The Lake Frome Monster. Arthur W. Upfield
and went north along “his” fence. Bony took rake and pitchfork, passed through the gateway, and worked for several hours raking leaves and twigs and hoeing buckbush out from the Fence for four feet up and over three of the monstrous sandhills. Returning to camp an hour before sundown, he hobbled and freed his camels to feed. He then started a cooking fire and later baked damper in the camp oven and boiled salted beef for the morrow.
It was the end of a perfect day. The flies were not troublesome, the air retained just a hint of freshness, and the stillness was broken only by the bell suspended from Rosie’s neck. Bony felt that if such a day was multiplied indefinitely, if a man had and did live rightly, he would begin to age only when a century old. But a man seldom lives rightly, and such a day is usually over at midnight he reflected sadly.
However, the next day was just as perfect, and Bony worked on his sandhills. The following day he took the camels to the lake for a drink, because, as Nugget had explained to him, after the fourth day without water Rosie would become cantankerous, and Old George would determinedly hobble away towards the nearest bore.
He had decided that he would circle the entire lake that day and on coming to the bore head he rounded it and proceeded to follow the eastern shore. Carrying a stick, his rifle slung from a shoulder, his eyes continuously searching, he covered half a mile. Now and then he prodded wedges of dead algae which here and there were as much as several yards from the water’s edge. Thus the wind’s power over this shallow sheet was proven.
Newton had referred to his diary relative to the weather on and after June Ninth. He had mentioned that wind was the great enemy of the SA Border Fence. Wind concerned him most, and wind was the burden Nature laid upon all his men. Wind and rain were ever Bony’s concern when beginning an investigation, for on these climatic elements rested small but vital points in the search for clues in a land and under conditions where fingerprints are practically non-existent.
It was the information on wind contained within Newton’s diary which made Bony decide to circle the artificial lake. From the diary the following story of the wind emerged:
June 9. Fitful breeze from the south.
June 10. Breeze from the north-east.
June 11. Entirely calm day.
June 12. Strong west wind rose late.
June 13. West wind.
June 14. Calm day.
Bony referred to his notes after he had watered the camels and filled the two five-gallon water-drums carried by Old George. During the period there had been only one day of strong wind and this blew from the west and was of sufficient strength to raise the water level of the lake along the eastern side of the lake by several inches. The position of the saline suds and the dead algae proved that the eastern drift had extended in places for two yards, and again when walking along the eastern verge, Bony turned over the wedges of algae. However, he found nothing, not even water-bugs, not even the pupae of the blowfly.
Cattle tracks there were a-plenty. There were horse tracks. The tracks had been imprinted but recently, certainly after the last strong wind. He found not one item indicative of human presence in the vicinity of the lake. Not a bottle, a cork, a cigarette packet or anything to show that human life had visited it, until he reached the far western extremity of the lake, where he found two photographer’s flash bulbs. Bony examined them closely, found they had been used, and wrapped them carefully in a handkerchief.
The bulbs gave the foundation of a story.
According to the aborigine trackers with the Quinambie overseer, Maidstone had made camp the day he left Quinambie, and the next morning had tramped to the lake to fill his billy with water. Why go with a small billy for water? One of the canvas bags attached to the bike was full, the other empty, and it would have been the empty bag he would have taken, not the billy-can, save as a means by which to fill the bag.
The man’s camera in its leather case and suspended from a tree branch at the camp was later found by the police to contain no film. Among his equipment were two exposed films. Maidstone had taken, among others, pictures of Quinambie homestead and one of the bore head of Number Nine.
That he had gone to the Number Ten Bore lake and there had taken two night pictures was proved by the flash bulbs; but the aborigines who tracked him said nothing of this night work. They must have seen where he sat and waited for animal visitors to the lake to come within flashbulb range of his camera. Had he returned to camp with the camera, either there would have been an entire film exposed and put away with the others, or the camera must have contained film.
Who had extracted the partially-exposed film? What had been the subjects of the pictures taken that night? The empty billy-can! What was he doing with it when shot?
The possible answers to these questions raised others even more difficult.
Bony completed the encirclement of the lake without discovering further flash bulbs, but in his mind was the picture of a man who had come to the north side carrying a camera and a billy-can filled with tea or coffee to sustain him during the night. He hoped by remaining quiet to take a picture of a dingo drinking, or a fox, possibly of cattle. He had taken two pictures, had left the lake with the camera and empty billy and had been shot when walking back to his camp. The killer had emptied the camera of film, and hung the camera from the tree branch, and the aborigines had not reported the presence of this second man whose movements must have been recorded on the sandy ground.
Maidstone had probably taken this man’s picture, and it was so important to the man to destroy pictorial proof of his presence at the lake that he murdered to effect it. Why? It was a free country. There was no question of trespass on private land. Maidstone had a legitimate reason for his visit to the lake at night. What purpose could the second man have had to feel so guilty as to commit murder?
Bony visited the camp site where Maidstone last stayed, and, without expectancy, thoroughly examined every square foot of the locality. Back at his own camp, he loaded the camels and moved off over the chain of sandhills on the southward strip of his section. There were several odd jobs to do, and it was four o’clock when he reached the place where he and Newton had boiled the billy a short distance from Nugget’s camp site. It was six miles to the gate where he and the overseer had parted company, and it would be the same distance to Bore Ten.
Having hobbled the camels, he made a fire for tea and sat on the tucker box whilst sipping the tea and smoking a cigarette. The sun at late afternoon had warmth in it, but the night would be cold and clear.
The results of his visit to the bore lake were two: the one, the finding of the flash bulbs; the other the strong suspicion that the native trackers had from the start “gone dumb”. If this suspicion were correct, then one of their tribe was concerned with the crime, and of their race was the three-quarter caste, Nugget.
It would be nothing to a man like Nugget to tramp six miles after dark to that lake, stay there for several hours and be back at his camp by daybreak. The overseer, Newton, at the time was many miles down to the south, and in any case if he did not show up at Nugget’s camp by sundown it could be taken for granted that he would not show up that day. Bony rose and walked to the vacated camp.
Beside the frame of poles to erect the tent when it rained, Nugget’s family had built a rough lean-to wind-break broadside to the fireplace. There was litter of all kinds: paper, tins, broken toys, kangaroo-meat bones, and it was certainly not a camp site any white man would care to occupy. He found also a broken box camera having a length of film trailing from it. The marks of dog teeth seemed to say that the camera had been carelessly left unguarded and one of Nugget’s dogs had chewed it in play.
The film would not have fitted Maidstone’s camera.
Chapter Four
Needle Kent
On that southward trip, Bony examined all Nugget’s camping places, but found nothing of interest save a rag doll and several cartridge cases. In common with most aborigines, Nugget and his family had displayed little interest in keeping their camp sites tidy.
Bony