"The Devil_s Steps" - читать интересную книгу автора (Upfield Arthur W.)

Chapter Ten

Bony Resumes His Holiday

TOWARDS THREE O’CLOCK, a car deposited Bony at the driveway to the Chalet, and then proceeded on up the mountain road. The sun was no longer shining, for the sky was almost filled with cloud moving slowly from the west. The continued clarity of the atmosphere, together with the wind-direction, indicated rain before the following morning.

As he had left the Chalet, so he returned. He wore no hat, and the wind ruffled his fine black hair. His clothes had been brushed and pressed by Colonel Blythe’s valet, so that he might have been returning from a stroll, after lunch in Miss Jade’s beautiful dining room. The cut on his cheek-bone although noticeable, was no longer angry in appearance.

Instead of passing up the driveway, Bony followed the road to the ramp leading to the wicket gate. On the bank above the place where the body of Grumman had been found were standing four men, and these Bony assessed as pressmen. At the wicket gate he met Inspector Snook.

“Ah-good afternoon, Inspector!” he said in greeting.“Beautiful scenery-wonderful view.”

“Damn the view!” remarked Inspector Snook. “You just arrived?”

“Only just,” admitted Bony, smiling provocatively.

“Know anything?”

“Only what I learned during a visit to your palatial Headquarters. The Super wasn’t in a healthful frame of mind.”

Snooksregarded Bony with a stony stare.

“Healthful!” he repeated.

“Yes, thatis what I said, my dear fellow. Temper is dangerous to one of Bolt’s physique. Upsets the stomach and brings about ulcers, and ulcers bring about- Well, you know what ulcers bring about. The cause of his annoyance was the clear getaway of friend Marcus. He appears to have the idea that Marcus got away to Melbourne, orTimbuctoo, or some such place, and when I suggested that Marcus might have retired to a house somewhere on this mountain, his annoyance increased.”

“Did you read up Marcus’s history?” enquired Snook.

“Yes. Quite a broth of a boy. Four known murders and about a dozen suspected killings between here and New York and London. Goes in for disguises and what not, and is by no means a poor linguist.”

“And you think he might be still hanging around here?” Snooksaid, a hint of contempt in his voice. “What makes you think that?”

“Intuition,” Bony blandly replied. “Ah! I observe George serving tea to guests on the veranda. You will have to excuse me.”

Inspector Snook scowled at Bony’s back. Intuition! Well, what could you expect from a half-caste promoted to the rank of Detective-Inspector? Must have influential friends to get him up to that rank and send him on such joy-rides for the blinking Army. As for Marcus’s getaway, well, that wasn’t his fault. With five minutes to spare in a mile-a-minute car on ninety-miles-an-hour roads, there were five gateways to freedom for Marcus, and Marcus had got those five minutes.

Having reached the veranda, Bony caught the eye of George and drifted to a quiet corner where he sat in a wickedly sensuous lounge chair and was waited on by the smiling steward.

“Looks like rain, George,” Bony remarked. “Do I observe some new guests?”

“Yes, sir. Several new guests arrived today. Just back from the city?”

“Just back, George. My friends brought me as far as the drive. Plenty of policemen still meandering about.”

“They are apt to do that, sir, after the crime.”

“Naturally,” Bony agreed.

“Another cup of tea, sir?”

“Thank you.”

“I see that you’ve cut your cheek, sir. Rather badly, too,” George said solicitously. “Miss Jade keeps a surgical box, and she could dress the wound, if you wish.”

Bony smiled. He regarded the dark eyes gazing down upon him.

“I might accept your suggestion after dinner,” he said. “I bashed my cheek against a projection in the friend’s car as I was getting out. They put some plaster and stuff on it, but I washed it all off before I left to return home. It looked worse than the cut. I see a guest waiting to catch your attention.”

“Thank you, sir,” George murmured, and wheeled away his serving trolley.

