The Devil's Steps Read online

  “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 deep hole 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 minutes ago, 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 ’im off, sort of, when Rice came in. Then the bloke saw Rice and Rice recognised ’im, and Rice made a jump for ’im and 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.”

  Chapter Three

  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 made cigarettes, his ears open to the chatter of other guests who were by now suspecting that something was seriously amiss. Some of them were 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?

  Time passed, and then Bisker was coming up from the wicket gate with three detectives. From where he sat Bony could see them just above the coping of the stone balustrade. The party turned to their right at the top of the path, and took the path leading to the end of the house where the main entrance and the reception hall were situated. The hall and office would certainly be in the temporary possession of the police. Most likely they would use the lounge in which to examine every guest.

  Bonaparte experienced a feeling of mental exhilaration. He had reason to feel it. In the first place his case of two days had taken an unexpected and remarkable twist, and, in the second place, he would have to continue to work independently of the police, as he had begun.

  This was by no means the first time he had worked for Colonel Blythe. The first occasion had been in April, 1942, when he had been instrumental in locating the leaders of a spy ring acting for Japan.

  This Grumman business was a kind of aftermath of the German surrender, and had called him, Bonaparte, from Brisbane to Melbourne, and in Melbourne to a house in the best side of Toorak Road. There Colonel Blythe had offered him a drink and cigarettes and begun to talk.

  Had not Colonel Blythe married Colonel Spendor’s daughter, it is doubtful whether Bony would have ever seen Mr. Grumman. Blythe was a little over forty, fair-haired and blue-eyed, cultured and charming. He had had something to do with the British War Office for years before being seconded to Australia for special intelligence work, and the only time he seemed put out was when mention was made of the war-time Australian Intelligence Officers at Army Headquarters.

  It was but four days before this beautiful morning of September 1 that Colonel Spendor, Chief Commissioner of Police, Brisbane, had sent for Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte and gruffly informed him:

  “My son-in-law’s got a job for you, damn and blast him! I wouldn’t let him have you if you were not free for the moment. I’ve obtained priority for you on a plane leaving at two-fifteen. Before going out to the airfield, call in for some letters I want you to hand over to my daughter, will you? I wouldn’t put it past those blasted censors to open anything I posted. And don’t forget to give her my love, and tell her husband that he can have you for only seven days.”

  Then in that quietly furnished room in the house in South Yarra, Bony had presented the letters to Mrs. Blythe, and assured her that Colonel Spendor was very well, as was Mrs. Spendor when he had seen her the previous week. After she had withdrawn, Colonel Blythe got down to work.

  “D’you think the civil ’tecs noticed you as you left the plane?” he asked, and Bony had said he thought he had not been especially noted.

  “Good! Well, old pal, there’s a bird staying at a guest house some thirt
y miles out in the country who goes by the name of Grumman. If I ask Military Intelligence here to run the rule over this Grumman, they will probably send a lance corporal out to see him and to ask him a set of questions written down on a sheet of paper. They’ve done it before, the brainless idiots. And they’d like to know what I know, and wouldn’t begin to function until I had set out on some silly form all that I did know, which would not be much.

  “Listen, we’ll go into the details later, but now here is the outline. Mr. Grumman is General Wilhelm Lode, who, it was reported by the Germans three months before they crashed, was killed in action. He was, and still is, a member of the German OKW, an organisation of military experts which lives for ever, in peace and in war, and through defeat. The public name for the OKW is the German General Staff.

  “When the German General Staff knew that the game was up, it was announced that General Lode had been killed. Other high officers also were alleged to have been killed. Lode’s job, and that of other officers, was to preserve the blueprints and the formulas of the most advanced weapons and scientific results in war-making, including the release of atomic energy, until the time again arrives when the General Staff can begin the blue-printing of another German Army for the third World War.

