52 Biggles In Australia

by Captain W E Johns

  Ì'd say the last,' replied Biggies. 'I imagine the gulls would soon make short work of a body, human or otherwise. Besides, when the storm was actually on, wind and waves would have broken up a skeleton had it been lying here then.'

  They found more skeletons. Aside from these grisly souvenirs of disaster the search went on for an hour or more without producing anything of real interest. There were one or two magazines and scraps of paper but they had been reduced to pulp. Ginger found the stiff covers of a document file, but any papers that it had contained were missing. But a single word, stamped with a rubber stamp on the front, was significant. It was Vertraulich.

  'Confidential,' translated Biggles. 'Evidently a confidential file. Pity the contents have gone. Anyway, it tells us that a German ship, carrying secret papers, was wrecked here, or near here.'

  'That list of addresses I picked up could have come from that file,' said Ginger. 'The size is the same.'

  'Could be,' conceded Biggles. 'A file is only used normally to hold several papers, so I suspect that sheet of addresses wasn't the only one.

  I noticed that of the addresses shown there wasn't one in Sydney or Melbourne. It seems hardly likely that places of that size would be omitted from a complete list, from which I conclude they occurred on pages other than the one we have. But we'll talk about that later. I think we can take it that von Stalhein's story of being shipwrecked was substantially true. But we assumed that already. His party wouldn't have put to sea in an open boat as a matter of choice. It's queer there's nothing with a name on. I have a feeling that anything of that nature was deliberately destroyed. A wooden object, or a cork lifebelt, could easily have been burnt.

  We've seen the marks of at least one good bonfire. What's this thing?'

  A handle stuck up at an angle from the sand. He took hold of it and pulled. The object to which it was attached emerged. He shook the sand from it, and after a brief inspection the face that he turned to Ginger wore a curious smile. 'Now we're getting somewhere,'

  he said softly. 'No lugger would be likely to carry that.'

  'A Geiger Counter,' breathed Ginger.

  'It looks as if von Stalhein may have had some scientists with him; but that isn't to say they were interested in fish. At first sight it looks as if we may have discovered the purpose of that ship in these waters.'

  'You mean, to make tests around the Montebello Islands, where we exploded atomic bombs.'

  'That could be one of the reasons.'

  'How far are we from the islands?'

  Tor a rough guess four hundred miles.'

  'That sounds a long way.'

  'The Americans issued a warning to shipping within four hundred and fifty miles of the Marshall Group, where they exploded their bombs. Von Stalhein and his friends may have been going nearer to the Montebello Group for all we know. But let's not jump to conclusions and say the mystery of the spy ship in these waters has been solved. The Geiger Counter is also used for other purposes; for locating uranium deposits in the ground, for instance. Anyway, it's an interesting discovery. We'll take the thing with us when we go.' Biggles raised his head and sniffed.

  'Can you smell anything?'

  'I've noticed a pretty offensive stink once or twice, if that's what you mean.'

  'That's exactly what I mean. It's corruption of some sort. It can only come on the breeze so whatever it is should be in this direction. Let's see.'

  A walk of some distance, with the smell becoming stronger, took them inland to an area of scrub that had not been explored, for the search, naturally, had been confined to the foreshore. Biggles approached cautiously — stopped — and then, after taking a few quick paces forward, stopped again, his handkerchief to his nose, bending over something.

  'You'd better stay where you are,' he told Ginger. 'This isn't pretty.'

  Ginger waited. Minutes passed. Then Biggles, looking a little pale, rejoined him. 'Things outside my calculations have happened here,' he announced grimly.

  'What was it?'

  'A man. Or what's left of one. I don't think he could have been dead more than a week or ten days.'

  'A white man?'

  'No. An oriental. I'd say Japanese. He must have been on the lugger. I seem to remember that most of the pearling fleet is manned by Japanese types, Malays, or Asiatics of some sort. I fancy he was the skipper or he wouldn't have had this on him.' Biggles opened a hand to disclose a small tobacco tin. He lifted the lid.

  Ginger's eyes went round. 'Pearls!'

  'Naturally, that would be the one thing he'd try to save when he knew his ship was done for.'

  'But how — why did he stay, when-.--'

  'Just a minute and I'll answer your questions, although, by thunder, they leave more to be answered. He was shot — at least twice. He was hit in the stomach and in the leg. His clothes are stiff with dried blood. And he didn't commit suicide, although he had this gun lying near his hand.'

  Biggles took the revolver from his pocket, and 'broke' it to show that four shots had been fired. A man determined to kill himself doesn't shoot himself in the leg.'

  'He was murdered.'

  'He was certainly shot by somebody and that looks mighty like murder. As I see it, hard hit, the poor devil clawed his way into these bushes to escape from whoever was after him.'

  'Mutiny.'

  Biggles shrugged. 'Could have been; but was this the time and place for a mutiny? Think.

