The Devil's Steps Read online

  “Well, all’s well that end’s well,” he broke in, the several drinks already presented to him on George’s tray that evening having mellowed him. “Miss Jade! I seek your favour. Will you be so kind as to permit me to call upon George to bring us all a dose of nerve-steadier? Our nerves have been subjected to great strain, and a little bracing fluid would restore them to normal.” Miss Jade’s anger was melting. “In view of the circumstances,” went on Mr. Sleeman, “I’d like to suggest that George wait upon all of us here that we might do honour to Mrs. Parkes. It was the most beautiful shot with a flat-iron I have ever witnessed.”

  Miss Jade bent her head towards Mr. Sleeman, and George walked forward. He accepted the orders without the aid of a memo pad and departed.

  “Dashed good idea of yours, Sleeman,” said Raymond Leslie. “I thought there had been another murder.”

  “Oh! Oh! Oh!” began the girl in the mighty arms of the cook.

  “Stop it, Alice, or I’ll belt you one,” Mrs. Parkes said, kindly. “Now, now, a little drop of brandy will settle you. Be quiet and sit down here with me.”

  Mr. Sleeman began to relate an anecdote about his wife and a pet mouse released by his son. Mr. Downes patiently listened. Miss Jade began ordering Bisker to fumigate the wood-stack the following morning, for that was where the rat must have come from. Bisker stoutly denied the presence of rats in his wood-stack, but he was talked down. Bony crossed to look at the dead animal which, he saw, was a bush rat large even for that species. Then George came with the drinks, and Mr. Sleeman called for three cheers for Mrs. Parkes. One tiny cheer was given, as it became obvious that this frivolity did not have Miss Jade’s approval. After that, the kitchen party broke up.

  In an atmosphere of anticlimax, Bony went back to the lounge for a quarter of an hour, after which he slipped away to the hall and out through the main entrance, ostensibly to take a walk, as the rain had ceased. Bisker was loading his early-moming pipe with “dottles” salvaged from the day’s smoking, when Bony entered his hut.

  “The rain will have ruined the impression made by the man’s hand on the earth in the shrub tub,” he told Bisker. “To make a plaster cast now would be useless. Anyway, I have memorised the impression. Want to go to bed?”

  “No, not for an hour,” Bisker replied.

  “Any whisky left in the bottle?”

  “A little drop I’ve been saving for a night-cap.”

  “All right! I won’t keep you up long. Er—tell me, when you leave here in the mornings, how do you get into the house?”

  Bisker proceeded to load the early-morning pipe with great care, and without looking up from that important task, he answered:

  “Before George turns in, he locks the scullery door from the outside and he puts the key under a brick what lies ’andy. Then ’e goes round the house to the front door what he locks for the night. Of a morning, I gets the key from under the brick and goes in by that scullery door to begin the chores.”

  “Did you see Miss Jade enter the house by the scullery door last night?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Did she use the key left under the brick, d’you know?”

  “No, she didn’t. She musta had a key of ’er own. I ’eard ’er unlock the door, and I ’eard ’er lock it again when she was inside. Me, I was sorta froze against the wood-stack. I could’ve swore she saw me, but she couldn’t ’ave.”

  “Just what time was that?”

  “Well, by me clock ’ere it was two minutes to ’alf-past twelve.”

  “Was the house locked up at that time?”

  “Oh, yes. There wasn’t a light anywhere. I made sure everyone was abunk before I got through your winder with the blankets.”

  Bony regarded Bisker’s fingers and noted with an inward shudder how the mass of “dottles” was being pressed into the pipe bowl to be smoked first thing in the morning.

  “You clean all the boots and shoes, don’t you?” he asked.

  “Yes,” replied Bisker.

  “Dig into your mind and tell me if you have ever cleaned a pair of boots or shoes size twelve.”

  “Size twelve!” repeated Bisker, looking up into Bony’s eyes. “That’s a mighty big boot. I take an eight boot, and you take a seven. Crummy! Size twelve! A bloke with that size in feet must be a very big man or a policeman. I remember cleaning a pair of gent’s shoes size ten—but size twelve! Why Fred, ’e takes a nine, and that’s bigger than the average.”

