The Devil's Steps. Arthur W. UpfieldЧитать онлайн книгу.
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 co-operate 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 9.54 a.m. when I examined the body.”
“Five!” repeated Bony. “That goes back to five o’clock this morning. According 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