The Devil's Steps. Arthur W. Upfield
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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 N 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 thirty 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