Arthur Upfield - The Devil_s Steps

The harsh nasal voice, deliberately kept low, ceased, and Bony once more tried to estimate the size of Bagshott’s shoes. The shadows, however, persisted and he gave it up. There would be time and opportunity to look over Clarence B. Bagshott, and to determine just what size shoes he did wear, and just how he wore them and the impressions they made. The vehicle was travelling slowly in second gear and was passing round a bend a thousand feet above the valley. Down in the gulf gleamed clusters of stars, the lights of hamlets, and away in the distance millions of fallen stars lay upon the black velvet-the lights of Melbourne.

“Has Mr. Bagshott been living up here long?” he enquired of his companion, in a whisper.

“ ’Boutten years, I think,” was her reply.“Thinks himself somebody, too.”

Bony regarded Bagshott again in the light of this latest information concerning him. Just then he was talking and laughing and his travelling companion and the child were both laughing with him. What he said could not be heard, but he did not have the appearance of a man either conceited or overbearing in personality.

Still, his feet were of very great interest. If he had made the impressions on the ramp that night Grumman had been murdered, and also the following night on Bisker’s path and about Bisker’s hut, then his feet would become even more interesting.

Bony was sorry he had to alight before Bagshott. Had the author alighted first he would have been able to see his shoes in clear light as he walked past him to the entrance to the bus.

Clarence B. Bagshott

LOUNGING ON the Chalet veranda, Bony gazed at the panorama of mountain and valley spread in colourful glory before him. On the wide arms of his chair were a cup of tea and a plate of Mrs. Parkes’s short-bread biscuits.

At this moment, he was absolutely satisfied with life.

He was meeting new people and this was always refreshing. They were, of course, vastly different from the people of the interior, but he was coming to understand these southern people, and the growth of understanding added to his interest.

There was the Watkins pair. They had arranged to have a table in the dining room to themselves. Watkins was heavy-jowled; his wife was big and overloaded with powder and lipstick and jewellery. Why had they insisted upon having a table to themselves when always they spoke loudly enough for everyone to hear? The subject of their conversation was invariably travel-their own travels to New Zealand, Tasmania, and to Sydney. Strange how the sense of inferiority does become manifest. Bisker, and the man then mowing the lawn, had both travelled fifty times more than the Watkins couple, but one never heard either of them mount his travel experiences upon the stand of conversation.

George never mentioned that he had been a liner steward for six years. He never spoke loudly, assertively. He seemed to be a well-oiled machine running smoothly and gliding silently along the rails of life. There was more in George than in the Watkins couple combined; for underneath his suaveness lay character of a kind, a character felt rather than seen by the sensitive Bonaparte. Bolt had expressed satisfaction with George’s history, a deal of which had been learned from sources other than George himself.

To compare Miss Jade with the Watkins woman made the latter appear superficial. Although Miss Jade appealed to Bony’s romantic nature, he had to confess that he did not understand her. She possessed character-of that there was no doubt. She could command herself and, therefore, could command others. Never once had Bony seenher a fraction careless in dress or appearance, or in speech. Success in her business was due to that application of self-discipline nicely tempered with the warm feminine traits of sympathy and understanding.

Of the guests, only Sleeman and Downes were men of character, but whether good or bad Bony was undecided. Raymond Leslie, the artist, was a wind-bag, and Lee, the squatter, appeared to findhimself at a loss in a community uninterested in livestock and fodders. That Wideview Chalet was almost empty of guests appeared to please everyone, including Miss Jade.

Presently, Bony decided to exert himself by taking a walk and, possibly, both seeing and learning something more of the man Clarence B. Bagshott.

Not troubling about his hat, he left the veranda and proceeded down the path towards the wicket gate. Fred was pushing the mower across the incline of the lawn to the left of the path, and of that section he had already cut about half. The grass, as Bony had observed, was fine of quality and luscious of growth, but not over-long, although to his own knowledge it had not been cut during the past eight days.

“The grass doesn’t grow very fast, does it?” he said when Fred had brought the mower to the edge of the path. The man was tall andrangey and about fifty years old. He turned his watery blue eyes upon Bony, who noted the abnormally red nose and the weak mouth.

“It never grows much this time of the year.” Fred’s drawling voice placed him at once as aninlander.“Juststartin ’ to grow now. Another fortnight, you’ll see how she can grow. Don’t grow longer than a dog’s hair all through winter, but once spring comes there’s nostoppin ’ her. Everything then busts wide open, all of a sudden like.”

“Well, spring cannot be far off by the feel of the air today,” remarked Bony. “How far up along the highway is the next garage?”

“Oh-about a mile.” A smile flitted across the man’s weathered face.“I never mind going up the ’ill for a start. If you goesdown’ill for a start yougotta startwalkin ’ up the ’ill to get home.”

“That’s true,” Bony agreed. “Whereabouts do you live?”

“Me? Oh-down at the bottom of the road turning off the main road at the fruit shop. I built me own shack down there some ten years back. The road peters out at my shack, and you can go on from there by a track what takes you to The Way of a Thousand Steps.”

“Way of a Thousand Steps!” repeated the detective. “That sounds romantic.”

“Yes.” Fred’s eyes regarded the veranda, probably to locate Miss Jade. “Bagshott, the author, give it that name. It’s a gully and there’s a path following the gully from top to bottom and the Reserves Committee at odd times uses the trunks of fern-trees to make stepsso’s that anyone going up or down won’t slip and slide for yards in the mud. The Way of a Thousand Steps begins at the highway where she turns over a stream and it ends ’way down on the edge of the valley forest.”

“I might take a walk down The Way of a Thousand Steps one of these days. Bagshott’s house-it’s beyond the garage, isn’t it?”

“Yes, hundred yards or so. You can’t mistake it. Bigcyprus hedge round most of the place. You’ll seea coupler wireless masts in his garden. I was told that the Secret Service was up here during the war about them masts. Looks like that Bagshott was sending wireless messages to Japan or somewhere. Funnysorta bloke, although I think ’e’sall right, him having been a lot outback where people is sort of civilized. You come from outback, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Bony admitted. “So do you. Howd’you like being in these parts?”

“Oh, it’s all right in a way. But the people! I can’t make ’emout.”

Bony’s browsrose a fraction and he looked interested. Fred searched the veranda and garden for sight of Miss Jade.

“Well, it’s like this,” Fred explained. “If you don’t wearno collar and tie you’re a bit of dirt. If youhas a drink, you’re just an outcast. If you tries to be friendly, they spits at you. And if you tell ’emto go to hell, theyscreeches at you and goes around telling all the lies about you they can think up. If it wasn’t for Bisker, I wouldn’t be ’ere. He’s the only civilized one in the district. Cripes! I must bedoin ’ a bit.”