  “Who is Fred?”

  “’E was the bloke what first found Grumman in the ditch. You know, ’e was with me when you came to stand on the bank yestiddy morning.”

  “What does he do?”

  “Just works about, here and there, cutting wood, digging in gardens. ’E comes ’ere every week to cut the lawn.” Bisker laid aside the early-morning pipe and proceeded to cut chips from his plug for the pipe which had been dangling from his mouth. “Not a bad bloke, Fred. Been a shearer in ‘is time. Me and ’im is sorta cobbers. When either of us ‘as a win, we shares a bottle.”

  “A win?”

  “Yes. A win on an ’orse. Fred’s pretty good at pickin’ ’em. And then sometimes I ‘as a win from a guest. Sometimes ’alf a quid. On two times I’ve been ’anded a full quid tip.”

  “Oh!” Bony rolled and lit a cigarette. Then: “Did George ask you about Grumman’s luggage?”

  Bisker brightened. “Yes,” he replied, “I told ’im I never seen any of it shifted by the police. Course it could ’ave been done without me seeing. I wasn’t outside the main entrance all the time. What’s the strength of that?”

  “Nothing very much, Bisker. The subject came up at dinner. One of the guests said that he happened to see into the room occupied by Grumman and saw that all his luggage had gone, and another guest said the police couldn’t have taken it because he saw all the cars leave. Then Miss Jade said she knew nothing about it. Just a little argument, that was all. When you took Grumman’s cleaned shoes to his bedroom door yesterday morning, about what time was that?”

  “About quarter to seven.”

  “You saw no light beneath his door?”

  “No.”

  “There was nothing unusual about Grumman’s bedroom door?”

  “Didn’t notice, Mr. Bonaparte.”

  “Nothing unusual about his shoes that morning?”

  “They was a bit wet, I remember.” Bisker’s weathered face expanded into a grin. “Yes, I remember that,” he continued, chuckling. “They was the only wet pair that morning for me to clean, the only pair bar one other pair.”

  “Indeed!” Bony said encouragingly, as Bisker halted before further explanation.

  “Yes, that other pair belonged to the old cat,” Bisker proceeded. “I says to meself, Hoh! Hoh! The blinkin’ foreign German was out walking in the grass last night, and the old cat musta been out walkin’ in the wet grass, too. A bit of love, I says. Looks like it, didn’t it?”

  Bony smiled. “I’m assuming,” he said, “that you are referring to Miss Jade. The evening before last was dry and frosty. I was out for a walk after dinner, but I kept to road and paths. My shoes were not wet.”

  “That’s right. Your shoes weren’t wet at all. No one else’s was either, bar them two.”

  “Have you ever noticed Miss Jade returning to the house very late at night before last night?”

  Bisker shook his head.

  “H’m!” murmured Bony. “Interesting. Take particular note of Miss Jade’s shoes tomorrow morning. Note if they are the same shoes that you cleaned this morning.”

  “All right. D’you think Miss Jade was in at Grumman’s murder?”

  “Bisker, don’t be a fool,” Bony said, sharply. “If you are to continue to be an offsider to me, you’ll never ask such a stupid question again, or ask any questions. You’ll just stay silent about everything, and do just what I ask you to do, and when I ask it. Clear?”

  Bisker nodded.

  “Good!” Bony said briskly. “Now I want
you to do a job for me. I suppose you know every room and cupboard in the house?”

  “That’s so, Mr. Bonaparte.”

  “Well, d’you think you could draw a plan of the inside of the house, showing every room and cupboard and storeroom?”

  “Yes, I reckon I could.”

  “Excellent. I’ve brought paper and pencils with me. You do it now. Take your time, and if you make a bloomer, begin again. There is plenty of paper.”

  Bisker fell to work, his pipe forgotten, the end of the pencils being chewed to splinters one after the other. Bony sat silently watching him. It was raining again, pattering on the iron roof low above their heads.

  Chapter Fourteen

  An Item of Gossip

  FOUR DAYS passed and Bony gained precisely nothing other than a pound or two in weight. It seemed that neither did the police gain anything during those four days, for on the fifth day when Bony visited Superintendent Bolt at Headquarters he was told that nothing was known of the whereabouts of Marcus, and that Grumman’s luggage had not been traced.

