The Devil_s Steps b-10

by Arthur W. Upfield

  “Er-no-Downes, I wouldn’t say that of you,” he dribbled. “I was only speaking generally.”

  “I am glad to hear that, Leslie,” Downes said, employing his knife and fork. “Naturally, I can quite understand your enthusiasm for the real Australian literature,” and Bony wanted to chuckle at the plain emphasis on the second personal pronoun.

  “I met him this morning,” Bony said casually, and the strain vanished, leaving Leslie like a stranded fish. Out of the tail of his eye, Bony flashed a glance at Miss Jade, to see her hands still and her head bent in an attitude of concentrated effort to hear what was being said.“Happened to be passing his place when he backed his car out of the gate. I made some remark or other about the locality, and he appeared quite friendly and breezy. Said he had promised himself a month on a diet of beer up at Wanaaring.”

  “Why go to Wanaaring-wherever that is?” asked the now more than interested Sleeman.

  “Well, you see, Wanaaring had three pubs and about fifteen houses when I was last there,” Bony informed them all. “The inhabitants are very friendly and they can really drink beer, in some cases perhaps not too politely, but certainly with grand efficiency. The climate is either very hot or very dusty, and more often than not both at the same time. There are other advantages, too.”

  When Bony paused, Sleeman prompted him.

  “Well, you see, up in Wanaaring, which is a few hundred miles west of Bourke in New South Wales, one feels free of restrictions. For instance, a chap doesn’t bother about what his neighbours might think if he chooses to go without a collar. Then the police are both friendly and diplomatic. Should you be found crawling about on hands and knees, they order your friends to put you to bed or to carry you into the local lock-up to lie for a few hours till consciousness returns.”

  “How do you get to Wan-that place you said?” Sleeman asked.

  “Better stay put,” suggested Downes, and for the first time Bony witnessed a smile on the normally cold face.

  “And Clarence B. Bagshott is thinking of going to Wan-that place?” persisted Sleeman. “Hang it! I’d like to go with him.”

  Again Downes spoke, and again he smiled.

  “I still say you’d better stay put, Sleeman. The police mightn’t be so tolerant if they saw two fellows going around on their hands and knees at the same time.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Bagshott and you,” replied Downes, disarmingly.

  The idea, however, remained attractive to Mr. Sleeman, and he became avid for information concerning Wanaaring and the easiest way of getting there. Raymond Leslie maintained the silence which Downes had evidently imposed with his eyes. The meal which had been threatened by unpleasant boorishness eventually proved to be highly successful, and Bony retired to his chair at the far end of the veranda, feeling very well satisfied withhimself.

  He was thankful that he did not have to push a lawn mower this quiet and restful afternoon, thankful that he was able to sit and smoke in the acme of comfort and watch the colours pouring against the slopes of the distant mountains as the sun began its descent from the zenith.

  The noise of motor cars was more persistent this Saturday afternoon as they came humming up the highway bringing week-enders. Bony recalled the previous Sunday, when the Chalet seemed filled to capacity with guests, and when the road traffic was astonishing. The fruit-stall man had predicted a fine day on the morrow, and that the traffic would then be extra-heavy.

  Bony dozed for a little while, but he could not properly sleep because Leslie’s enraged face would protrude into his consciousness, followed by the icy voice of Mr. Downes and his piercing eyes which had caused the artist to shut up like a man in a bar when his wife breaks in. Bony awakened long enough to change position in his chair, when he observed Fred still cutting the lawn, and was faintly irritated by the wireless in the lounge, a race description being given.

  With eyes closed, he tried again to settle his mind, but this time it was Bagshott who persisted in intruding. He wondered how much of those stories about him were true, and decided he would confer with Miss Jade, who appeared to have a degree of nervousness of local gossip. Notwithstanding, there was the fact that Bagshott wore shoes size twelve, and that the imprints of a similar shoe were left on the ramp on the night Grumman was murdered, and all about Bisker’s hut on the following night.

