Arthur Upfield - The Devil_s Steps

These shoes took him three times as long to clean as any previous pair. Having done them, he began to whistle, and continued whistling till he came to the last pair. These were a woman’s shoes, size six, collected from the bedroom door of Miss Eleanor Jade. Like the shoes from Number Five, they were also damp.

“Ha! Ha!”chortled Bisker.“The old bird! The old cat! The old-old-” Ceasing his chortling he began to brush the shoes collected from the bedroom door behind which slept Miss Eleanor Jade. “Now, lemme see. Number Five goes for a walk late last night. In he comes, has a drink or two-I must ask George about that-then toddles off to ’is room, takes off ’is shoes and plants ’emoutside his door for me to clean. Yes, that’s how it was. But that same argument can’t be applied to the old cat. She wouldn’t be outwalkin ’ late last night, and yet ’ershoes are wet same as Number Five’s. The old- Ah-yes, she could ’ave. A little bit of love, eh! Ho! Ho! Sherlock ’Olmesme!”

Having completed this task, Bisker placed the footwear on a large wooden tray and went back to the bedrooms. By the time he had replaced them where he had found them it was almost full daylight.

He left the house to return to his room, a hut built in a far corner of the spacious garden. On the way a magnificent panoramic view of valley and distant mountains was presented to his unappreciative eyes. From the wide, stone-balustradedveranda extending the full length of the house-front, a well-kept lawn tilted gently down to the distant wire fence bordering a main highway. The lawn, as well as the small shrubs in beds spaced upon it, was white with frost, a glittering white upon which lay the reflected light of the sun now rising above the far mountains, thirty-odd miles across the valley.

After shaving and washing in ice-cold water, Bisker returned to the kitchen where the aroma of cooking food and simmering coffee caused him to forget momentarily the agony of the first five minutes of his day following the ringing of the alarm clock. Outside, the air was milder. The bushman in Bisker was quick to note the remarkable rise in the temperature after the sun had risen.

A uniformed maid entered the kitchen with an empty tray on which she had taken early-morning tea to Miss Jade’s guests. George, the drinks steward and table waiter, was already at breakfast at a side table to which Bisker drifted. Another maid set down before him his breakfast of bacon and eggs, toast and coffee for Miss Jade fed her staff well.

“Mornin’, George!”

“Morning, Bisker,” replied George, a sleek man of about thirty, pale of face, dark of eyes and hair. “Nice day.”

“Yes. Gonna be a warm day after the frost. Wind’s gone round to the west. Thefrost’ll thaw off quick. Might get rain tonight. What time you get to bed?”

“About eleven,” replied George. “The men were tired and cleared off to bed early.”

“You tuck ’emall in nice and comfy?” Bisker enquired with his mouth full.

George smiled in his superior manner.

“All bar the bridegroom,” he admitted. “I left him to the bride.”

Bisker winked and leered. He glanced furtively over a shoulder observed that one of the maids and the cook were standing close, winked again at George and refrained from making an evil remark. The remark was never made, because George, having finished his breakfast, departed for the dining room.

Presently Bisker rose and shuffled out of the kitchen. He left the building by the scullery door and crossed the yard to the wood-stack where, sitting on a splitting-log in the warm sunshine, he fell to slicing chips from his tobacco plug. The slight problem of the wet shoes had vanished from his mind.

Having smoked for ten minutes, he put away his pipe and took up an axe with which he proceeded to split foot-length logs into billets for the cooking range. In addition to the kitchen and the boiler fires, there were the lounge and dining room fires to be fed, great blazing fires so much preferred to the cheerless gas and electric fires in the homes of the guests.

For half an hour, Bisker split wood and then took a broom and began the daily sweeping of the bitumened areas and the paths. And then, when he had worked round to the long front of the house, he heard Miss Jade’s voice.

“Bisker! Have you see Mr. Grumman this morning?”

Bisker turned and looked upward to see his employer standing at the veranda balustrade, her bejewelled hands sparkling in the golden sunlight.

“No, marm,” he replied.

He stood staring at “the old cat,” the wonder in his mind, as it was always when he looked at her, that anyone could be so fortunate. Under forty, Miss Jade’s hair was as black as night, her eyes were dark and big and even now as she faced the sun her make-up was perfect. Her voice had the faultlessness of tone and accent which must have been acquired only by long practise.

“Very well. Continue your work, Bisker,” she commanded.

Bisker obeyed, but his thoughts were not gentlemanly. He was sweeping the path running parallel with the house-front. It crossed midway the wider path leading from the veranda through the lawn to the wicket gate in the bottom fence above the road. He had almost reached the far end of the path when, to his astonishment, he observed a man in working clothes walking up from the wicket gate. Bisker looked involuntarily for Miss Jade, for no person other than a guest was permitted to enter the grounds of Wideview Chalet by that gate.

Miss Jade was no longer on the veranda. Bisker dropped his broom and ambled down the path to meet the social outcast. He knew him.

“Hey, Fred!” he called, when he was twenty feet away from the intruder. “Don’t you know that none of the slaves can use that there gate to come in?”

The intruder was tall, thin and bony. His blue eyes watered. The tip of his nose suspended a water drop. He said, with the unruffled calm of the man who will not be hurried:

“Come on down. I’ve got something to show you.”

He turned about and went on down to the gate. Bisker paused, glanced back to see if Miss Jade was watching them, and followed. When hard on Fred’s heels, he said, hopefully:

“Got a bottle?”

“Better still,” Fred answered without turning about.“Just a bit of a surprise for you. You and me aregonna be famous.”

“I don’twanna be famous,” asserted Bisker. “If you’ve brought me all the way down here not to crack a bottle, youain’tno friend of mine any more. A coldmornin ’ like this, too. And that old cat will bestarin ’ at me with ’erblack eyes an’ all and willbewantin ’ to know this and that and who the hell you are, and all the ruddy rest.”

On arriving at the wicket gate, it could be seen that a ramp had been cut in the red bank skirting the top side of the highway. Fred and Bisker passed through the gate, down the ramp and so to the macadamised road where they were out of sight of anyone standing on the veranda. Fred stopped, turned and pointed a finger accusingly at Bisker.

“Where were you last night?” he asked.

“In bed. Whered’you think I was?”

“Wherewas you before you went to bed?”

“Where- I was drinking whisky with you in me ’utas you well know,” indignantly replied Bisker.

“You’re lucky,” he was informed. “Youever seen a dead man?”

“ ’Undreds. Why?”

“I’ve found a dead ’un.”

“You have? Where?”

“You’re that close to ’imthat you’re all ’ot.”

“You don’t say.”

“I do say. Come on and I’ll show you.”

Fred led Bisker along the road bordering the storm-water gutter dug deep against the foot of the bank. He led on down the road from the little bridge at the foot of the ramp which crossed the gutter. The gutter was almost hidden by the briars and winter weeds. When he stopped, he said: