Arthur Upfield - The Devil_s Steps

“And that was-at what time?”

“ ’Bouttwo hours back.”

“Might be useful, Bisker, but we cannot very well examine the impression now. Too many people wandering about. Do you know where we could obtain some plaster ofparis?”

“Too right, I do. There’s some in the tool shed.”

“Excellent. Later on, after dinner, I’ll make a cast, although it will be difficult in the dark. You might do it with greater success because you know the exact position of the impression. When you’ve finished for the day, bring the plaster to your hut in readiness. How’s your day gone?”

“Not so bad,” Bisker said, adding after a distinct pause: “One of the detectives grabbed me and made me bring ’im’ere to the hut. He made me show him all I possessed and then he went through the place looking for something. I asked ’imwhat he was ’oping to find and he said he just wanted to look around, sorta.”

“You don’t really know what he was after?”

Bisker shook his head.

“Did you bring him along the path?”

Bisker grinned.

“I did not,” he replied, now smiling with both his face and his eyes. “Him and me first went to the tool shed, where he done a lot of fossicking about, and when we left there, remembering what you ’ad tole me about that path, I sort of edged ’imaway from it so that we came down along the back fence. After ’e had done ’ere, wesorta made a round trip of the garden, going down as far as the front fence and slewing right to the drive and so back.”

“To your knowledge, no one has walked on that path since last night?”

“No one, s’far as I know.”

“Good!”

Bony gazed about him like a countryman in a city. Then he pointed at a shrub a little way back along the path and told Bisker to follow him and to pretend to be talking about it, in case someone was observing them. When they were standing before the shrub he asked:

“Did you by any chance observe the gunman’s feet?”

“Notpartic’ly,” answered Bisker. “After I come to and before I got up I did see that ’e was wearing shoes.”

“What kind of shoes?”

“Kind!”Bisker echoed. “Why, just ordinary shoes, I suppose. Lemme think. Yes, they were ordinary shoes-looked a bit big for a bloke of ’is size-that’s all.”

“Looked big, eh?”persisted Bony. “Try to think back. I estimated that he weighed about ten stone and that he was about five feet ten or eleven in height. Somethinglike my own weight. I wear a size seven in shoes.”

Bisker stared hard at the ground and frowned, but he found himself unable to state definitely that the gunman’s shoes were abnormally large, just a “bit big for a bloke of ’is size.”

“You have no idea what the detective was after?” Bony continued.

“Not a glimmer.”

“At any time yesterday or today, were you asked where you came from before you obtained employment here?”

“Yes, I was. I told ’emthe truth, that I was down from the bush on a bender when I went broke and ’ad to take the job ’ere. Why?”

Smiling, Bony explained what he thought was the reason for the search. He asked when Bisker’s history was gone into, and Bisker said it had been the day before. That morning he had been interrogated about the stations on which he had worked. Grumman had been poisoned with cyanide, and bushmen may with ease purchase both cyanide and strychnine with their groceries, and use it for poisoning foxes and rabbits for the pelts.

Bisker began to chuckle and to say repeatedly, “Wotd’youknow about that?”

“Why the happiness?” mildly asked Bony.

“Well, that’s funny, that is,” chortled Bisker. “If that d. waslookin ’ for poison, all ’e ’ad to do was to ask me if I ’ad any and if I’d bin in a good mood, which I wasn’t, I could ’aveproduced nearly a full bottle ofstrych wot I ’ad in me swag when I come toMelbun, andwot’s now in a tin stowed on a roof beam of the ’ut. I put it up there with me reserve of tobacco and a drop ofwarmin ’ fluid for use when things were very, very dry, sort of. That d. never looked up at the roof.”

“How much is there?”

“Pretty near a full ounce bottle I put into the tin.”

Bony sighed, knowing the extraordinary carelessness ofbushmen with poisons. He said:

“Just as well, Bisker, for you that your hoard does not contain a quantity of cyanide and that cyanide wasn’t found in your possession.”

Bisker wanted to know why, and when Bony told him that Grumman had died from cyanide poisoning, he whistled softly, looked grim for a moment, and then regained his present good humour.

A raindrop fell upon Bony’s bare head. Already the afternoon was waning into early dusk.

“I took your blankets back to your room,” Bisker said. “And I laid ’emout under the quilt like you told me. Nearly got nabbed, too, after I got outer the winder. It was that dark that I nearlycollisioned with Miss Jade, who was making for the scullery door from the top-road gate. And that was after midnight, too.”

Meditation

BONY DECIDED to be particularly charming to Miss Jade. That would not make demands on any reserve of courage or natural shyness, for Miss Jade was far from being repellent and Bony had more to him than a mere brain.

This decision Bony made immediately on leaving Bisker, when he sauntered through the gentle rain, down along the narrow cinder path to the open space in front of the Chalet; for there was a little more behind the word “intuition” he had uttered to cold Inspector Snook when intimating that he thought the killer of Grumman and the man Marcus were still in the vicinity.

Standing with the closed door at his back, Bony studied his room. It was fairly large for a bedroom in such an establishment, measuring about twelve by fourteen feet and lighted by double windows in the one frame. The failing daylight increased the shadow by the three-quarter bed and at the foot of the wardrobe, but the plated-backed hairbrush, the buckle of the leather box containing his shaving kit, the pot of hair grease and an ivory stud box all on the dressing table gleamed like old silver.

A maid had been at work in this room since he left it the previous night. There was nothing out of place. There was not a speck of dust to be seen even if the sunlight had streamed through the windows, now open as they had been all day. On the little bedside table a vase held pinkamarias, and on the walls hung framed photographic enlargements of local views of mountain and valley. A sleeping place far removed from the interior of a stockman’s hut, a tent beneath a mulga tree, and that cabin on the lugger in which he had been imprisoned for three weeks by gentlemen in the pay of Japan. It was a bedroom even superior to that occupied by his wife and himself-sometimes-in their own home at Banyo. But who cared about the cost when the money came from somewhere through Colonel Blythe?

Bisker had explained that a Mr. and Mrs. Watkins now occupied the room on one side of him and that Mr. Sleeman occupied that on the other. He had met Mr. Sleeman, who had been staying at the Chalet for some time. The Watkins couple had arrived only that day.

Coming back to this room Bony found very pleasant. To one who had spent by far the greater proportion of his professional life in the interior of Australia, such a luxury as this room presented, with its thick floor carpets and electric radiator, was not quickly to be abandoned. Neither was to be abandoned this case of two murders, although Bony’s actual work for Colonel Blythe was completed.

The electric clock set into the wall, where the visitor could see the time when lying in bed, indicated that it was eighteen minutes to five. The call to dinner would be made at half-past six. The rain was falling ever a little heavier faintly thrumming on the roof. Bony switched on the radiator, drew a lounge chair to sit before it, with the essentials of cigarette manufacture on the wide arms of the chair, he settled down to review the events of the past two days.