  The lugger had been battered to death by a hurricane. One man, probably several, managed to get ashore. And here they were, cast away, with little hope, as far as one can see, of ever getting off. I repeat, was that the moment for the survivors to start shooting each other?'

  'One would hardly think so.'

  'Then how did this shooting come about?'

  'There may have been a shortage of food. Some members of the crew shot the others in order to make it go round.'

  'Where are they? There's nobody here, alive, or we'd have seen them.'

  'They might have got away in a small boat.'

  'Would they, do you think, have gone without these?' Biggles held out the pearl tin. 'They must have known about them. Would they have gone knowing that somewhere on the island there was a small fortune to be picked up?'

  'Shouldn't think so.'

  'On the face of it these pearls might well have been the motive for murder. Yet they were left behind. That doesn't make sense. No, that isn't the answer. If it comes to that, if one man was shot it's possible that others were shot — those on the beach, who we assumed to have been drowned. Were they shot? Let's see.'

  Without speaking they returned to the beach, and the nearest skeleton.

  Biggles dropped on his knees beside it and began lifting the bones carefully and putting them on one side. A ring fell from a bony finger. A signet ring. He picked it up and looked at the device on it. 'Oriental,'

  he said. 'Apparently another member of the lugger's crew. Ah! Here we are. This is what I was looking for.' He held out, in the palm of his hand, a bullet, slightly flattened. 'Looks mighty like a Luger to me.

  I'll keep this. It may tell a tale one day.' Putting it in his pocket he got to his feet.

  'There seems to have been a battle here,' said Ginger, looking shaken by this unexpected development.

  'We could probably find more bullets if we went through the other skeletons, but I shan't bother. What we have seen tells us enough about that aspect of what happened here.'

  'But what could the fighting have been about if it wasn't pearls?'

  'You haven't forgotten that another ship went ashore here?' 'No. But as all these survivors would be in the same boat why should they set about each other?'

  'That's just it. They weren't in the same boat. There wasn't room for all of them.'

  Ginger stared.

  'If you were cast away here pearls wouldn't be much use to you. Only one thing could help you.'

  'A boat.'

  'That's how it looks to me. There was one boat �
�� and more people than could get into it.

  Von Stalhein's party got possession of it. Whether it was their boat, or a boat belonging to the lugger, I don't know. But we'll soon find out.

  That boat should still be on Eighty Mile Beach, and it should have a name on it. I say it should have. I don't say it has. But if it hasn't we shall know why. Let's go and look. We should have enough fuel to take in the Beach on our way to Broome for a fill-up. Come on. We know where this island is should we decide to return to it. It doesn't appear to have a name.'

  As they walked briskly to the Otter, Ginger asked: 'What are you going to do with the pearls?'

  'Find the rightful owner and hand them over. We shall have to report what we've seen today even if we don't do it right away. It isn't just a matter of the pearls, although the large pink one in particular should be worth a lot of money. It's a matter of suspected murder, and failure to report a thing like that might subject us to criticism, if nothing worse.

  For the moment I'll keep an open mind about it.'

  The Otter was soon on its way to the mainland, on a course calculated to bring it to Eighty Mile Beach below the estimated position of the abandoned lifeboat. The idea then was to fly along the beach, and after looking at the boat carry on to Broome.

  On striking the vast curve of deserted sand, stretching away on either side as far as the eye could see, Biggles made a left hand turn, took the machine to something under a hundred feet and settled down to as slow a cruising speed as was compatible with safe flying. They expected no difficulty in spotting the boat on the flat, unbroken, wind-borne sand.

  Nor did they, although the sand had silted against it on one side and overflowed into the boat itself. On such a boundless airfield a landing presented no difficulty.

  Biggles dropped his wheels, put the machine down with hardly a tremor and taxied right up to the little craft that would go to sea no more. In a couple of minutes they were both standing by it.

  'No name on the bows or the stern,' muttered Biggles. 'Just what I expected.' On the bows it had been scraped out. On the stern a piece of new timber had been let in. 'Well, that tells us plenty. If the boat had belonged to the See Taube there would have been no need to remove the name — always supposing that See Taube was really the name of von Stalhein's ship. My guess, and I think it's a pretty safe one, is that this boat belonged to the lost lugger. It was, I fancy, the motive for the murders. Try to carry a description of the boat in your head in case I forget anything. In Broome we should be able to settle any argument.

  What happened on that island we may never know, but there should be no difficulty in identifying the lost lugger by my description of the dead man. Broome isn't all that big. Let's get along.'

  Biggles said little on the short flight to the airfield. Clearly preoccupied with the problems that had arisen, Ginger did not interrupt his thoughts. However, when the white-roofed township appeared ahead Biggles said: 'To save time I'm going to leave you to attend to the refuelling. When you're through, take the small-kit to the Continental Hotel. We'll sleep there tonight. I've some enquiries to make, and I've decided that the safest — and the quickest — way, would be to go to the police. They'll keep quiet if I ask them. Otherwise we might be fiddling about here for days.'