  Today, Bagshott had not been wearing the same shoes as those which had made the impressions for the position of the trademarks on the rubber soles was not identical. Still, Bagshott would have to be examined.

  It appeared to the lethargic Bonaparte that he had been a long time staying at Wideview Chalet. He had not visited Colonel Blythe now for five days, and the Colonel was bound to have at least one letter from Colonel Spendor demanding in hectic language what he, Bony, was supposed to be doing all this time.

  Regarding that query, Bony was not worrying. A man had been murdered with cyanide poison in this very house. His personal effects contained in heavy steamer trunks and suitcases had vanished. A local lad had “pinched” Grumman’s priceless secrets, and only by the favour of Dame Fortune had those secrets come into Bony’s possession. Well, after the excitement, there had followed this period of calm. It was strange how there were always periods of calm in an investigation, and how a period of calm inevitably gave place to another period of excitement and action. Crime is a most peculiar manifestation of human psychology. It never lies down for very long, especially the crime of homicide.

  “I really cannot allow you to sleep any longer Mr. Bonaparte.”

  Bony opened first one eye, then the other. Then he was on his feet and smiling into Miss Jade’s dark eyes.

  “Madame, forgive me!” he said, mentally alert the instant he awoke. “That I should sleep in your presence is a crime. Has the roof fallen in?”

  “No, but George has just fallen out-with the afternoon tea, and I thought I would have afternoon tea with you. May I?”

  Bony gave the slightest bow, and his pleasure was expressed in his dancing blue eyes.

  “There is nothing which would give me greater pleasure, Miss Jade,” he told her with conviction in both eyes and voice.

  George was waiting with his trolley just behind Miss Jade, and before she could direct him, he brought the twin of the chair Bony had been occupying, arranged the cushion with expert hands, and then hurried to bring a small table which he placed before them.

  About the centre of the veranda, just back from the steps leading down to the path which bisected the lawn to the wicket gate, a group already at tea comprised the Watkins couple, Lee, Sellman and Downes.

  “You know, Miss Jade,” Bony murmured. “Earlier this afternoon I found myself glad that the number of your guests is very small. Selfish of me. But I am doubly glad now. Had the number been large you would not have found the opportunity to honour me like this.”

  Miss Jade smiled, and when she smiled Bony liked her the more. Such a speech from another man might have sounded cynical and she would have been quick to detect it. From Bony it came easily and was natural and genuine.

  “I could have had more guests, Mr. Bonaparte, but after what happened here, I felt it would be unfair to the staff to have a crowd. Just the few of us provide the staff with something to do, and the organisation is kept running. Next week we shall again be full up. I didn’t wish to be surrounded by a lot of-er-rubber-necks, you understand.”

  “Quite. Rubber-necks with money are as objectionable as those without.” Bony waved his disengaged hand to indicate the scene presented to them-Fred and his lawn mower in the foreground against the backdrop of valley and mountains now so coloured that better artists than Raymond Leslie had failed to reproduce them. “What a place to dwell in! You know, Miss Jade, you are a remarkably fortunate woman.”

  “Yes, I am,” she admitted. “A few years ago, when I stood here amid trees and bracken and gazed through tree trunks across the valley to those mountains, I said: ‘This is where I shall build my dream
house.’ Lo-it is built. I’m not old enough yet, however, to forget the days and the nights when my feet ached, and my back felt broken, when I first set up in a guest house. I had only one woman to help me, and I was cook, waitress and manageress all together.”

  “And the secret of success is-personality,” stated Bony.

  “The secret of success is-organisation,” countered Miss Jade.“The study of details so that unnecessary labour is eliminated. Success is not dependent on the appearance of the hostess-it might be in a saloon bar.”

  Bony chuckled. “I stand reproved-or rather I sit reproved. How do you get along with the local people?”

  Miss Jade’s dark eyes opened a fraction.

  “You have been talking to people-to local people?”

