The Devil's Steps. Arthur W. Upfield
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wood-stack.
“Yet another little mystery,” murmured Bony, delightedly. “Now what, about that tub, interests Bisker? Either he picked up something on the surface of the earth in the tub, a something I could not see, or he wanted to take something and became too frightened that someone in the reception hall or about the garages might observe him. I must get to know Bisker a little more intimately. Well, here’s me for a wash and dinner. I’m hungry. Must be the air.”
No one but Bisker knew how dry was Bisker. He dared not “put it on” Miss Jade for a snifter. He dared not ask George to get him a drink for which he would have to pay, in case either George or Miss Jade might recall the full bottle of whisky taken to the office with the alleged purpose of reviving Miss Jade. And it was still too early to “sneak” off to the hotel a mile down the road, for dinner had not started and he had dishes to wash. Anyway, why walk a full mile down to the hotel when there was a bottle three parts filled with whisky right there under his hands? He had been a fool to have attempted to retrieve it in daylight. Someone might have seen him.
Reluctantly, Bisker dragged himself away from the tub and ambled in his distinctive gait round to the scullery door. Deciding he would have to wait until he had “cleaned up” after dinner, he planned how he might reduce the after-dinner chores by doing as much before dinner as was possible. In the scullery he found the beginning of the evening’s labours awaiting him, and filling a trough with hot water, he fell to reducing the stack of baking trays and utensils used that late afternoon. When the house gong was struck he was that much forward.
The evening was well advanced when again he left the house, and immediately he was assailed by the temptation to retrieve his bottle of whisky. This was a favourable opportunity. The guests would be going to the dining room, the secretary would be “titivating” herself in her room, and Miss Jade would be hovering about the servers and the kitchen.
Despite the dusk, Bisker chipped at his tobacco plug and loaded his pipe, whilst his eyes searched the neighbourhood for possible enemies. Nothing stirred, not even a cat. He paused casually to strike a match and light his pipe. Still there was no sign of any living thing. Gradually, he worked his way round to the shrub tub, and with a nonchalance he did not feel, he seated himself on the edge of the tub, his body directly above the coveted bottle.
The light suspended from the roof of the entrance porch just failed to reach the tub, but in case someone should come out on the porch and see him, he slid farther round the shrub until it came between him and the door. Then, with his right hand, he began to grope round the shrub to that part of the tub which had become for him an irresistible magnet.
The tips of his fingers had begun to burrow gently into the soft loam when a figure appeared at the corner of the house and slowly approached.
Bisker withdrew his hand as quickly as though it had been bitten by a bull-ant. His body froze into immobility, but he had omitted to put out his pipe from which shreds of burning tobacco were still falling unheeded on his old working clothes.
“Good evening, Bisker!” Bony cheerfully greeted him.
“Ha! Good evenin’, Mr. Bonaparte.” Bisker’s voice betrayed his state of nerves. “Nice night!”
“It certainly is. Has the dinner gong sounded?”
“Five minutes back,” Bisker replied.
“Then I must hurry in. Good night!”
Bisker watched Bony enter the area of porch light and pass into the reception hall. He waited—a full minute. Now was the time. It was almost quite dark. A swift delving, a short rush to his hut and——
Again Bisker’s hand was withdrawn with the previous swiftness. Bony re-appeared on the porch, and unhurriedly came outside to where Bisker sat on the shrub tub.
“Sorry to disturb you,” Bony told him. “I seem to remember having seen you somewhere some time ago, and the thought has stuck in my mind. Are you a native of these parts?”
“What, me!” Bisker exploded. “Me a native of this miserable, fog-cramped, frost-deadened country! Why, I come from west of Cobar where the people are civilized, what there is of ’em, and where there’s plenty of wood to keep a man warm. You’re a grazier, aren’t you, sir?”
“Yes, Bisker. I am interested in Thunder Downs, in Western Queensland. You ever passed through Thunder Downs?”
“That I have,” Bisker answered, now cheerful and memory mastering the desire to get at his bottle. “I’ve come through Thunder Downs with cattle—lemme see, yes, back in ’thirty-seven that was.”
“Then what are you doing down here?” Bony asked him, and knew the answer before Bisker spoke it. Bisker didn’t hesitate.
“I come down to Melbun on a ’oliday, and I went broke. I ’aven’t been anythink else than broke ever since. The booze ’as got me properly.”
“Like to go back to the bush, Bisker? Back where it’s a real man’s life, away back where there isn’t any booze for a man excepting perhaps once a year down in Cobar or Broken Hill?”
There was the silence of hesitation. Then Bisker said:
“I can’t save enough money to get back to a railway terminus. And I once tramped back through ’undreds of miles of farmin’ country and won’t do that never no more.” Bisker grasped at a straw: “I suppose you wouldn’t take me back with you when you went, would you, Mr. Bonaparte?”
“I might,” Bony conceded. “I’ll think it over.”
“Thank you,” Bisker said, earnestly. “You see, once I got away from the drink for two or three months, I’d be all right again.”
“Of course you would. I’ll see what can be done about it, Bisker. Now I must go in to dinner. When do you get yours?”
Bisker slid off the tub and said that he would have to go in for his dinner at once, and thus Bony was satisfied that, whatever it was that interested Bisker in the shrub, it would have now to wait until later.
“Where you been?” demanded Mrs. Parkes of Bisker when he entered the warm kitchen.
“Workin’,” Bisker replied in such a tone that the cook stared. Bisker ambled across to the table where the staff ate. In his mind the prospects of returning to his beloved bush almost totally eclipsed the desire for whisky. He ate his dinner hardly aware of what he ate, for he was a member of a small army of bushmen who live hard, work hard, enjoy life to the full, until they smell whisky or hear a cork being drawn. Thereafter, nothing stops them from drawing their money and hurrying to the nearest township or wayside hotel. And like the male spider, they know clearly the danger of courting the siren.
It was not until he was washing the heavy utensils used for preparing the dinner that his mind returned to the bottle buried in the tub, and when he came to the utensil he was looking for, the last, he whistled expectantly through his teeth.
His work done for the day, he walked out without saying even a good night to the cook. He made his way across the open space in front of the garages and so to his hut, where he lighted his hurricane lamp and lit his own fire on the open hearth.
That done, he left his hut and followed the path to the open space at the edge of which he paused to examine the night-shrouded scene. The house porch was aglow with its light. There were lights in rooms to the left. The roof of the big house supported the dark but star-studded sky. Bisker kicked off his boots which all day had remained unlaced.
In his socks, he edged across the bitumened space before the garages. Nothing alive moved within his restricted vision, and he kept the shrub in its tub between himself and the porch. Without sound he reached the tub, and stood there like a darker shadow for a full minute. It was now ...
Bisker dug his hands into the soft loam, and his fingers came into contact with an object both round and smooth, and then a similar object adjacent to it. His fingers went a little more deeply into the loam, and he pulled up what felt like two fountain pens in a leather pocket