The wind contained a cold finger, so Bony did not long remain on the veranda. He had seen Inspector Snook walk up from the wicket gate, and he had observed the roof of the bus which had stopped below the gates to pick up the pressmen who had gone down to meet it. And now, slowly and pensively, he left the veranda and strolled along the path which would take him to the driveway and the end of the house where the main entrance and garages were situated. He was in time to see Snook and three other plain-clothes men get into a car and leave.

He began to admire Miss Jade’s shrubs, many of which were flowering. Her selection of rhododendrons was excellent. Having crossed the drive to admire these, he came presently to the path leading to Bisker’s hut.

The path was composed of cinders. It was hard and level, but not sufficiently hard to prevent boot tracks being registered on its surface for such ashe to see. There were many marks made by Bisker’s hob-nailed boots number eight. There were the tracks made by another eight boot, worn by a man who had gone towards the hut and then had returned. And there were the impressions of a twelve-sized shoe or boot made previously to the visit of the man wearing the eightsize, for his boot-mark frequently overlaid the impressions of the twelve size.

On either side of the path there was a border of painted-wooden boards, and upon the outside of these boards the ground was cultivated and grew varieties of early-spring flowers planted somewhat widely apart. One of these, a heath, was a miniature hillock of heliotrope.

It grew within a few yards of Bisker’s hut, and near to it the ground bore evidence of recent disturbance.

On either side of the path the ground had been roughly dug, and since the operation had been completed it had rained much and this had tended to level the soil, a dark loam of fine texture. Where Bony had struggled with the gunman, there were patches of ground pressed into a greater degree of levelness and he saw the impressions of toe and heel marks, and several impressions of the abnormal shoe or boot size twelve. They had been made by the same man on the path and down on the ramp leading to the highway.

Here, a little off the path, the impressions made by the large boot or shoe could not be considered as an impression which the wearer would normally make when walking, but the impressions on the path were normally made.

Bony proceeded towards Bisker’s hut, slowly and with the interest of the guest captivated by the sylvan scene of garden and trees and the smoke-blue view beyond. He came to the hut, and, with his hands clasped behind him, often stopped to admire this and that. He circled the building to see his own tracks and those made by the large-size boot or shoe of the gunman, who had pretended to be drunk and who had also pretended that the hut was an abnormal tree trunk.

Having made a complete circle of the hut, Bony wandered towards the back fence of the property, then came back, passing along the front of the trees growing at the rear of the hut near the window. He observed that anyone standing under the trees could easily see into the hut when the blind was up and a lamp was lit inside, and there he found again the tracks of the man who wore twelves in footwear.

A man of the height and weight of that gunman must be deformed in both feet to have to wear so large a boot, and his feet were the only extremities Bony had not noted during the encounter the previous evening.

Had there been two men acting in alliance-the man wearing the large boots and the gunman? There were the impressions on the path made by boots or shoes size eight, and those might have been on the feet of the gunman. It might not have been the gunman with whom Bony had grappled on one side of the path.

This matter was occupying him when Bisker approached direct from the rear of the garages.

“Well, Bisker! How’s the head?” Bony asked the fat little man with the bushy eyebrows and the now-clipped grey moustache. Bisker smiled with his mouth only.

“I’d forgotten all about it, sir,” he replied, and stared at Bony’s cheek wound. “Looks like you copped it worse than I did. I’m glad to see you back. I’ve found a clue.”

“Ah!” murmured Bony, theatrically. Bisker glanced furtively all about them as though he had swiftly caught the melodrama in Bony’s voice.

“Yes, a clue. That gunman, when he was looking for ’is pens in the shrub tub, leaned with his left ’and pressing on the earth, and ’e left the marks of every finger and his thumb and the curve of ’is palm, so’s we can estimate the size and shape of ’is ’and. It’s still there, or was when I took me last bird’s-eye view of it.”

“And that was-at what time?”

“ ’Bouttwo hours back.”

“Might be useful, Bisker, but we cannot very well examine the impression now. Too many people wandering about. Do you know where we could obtain some plaster ofparis?”

“Too right, I do. There’s some in the tool shed.”

“Excellent. Later on, after dinner, I’ll make a cast, although it will be difficult in the dark. You might do it with greater success because you know the exact position of the impression. When you’ve finished for the day, bring the plaster to your hut in readiness. How’s your day gone?”

