Arthur Upfield - The Devil_s Steps

The light suspended from the roof of the entrance 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! Goodevenin ’, 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Again Bisker’s hand was withdrawn with the previous swiftness.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-lemmesee, 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 toMelbun ona ’oliday, and I went broke. I ’aven’tbeenanythink 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 ’undredsof miles offarmin ’ 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 ofbushmen 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.