The afternoon was warm, and he had walked far this day, so he composed his body full length along the bench, his swag for a headrest, and fell asleep before deciding whether to make himself known to the senior police officer or to work incognito on what he was sure was going to be an interesting investigation.

He was awakened by a hard voice asking:

“What’s your name?”

Like that of his maternal progenitors, Bony’s mind became fully active the instant he awoke, but he opened only one eye to observe a uniformed policeman looking down at him with disapproval writ plainly on his large, weather-tinted face.

“Hey! You! What’s your name?”

“Robert Burns,” replied Bony languidly, before yawning. “Go away.”

The request to depart was less irritating than the yawn to the policeman, who ranked as sergeant. The irritation was excusable, because Sergeant Marshall had never become accustomed to being yawned at by stockmen who slept during daylight hours on benches outside licensed premises.

The front of Bony’s shirt was gathered into a huge fist and he was lifted bodily to his feet. The sergeant’s bulk dwarfed him.

With the upper part of his left arm held in a humanvise, Bony was urged across the street to the police station. In the office a mounted constable, minus his tunic, was pounding on a typewriter.

“Keep your eye on this bird of passage, Gleeson,” ordered the sergeant. The constable rose to stand beside the prisoner. His superior sat down at his own desk and wrote rapidly on an official form. Then he said:

“You are charged with (a) giving fictitious answers to lawful questions put to you by a police officer, (b) being insolent to a police officer in the execution of his duty, (c) having no visible means of support, and (d) loitering outside a licensed premises. Lock him up, Gleeson.”

“There is an (e) within brackets but I had better not mention it,” Bony could not resist pointing out, and then another humanvise became clamped about his upper arm and he was conducted to one of two whitewashed cells in a building at the rear of the station. The constable heard him laughing as he walked back to his typewriter.