“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 thehalf-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 himau 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 tome.-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.”