Arthur Upfield - The Devil_s Steps

He found that his window had been lowered to three inches and that the blinds were drawn. From his trunk he procured a small-calibre pistol and rapidly checked its loading. He carried the weapon in the right-hand side pocket of his lounge coat. From the bed he took three blankets and rolled them into a bundle he tied with the cord taken from his dressing gown. He occupied himself for three minutes with the pens, then he snapped off the light, and slowly and quietly raised the window. He left the building by that way.

He had to skirt the wood-stack to avoid the pool of light shed by a bulb outside the scullery door, and from the wood-stack he passed to the back of the line of garages and so came to the narrow path leading to Bisker’s hut. Like a shadow he “drifted” along the path. The hut came to him out of the void, and he stopped when he noted that the chink of light under the door he had seen when he glanced back on leaving it now was not to be seen.

He stepped off the path and slowly felt with his feet over a vegetable patch to the wall of shrubs beyond the hut. In this way he reached the wall of the hut containing the window. He stood there for a full minute, his ear pressed against the glass. Not the slightest sound came to him from within the hut.

He passed silently round the first corner, waited there for a minute, then passed round the second corner and pressed himself against the wall beside the closed door. Still he heard no sound from within. Slowly, he moved to a position on one side of the door handle, then, with a quick movement, he turned it and flung the door inward. It crashed back against the wall.

“Bisker!” he called.

Bisker did not answer, and again Bony called his name.

The silence within the hut continued. Bony waited for a full minute before he proceeded to edge his face round the door-post. First he could just make out the bed, and presently the red embers of the fire on the open hearth. On the far side, in front of the window, stood the table, the side of which nearest the fire was faintly illumined by the dull red glow. The automatic now held to his front, Bony slid farther still round the door-post until he was able to see the inside of the wall. There was no one there, and he was sure no one could stand behind the door which he had crashed back against the wall.

Nothing moved in the gloom of the interior, and having delayed action for another two minutes, he thrust the blanket roll before him like a shield, and stepped inside. Still nothing moved, but there remained the possibility that someone was under the bed or under the table.

The glow of the fire embers was reflected in the lamp-glass and the bottle of whisky.

“You about, Bisker!” he called again, but softly.

No reply reached him. He put his blanket shield down upon the table and crossed to the door, which he closed. Then he passed back again to the table and lit the lamp. On the floor beside the bed lay Bisker. He was on his back, one arm lying parallel with his head, as though the hand was trying to reach the short-hafted axe.

An Insecure Hold

TWENTY MINUTES! He had not been absent from the hut longer than twenty minutes, and in that short period something had happened to Bisker which looked remarkably like violence. Setting the lamp on the floor, Bony fell to his knees and looked the more closely at Bisker’s face. His mouth was slightly open and he was breathing quietly. His coat was unbuttoned and beside himwas a corkscrew and a savings-bank deposit book. The pockets of his trousers were inside out, and the evidence appeared clear that all the pockets of his clothes had been rifled. When Bony gripped a shoulder with his hand and gently shook him, Bisker made no response.

It was then that Bony saw the blood at the back of his head, a patch as large as a five-shilling piece. It was a wound which could not possibly have resulted from accident.

The rifled pockets indicated that the person who had inflicted the wound had searched for the pens. Beyond Bisker, the blankets of his bed had been pulled away and lay in a heap on the floor. The mattress was turned and tossed as though the searcher had looked under it. Crouched there on the floor, Bony gazed about the hut. On the table stood the bottle with about the same amount of whisky in it that there had been when he left to fetch his blankets. On the shelf above the fireplace an alarm clock stood edgewise to front. Bony remembered that he himself had put the clock there when he brought the box to sit on at the table, but he had not placed it like that. There had been several cheap books at one end of the shelf, and now these lay on the cement slab in front of the hearth. The place had been ransacked. Even the contents of an old and battered suitcase lay strewn on the floor.

One unfamiliar with Bony’s facial reaction to taut nerves might have thought he was smiling. The mouth was wide and the lips parted so that his white teeth were distinctly revealed. There was, however, no smile in the eyes, which now and then glistened when the lamp-light met them at a certain angle. Absent now were the deliberate movements of hands and feet. The nostrils were faintly moving like those of a fox scenting.

Bony reached across the unconscious Bisker and drew the blankets under the man’s head and shoulders and about his feet and legs. Bisker had not put on his boots, which were under the table. And then seated on the floor beside Bisker, Bony produced tobacco and papers and proceeded to roll a cigarette.

He was aware that the walls of the hut were light-proof, and that the blind was much larger than the window and completely masked it. The only possible vent through which a person on the outside could see would be through the door key-hole. The thin slit between the bottom of the door and the bed-log was too low for a man to get his eyes to its level.

Bony felt he had two responsibilities. One of them was Bisker, and the other was the contents of the twin fountain pens in the leather holder now pinned into a waistcoat pocket. The sooner that material was in Colonel Blythe’s hands, the better.

Picking up Bisker’s old felt hat, Bony rose to his feet and, silently crossing to the door, hung the hat over the handle and thus blocked the key-hole. As there was little reason why they should freeze, he then went over to the fireplace beside which was a stack of foot-length logs, and there, still facing the door, he bent down and picked up several logs which he threw blindly onto the red embers.

Continuing to watch the door, Bony left the fireplace for the table, from which he took the whisky bottle and the cup. Then he stepped over Bisker’s body, crouching on its far side to enable him to face the closed door whilst he attempted to revive the man. He got Bisker to swallow a little of the liquor but it had no effect upon him, excepting to cause him to breathe a little stertorously. That encouraged Bony to think that Bisker would shortly recover consciousness and be able to relate what had happened during those twenty minutes he had been absent.

By Bony’s wrist watch the time was five minutes after nine o’clock.

At ten o’clock, Bisker was still unconscious, and his condition was worrying Bony, who was beginning to think of going to the house to telephone the doctor. He had not done so before, hoping that Bisker’s head injury would produce unconsciousness merely for a short time, and thusprevent additional complications to a case already well provided with them. Then again, he felt that if Bisker had regained consciousness to relate what had happened, he could have planned ahead. Now, to call the local doctor would also mean reporting to the police, and although he himself would say nothing to them about the fountain pens, they might well learn of them from Bisker when he recovered. There were such matters as State rights and Departmental regulations under which Superintendent Bolt would claim those fountain pens and their contents.