  “I have been gossiping,” he admitted. “I think I understand now the remark you made when I was imaginative enough to see us on a far-back station, when you called me Bony and I called you by your Christian name. I regret that I was the unwitting cause of the little unpleasantness at lunch, but I have read many of Bagshott’s articles and really was interested to learn that he lived up here. It would appear that, in the minds of the persons I spoke to about him-as about any public person-that he’s a thoroughly bad character. I wonder how much of itis gossip.”

  “What did they tell you?” Miss Jadeasked, her eyes abruptly hard.

  “Let me tabulate. One, that he was carrying on with a single girl for many years, for a child of eight or nine is said to be their son. Two, that Military Intelligence investigated him on suspicion that he was sending messages to Japan. Three, that he keeps his wife a prisoner and is likely at any moment to kill her and bury her in the garden. Four, that he was mixed up in amurder, or it might have been two or even three murders. And five, well, I can’t remember number five. It couldn’t have beenso lurid as one to four inclusive or I would have remembered it.”

  “Are you being serious?” asked Miss Jade.

  Bony nodded, saying: “Perfectly.”

  Miss Jade lay back in her chair and laughed. Her laughter caused the party above the steps to glance across at her. It reached Fred, who looked towards the veranda. He had completed the cutting of three quarters of the left-hand section of the lawn, and was working near the bottom fence. In that instant Bony heard someone give a shrill whistle at the far end of the house and beyond his vision and Fred stopped his work and raised both hands in vigorous acknowledgement. Then he went on with his work, and Miss Jade, who had apparently not heard the whistle or seen Fred’s answering signal, said, with laughter still in her voice:

  “For goodness sake, Mr. Bonaparte, don’t go round asking people about me.”

  “Oh, indeed!” Bony exclaimed gravely. “Is your character worse than Mr. Bagshott’s?”

  “Probably at least as bad. One has to be more circumspect than when living in a suburb, you know. You needn’t believe all that about Mr. Bagshott. Why, it’s just silly. He’s been living here for several years now. I’ve never heard such things from the nice people living about here. What is the matter?”

  “I’ve just remembered the fifth item about Bagshott. It is said that he catches rabbits and domestic dogs and poisons them to watch them die so that he can put the effects of poisons into his books.”

  “Rubbish!” snapped Miss Jade, and for the first time Bony saw anger in her dark eyes. “I was once at a meeting when Mr. Bagshott spoke, and he gave me the impression that he doesn’t mince his words, and is careless of the impression he makes. Temperamental! Well, so am I sometimes.”

  “I am always temperamental. Tell me, is Bagshott a sociable man?”

  Miss Jade regarded Bony with eyes which were steady.

  “I don’t really know. He doesn’t visit the people I know here.”

  “Have you ever seen him?”

  “Only at that meeting I mentioned I attended.”

  “Forgive me. I forgot that reference.” Bony turned from her to gaze out over the top of the stone balustrade and across the lawn. Fred was standing with his hands on his hips and staring up the slope of the lawn towards the house. “Yes,” he went on, “as in all near-country districts, the gossips are really professionals. The bush people are so different, you know. They seem to have so many more important matters to think about, besides which they are so scattered and therefore warmly human. I wonder what that man is looking at so intently.”

  “He’s wasting the time I’m paying him for,” Miss Jade said, once again the controller of an efficiently run organisation. She rose and Bony rose with her. As they advanced to the balustrade, George started to leave the far corner of the veranda with his service trolley. Then Miss Jade exclaimed:

  “Why, it looks like footprints on the grass!”

  “It certainly does,” agreed the interested Bony. “They begin here near the steps and theyproceed parallel with the path right down to the gate, or where Fred has stopped with the mower. It’s rather extraordinary.”

  Hearing George with the trolley collecting the tea things from their table, Bony turned and called softly to him, and the man, politely interested, came to stand a little behind Miss Jade.

  “What do you make of those marks, George?” Bony asked.

  “I-I don’t know, sir,” replied George. “They look-they look-”

  “To me they look like a man’s boot-marks,” reiterated Bony. “See the way they are spaced here at this end. Are you ill, George?”