  'Okay,' agreed Ginger.

  CHAPTER V

  A Word With

  Sergeant Gilson

  Leaving Ginger at the airport, Biggles made his way through white-roofed bungalows, palms and poinciana trees, to the Port of Pearls that nestles beside the blue waters of Dampier Creek. With shell-grit crunching under his shoes he sought the police station, where he found Sergeant William Gilson in charge, and introduced himself by putting his credentials on his desk.

  The Sergeant, tall, clear-eyed and sun-tanned, a fine figure of a man in his uniform, read the documents. Getting up he closed the door, resumed his seat, and looked enquiringly at Biggles, who was replacing his papers in his breast pocket. 'Take a seat,' he invited. 'It must be something important to bring you all this way,' he observed shrewdly.

  'It's important to me, it's important to you, and it may be more important still for Australia,' answered Biggles. 'In fact, it's so important that I thought hard before coming even to you. But you may be able to help me. In all seriousness I warn you that if word of this conversation leaks out, with my name attached to it, you may do your country an immense amount of harm.'

  'I can keep my trap shut,' promised Gilson, a trifle curtly. 'Then first I shall have to tell you what brings me to Australia.

  You will recall, following the recent willie-willie, seven survivors of a wrecked ship came ashore on Eighty Mile Beach?' 'I remember it.'

  'One of those men is, and has been for many years, the most notorious enemy agent in Europe. He hates us, which means he hates you. He is now in Australia.'

  'What does he want here?'

  'That's what I'd like to know, and what I'm here to find out. As he may be anywhere in Australia you'll appreciate I have a job on my hands.'

  'You certainly have.'

  'I've been having a look round, and it's what I've found that has brought me to you. In answering my questions you may learn a thing or two yourself. How many ships were lost from your fleet here in the last willie-willie?'

  'Three. We know where one went ashore so call it two.'

  Was the skipper of one of them a man, probably a Japanese, stockily built, about five foot four in height, with a gold-filled tooth in the upper jaw.'

  'He was. That'd be Toto Wada — an Australian-Jap. Nice quiet chap. Used to be a diver till he bought his own lugger.'

  'Just to make sure. Did you ever see the thing in which he carried his pearls.'

  'Often. It was a two ounce tobacco tin.'

  'Like this?' Biggles put the box on the table.

  'That's the one.'

  'Then you'd better take charge of it for his next of kin.' 'That's his wife. Lives in Sheba Lane.'

  The sergeant's eyes opened wide when Biggles held the tin so that the contents could be seen. 'How did you get that? Where's Toto?'

  'He won't be coming back. He's dead. His lugger went ashore on an island and broke up.

  He got ashore, and so did at least one of the crew. This ring may help you to identify him. Both men were subsequently shot. I found the bodies.'

  'Shot! How the – who the—'

  'A German ship went ashore on the same island. There were Germans in the party that landed on Eighty Mile Beach. You'll see what I'm getting at.'

  Gilson's brow was black. 'Yes. I see,' he said slowly.

  'That brings us to the boat,' resumed Biggles. 'I've just looked at the boat that brought these foreigners ashore. It's a brown-varnished clinker-built job about twenty-two feet long and four foot beam. Rather high in front, plenty of freeboard—'

  'You needn't say any more,' interposed the sergeant. 'I know that boat.

  It belonged to Toto.'

  'That's how I worked it out; and that's why I decided I'd have to tell you about it. Frankly, the fate of this unfortunate pearler is no concern of mine, because it isn't going to help me much in my search for the man I'm looking for. I'd rather you said nothing about it for the moment; but you might keep your ears open, and if you hear any local talk about a strange ship being seen off the coast between, say Wyndham and Perth, let me know.

  Incidentally, you'd better have these. They may be needed as evidence one day.' Biggles pushed two bullets and a ring across the desk. 'These are two of the shots that did the murders. The ring was on what was left of the finger of one of the crew.'

  'And you're asking me to do nothing about this?' Gilson looked doubtful.

  'Yes. I'm asking you because there's more at stake than the shooting of one or two pearlers. If you start making inquiries on your own account you may upset my applecart.

  I know the man I'm looking for. Leave him to me — unless, of course, you hear that I've made a boob and got myself shot.' Biggles smiled. 'Should that
happen, and it might, compare the bullet with those on your desk.'

  'All right,' agreed Gilson reluctantly. 'If that's how you want it. We'll leave it like that for the time being. You let me know when I can go ahead but don't leave it too long.'

  'Not longer than is absolutely necessary,' promised Biggles. Now I wonder if by any chance you can help me with this.' He took from his pocket the list of names and addresses Ginger had picked up. 'Do any of those names mean anything to you? I mean, have any of them, to your knowledge, a police record?'