Arthur Upfield - The Devil_s Steps

George Does Not Return

INHABITING THE trees in the immediate vicinity of Wideview Chalet was a family of nine kookaburras. These wise birds knew every cranny of the garden, every foot of the lawn, every branch of every tree, and into this, their domain, they permitted no outside kookaburras. They barely tolerated the day-sleeping opossums. Four of the nine birds had occupied positions on Bisker’s wood-stack, and the remaining five were perched within sighting distance all waiting for breakfast scraps, when Bony arrived at the gate in the upper fence.

The morning was cloudy. The valley lay clear of fog. The sun had not risen above the mountains and the wind was cold and dry. Just beyond the gate, the gravel of the roadway petered out into the soft sludge bordering the upper road, and on the sludge were the plain imprints of Miss Jade’s shoes and Mr. Sleeman’s larger shoes. Mr. Bonaparte had no difficulty in reading them.

Both Sleeman and Miss Jade had, on reaching the public road, gone to the right along the macadamised strip. They had stepped off this strip, crossing the sludge area again in order to reach the gravelled roadway and down into the house, but Bony was interested to ascertain where they had been. He walked along the upper road.

He had proceeded only a few yards when he sighted Sleeman’s tracks at the border of the strip. Miss Jade had kept upon the road. Sleeman had continued to walk along its flank on the softer ground.

Bony came presently to a crossroads, and because Sleeman had turned left, he also turned left and went on. The road led him upward and not once had Sleeman stepped off the softer ground edging it. Bony did not again see Miss Jade’s tracks until, when opposite a house standing well back within the seclusion provided by a barrier of closely growing fir trees, he saw that she had stepped off the road and had entered by the gate the grounds of the house behind the firs.

Sleeman had walked on. Bony continued following Sleeman’s tracks. The man had proceeded for fifty yards and then halted, and had returned to sit on a boulder opposite the house gate.

Having continued his walk for a further half mile, Bony returned and briskly passed the house behind the fir trees, and so walked back to the Chalet. He knew the story. Miss Jade had left her house very late at night to visit the house behind the firs. Mr. Sleeman had followed her, had sat on the boulder whilst she was within the house, and then had returned at leisure to enter the guest house by the front door and to “raid” the room occupied by the steward before retiring to his own room.

Bony certainly had to revise his views of Sleeman.

Of the five men at the one table, Sleeman was the last to appear for breakfast.

“Sleeman is apparently finding it difficult to get up this morning,” observed Downes, regarding Lee with his steady eyes. The pastoralist grinned broadly and then chuckled.

“He didn’t want to go to bed last night,” he said. “Alice told us she had been ordered to close down punctually at eleven. That pleased me because our friend was thirsty but I wasn’t-not by then.”

“Nice fellow,” asserted Raymond Leslie, and no one attempted to argue about that.

Sleeman entered the dining room and received cordial greetings. He appeared well groomed and normally cheerful. He greeted everyone individually, and ordered his food without any finicky regard for his digestion.

How old was he? Bony found difficulty in assessing Sleeman’s age. He might be anything between forty and fifty. He was well set up and the “weakness” did not show itself so very clearly on his face. Like Downes, and unlike either Lee or Leslie, he had never been informative about himself.

“What sort of a day is it going to be?” he asked, glancing through the great window at the magnificent view presented.

“Fine, I think,” Leslie answered him. “I’m going down what they call The Way of a Thousand Steps. We were speaking of it the other day, remember? There’s a place halfway down where the gulley path goes through a small forest of fern-trees. The tree-ferns are at least twelve feet high, some even higher, and so their age must be great. To sit there under them always reminds me of pictures of the Carboniferous Age and of pre-historic monsters standing on their hind legs to get at the young and juicy ferns sprouting outward from the tops of the trees of that time.”

Lee offered to accompany the artist. Sleeman said he had to remain indoors to write business letters. Downes expected a visitor. Bony said he was going to lounge about and read.

After breakfast, Bony put on a light overcoat and took a book out to the veranda, where he occupied a chair in his favourite position. He would have liked better to return to his room to sleep.

A little before ten o’clock, the man from the Riverina and the artist came round from the end of the house and went on down the path to the wicket gate. Leslie was carrying a satchel of drawing materials. They moved slowly whilst discussing the Devil’s Steps which so disfigured Miss Jade’s lawn, and finally disappeared beyond the gate as they walked down the ramp to the highway.

At ten o’clock, Bony saw the top of the bus from Manton as it drew to a stop at the drive. A minute or two later, he watched Bisker carrying up the driveway a load of suitcases. He was followed by an elderly couple. George did not appear. At eleven, the maid, Alice, brought to him a cup of tea and biscuits. At half-past eleven, Downes walked down the drive, wearing his overcoat and hat, and a few minutes after he had vanished from sight Bony heard the sound of a car coming up the highway. It was stopped somewhere out of sight, turned round and departed the way it had come. Then he saw Bisker appear among the trees lining the driveway, and casually he left his chair and sauntered down the steps to the lawn, where he stayed for a moment or two to regard the Devil’s Steps, before wandering to that end of the house near the entrance. He found Bisker washing the tiled flooring of the entrance porch.

“Same number. Same driver,” Bisker informed him.

Bony nodded his thanks and walked out to the upper road, turned left and followed it down to the highway as far as the fruit stall. Then he continued along its winding course until he left it and entered the Police Station.

“Where is the Sub-Inspector?” he asked a Senior Constable.

“I was ordered to inform you, sir, that Sub-Inspector Mason went down to Manton. The man wanted did not show up to catch the eight-thirty train from the city, and the Sub-Inspector thought it likely that he would return to his place of employment by car. The Manton officers don’t know the wanted man, but they have a description of him. I am to suggest, sir, that perhaps you might wish me to interview theBagshotts regarding the matter you spoke about to the Inspector.”

Bony pursed his lips and considered the situation, then:

“Contact Superintendent Bolt. I’ll write a message for you to read to him.” The S.C. took up the telephone, and Bony wrote rapidly on a pad and pushed the pad across the desk. They had to wait five minutes for the connection. Then the S.C. spoke, giving his name and station.

“A message for you, sir. Begins: ‘Suggest every outgoing ship searched for wanted man.’Message ends… Very well, sir.”

“I will stay here while you interview theBagshotts. This will be the line of the enquiry.”

Bony outlined what he wanted, and the S.C. departed. He was away for approximately fifteen minutes, and the result of his mission was the information that a man, representing himself to be a collector of footwear and clothes for refugees in European countries, had called a fortnight previously, exhibiting what purported to be an official card of the Clothes for Europe Committee of Victoria. Mrs. Bagshott had interviewed the man and she described him as well built and having a faint Irish brogue. She had given him several garments and several pairs of shoes, including one pair belonging to her husband.