Marlo-Joneses automatically copied him. They said nothing, and when they regained balance Bony was smiling.
“Strange pair, Sergeant,” remarked Bony when the car was moving.
“Harmless enough,” replied Yoti. “They say he’s a clever old bird, she does a lot of good at one thing and another.”
“A real Prof.?”
“Too right! Retired, of course. Lives here to be near the aboriginal settlement up-river. Writing a book about them. She teaches botany.”
Softy Bony laughed.
“Thought I was a new flower, I believe. Wanted me to stay for a billy of tea and a slice of brownie ... her idea of a smoko tea suitable for a half-caste.” The laughter ran before bitterness. “Guess to what I owe my self-respect, and my rank.”
“Haven’t a clue,” declined the now cautious Yoti.
“The facility with which I thumb my nose at superior people. Stop at the Post Office, please. I wish to telegraph a request to Superintendent Bolt, down in Melbourne.”
Chapter Four
Alice McGorr
Superintendent Bolt, Chief of the Criminal Investigation Branch of the Victoria Police, was verging on sixty and hated the thought of compulsory retirement. He had many friends and admirers in the Department, and one of them was First Constable Alice McGorr.
Bony had never met Alice McGorr, and he had not heard her story from Superintendent Bolt, although aware of Bolt’s warm regard for her.
It appeared that old man McGorr was the finest ‘can opener’ of his generation, having served an apprenticeship with an English firm of safe makers and kept his knowledge up-to-date. Bolt was a sergeant when he came in contact with McGorr, who at the time was on vacation from gaol, and was chiefly instrumental in terminating the ‘can opener’s’ holiday.
McGorr died in durance vile, and it happened that Mrs Bolt heard through her church association that Mrs McGorr and the children were facing the rocks. She visited the house owned by the widow to see what was what, and arrived an hour after Mrs McGorr had been taken to hospital with a fatal complaint.
Mrs Bolt was invited into the front room by Alice, a thin slab of a girl of fifteen who explained that her mother had been desperately ill for a long time. There was no animosity towards the visitor and Mrs Bolt learned that the eldest son was nineteen and in steady work, the eldest girl was eighteen and still in her first job as a stenographer. Next to this girl came Alice, who was followed by a girl of six and finally twin boys aged two and a fraction. She learned as well, from other sources, that Alice McGorr had been running the home for eighteen months, nursing the mother, caring for the small sister and the twin baby brothers.
The Bolts, having no family, became the parents of that one, when the mother died soon after entering hospital, and not one member of the family took the slightest interest in safes and the problem of opening them without keys.
Alice McGorr went to night school, and when Alice looked at Superintendent Bolt she was beautiful to see. She studied between making beds, sweeping rooms, even as she cooked, and Alice passed the Intermediate. They lived in an inner industrial suburb, and Alice took a keen interest in the people of the district, becoming the social worker of the church ... and something more. She had the knack of spinning threads of information into patterns, and the bread Bolt launched upon the water was returned to him by the baker’s batch.
When the twins left school and went to work, and the eldest son’s wife took over the home, Alice joined the Force. She had all the gifts the job