“Not so bad,” Bisker said, adding after a distinct pause: “One of the detectives grabbed me and made me bring ’im’ere to the hut. He made me show him all I possessed and then he went through the place looking for something. I asked ’imwhat he was ’oping to find and he said he just wanted to look around, sorta.”

“You don’t really know what he was after?”

Bisker shook his head.

“Did you bring him along the path?”

Bisker grinned.

“I did not,” he replied, now smiling with both his face and his eyes. “Him and me first went to the tool shed, where he done a lot of fossicking about, and when we left there, remembering what you ’ad tole me about that path, I sort of edged ’imaway from it so that we came down along the back fence. After ’e had done ’ere, wesorta made a round trip of the garden, going down as far as the front fence and slewing right to the drive and so back.”

“To your knowledge, no one has walked on that path since last night?”

“No one, s’far as I know.”

“Good!”

Bony gazed about him like a countryman in a city. Then he pointed at a shrub a little way back along the path and told Bisker to follow him and to pretend to be talking about it, in case someone was observing them. When they were standing before the shrub he asked:

“Did you by any chance observe the gunman’s feet?”

“Notpartic’ly,” answered Bisker. “After I come to and before I got up I did see that ’e was wearing shoes.”

“What kind of shoes?”

“Kind!”Bisker echoed. “Why, just ordinary shoes, I suppose. Lemme think. Yes, they were ordinary shoes-looked a bit big for a bloke of ’is size-that’s all.”

“Looked big, eh?”persisted Bony. “Try to think back. I estimated that he weighed about ten stone and that he was about five feet ten or eleven in height. Somethinglike my own weight. I wear a size seven in shoes.”

Bisker stared hard at the ground and frowned, but he found himself unable to state definitely that the gunman’s shoes were abnormally large, just a “bit big for a bloke of ’is size.”

“You have no idea what the detective was after?” Bony continued.

“Not a glimmer.”

“At any time yesterday or today, were you asked where you came from before you obtained employment here?”

“Yes, I was. I told ’emthe truth, that I was down from the bush on a bender when I went broke and ’ad to take the job ’ere. Why?”

Smiling, Bony explained what he thought was the reason for the search. He asked when Bisker’s history was gone into, and Bisker said it had been the day before. That morning he had been interrogated about the stations on which he had worked. Grumman had been poisoned with cyanide, and bushmen may with ease purchase both cyanide and strychnine with their groceries, and use it for poisoning foxes and rabbits for the pelts.

Bisker began to chuckle and to say repeatedly, “Wotd’youknow about that?”

“Why the happiness?” mildly asked Bony.

“Well, that’s funny, that is,” chortled Bisker. “If that d. waslookin ’ for poison, all ’e ’ad to do was to ask me if I ’ad any and if I’d bin in a good mood, which I wasn’t, I could ’aveproduced nearly a full bottle ofstrych wot I ’ad in me swag when I come toMelbun, andwot’s now in a tin stowed on a roof beam of the ’ut. I put it up there with me reserve of tobacco and a drop ofwarmin ’ fluid for use when things were very, very dry, sort of. That d. never looked up at the roof.”

“How much is there?”

“Pretty near a full ounce bottle I put into the tin.”

Bony sighed, knowing the extraordinary carelessness ofbushmen with poisons. He said:

“Just as well, Bisker, for you that your hoard does not contain a quantity of cyanide and that cyanide wasn’t found in your possession.”

Bisker wanted to know why, and when Bony told him that Grumman had died from cyanide poisoning, he whistled softly, looked grim for a moment, and then regained his present good humour.

A raindrop fell upon Bony’s bare head. Already the afternoon was waning into early dusk.

“I took your blankets back to your room,” Bisker said. “And I laid ’emout under the quilt like you told me. Nearly got nabbed, too, after I got outer the winder. It was that dark that I nearlycollisioned with Miss Jade, who was making for the scullery door from the top-road gate. And that was after midnight, too.”