Merino and Rose Marie

NO GANGS of yellow men carrying earth and rubble in baskets, no human chains of men and women, and even children, carrying stones in their lacerated arms, built these Walls of China. No Emperor Ch’in Shih Huang Ti directed over a million men to raise this extraordinary barrier lying athwart the bushlands in the south-west corner of the state of New South Wales. The colour of the country is reddish-brown, and upon this reddish-brown land the soft fingers of the wind built a wall of snow-white sand some twelve miles long, three-quarters of a mile wide, and several hundred feet high. No one knows when the wind laboured so mightily to build the barrier, and no one knows who named it the Walls of China.

On the morning of October twelfth, in an isolated hut lying within the sunrise shadow of the Walls of China, the body of a stockman named George Kendall was found in circumstances plainly indicating the act of homicide. Following the discovery, Detective Sergeant Redman arrived at Merino, a township three miles westward of the hut and the Walls of China. With him in the car were an official photographer and a fingerprint expert. They were driven to the police station in the view of the excited inhabitants, and in the course of the investigations questioned and cross-questioned all and sundry, took pictures of the scene of the crime, and reproduced fingerprints left on objects within the hut.

The arrival of Detective Inspector Bonaparte, alias Bony to his friends, was in marked contrast. His interest had been captured by the statements and documents compiled by Detective Sergeant Redman, and he drifted into Merino six weeks later in the guise of a stockman seeking a job. At the only hotel he drank a couple of deep-noserswith the licensee, then parked himself on the bench on the hotel veranda and proceeded to smoke his atrociously made cigarettes.