  “Our loved friend will have got out of the State by this time,” growled Bolt. “Probably travelled quite openly by air or rail, looking like anything but Alexander Croft, alias this and that.”

  “Mind if I have another glance through his record?” asked Bony.

  “Of course not. Want to look for anything special?”

  “Yes. I’d like to examine your pictures of him. Kirby, you know, Colonel Blythe’s assistant, suggested that Scotland Yard might have photographs of Croft, and the Colonel cabled to find out. The London crowd replied that they had photos of Marcus, and were air-mailing copies.”

  Bony fell to tapping his teeth with the pencil he had used to write a memo. Then:

  “When I was last here I saw three pictures of Marcus. They were taken eleven years ago, I understand, when Marcus was imprisoned for manslaughter. What Scotland Yard pinned to him, I don’t know, and that is of small importance to us compared with the fact that they also have photographs of him. Now, with their photographs added to those we have here, do you think your experts could build with reasonable accuracy a mould from which a cast could be produced of the head of Marcus?”

  “They could do that all right, but with what degree of accuracy, I don’t know,” replied Bolt. “Why do you suggest it?”

  “Well, you see a man can disguise his features so effectively as to pass unrecognised by his own wife, or the cleverest policemen, but even friend Marcus would not think to disguise the shape of his head. Profile pictures do give the shape of the head, and I remember that you have one of the rear of Marcus’s head, but a near-exact of his head in plaster of paris would enable us to memorise his head-shape, and from that someone might get under the very best disguise.”

  “H’m!” Bolt regarded Bony with his piercing small brown eyes. “Might be worth doing. Wish I had your confidence that Marcus is still in the State. We don’t think so now. In the first place, there was sufficient time for him to get past the roadblocks before they were fixed, and in the second place, his mastery of disguise has proved such a winner not only in Australia but in Europe and in America.”

  Bolt, watching Bony roll a cigarette, decided that he had never seen a man manufacture worse. He had many crowded hours ahead, but notwithstanding, he patiently waited for his visitor and colleague to finish making the cigarette and light it. Aware of Bony’s impatience of regulations and legalities, an impatience with which he was securely sympathetic, he was able to appreciate Bony’s peculiar gifts and to value them as an addition to the orthodox and modern methods of crime detection. The huge Superintendent was, as he had always been, anxious to learn.

  “There is something else which a man forgets to disguise,” Bony said, softly blowing smoke in a spear over the conical top of Bolt’s cranium. “The something else is his feet and the way he walks. No two men walk alike, and because I am able to read man-tracks as easily as you read a report, I could teach others to read. In the long ago, I put a suggestion to my Chief that in addition to recording a man’s fingerprints, a record should be made of his footprints. I suggested that all convicted persons, and, in some cases, suspected persons, should be made to walk in boots or shoes over a new cement block, and then made to walk over that block in their bare feet. The cement should bear the imprints of at least six steps, and the impressions would then be photographed for the record. The graduate from my school of tracking would be able not only to follow tracks unobserved by the ordinary detective, but also he would be able to recognise the tracks made by any person whose tracks had been recorded. If I had ever observed the tracks of friend Marcus, I would recognise them now and anywhere, so that disguise would be ineffective to me.”

  “Good idea, I think,” Bolt said, slowly.

  “Sound sense,” Bony stated, and then smiled: “But you know what any Government Department is like.”

  “Ya,” growled Bolt. “And I know particularly well what Australian Government Departmental heads are like. The only way you could get that school of yours started was to have gone abroad and called yourself Spiffoski, and then the Police Department of every State would have adopted the scheme saying what a great thing it would be in crime detection.”

  Bony’s eyes opened wide and then half closed in laughter.

  “Spiffoski!” he repeated, throatily. “Bony Spiffoski! I’ll have to get the Russian for Bony. Ah—Boniski Spiffoski! When I go back to Brisbane, I’ll ring through to the Chiefs secretary and say: ‘Morning, Lowther. Tell the Colonel that Inspector Boniski Spiffoski has reported for duty this morning.’ It’ll sound good. And I’ll be in the clerks’ room directly below the old boy’s office, and I’ll be able to hear him bouncing about in his chair and demanding Lowther to tell him who the hell this and that. But then, it wouldn’t work. Lowther wouldn’t have the courage. Well, I’ll get along to your records room, Super.” He rose, still smiling. “And give consideration to the idea of making a bust of Marcus’s head. I’ll ask Colonel Blythe to send along the photos from Scotland Yard.”

  Also on his feet, Bolt said they “would give it a go.” He accompanied Bony to the door, smiled broadly and shook hands, then passed back to his desk to give orders to the Records Branch to serve Inspector Bonaparte. When Inspector Snook entered a few minutes later, Superintendent Bolt did not mention Bony’s scheme for the recording of footprints.

  It was a Friday, and it was half-past five when Bony emerged from Police Headquarters in Russell Street, coming out through a small door into a back street. There he paused to light one of his cigarettes and to take stock of all persons in view. There were fewer than a dozen, and there had been fewer still when he had entered the great building through that same innocuous doorway. Before he reached Swanston Street via Spring and Flinders streets, he was reasonably confident that he had not been followed either going to or coming from Headquarters.

  He spent half an hour in a tea-shop, and then became a unit of the river of humanity flowing towards the one railway station. The speed of the stream was that of a fast walk, and the few people who battled against it in the opposite direction were buffeted and jostled. Bony was halted at the Flinders Street intersection, a unit of the river temporarily dammed, a dam which appeared about to burst all restraint when the traffic lights showed green and the traffic policemen beckoned.

  To Bony, the experience held exhilaration. He was swept across the street, up the steps of the station entrance, across the great hall and through the barriers, a unit of a river which flowed in flood for more than an hour. Whilst waiting on the platform for his train to Manton, he watched the river pouring down the ramp and flowing up the sub-ways to be halted for a space thick against the edges of platforms. Trains came in and the river flowed into them. They whirred out filled to capacity, taking the “edging” with them, and immediately the human stream would once more grow thick along the platform edge, waiting to be poured into the next train. Brisbane had nothing to show like this.

&nb
sp; It took his train just short of an hour to reach Manton. When he arrived at the waiting bus it was almost full and he got a seat at the front end just in time to avoid having to stand. The seating was arranged along the sides and at the back, and he had for neighbours a man on his left hand and an office girl on his right.

  At the foot of Mount Chalmers, a little more than halfway to Wideview Chalet, the bus was barely half filled, and the girl on Bony’s right who had been talking to another girl mentioned softly the name of Clarence B. Bagshott. That name brought Bony from a bout of meditation, and he came presently to understand that the author of mystery novels was also travelling in the bus.

  A little further along the road, his neighbour’s friend alighted, and after a little period, he said in a whisper:

  “Am I right in thinking that Bagshott, the author, is in this bus?”

  The girl nodded, and regarded him sharply. Bony smiled.

  “Please forgive me for speaking to you,” he pleaded. “You see, I have read several of Bagshott’s books, and I am curious to see what he is like.”

  When she spoke again, her lips barely moved.

  “That’s him in the far corner,” she said.

  The interior lighting was good—for a bus—and with interest he studied this man who had been reported to him via Bisker, via Mrs. Parkes, as addicted to experimenting on rabbits with poison, that the data obtained might be put into his crime books.

  Bony felt disappointed. Never before had he consciously seen an author in the flesh, and he had somehow built up in his mind that authors were a particular species of the race, a species not quite like poets and not quite like artists. He had thought to see in Bagshott a man with massive brow, large and staring eyes, a loud and penetrating voice, and distinctive clothes.

  Clarence B. Bagshott’s appearance was disappointingly ordinary. He was wearing a raincoat over a navy-blue suit. His hat was lying on his knees, so that Bony was able to study his face. His brow was low and narrow, but the back of his head was exceptionally wide. His eyes were constantly alert, and when he smiled he seemed human enough. Even whilst Bony was unostentatiously observing him, he lifted his hat and crossed his legs, and it was then that Bony noticed his shoes. They were exceptionally large—the only oddity in all his make-up.