Arthur Upfield - The Devil_s Steps

“Ah-good afternoon, Inspector!” he said in greeting.“Beautiful scenery-wonderful view.”

“Damn the view!” remarked Inspector Snook. “You just arrived?”

“Only just,” admitted Bony, smiling provocatively.

“Know anything?”

“Only what I learned during a visit to your palatial Headquarters. The Super wasn’t in a healthful frame of mind.”

Snooksregarded Bony with a stony stare.

“Healthful!” he repeated.

“Yes, thatis what I said, my dear fellow. Temper is dangerous to one of Bolt’s physique. Upsets the stomach and brings about ulcers, and ulcers bring about- Well, you know what ulcers bring about. The cause of his annoyance was the clear getaway of friend Marcus. He appears to have the idea that Marcus got away to Melbourne, orTimbuctoo, or some such place, and when I suggested that Marcus might have retired to a house somewhere on this mountain, his annoyance increased.”

“Did you read up Marcus’s history?” enquired Snook.

“Yes. Quite a broth of a boy. Four known murders and about a dozen suspected killings between here and New York and London. Goes in for disguises and what not, and is by no means a poor linguist.”

“And you think he might be still hanging around here?” Snooksaid, a hint of contempt in his voice. “What makes you think that?”

“Intuition,” Bony blandly replied. “Ah! I observe George serving tea to guests on the veranda. You will have to excuse me.”

Inspector Snook scowled at Bony’s back. Intuition! Well, what could you expect from a half-caste promoted to the rank of Detective-Inspector? Must have influential friends to get him up to that rank and send him on such joy-rides for the blinking Army. As for Marcus’s getaway, well, that wasn’t his fault. With five minutes to spare in a mile-a-minute car on ninety-miles-an-hour roads, there were five gateways to freedom for Marcus, and Marcus had got those five minutes.

Having reached the veranda, Bony caught the eye of George and drifted to a quiet corner where he sat in a wickedly sensuous lounge chair and was waited on by the smiling steward.

“Looks like rain, George,” Bony remarked. “Do I observe some new guests?”

“Yes, sir. Several new guests arrived today. Just back from the city?”

“Just back, George. My friends brought me as far as the drive. Plenty of policemen still meandering about.”

“They are apt to do that, sir, after the crime.”

“Naturally,” Bony agreed.

“Another cup of tea, sir?”

“Thank you.”

“I see that you’ve cut your cheek, sir. Rather badly, too,” George said solicitously. “Miss Jade keeps a surgical box, and she could dress the wound, if you wish.”

Bony smiled. He regarded the dark eyes gazing down upon him.

“I might accept your suggestion after dinner,” he said. “I bashed my cheek against a projection in the friend’s car as I was getting out. They put some plaster and stuff on it, but I washed it all off before I left to return home. It looked worse than the cut. I see a guest waiting to catch your attention.”

“Thank you, sir,” George murmured, and wheeled away his serving trolley.

The wind contained a cold finger, so Bony did not long remain on the veranda. He had seen Inspector Snook walk up from the wicket gate, and he had observed the roof of the bus which had stopped below the gates to pick up the pressmen who had gone down to meet it. And now, slowly and pensively, he left the veranda and strolled along the path which would take him to the driveway and the end of the house where the main entrance and garages were situated. He was in time to see Snook and three other plain-clothes men get into a car and leave.

He began to admire Miss Jade’s shrubs, many of which were flowering. Her selection of rhododendrons was excellent. Having crossed the drive to admire these, he came presently to the path leading to Bisker’s hut.

The path was composed of cinders. It was hard and level, but not sufficiently hard to prevent boot tracks being registered on its surface for such ashe to see. There were many marks made by Bisker’s hob-nailed boots number eight. There were the tracks made by another eight boot, worn by a man who had gone towards the hut and then had returned. And there were the impressions of a twelve-sized shoe or boot made previously to the visit of the man wearing the eightsize, for his boot-mark frequently overlaid the impressions of the twelve size.

On either side of the path there was a border of painted-wooden boards, and upon the outside of these boards the ground was cultivated and grew varieties of early-spring flowers planted somewhat widely apart. One of these, a heath, was a miniature hillock of heliotrope.

It grew within a few yards of Bisker’s hut, and near to it the ground bore evidence of recent disturbance.

On either side of the path the ground had been roughly dug, and since the operation had been completed it had rained much and this had tended to level the soil, a dark loam of fine texture. Where Bony had struggled with the gunman, there were patches of ground pressed into a greater degree of levelness and he saw the impressions of toe and heel marks, and several impressions of the abnormal shoe or boot size twelve. They had been made by the same man on the path and down on the ramp leading to the highway.

Here, a little off the path, the impressions made by the large boot or shoe could not be considered as an impression which the wearer would normally make when walking, but the impressions on the path were normally made.

Bony proceeded towards Bisker’s hut, slowly and with the interest of the guest captivated by the sylvan scene of garden and trees and the smoke-blue view beyond. He came to the hut, and, with his hands clasped behind him, often stopped to admire this and that. He circled the building to see his own tracks and those made by the large-size boot or shoe of the gunman, who had pretended to be drunk and who had also pretended that the hut was an abnormal tree trunk.

Having made a complete circle of the hut, Bony wandered towards the back fence of the property, then came back, passing along the front of the trees growing at the rear of the hut near the window. He observed that anyone standing under the trees could easily see into the hut when the blind was up and a lamp was lit inside, and there he found again the tracks of the man who wore twelves in footwear.

A man of the height and weight of that gunman must be deformed in both feet to have to wear so large a boot, and his feet were the only extremities Bony had not noted during the encounter the previous evening.

Had there been two men acting in alliance-the man wearing the large boots and the gunman? There were the impressions on the path made by boots or shoes size eight, and those might have been on the feet of the gunman. It might not have been the gunman with whom Bony had grappled on one side of the path.

This matter was occupying him when Bisker approached direct from the rear of the garages.

“Well, Bisker! How’s the head?” Bony asked the fat little man with the bushy eyebrows and the now-clipped grey moustache. Bisker smiled with his mouth only.

“I’d forgotten all about it, sir,” he replied, and stared at Bony’s cheek wound. “Looks like you copped it worse than I did. I’m glad to see you back. I’ve found a clue.”

“Ah!” murmured Bony, theatrically. Bisker glanced furtively all about them as though he had swiftly caught the melodrama in Bony’s voice.

“Yes, a clue. That gunman, when he was looking for ’is pens in the shrub tub, leaned with his left ’and pressing on the earth, and ’e left the marks of every finger and his thumb and the curve of ’is palm, so’s we can estimate the size and shape of ’is ’and. It’s still there, or was when I took me last bird’s-eye view of it.”