The Devil's Steps

by Arthur W. Upfield

  He wondered what Colonel Blythe’s reactions would be when he heard that Grumman was dead and his luggage removed. At least, the theft suggested that there were others besides Colonel Blythe who suspected the distinguished member of the OKW had brought priceless documents with him from Germany.

  He wondered, too, just how Grumman had met his end. Bony himself was to a degree associated with the dead man during the last evening of his life. At half-past six, he had been seated with Grumman at dinner, at the same table with four other guests, two men and their wives. It was a circular table, and Grumman occupied the chair opposite the detective.

  The German was raw-boned and lean. He had light blue eyes and a rat-trap of a mouth. His grizzled hair was worn fairly long, obviously, to Bony, as a partial disguise. With his hair cropped close, and with a monocle in his eye, he would have looked just what he was—a Prussian. He spoke like a German who had lived in the U.S.A. for many years, and to Bony’s ears the North American accent was emphatic, so much so that had he not been aware of Grumman’s origin, he would not have detected the slightest faults due to the acquirement of English as spoken by educated Americans.

  Grumman had appeared to be quite free in the company at that table. He talked interestedly of America and of cities in South America. There was no marked reserve in his demeanour; in fact, he was just one of the well-educated, travelled East-coast Americans who call in at Australia on a round-the-world rest-cruise.

  After dinner, the five people who had dined with Bony drifted to the lounge where coffee was served and where smoking was permitted by Miss Jade. When Bony left the lounge at half-past seven to take a stroll, Grumman was talking with two male guests. When he again entered the lounge at about a quarter past eight, the two male guests and Grumman were still occupying the same chairs.

  Grumman remained with those two guests until five minutes after ten when he arose, saying in Bony’s hearing that he would take a sharp walk before going to bed. He left the lounge by the door opening into the short passage leading to the reception hall and the main entrance. He left without hat or coat for, to have obtained them from his room, he would have left the lounge by another door.

  A little before a quarter to eleven, Grumman came back through the same door by which he had left, and the flush on his face indicated a sharp walk in the keen air. An elderly man who had been reading a novel invited him to take a drink, and Grumman ordered whisky. After returning the hospitality, he went off to his room, the time then being a few minutes to eleven.

  Grumman’s room was the best at Wideview Chalet. It was lighted by a pair of french windows opening on to the front veranda. Bony’s room was less expensive, having only an ordinary window facing the top side of the house and the road down which Constable Rice had driven his car.

  The door locks were the same, and the key to Bony’s door fitted the lock on Grumman’s door. He had established that fact just before leaving for his walk the evening before. He was also able to establish at the same time the fact that Grumman did not lock his room when he left it during the day or evening.

  Those who had killed him were certainly ruthless. How had they achieved their purpose in poisoning the man? The poison had most certainly not been in the drinks served by George in the lounge. He must have received it in his room, after he had undressed and slipped on a dressing gown over his pyjamas. He had taken two whiskies in the lounge, the first at the other guest’s expense, the second at his own. The other guest had suggested a third drink, but Grumman had declined, and therefore, it would be improbable that Grumman would take another drink from a private store after undressing. Had he, before getting into bed, drunk water from the carafe, water containing cyanide? Hardly! For one thing he would not be thirsty, and for another, a whisky drinker would not take water—unless it was to swallow a medicinal tablet.

  He wondered whether that “idea” had occurred to Snook or Mason, and whether the contents, if any, of the carafe had been taken for analysis.

  He wondered, too, where the man Marcus came into the picture. A dope peddler, even in the international trading scale, would have no business or social connection with such a man as Grumman. He might have discovered Grumman’s identity and intended to practise a little blackmail. One thing, however, was certain. Marcus was not responsible for Grumman’s death and the theft of Grumman’s effects.

  He paused in his stroll to look down upon Wideview Chalet lying two hundred feet below the narrow lane he was following. Two hatless men and a woman wearing a scarlet kerchief over her hair were coming leisurely up the path from the wicket gate. There were two cars parked on the open space before the main entrance to the house, and even as Bony watched several men came out to the cars. Another came with Bisker from the direction of Bisker’s hut.

