Arthur Upfield - The Devil_s Steps

“Get that whisky quick,” Bisker snarled, and George almost ran to obey. When he returned, Bisker let him into the hall and locked the door. He took the tray from George.

“Bolt the front door-go on-quick.”

In the office he found Miss Jade still slumped into her chair. She looked up at him, her black eyes wide and unwinking. She opened her mouth to scream, and Bisker said:

“Keep your trap shut, marm.”

He poured whisky into a glass, added a splash of soda-water and offered it to Miss Jade, who continued to regard him with a fixed stare.

“Take a holt ofyerself, marm. Come on-drink ’erup.”

“Bisker!” she cried. “Is Mr. Rice dead?”

“As mutton, marm,” replied Bisker.

Miss Jade noted the remarkable metamorphosis in Bisker, Bisker the retiring, apologetic, shuffling Bisker, and she thought it evenmore strange that she liked him and experienced a feeling of comfort-of all feelings she might be expected not to be expecting. Her arms slid outward over the desk and her head fell forward to rest upon them as she burst into a fit of weeping.

Even as she wept she heard the gurgle of liquid pouring into a glass. She did not observe Bisker fill a glass to the brim and drink it without more than one swallow. She heard the siphon sizzle when Bisker half filled his glass with soda-water for a “chaser.” Then she heard him at the telephone calling for Police Headquarters, Melbourne.

Her weeping ceased as abruptly as it had begun. She moved her body upwards. Bisker was sprawling over the desk speaking into the receiver, describing what had happened. She felt inexpressibly tired. Almost mechanically, she picked up the drink Bisker had poured for her and began to take quick sips from the glass. Behind Bisker stood George and she thought how extraordinary it was that George appeared calm and self-possessed.

Presently Bisker replaced the telephone.

“A patrol car in an outer suburb nearest to us will be here in twenty minutes,” he told her. “I’m to keep everyone out until they arrive. You had better go and see that the guests don’t wake up to what’s happened.”

“I-I-” began Miss Jade, when Bisker cut her short. It was necessary, in order to execute a little plan he had thought of, to get rid of Miss Jade and George.

“George!” he snapped. “Help me to take Miss Jade outer here.”

They had almost to carry Miss Jade from the office and across the reception hall, past the sprawling figure on the floor. At the passage door Bisker glared into George’s eyes and snarled:

“Take Miss Jade away to her room, anywhere. And keep your own trap shut, too. Get me?”

George nodded. Bisker unlocked the door, and George assisted his employer out into the short passage. After that Bisker shut and re-locked that door. He ambled back into the office, where he put the siphon behind a lounge chair, the glasses into a desk drawer and the three-parts-full bottle of whisky into his hip pocket. Then he passed out of the office, crossed to the main door, unbolted that, passed outside and re-closed the door, and stood hesitant on the iron foot-grid before the front step of the porch.

Would he have time to take the bottle of whisky to his hut and there conceal it under his mattress? Hardly. There was, too, the chance that someone might see him, and the police might hear of it and want to know why.

Either side of the front door there grew an ornamental shrub in a large tub. Bisker selected the tub on the left side of the door. The earth was friable. He scooped a small and deephole straight down so that the bottle would not lie longwise with the danger of its precious contents seeping out from the glass-stoppered cork. Down went the bottle into the hole. Bisker covered it in, having to place only three inches of earth above the stopper. That done, he sat on the edge of the tub and produced his tobacco plug, knife, pipe and matches and began to slice wafers from the plug.

The second wafer was cut when round the corner of the building appeared Mr. Napoleon Bonaparte.

“Ah! Bisker! Did you call the local policeman?” Bony enquired.

“I did, Mr. Bonaparte. He’s here-inside.”

“Indeed! What is keeping him?”

Bonaparte’s blue eyes regarded Bisker with a penetrating stare.

“You just didn’t happen to see the car what come up the drive and then went down the drive a few minutesago, did you?” Bisker asked.

“I did. What of it?”

“Didn’t note the number, I suppose, Mr. Bonaparte?”

“No, I wasn’t near the drive. Why?”

“Well, the bloke in that car came into the reception ’all when me and Miss Jade was waiting for Constable Rice to arrive. The bloke in the car came in and asked for Mr. Grumman, and Miss Jade was putting ’imoff, sort of, when Rice came in. Then the bloke saw Rice and Rice recognised ’im, and Rice made a jump for ’imand he shot Rice with a pistol fitted with a silencer.”

“Indeed! Is the constable badly hurt?”

“He’s quite dead,” replied Bisker, and felt disappointment at not observing any alteration in the expression of mild interest on Bonaparte’s dark face. Then all that had happened burst from him as the taut nerves began to relax, and when it was told, he sat trembling on the edge of the tub, the brief period of self-appointed authority vanished.

“There is nothing we can do, Bisker,” Bony said, “but wait for the police.”

Boots, Male, Size Twelve

WHEN THE first police car arrived, Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte was sitting in a cane chair on the wide front veranda overlooking valley and mountain. Patches of fog scattered over the valley appeared like little woolly clouds spaced on a rumpled carpet of red and green checkers. There was no wind. The air was warm and so clear that he could distinguish the grey of fire-killed trees on the mountain slopes thirty-odd miles distant.

He sat alone at the far end of the veranda, smoking his badly madecigarettes, his ears open to the chatter of other guests who were by now suspecting that something was seriously amiss. Some of themwere wanting to take the next bus down to the city and Miss Jade was indisposed and the secretary had vanished. He heard the police car coming several minutes before it turned off the highway and purred up the sharper incline of the tree-lined drive.

Three minutes later, he observed Bisker, accompanied by a large man in plain clothes, on the path skirting the front of the veranda. They came along as far as the steps, and then turned down the path dividing the lawn, which would take them to the wicket gate-and the body of Grumman.

A further period of ten minutes elapsed before Bony heard the sound of more than one car coming up at speed along the highway. These cars also turned in at the driveway and came to a halt beyond the far end of the house. Soon after their arrival, several plain-clothes men followed the path taken by Bisker and the first arrival, and of these two carried cameras and one a substantial leather suitcase. He did not walk with the military alertness of his companions, and Bony guessed him to be the police surgeon.

After they had disappeared through the wicket gate and down the ramp, Bony rolled another cigarette, lit it, and then lounged farther down into his comfortable chair. The cushion behind his head was soft, the contours of the chair fitted his slim body, and the sunshine which poured in radiance over him was warm and delightful.

He wondered what Colonel Blythe would say when he heard that Mr. Grumman was dead. And he wondered what the police would think when they entered Mr. Grumman’s room. It was certain that they would be more interested in nailing the murderer of First Constable Rice than in finding the murderer of Mr. Grumman although the killer of Grumman would, of course, be hunted for. Rice was one of them, and it seemed that Marcus was known to them. A point of special interest to Bony was what had Marcus to do with Grumman?