  “How Lode got to Australia, I don’t know. I met him in 1932, and I saw him five days ago in Collins Street. You are the only man I can trust, Bony. I want you to rub him over, find what is in his luggage, find his associates, find where he has planted the stuff he certainly brought out of Germany. Those plans and formulas are more precious to us than his carcase.”

  Well, that had been the introduction of Bony to Mr. Grumman. He had come to Wideview Chalet to stay for a fortnight. He had met Mr. Grumman, who spoke perfect English and not before that morning, when Mr. Grumman was found dead in the ditch, had he been able to take a peep into his room, where he received a great surprise.

  Now Grumman was dead, and a friend of his named Marcus had called to see him and had departed hurriedly after having killed the local policeman. On top of all that, there was the surprise given him, and awaiting the investigating detectives, in Mr. Grumman’s room. Bonaparte was lost in his thoughts when a pleasant voice close to him said:

  “Not Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, surely?”

  Bony opened his eyes, affected a yawn and looked upwards to see standing just beyond his feet a man dressed in an elegantly cut lounge suit.

  “And you?” he asked.

  The other smiled.

  “I am Sub-Inspector Mason,” he replied. “We have never met, I think. But Superintendent Bolt says he knows you quite well, and he’s rather anxious to renew the acquaintance. He’s in the office here. Care to come along?”

  Bony smiled, and rose not ungracefully to his feet.

  “Lead me to the Grand Inquisitor,” he pleaded. “How’s the old temper?”

  “Fairish,” replied Mason, as they walked along the veranda. “You ever suffered from it?”

  “Oh, no. I have observed it only.”

  On passing through the lounge, Bony observed one of the guests seated at a little table, with two obvious plain-clothes men seated on its opposite side. Several small groups of guests were talking in low tones, some obviously irritated, others merely excited. The body of Constable Rice had been removed from the reception hall. In the office, Superintendent Bolt and two junior officers were seated at Miss Jade’s desk.

  Bolt was a ponderous man, seventeen stone in weight, with not a great deal of superfluous flesh on his enormous frame. The top of his head was distinctly dome-like, a yellowish rock rising above a fringe of grey hair resting on his ears. Small brown eyes lighted when Bony and Mason entered the office, and he rose from his chair with outstretched hand. He moved with the effortless grace of a cat despite his fifty years.

  “So it is actually you!” he said, his voice a purr. “How are you, Bony?”

  “Very well, Super,” Bony replied, taking the hand offered and careful to avoid having his own crushed in the greeting. “Beautiful place, good cooking, good attention.”

  “And no work, eh?”

  “Nothing to speak of. Glad to see you looking so fit.”

  “Thanks. Come over and have a chat.”

  “If—you can spare the time.”

  “Oh, yes, I can always spare time with you,” agreed Bolt, and chuckled. “Meet Dr. Black, our own surgeon. And Inspector Snook. Gentlemen, meet Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte of Queensland.”

  Bony shook hands, noting the long cadaverous face of the police surgeon and the square-cut countenance of the Inspector. He accepted a chair and sat with them, Mason making a fifth.

  “Been staying here long?” Bolt enquired of him.

  “No, only a couple of days,” replied Bony, now engaged in the manufacture of a cigarette. “I came up here for a week of quietness and the proper atmosphere for meditation.”

  “Ah!” breathed the Superintendent. “Meditation.”

  “Not always is meditation a luxury; sometimes it is a necessity,” Bony stated, looking up from his task to survey the others swiftly in turn. “Dr. Black will surely agree with me that physical and mental relaxation are of enormous benefit to men who employ their brain.”

  “Quite agree,” Bolt cut in ahead of the surgeon. “Good yarn for the marines.”

  “The marines!”

  “Yep! Now, my dear old friend, cut out the Justice Darling act of asking what a picture show is, and concentrate. You going to play ball?”

  Bony sighed. He lit the cigarette he had made and which was an obvious offence to Dr. Black. The police officers regarded him steadily. Bony said:

  “Tell me—who is Marcus?”

