The Devil's Steps Read online

  “Back!” Downes snapped. “Into that corner or I’ll snuff you out like candles.”

  The threat backed by a pistol was less frightening than the man’s eyes and affected the two women in different ways. Miss Jade’s growing feeling of despair was replaced by a feeling of mounting anger, a feeling even inexplicable to herself. In contrast, Mrs. Parkes’s anger swiftly subsided as the heat of her brain was replaced by a coldness she often had experienced when her husband required correction.

  “Back into that corner,” shouted Downes. “I’m giving no chances.”

  Someone was banging on the door. Beyond it they could hear the voices of many men. By some freak of acoustics, or by reason of their mental excitement, neither woman had heard the firing on the veranda, and this sudden dreadful threat of death came upon them with terrific force. Miss Jade found herself wanting to scream, and yet realised she was incapable of screaming. She remembered seeing a pair of flame-lit eyes, and the crumpling body of Constable Rice. The hardness of the wall at her back was like a giant hand holding her steady whilst she was about to be killed. She did not see Mrs. Parkes, but she felt the woman at her side.

  The door withstood a fearful shock. Again came the shock against it. Downes fired through the door—once. Yet again the door was shaken by some object without. This time there was the sound of splintering wood. And now Downes waited, a pistol in both hands, and it was now that he made his fatal mistake.

  No great man can avoid making a mistake now and then. The greater the man, the sillier the mistakes he makes. Marcus was a great man in his sphere of activity, and yet he made a mistake of such enormity that his career ended on a note of farce. The mistake he made would never have been committed even by Bisker, and for him there was no excuse, for he had seen with both eyes wide open Mrs. Parkes kill a running rat with a flat-iron.

  He actually turned his back on Mrs. Parkes.

  There was only one missile handy to that woman’s great hands, and that was the secretary’s portable typewriter. This machine was a little too large for the normal hand to grasp and the normal arm to throw, but the hand that did grasp it was not ordinary, and the arm attached to the hand was as large below the elbow as is the leg of the average man above the knee, and much harder with muscle.

  The machine struck Marcus on the back of his head and he went to the carpet with the terrible abruptness with which Constable Rice had fallen. With astonishing agility, Mrs. Parkes picked up the typewriter, held it up at arm’s length as she stood over one of the world’s most dangerous men, and over her wide face there hovered a tiny smile as though she were willing poor Marcus to sit up and beg for another jolt.

  Miss Jade began to laugh hysterically. The door was burst inward. Policemen appeared at the window. Bolt and Snook and Mason almost fell in through the splintered door. Bony came in after them. They saw Mrs. Parkes calmly and contemptuously drop the typewriter onto the small of Marcus’s back, and then turn and take the over-wrought Miss Jade into her arms and press the dark head against her enormous bosom. They heard her say:

  “There, there, dearie! Now don’t you take on so. It’s all right! When I throws things I throws ’em.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  The Rebel Goes Fishing

  “YOU WILL be interested to know, Colonel, that Superintendent Bolt’s friend, known locally by the name of Marcus, is now recovering nicely from the impact of a typewriter. It was not a large machine. You will remember the story of Mrs. Parkes.”

  “Wonderful woman,” breathed Colonel Blythe. It was the fourth day after Mrs. Parkes had thrown the typewriter, and Bony was making a farewell visit. He went on:

  “It appears that Marcus was very friendly with the American Grumman, and having read the first statement made by Mick the Tickler, you will recall that the American Grumman changed places with General Lode, and was taken back, it is assumed, to Germany.

  “Marcus was unaware of all this, and when he heard that an American named Grumman was staying at Wideview Chalet, he naturally desired to call on him. Firstly, however, as he was staying with his friend Jackson on Mount Chalmers, he contacted ex-General Lode at the Chalet by telephone. And when Lode could not remember Grumman’s friend Marcus he endeavoured to put Marcus off but Marcus isn’t the kind of man to be put off.

  “Ridge House, where he was staying with his friend, Jackson, is only two miles down the highway from the Chalet, and being reasonably able to assume that he wouldn’t meet a policeman, he didn’t trouble to disguise himself in addition to the removal of a genuine moustache—removed several weeks previously.

  “Under the circumstances which, although rare, are not fantastic, no one noted the number of his friend’s car when Marcus was driven to the Chalet. That there was no one outside the house during Marcus’s visit is not extraordinary, considering the time of the visit and that Bisker the yardman was inside the office with Miss Jade waiting for the local policeman. After leaving the Chalet, Marcus crouched down on the floor of the car until Jackson stopped it outside his house. There Marcus left the car and Jackson drove on down to the city and his office. He must have just got through before the road-block was set up.

  “Marcus then built himself into the personality of Downes. He went by bus to the city, where he telephoned to Miss Jade for accommodation, returning to the Chalet per bus. He believed that nowhere would he be safer, and also he would work to learn what had happened to his pal, Grumman, and why.”

  “Pretty cool customer,” interjected the Colonel.

  “Oh, yes, he’s all that,” Bony agreed. “Get Bolt to let you read his record. Coming to believe that George Banks knew what had happened to Grumman’s luggage, and, therefore, to Grumman himself, Marcus determined to ascertain from the steward what he did know. He assigned that task to his friend, Jackson.

  “Jackson and two accomplices picked up George shortly after he had parted from his brother, Mick the Tickler, and they took the steward to Jackson’s factory, where they proceeded to extract from their victim not only what had become of Grumman’s luggage but also why and how Grumman was killed. Having then shot him, they disposed of his body, as you know.

  “A point of interest is that Banks said nothing to them about his hiding of the fountain pens in the shrub tub, and what they contained. The pens were found on Jackson when they arrested him, and are now in my possession. I think a lot of them.

  “Bolt and his crowd worked fast and well, following their raid on Jackson’s house on Mount Chalmers. What I have related to you is what the Victorian Police have built up with evidence and statements obtained from Jackson and his accomplices. Those statements fill in the blanks in that made by Mick the Tickler and Bolt now has the story clear-cut.

  “The brothers planned to put cyanide in the water carafe in Grumman’s room, and then to remove the body and the luggage to make it appear that Grumman had ‘flitted’ to avoid paying his bill. Mick was to steal a truck which habitually was left outside the gate of a house tenanted by a wood carter. This place was two miles up the highway, and the truck was so parked that all Mick had to do was to release the hand-brake and steer the vehicle down the road, without the engine running, all the way to the Chalet. Then, having placed on the truck the body and the luggage, the vehicle could be steered for three more miles down the mountain road without having to use the engine. Here they would arrive at a place where luggage and body could be safely hidden perhaps for months in a natural hole several hundred yards down the slope from the highway.

  “Having entered Grumman’s room and having found the pens, Mick set off for the truck, and George, wearing a pair of Bagshott’s boots, carried the body down to the highway and waited for the truck to arrive. It did not arrive, for the simple reason that the wood carter had accidently damaged a wheel the day before. The truck had been towed to his house, and he had removed the wheel and sent it away for repairs.

  “They then decided to hide Grumman’s body in the ditch, and take it away the following night,
but they had to work in the dark and their efforts to conceal the body were not successful. The luggage they carried through the house and ‘buried it’ in the corner of a lumber room behind a stack of Miss Jade’s unwanted furniture.

  “That, Colonel, was a very neat piece of work,” Bony said. “Just think. Amid a houseful of sleeping guests and others, they carried heavy steamer trunks along passages and shifted stacked furniture without awakening anyone. Their planning was good, we must admit. They went to the length of wearing a pair of Bagshott’s shoes because of their abnormal size, just in case the police should be interested in the departure of Grumman, but they had not taken into consideration the accident to the wheel of that truck.

  “I think that covers everything, bar the bone I have to pick with you. I stipulated with Bolt that I was to be left free to investigate in and about Wideview Chalet, but Bolt went so far in breaking the agreement as to place a policeman named Tully inside the Chalet on the excuse that he was to protect me from the persons who had killed George Banks and who, it was thought, would find out that I had taken the films from the fountain pens. The result was that Tully had been severely wounded. And then you did not tell me that you had already sent a man to the Chalet before I came down from Brisbane, so that not only was he severely wounded by Marcus during the uproar on the front veranda, but I have been put to a lot of inconvenience and have had my time wasted unnecessarily.”

  “My dear man, what the devil are you talking about?” Blythe asked.

  “I am referring to Major Sleeman of Military Intelligence, assigned by Military Intelligence to investigate Grumman. Major Sleeman was a guest at Wideview Chalet when I arrived there.”

  Colonel Blythe waved his hand in mock despair. Then he pressed a bell button, summoning Captain Kirby.

  “Kirby, do you know anything of a Major Sleeman staying up at Wideview Chalet?” he asked the ex-Scotland Yard man who entered.

  “No, sir.”

  “I thought not.” Blythe rose to his feet, a very angry man. To Bony, he said, witheringly: “If you were to gather into one place all the country’s village idiots, and then compare them with these alleged Intelligence Officers, you would find the village idiots a thousand per cent more intelligent.”

  ***

  “I am so sorry that your stay here has been disturbed by the extraordinary things that have happened,” Miss Jade said earnestly to Bony. “I hope you will come again sometime.”

  “Thank you, Miss Jade. I hope to come again, and to bring my wife with me. My stay here has been delightful and it is with genuine regret that I have to return to Brisbane. I am going to let you into a little secret. Actually, I am a Detective-Inspector on a busman’s holiday.”

  Miss Jade’s brows rose high and she exclaimed:

  “Mr. Bonaparte—are you, indeed!”

  “Yes, that is so, and unbeknown to you, I have used a little influence to keep your name out of what is bound to follow, what with inquests and trials. Mr. Sleeman is an officer of the Military Intelligence, who were interested in Mr. Grumman, and he found out that very late at night you visit at a house up along the higher road. It has devolved upon me to ascertain from you just why you visit that house so late at night.”

  “But—but that hasn’t anything to do with Mr. Grumman,” expostulated Miss Jade, a flash of fear entering and leaving her eyes.

  “Possibly not. Personally, I don’t think your visits to that house do have anything to do with the Grumman case, but Mr. Sleeman does, and I have so engineered it that my word for it will be sufficient to stop any future enquiry. You see, the Grumman case goes very much deeper than his murder.”

  Miss Jade sank back farther into her chair in the lounge of the Chalet and regarded the dark face and the dark sympathetic eyes. Like all women who came to know this gentle, almost wistful man, she discovered that she could trust him. She wanted, quite naturally, to put the events of the past few days far behind her, and to get along with her peaceful business of running a guest house high up on this peaceful mountain. She asked Bony a strange question:

  “How old do you think I am?”

  “Thirty-four, or perhaps-five,” he ventured.

  “I am forty-one,” she said. “I have never been married, but when I was twenty-five, I had a baby girl.” Miss Jade spoke softly and no longer was looking at him.” Her father didn’t refuse to marry me, or desert me, or anything like that. Everything was arranged for the wedding. But, you see, the day before we were to be married, he was killed in a motor accident.

  “When the child was five she had infantile paralysis and she has never recovered despite all that has been done for her. That was before I started a guest house in St. Kilda, and I rented a house and furnished it with the things my husband-to-be and I had saved for and bought. I got a woman to live there and look after the child, who is also not quite normal. When I came up here and built this place, and was warned even then about the scandal-mongers, I still wanted my daughter near, and so I obtained that house on the upper road, and brought up the furniture. Some of it I had to store here. I’ll always keep it just because it was bought by the man I loved and the father of my unfortunate daughter. That’s all, Mr. Bonaparte. There’s nothing else in it but that. I have had to be so careful about going there to prevent people finding out.”

  For a while there was silence between them. Then Bony said, and he placed his hand on her wrist:

  “Your secret shall be kept. And with regard to your motive for keeping the matter secret, I fancy that Clarence B. Bag-shott would fully concur.”

  “Thank you, Bony.”

  He beamed. She realised her error and bit her nether lip.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry, Mr. Bonaparte!” she exclaimed. “I didn’t—”

  “But why not? Everyone calls me Bony—from my Chief down to my youngest son. There comes a time in all our lives, you know, when we need a friend, and you can regard me as such. I understand that you are not intending to accept any guests till after the summer. In fact, I have to thank you for not turning me out. You ought to consider a holiday. Take a trip up to Brisbane and come and stay with my wife. The spring up there is very lovely. I’ll get her to drop you a little note. We live very quietly; nothing so grand as this, but our hearts, I am glad to say, are in the right places. Ah—that will be Clarence B. Bagshott.”

  They rose at the sound of a motor horn being worked like the Morse Code. He held out his hand and she took it, regarding him with eyes that were misty. He smiled at her, and she did her best to smile back at him. Then he bowed to her, walked to the french window and bowed to her again, and she said:

  “Au revoir, Bony! And thank you—oh, so much.”

  He left the veranda and walked down the path skirting the Devil’s Steps. Cloud fog swirled about him. Halfway down he turned to wave back to Miss Jade and to see her answering wave. At the wicket gate he could no longer see her.

  Bisker stood beside a car at the foot of the drive.

  “All your things are stowed away, Mr. Bonaparte,” Bisker told him.

  “Thank you, Bisker, and good-bye. When you really want to leave Miss Jade, and I think you would be foolish ever to do so, you have only to write to Windee Station and the owner will send you down your fares.”

  He gripped Bisker’s grimy hand and got into the car beside Clarence B. Bagshott, who said:

  “Settle down, settle down. Friend of yours in the back.”

  Bony turned and looked behind—to see Colonel Blythe. Blythe was dressed in very old clothes and on his head was a disgracefully shabby cloth cap.

  “Well, I never!” Bony exclaimed, rare astonishment plain in his eyes.

  Blythe chuckled.

  “Secret Service, me!” he said. “Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte declined to return to Brisbane by air because, so he said, air travel makes him sick. Despite Colonel Spendor’s ramping and roaring, little Bony planned with Bagshott to travel back to Brisbane by car, and the car was to break down at Bermagui for th
ree or four days, while little Bony and Bagshott went off tuna fishing, as the swordies are not about at this time of the year. And so, as Colonel Blythe was instrumental, in the company of the said Napoleon Bonaparte, in obtaining for the British Government plans and formulas of priceless worth, the said Colonel Blythe decided to have a few days’ tuna fishing. Drive on, Clarence B.”

  Bagshott broke into delighted laughter. The car rushed into unlawful speed down the fog-masked highway.

  “This is going to be a real bucks’ party,” he shouted. “Do we stop at the first pub?”