  All except the handy-man got into the cars which were then driven down the drive to the highway, and Bony smiled a little tight-lipped smile, for they were newspaper men. Had they seen him it was probable that one at least would have known his profession and blazoned it to the world.

  He was about to continue down the lane which would take him to the upper road and the Chalet, when he observed Bisker turn from watching the departing cars and cross to one of the ornamental shrubs growing on either side of the front doorway. There he paused, looking first through the open door into the reception hall and then towards the garages. With a swift movement, he thrust forward his right hand, apparently to press down the earth in the tub, and with movement equally quick, he drew back that hand, again gazed furtively all round, and abruptly walked round the corner of the building to enter a rear door opposite the wood-stack.

  “Yet another little mystery,” murmured Bony, delightedly. “Now what, about that tub, interests Bisker? Either he picked up something on the surface of the earth in the tub, a something I could not see, or he wanted to take something and became too frightened that someone in the reception hall or about the garages might observe him. I must get to know Bisker a little more intimately. Well, here’s me for a wash and dinner. I’m hungry. Must be the air.”

  No one but Bisker knew how dry was Bisker. He dared not “put it on” Miss Jade for a snifter. He dared not ask George to get him a drink for which he would have to pay, in case either George or Miss Jade might recall the full bottle of whisky taken to the office with the alleged purpose of reviving Miss Jade. And it was still too early to “sneak” off to the hotel a mile down the road, for dinner had not started and he had dishes to wash. Anyway, why walk a full mile down to the hotel when there was a bottle three parts filled with whisky right there under his hands? He had been a fool to have attempted to retrieve it in daylight. Someone might have seen him.

  Reluctantly, Bisker dragged himself away from the tub and ambled in his distinctive gait round to the scullery door. Deciding he would have to wait until he had “cleaned up” after dinner, he planned how he might reduce the after-dinner chores by doing as much before dinner as was possible. In the scullery he found the beginning of the evening’s labours awaiting him, and filling a trough with hot water, he fell to reducing the stack of baking trays and utensils used that late afternoon. When the house gong was struck he was that much forward.

  The evening was well advanced when again he left the house, and immediately he was assailed by the temptation to retrieve his bottle of whisky. This was a favourable opportunity. The guests would be going to the dining room, the secretary would be “titivating” herself in her room, and Miss Jade would be hovering about the servers and the kitchen.

  Despite the dusk, Bisker chipped at his tobacco plug and loaded his pipe, whilst his eyes searched the neighbourhood for possible enemies. Nothing stirred, not even a cat. He paused casually to strike a match and light his pipe. Still there was no sign of any living thing. Gradually, he worked his way round to the shrub tub, and with a nonchalance he did not feel, he seated himself on the edge of the tub, his body directly above the coveted bottle.

  The light suspended from the roof of the en
trance porch just failed to reach the tub, but in case someone should come out on the porch and see him, he slid farther round the shrub until it came between him and the door. Then, with his right hand, he began to grope round the shrub to that part of the tub which had become for him an irresistible magnet.

  The tips of his fingers had begun to burrow gently into the soft loam when a figure appeared at the corner of the house and slowly approached.

  Bisker withdrew his hand as quickly as though it had been bitten by a bull-ant. His body froze into immobility, but he had omitted to put out his pipe from which shreds of burning tobacco were still falling unheeded on his old working clothes.

  “Good evening, Bisker!” Bony cheerfully greeted him.

  “Ha! Good evenin’, Mr. Bonaparte.” Bisker’s voice betrayed his state of nerves. “Nice night!”

  “It certainly is. Has the dinner gong sounded?”

  “Five minutes back,” Bisker replied.

  “Then I must hurry in. Good night!”

  Bisker watched Bony enter the area of porch light and pass into the reception hall. He waited—a full minute. Now was the time. It was almost quite dark. A swift delving, a short rush to his hut and—

  Again Bisker’s hand was withdrawn with the previous swiftness. Bony re-appeared on the porch, and unhurriedly came outside to where Bisker sat on the shrub tub.

