The Devil's Steps. Arthur W. Upfield
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Miss Jade was no longer on the veranda. Bisker dropped his broom and ambled down the path to meet the social outcast. He knew him.
“Hey, Fred!” he called, when he was twenty feet away from the intruder. “Don’t you know that none of the slaves can use that there gate to come in?”
The intruder was tall, thin and bony. His blue eyes watered. The tip of his nose suspended a water drop. He said, with the unruffled calm of the man who will not be hurried:
“Come on down. I’ve got something to show you.”
He turned about and went on down to the gate. Bisker paused, glanced back to see if Miss Jade was watching them, and followed. When hard on Fred’s heels, he said, hopefully:
“Got a bottle?”
“Better still,” Fred answered without turning about. “Just a bit of a surprise for you. You and me are gonna be famous.”
“I don’t wanna be famous,” asserted Bisker. “If you’ve brought me all the way down here not to crack a bottle, you ain’t no friend of mine any more. A cold mornin’ like this, too. And that old cat will be starin’ at me with ’er black eyes an’ all and will be wantin’ to know this and that and who the hell you are, and all the ruddy rest.”
On arriving at the wicket gate, it could be seen that a ramp had been cut in the red bank skirting the top side of the highway. Fred and Bisker passed through the gate, down the ramp and so to the macadamised road where they were out of sight of anyone standing on the veranda. Fred stopped, turned and pointed a finger accusingly at Bisker.
“Where were you last night?” he asked.
“In bed. Where d’you think I was?”
“Where was you before you went to bed?”
“Where——I was drinking whisky with you in me ’ut as you well know,” indignantly replied Bisker.
“You’re lucky,” he was informed. “You ever seen a dead man?”
“’Undreds. Why?”
“I’ve found a dead ’un.”
“You have? Where?”
“You’re that close to ’im that you’re all ’ot.”
“You don’t say.”
“I do say. Come on and I’ll show you.”
Fred led Bisker along the road bordering the storm-water gutter dug deep against the foot of the bank. He led on down the road from the little bridge at the foot of the ramp which crossed the gutter. The gutter was almost hidden by the briars and winter weeds. When he stopped, he said:
“I only just caught sight of ’im as I was walking along ’ere on my way to a job. Look!”
He pointed into the gutter. Bisker stood quite still and stared downward into the gutter with eyes unusually large. First he saw, beneath lines of vivid green, a patch of scarlet. Then he saw, also beneath lines of vivid green, part of a man’s face. He bent his body forward, resting his hands upon his bent knees, and stared still harder.
“That’s one of our guests,” he said slowly. “A bloke named Grumman. Looks like ’e’s dead.”
“Too right!” supplemented Fred. “You take a closer bird’s-eye view of ’im.”
Bisker straightened himself and regarded Fred as though it had been suggested that he step off a cliff a hundred feet high. Then he knelt at the edge of the gutter and lowered himself down into it. With his arms, he parted the tangle of brambles and weeds above the figure of the man dressed in a grey dressing gown and with red leather slippers on his feet. Bisker could tell if a man was dead, having seen dead men. He rearranged the covering of vegetation over the body, and then regained the edge of the road.
Fred regarded Bisker with an expression of sternness in his watery eyes. Bisker looked up and was about to speak when, from above them, a voice said:
“What is going on down there?”
Both men stared guiltily and looked upwards to see a slight and well-dressed man standing on the lip of the road bank. Bisker said:
“Morning Mr. Bonaparte. Better come down an’ take a bird’s-eye view of a corpse we’ve found.”
“Did you say a corpse?” asked Mr. Bonaparte.
“That’s right,” affirmed Fred.
“Then I will join you.”
In less than ten seconds this guest at Wideview Chalet stood with Bisker and Fred on the edge of the road just above the body.
“Have either of you men been down there in the gutter?” asked Mr. Bonaparte.
“We both ’ave,” replied Bisker. “Fred ’ere ’e found ’im and brought me down from me work.”
“Ah—pity. You are quite sure he is dead?”
“Too right!”
“Do you know who it is?”
“Mr. Grumman,” answered Bisker.
“Mr. Grumman, eh! Oh! Bring me a stick about five feet in length.”
Fred found a branch on the lower side of the road and snapped off a stick of the required length. With its point, Mr. Bonaparte moved aside the intervening brambles so that he could see clearly the dead man’s face and the clothes he was wearing. Then with the stick he pushed and pulled the vegetation back to hide the body.
Chapter Two
Bisker’s Unusual Morning
Miss Jade was taking breakfast in a corner of the dining room. The dining room at Wideview Chalet was Miss Jade’s pride, for she had designed it with the purpose of making as much as possible of the magnificent view. Across the entire front were wide panes of glass so that guests whilst eating might admire one of the finest views in all the State of Victoria.
The maid who brought Miss Jade’s bacon and eggs said to her:
“Bisker wants to see you, marm.”
“Bisker wants to see me?” Miss Jade exclaimed. “Did you say that Bisker wants to see me?”
“Yes, marm,” replied the maid, adding pertly: “That is what I said, marm.”
“Tell Bisker that I am breakfasting.”
The girl departed silently over the thick pile. Miss Jade’s finely pencilled brows drew a fraction closer together. There appeared between them two short vertical lines, lines which had caused Miss Jade a good deal of concern, and which she could vanquish only by keeping her brows raised. She heard the maid’s voice from beyond the dining room’s well-oiled swing doors, and almost choked at the sight of Bisker himself advancing towards her table.
“Bisker!” Miss Jade almost shouted.
Bisker continued to advance, to advance in defiance of Miss Jade’s terrible eyes which ordinarily would have petrified him into immobility. He was smiling faintly, a softly sardonic smile, and when he arrived at her table twiddling his old felt hat in his grubby hands, he said:
“You was asking after Mr. Grumman, marm.”
“How dare you come here, Bisker!” cried Miss Jade.
“I came to give you a bit of news about Mr. Grumman, marm,” Bisker persisted, the sardonic smile lingering in his eyes. “It isn’t the sorta news I thought you’d want the guests to know just yet.”
Bisker waited. He had news to impart and it was not going to lose anything in the telling. Miss Jade regarded him icily. To her this was a new Bisker.
“Well what have you to say to me about Mr. Grumman?” she asked.
“He’s