“Those two he swears by, are they away with him now?”

“No. One is having a spell up the creek and the other is that fellow we found smoking himself with petrol.”

Sawtell decided that never previously had he seen a cigarette rolled so badly. The middle was oversize and the ends were pointed like pencil tips. The black hair, the dark complexion and the sharp features of the cigarette-murderer seated easily in the swivel chair comprised the pieces of a picture puzzle always presented to strangers, and the sergeant was yet to watch the pieces fall into position to portray this unusual product of two distinctly opposite races. Certainly unconscious of inferiority to anyone, Sawtell was now conscious of the power behind the broad forehead and the blue eyes again directed to him.

“Until men grow wings they must walk on their two feet,” Bony said, and lit the alleged cigarette. “I see a problem I’ve often come across… the gulf existent between the mind of the white man and the mind of the Australian black man. As the mind of the Occidental differs widely from that of the Oriental, so differs as widely the minds of the Australian black tracker and the Australian white policeman. My birth and training fashion me into a bridge spanning the gulf between them. Your murderer left his tracks without doubt.”

“Then why…” began Walters.

“Your trackers did not understand exactly what they had to look for. You did not tell them what kind of man committed the murders?”

“Of course not. We don’t know what kind of man he is.”

“Well, then, you couldn’t expect your trackers to find his tracks. Had they been sufficiently instructed they might have seen tracks about the scene of the second murder which they remembered having seen about the scene of the first, but, even had you done that, the trackers would have had to be abnormallyintelligent. ” Bony waved the remainder of his cigarette in a short arc.