  “Sorry to disturb you,” Bony told him. “I seem to remember having seen you somewhere some time ago, and the thought has stuck in my mind. Are you a native of these parts?”

  “What, me!” Bisker exploded. “Me a native of this miserable, fog-cramped, frost-deadened country! Why, I come from west of Cobar where the people are civilized, what there is of ’em, and where there’s plenty of wood to keep a man warm. You’re a grazier, aren’t you, sir?”

  “Yes, Bisker. I am interested in Thunder Downs, in Western Queensland. You ever passed through Thunder Downs?”

  “That I have,” Bisker answered, now cheerful and memory mastering the desire to get at his bottle. “I’ve come through Thunder Downs with cattle—lemme see, yes, back in ’thirty-seven that was.”

  “Then what are you doing down here?” Bony asked him, and knew the answer before Bisker spoke it. Bisker didn’t hesitate.

  “I come down to Melbun on a ’oliday, and I went broke. I ’aven’t been anythink else than broke ever since. The booze ‘as got me properly.”

  “Like to go back to the bush, Bisker? Back where it’s a real man’s life, away back where there isn’t any booze for a man excepting perhaps once a year down in Cobar or Broken Hill?”

  There was the silence of hesitation. Then Bisker said:

  “I can’t save enough money to get back to a railway terminus. And I once tramped back through ’undreds of miles of farmin’ country and won’t do that never no more.” Bisker grasped at a straw: “I suppose you wouldn’t take me back with you when you went, would you, Mr. Bonaparte?”

  “I might,” Bony conceded. “I’ll think it over.”

  “Thank you,” Bisker said, earnestly. “You see, once I got away from the drink for two or three months, I’d be all right again.”

  “Of course you would. I’ll see what can be done about it, Bisker. Now I must go in to dinner. When do you get yours?”

  Bisker slid off the tub and said that he would have to go in for his dinner at once, and thus Bony was satisfied that, whatever it was that interested Bisker in the shrub, it would have now to wait until later.

  “Where you been?” demanded Mrs. Parkes of Bisker when he entered the warm kitchen.

  “Workin’,” Bisker replied in such a tone that the cook stared. Bisker ambled across to the table where the staff ate. In his mind the prospects of returning to his beloved bush almost totally eclipsed the desire for whisky. He ate his dinner hardly aware of what he ate, for he was a member of a small army of bushmen who live hard, work hard, enjoy life to the full, until they smell whisky or hear a cork being drawn. Thereafter, nothing stops them from drawing their money and hurrying to the nearest township or wayside hotel. And like the male spider, they know clearly the danger of courting the siren.

  It was not until he was washing the heavy utensils used for preparing the dinner that his mind returned to the bottle buried in the tub, and when he came to the utensil he was looking for, the last, he whistled expectantly through his teeth.

  His work done for the day, he walked out without saying even a good night to the cook. He made his way across the open space in front of the garages and so to his hut, where he lighted his hurricane lamp and lit his own fire on the open hearth.

  That done, he left his hut and followed the path to the open space at the edge of which he paused to examine the night-shrouded scene. The house porch was aglow with its light. There were lights in rooms to the left. The roof of the big house supported the dark but star-studded sky. Bisker kicked off his boots which all day had remained unlaced.

  In his socks, he edged across the bitumened space before the garages. Nothing alive moved within his restricted vision, and he kept the shrub in its tub between himself and the porch. Without sound he reached the tub, and stood there like a darker shadow for a full minute. It was now...

  Bisker dug his hands into the soft loam, and his fingers came into contact with an object both round and smooth, and then a similar object adjacent to it. His fingers went a little more deeply into the loam, and he pulled up what felt like two fountain pens in a leather pocket case. This object he transferred quickly to a pocket, and frantically delved again—to find with an ecstasy of relief the top of the whisky bottle not three inches from the point where he had first touched what appeared to be twin fountain pens.