  Bolt leaned forward and glared.

  “Bony, tell us first—are you going to play ball?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good!”

  “With a proviso,” murmured Bony. “I can play ball with you up to a point, and I will explain just how far I can go because you will not want to spend time unnecessarily. I have been, and still am, interested in the man named Grumman found dead in the water-gutter down beside the road. I came down to Melbourne for a special assignment, having been seconded by my Commissioner to the Army people. I am interested in Grumman’s past activities and in the person or persons who killed him. You will be interested in the persons who killed him, too, but not for quite the same reason that I am interested. I am interested in the man Marcus because he was connected with Grumman. You will be interested in him because he killed Constable Rice. Our interests, therefore, will not clash, or ought not to, and so I am quite willing to cooperate with you in return for your co-operation with me.”

  “Good!” Bolt again exclaimed, this time rubbing the palms of his hands together. “Let’s begin. You were down by the body soon after it was discovered, weren’t you?”

  “Yes. I found the man Bisker and a second man standing on the edge of the gutter just after Bisker had been down into it to see the body which the other man first found. I had a look around the place, examined the road-verge up and down, and then along the top of the bank, and finally the ground along both sides of the wire fence and upward from the little gate.”

  “Did you find anything?” asked the Superintendent, and four pairs of eyes bored into Bony’s now-expressionless face.

  “Very little,” he admitted. “Unfortunately, last night there was a very hard frost which, again unfortunately, was thawed very early this morning by a moist wind coming in from the southwest. I’d like to ask a question here.”

  “Go ahead,” urged Bolt.

  “Doctor—I know how difficult it will be to answer this question. How long do you think Grumman had been dead when you examined the body?”

  The police surgeon frowned.

  “Certainly less than twelve hours and certainly longer than five—going back from 9.54a.m. when I examined the body.”

  “Five!” repeated Bony. “That goes back to five o’clock this morning. Ac
cording to Bisker, who got up this morning at twenty minutes to six, when he left his hut he noticed that the west wind, or rather what was a westerly drift of warm air, had set in. Had set in, remember. Not had just set in when he left his hut.

  “We can accept it as a fact that Grumman left his room, or was carried from his room, before five o’clock and before that westerly warm air reached here so rapidly as to bring about a thaw. He was wearing slippers size eight. He weighed, I should think, about eleven stone. I have found no track made by either one of those slippers, either on the ramp leading from the gate down to the road, or along the edge of the road.

  “From the face of the bank, I am convinced that he did not fall from its top down into the gutter, and I am certain that his body was not dropped into the gutter from the top of the bank. I am also sure that the body was not dropped into the gutter from the edge of the road. It was taken down into the gutter, and there carefully laid in it and the grass and brambles drawn over it to hide it from any chance passer-by.”

  “But the man, Fred, was a chance passer-by,” interjected Inspector Snook.

  “Quite so,” Bony agreed. “He saw parts, or a part, of the body, but we should remember that the body was placed there in the dark, by a person or persons not able to be positively sure they had concealed the body, which, from the position of grass stems and brambles, they had endeavoured to do.

  “These points may appear to you to be unimportant. My task of tracking was made exceedingly difficult by the frost which made the ground iron-hard at the time Grumman’s body was placed in the gutter, and which thawed completely before the body was discovered. However, on the ramp I saw the imprints of a man’s boots, size twelve. This man came up the ramp after I did last evening shortly after eight o’clock, for an imprint of his right boot is partly overlaid on one made by mine, and he went down the ramp when the ground was much more frozen than it was when he walked up. The peculiar thing about this is that during the time I have been here, two days and a night, I have not seen any man wearing a boot size twelve, nor have I seen the track of such a boot. No man among the guests has such a foot, and neither Bisker nor the man who found the body has that size. He is, at the moment, a misplaced object and, in consequence, of interest. A man wearing such a boot would be big enough to carry a man of Grumman’s weight down to the gutter. How did Grumman die?”