Arthur Upfield - The New Shoe

They were now at the summit of the main stone and cement structure upon which rested the cupola housing the Light. To reach the Light was a further flight of fifteen-odd steps, and a steel gangway circled the Light similar to that from which a ship’s engine is served. The engineer went up, and Bony followed.

The daylight entering through the outside plain glass “face” of the Lighthouse illumined the shell of prisms making of them a jewel deserving the softest plush for background. The beauty entranced Bony, so entirely unexpected was it.

In the centre of the prisms and almost at their base nestled a cluster of ordinary acetylene gas jets, and in the heart of the cluster lay another burning a tiny light. The engineer turned a small cock outside the prisms, and the cluster of jets flamed, magnifying the light to ten thousand candle power. The light went out, then flamed again. There was an eclipse, and this was followed by four flashes covering a period of twelve seconds prior to the next eclipse.

Bony found the engineer watching him, and he nodded, whereupon Fisher turned the cock and the flashing lights ended.

“Having tested the Light,” he said. “I went outside to take a look at the sun-valve, not that there could be anything wrong with it because the jets were operating.”

Bony followed him down to the main floor, and Fisher opened a door in the circling iron wall and passed outside. Bony followed, finding himself on the narrow steel balcony, and at once thought of how much the policeman suffers to maintain law and order.

He closed his eyes and held tightly to the railing of the spidery balcony. The narrow overhang of ledge beneath prevented anyone from looking directly down the white wall, and not for several moments did he ascertain that fact for himself. On opening his eyes, he gazed determinedly out over the Inlet to the mountains, and then at the highway and the bridge where the man Owen had waited for him.

He followed Fisher round the balcony, and there was nothing other than the blue and shadowed sea, until he ventured to look down and courageously gazed upon the paw and the wide talons of Split Point. The white-washed rocks and the sandy beach seemed not half a dozen feet below the edge of the headland.

“Long way down,” said the engineer, and Bony turned to look at him. The man’s eyes were dark and seemed full of meaning. The hands resting on the cobweb of balcony rail were like the hands of a giant. For them to pick up a man and toss him over would require no great effort. Bony decided he had never really adored heights.

They passed on round the balcony, and when Fisher again stopped, he reached up and touched a cylinder of glass about twelve inches long and metal-capped at both ends.

“This is the sun-valve,” he explained. “The mechanics are simple when you know. The interior is extremely sensitive to light, but the light must contain heat. Sunlight contains heat, moonlight doesn’t. When the sun rises, no matter what clouds there are, its light acts on the valve and the valve automatically turns off the supply of gas to the jets, and when the sun goes down, the gas is automatically turned on again. The pilot light in the middle of the jets is a permanent light, and the mechanism operating the jets to make them flash is another piece of mechanism.

“Now I came out here to take a look at the sun-valve, as usual, and I found the glass was cracked. Can’t make out what cracked it. Anyway, it was cracked, and I went inside for my bag of tools and took it off, intending to take it back to Melbourne, and knowing there was a spare valve down below.”

“All right. I’ll follow you,” Bony said, slightly impatient to get off that balcony.

He was glad to be inside again, and see Fisher close the iron door and bar it. Once he glanced upward at the jewel set in steel, and then proceeded to follow the engineer down the spiralling steps.

Just before they came to the lowest landing, Fisher stopped and switched on a flashlight, waiting for Bony to stand with him. He then opened a door in the wall to reveal a cavity approximately four feet thick and four by four feet high and wide.

“There used to be a window on the outside of this chamber,” he said. “Before the Light was automatic, the red danger lamp was installed here, and because nothing was done with the space after the lamp was removed, the foreman of a repair gang made the door to fit so that the place could be used as a locker for spare parts.

“The spare sun-valve was kept here. I opened the door, and even put my hand inside for the valve. Then I switched on the torch and saw it. Not the sun-valve. I thought it was a sort of octopus. My torch beam was aimed straight at the face, and the eyes were wide open and the mouth was sagging. I hadn’t sort of expected to see that.”

“Certainly unlikely,” Bony said, dryly. “It must have hit you hard.”

“It did so,” agreed Fisher. “How I went down to the bottom I don’t recollect. Could have been head first. I was down and out of this Lighthouse in two ticks, and even now I don’t like coming back to it, or stopping here by this locker.”

“Then let us go on down.”

It was dark when the engineer switched off his light.

“Thought we left the door open,” he said, turning on the torch. “Didn’t you?”

“We did,”assented Bony. “Actually, I left it open before sitting on the case and making a cigarette. Wind must have blown it shut.”

“Not likely. Too heavy.”

The door hinges were certainly too resistant for the slight wind to move the heavy door. The dog waited in the yard, and he was panting. Bony saw that the yard gate was shut as he had left it, and saw, too, that between the entrance to the Lighthouse and the yard gate there was a third set of footprints made by a man’s shoes. Watched curiously by Fisher, he sauntered to the gate without letting the engineer know he was gazing at those prints, which here and there overlay their own. He opened the gate and looked out, saw no one and closed it again.

Whilst they had been up to the Light, someone had come in and gone from the yard. The person had been wearing a man’s boots that were either a small seven or a large six, and the peculiar item in the story told by the footprints was that the maker of them had come and gone on tiptoe. Peculiar because the ground was soft and even a horse could have walked about the yard without anyone inside the Lighthouse hearing it.

Not in the Summary

AS MRS WASHFOLD had warned, the climb to the Light had not been without cost to his legs. Complaining muscles had some influence on his decision to give up tracking the person in small shoes or boots who, on emerging from the fence gate, had walked away across the tough headland grass. He would remember those tracks and recognize them again did he see them a year hence.

Part-way down the headland to the Inlet was a seat, and here Bony rolled a cigarette, and gently pushed Stug from sitting on his foot to scratch for fleas. The old dog took the hint, and lay down to rest his muzzle on his paws and watch him in canine infatuation.

“Strange goings on, Stug, I must say,” Bony commented. “Friend of yours, without doubt, a friend who walks about on tiptoe when doing so is entirely unnecessary, a friend who stands firm on the ground just outside the Lighthouse door. Slightly pigeon-toed, that friend of yours. Could be a jockey, you know. Jockeys are small men, and all horsemen are slightly pigeon-toed. Well, well. We’ll pick him up some time.”

The hump of the headland partially protected man and dog from the south wind, cold and tangy. The sun was low above distant mountains back of Lorne, and Bony decided that the slight elevation above the Inlet was preferable to that balcony where Fisher was now cleaning windows.