  He hugged the bottle to his chest with his left hand whilst the right smoothed down the earth. That occupied him five seconds, and then he moved silently away across the bitumened space, recovered his boots, and like a black wraith slipped along the narrow path to his hut. With a sigh of relief he closed the door, crossed to the table and there in the light of the lamp examined the bottle gleefully, like a miser counting his gold pieces.

  Bisker sat on a case at the table and up-ended the bottle between his lips and drank. The liquid fire coursed down his gullet, ran into and through all his veins and vanquished the depression which had settled on him like an enormous weight. He drank again, a little more slowly and a little less. Then he set down the bottle, loaded his pipe and smoked.

  Ha! Life was not so bad after all. That bottle was a win, all right and all. What a win over the old cat, and that blinking George who wouldn’t give a dying duck a bit of weed. Bisker’s hand brushed his left coat pocket, and touched the first object he had taken from the shrub tub.

  He had guessed rightly. In a black leather holder, to which two strong safety pins were attached, there were two large-sized fountain pens. Bisker looked at them. Then he drew an old newspaper towards him, unscrewed the top of one pen and began to write in a terrible scrawl. He tried the other pen with equal success. Both were good pens, gold-mounted. Now how did they work?

  Bisker examined them more closely. He raised the gold filler-bar, and then he depressed it. Nothing happened. Yet that was the way a similar pen in the possession of young Frank up at Marlee Cliffs had spurted ink. But what was the little screw at the end of each pen for? Bisker tried to loosen one with a thumbnail and failed. He inserted the point of his clasp-knife into the screw-head and after trouble at last moved it. When he took it out with forefinger and thumb he saw the screw was attached to a tiny cylinder less than one inch in length. The cylinder was covered with a glistening wax-like substance.

  “Now wot in ’ell’s inside that?” he demanded softly. “Well, we’ll cut ’er open and just see.”

  The end of the cutting edge of his clasp-knife was razor-sharp. With it, he began gently to cut longwise through the wax which was fairly hard. Quite suddenly the material inside the wax burst open, and Bisker sat looking down on a strip of white film less than half an inch in
width and about twelve inches in length. On the film was a series of black dots smaller than pin heads.

  Then Bisker’s blood froze. There was someone behind him. There had not been a sound, but he knew suddenly that someone stood behind him.

  “Where did you find those pens, Bisker?”

  The blood in Bisker’s veins began again to flow. The pens! Poof! He had feared that someone behind him was after the whisky in the bottle. The voice was that of Mr. Bonaparte.

  Chapter Six

  Bisker’s Visitors

  “DON’T MOVE your hand, Bisker. You might tear that most valuable film.”

  Into the range of Bisker’s eyes Bony slid a long-fingered brown hand which closed firmly on his wrist. Against his shoulder pressed the slim body of the guest who had promised to consider how he could be released from servitude to Miss Jade. The strength in the hand about his wrist astonished Bisker.

  Bony’s other hand then came into Bisker’s view, and the fingers began to disentangle the long strip of what appeared to be a species of celluloid on which the many dots showed clearly. It was not unlike a strip of cine-film.

  “I am going to release your wrist. Don’t move it until I say so,” Bony ordered, and Bisker stared with fascination as the two brown hands slowly and carefully disengaged the strip. He saw that the inner end was attached to an aluminium spindle. “Take this end. Gently now. Take it by the edge and don’t let go.”

  Bony now had the strip straightened between himself and Bisker, and with great care he began to rewind it on the spindle. Without speaking, Bisker watched the brown hands, and then glanced upwards at the brown face in which the blue eyes gleamed like gems, then down once more to the film being slowly re-wound. After what appeared to be a very long time for Bisker, who could observe the whisky bottle beyond Bony’s hands, the end he held was drawn against the roll, and now the roll was being pressed into the little waxlike case. Thereupon the cut selvedge’s were pressed together as the whole was inserted into the pen. Finally, the containing screw was replaced, and the pen slipped into the leather holder. Not until he saw the filled holder slipped into Bony’s inside coat pocket did Bisker speak.