  “No, sir. A slight headache, that’s all.”

  The others gathered about them and George withdrew to collect the tea things from the table at which Miss Jade and Bony had been seated. Miss Jade pointed out the strange marks on her beautiful lawn. Everyone agreed that they looked just like a man’s tracks.

  “The grass appears to have been burned straw-white, as though someone had poured acid on it,” remarked Downes.

  “As though someone had walked down there in red-hot metal shoes,” supplemented Sleeman.“Never seen anything like it before.”

  “Must be the Devil walking about,” Downes said. “Now I wonder just how that happened.”

  Miss Jade spoke, and there was anger in her voice.

  “Then why didn’t he walk along the path, which is only three or four feet to the left? Perhaps that casual man knows something about it.”

  She was the first to leave the veranda, going down the steps to the path running parallel with the veranda, and then along the path going down to the wicket gate. The large Mrs. Watkins followed with her husband. After them went Sleeman and Lee. Downes sped a swift glance at George, and Bony looked that way, too, to observe the steward standing by the table, both hands holding the tea utensils, and looking outward over the lawn. Then Downes went down the steps and Bony followed him.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Bagshott in the News

  “FRED, HOW DO those marks come to be there?” asked Miss Jade, her eyes wide and blazing at the unfortunate man. Fred removed his ancient felt hat, sniffed, and regarded the marks with an expression on his face of profound misery. Then he looked again into the dark eyes still concentrated upon him.

  “I don’t know, marm,” he said. “I’ve only just noticed ’em.”

  “Only just noticed them!” echoed Miss Jade. “Why, you have been cutting this section of the lawn all the afternoon. Whatd’youmean- you’ve only just noticed them?”

  It was a difficult question to answer and Fred made no attempt. He gazed sadly down the slope at the marks laid upon the velvety green in almost a straight line. Then, as though relieved of great responsibility, he walked on down behind Bony, who was slowly moving away, his hands behind him, his head bent forward.

  The marks of the boots or shoes were as distinct as though they had been made on soft sand. The size of the footwear which had made the marks was number twelve.

  Each stamp of the boot or shoe was almost perfect, almost, but lacking in several important essentials. Such a mark made on sand would have revealed to Bony peculiarities such as a
reas of greatest pressure and the exact manner in which the person who had made the marks lifted his feet off the ground. Those peculiarities were the vital tell-tales. The grass was not able to reveal the vital peculiarities-it could only register the flat impression of the soles of the boots or shoes.

  Arriving at the edge of the still-uncut portion of the lawn, Bony saw how he had come to miss seeing the marks when walking up the path before lunch. The uncut grass was approximately two inches in length and was lying at various angles from the perpendicular. The “burned” patches could be seen among this uncut grass, but not so clearly as when the grass was cut. Bony could see that the man whose feet had made the marks had gone on down the lawn to the bottom, and then had turned abruptly to reach the path just above the wicket gate.

  Along the inside of the wire fence running above the top of the road bank there was left a strip of some four feet which had never been cut by a mower, and the grass along this strip was high, about nine or ten inches, and very rank and coarse.

  Bony stood on the inside of the wicket gate and regarded the surface of the ramp leading down to the road. It was fairly soft. He saw his own foot-marks made this day. Those left when on his way from the house were overlaid by others, but those made on his return were undamaged right down to the road, indicating that he had been the last to come up the ramp to the gate. He saw the foot-tracks left by Mr. and Mrs. Watkins, by Fred, by Lee and Sleeman, and by people he did not know, and later he learned that the strangers to him had been four people who had called to visit the Watkins couple.

  Miss Jade and her several guests were still standing in a group at the top side of the lawn. Fred was standing aimlessly beside his lawn mower. Downes was mid-way between Fred and himself, walking slowly beside the line of tracks. And slowly Bony began to walk to meet him.

  “Mighty strange,” observed Downes a moment later, when they both returned to the edge of the uncut portion of the lawn.

  “Very,” Bony agreed. “I don’t understand it. Do you?”