Arthur Upfield - The Devil_s Steps

Colonel Blythe audibly sighed.

“Heck of a mix-up. What do you intend to do now?” he asked.

“Find out who killed Grumman. Find out who robbed me of those pens I wanted for keepsakes. Find outwho the man is who wears a twelve size in shoes, and one or two other things which have come to interest me.”

The Colonel began to pace on the sound-defying carpet. Bony poured himself his third cup of coffee and lit his third cigarette. Neither spoke for five minutes, when Blythe halted before the seated Bony.

“We’ve got to get those pens,” he said. “The blasted Peace Conference may fail to keep Germany in subjection as long as she ought to be, and the German General Staff might well get into the saddle again within a year or two.”

Bony, looking upward, noted the anxiety in the other man’s face. Blythe went on:

“Hang it, Bony. It’s not like you. I don’t understand you. You had those pens and then you- Oh, damn!”

“I’m going to get those pens, never fear,” Bony boasted. “I have never failed yet in finalising a case assigned to me. Those pens are going to be mine. They are lovely pens, gold-mounted. I want one to give to my eldest son Charles who has just gained his Medical Degree and the other I want to give to my wife.”

“You can have the pens-if ever you get them,” Blythe promised. “You must get them. Why, thecontents of those pens is without price. I want the contents. And I want the contents right now.”

“Oh!” Bony’s eyes gleamed. “If it’s the contents you are so greedy for, that will be easy.”

Colonel Blythe again audibly sighed with impatience. He began again to pace to and fro over the thick carpet. He had been first amazed on seeing General Lode in Collins Street, then his hopes had been raised high when Colonel Spendor had sent Bony down to him, for the little detective’s war work for him had been remarkably successful. And then for Bony to have the pens in his possession only to lose them to a gunman!

What was that! Bony was saying:

“I want the pens, and you want the contents, Colonel. Well, I have still to get the pens. The contents you can have now.”

Colonel Blythe halted once again before the seated Bony. He stooped down to peer into Bony’s upturned hands. His own hands tore through his long and still-fair hair. As a man believing that what he sees is a vision, he took up from Bony’s hands two thin cylinders covered with a material like wax, and the covering of one had been slit with a knife and now was bound with a piece of twine. Without speaking, he took the cylinders to a desk and turned on a desk light. With a knife he cut the twine, and out burst the roll of what looked like film. He held it before the light. He looked at portions of it through a glass. He was there a full minute, watched by the smiling Bony. For the third time he went back to stand over the detective.

“You blooming swab, you!” he chortled.“You-you-you not-a-policeman’s-bootlace-you, according to old Pop. You tantalising, obstinate, undisciplined shadow of a policeman-again according to Pop Spendor. Oh, joy! Oh, heaven!”

“Better go quiet, or you’ll wake the wife,” urged Bony, smiling delightedly at the effect of his surprise. “Please remember that I seldom take unnecessary risks. I transferred the contents to another pocket immediately after I left Bisker to go to my room for blankets. I wasn’t sure of Bisker, for a start, but I believed him when he said he didn’t bury the pens. But-I could not take the risk of staying at the Chalet for the night in case that gunman found that the contents had been taken from the pens he had, and came back with reinforcements. I could not take the chance of ringing for a hire car, or even engaging the local hire-car man to bring me to the station. So I left as soon as I could, and I walked to the station, where I had to stay for five hours to catch a city-bound train. And then, having reached the city, I couldn’t take the chance of coming here direct-in case I had been picked up and was being followed.”

Colonel Blythe appeared as though he wanted to shake hands.

“Well, you’ve done a good job, my dear fellow,” he said. “Pop Spendor ought to be pleased at having you back with him so soon. All the better! He’ll not moan and wince so much the next time I ask him for you!”

“I shall, I think, not be returning immediately,” Bony countered.

“Oh! But you’ve done the job.”

“Your job, yes, but I haven’t finished my holiday,” objected Bony. “When I saw the Chalet on Mount Chalmers, I decided I’d stay for two weeks. When I had lived there twenty-four hours I made it a month. Why the food is super-excellent. The service is good. And I must get those pens.”

“But your work is accomplished,” persisted Blythe. “You can take a year’s holiday at Wideview Chalet as far as I’m concerned. I’m willing to bet that by the post this morning I’ll have an air-mailed letter fromPop demanding to know how long I intend keeping you.”

Bony rose from his chair.

“You have probably found Colonel Spendor little more difficult as a father-in-law than I have found him as a Chief Commissioner,” he said. “He can damn and blast as much as he feels like it. I am going back to Wideview Chalet to get those pens I have promised to my wife and my son Charles. The Victorian Police can go-get Marcus. The killer of Grumman is my meat. So, too, is the gunman who took those pens from me. Why, if I went back to Brisbane without nailing that gunman, I’d hear his laughter all the rest of my life. So you just tell Colonel Spendor that Bony’s still on the job for you. Or else…”

Colonel Blythe clenched his fists and grinned like a schoolboy.

“I’d like to have a bit of you,” he threatened. “I would, too, if I didn’t admire your guts. Now for a shower and a couple of hours’ sleep, eh? Then a late breakfast and a confab with Kirby about friend Marcus. You’d like to get ahead of the Melbourne lads, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, it would be a little comforting,” agreed Bony.

Calm at Wideview Chalet

AS USUAL, Bisker’s alarm clock rang at half-past five on the morning of September 2, and, as usual, a callused fist crashed down upon its “stop” button. It was absolutely dark inside the hut. Bisker groaned and got through the first sentence of his morning hate before he remembered the excitement of the previous day.

He lit the lamp, and drew to his mouth the early-morning pipe so carefully loaded with “dottles” and now drawing at this trebly poisonous concoction, he surveyed past events and recalled those last orders given him by Napoleon Bonaparte.

Like allbushmen, he had a profound contempt for the city gunman and thug who made himself temporarily superior to ordinary folk through the possession of firearms, and who exercised his trade by armed force instead of the brain that is necessary in the robbing of a bank. Therefore, it was natural for Bisker, at this early-morning hour, to muse on the indignation he had taken to bed with him following his own ill-usage at the hands of such a man.

Dressing with his customary carelessness, and with his customary care filling his pockets with tobacco and spare pipe, clasp-knife and match tin and corkscrew, Bisker took up the lamp and stepped out into the cold, dank and uninviting morning.

On closing the door, he did not follow the path to the open space fronting the garages. Obeying instructions, he sidled along the wall of the hut to its corner and then proceeded direct to the top fence. This he followed past the rear of the garages to reach the scullery door of the Chalet, and so did not obliterate possible tracks made by the gunman, tracks which would be of undoubted interest to Bony when he returned from the city. He had made the morning tea for himself and the cook when Mrs. Parkes arrived in the kitchen.