The Mystery of Swordfish Reef

by Arthur W. Upfield

  One man in Bermagui came to wonder just who and what Mr Ericson had been—and was, if still alive. The secretary of the club followed the intensive and extensive search with both hope for its success and gratification that officialdom was trying so hard, incidentally, to remove the stigma the mystery put upon Bermagui.

  A second plane was sent down from Sydney to assist the first in its thorough examination of the sea and the coast. Allen recommended the employment of the Marlin, and her crew, to continue making a search for flotsam, and for a little more than a fortnight Wilton and his mate enjoyed government pay. On shore, Sergeant Allen organized two search-parties to explore the base of cliffs and those parts of the coast barred to launches, these men primarily concentrating on the discovery of small items of wreckage not likely to be observed by the air pilots. At the end of three weeks the only clue to the fate of the Dome was the thermos-flask retrieved from the sea by Wilton.

  Even the flask was not a clue that proved anything. That it belonged to the licensee of the Bermagui Hotel, and that it had been filled with tea and put into Ericson’s lunch basket, was, of course, established; but, there was no proof how it came to be floating in the sea; whether it had been washed off the Do-me when she sank, or had been lost overboard. General opinion favoured the first theory; for, as Joe Peace maintained, had the angler or one of his launchmen accidentally knocked the flask overboard it would have been retrieved. It appeared unlikely that an article such as a thermos-flask would fall overboard unobserved. The angler would take it from the basket, and pour tea from it, whilst he was in his rightful place—the cockpit.

  Joe’s claim to the wide knowledge of the local sea currents, and his ability to follow them, even to “back-track” them, was given little credence by Sergeant Allen, or by Detective-Sergeant Light, who came down to assist him. The small army or reporters were even greater doubters. For a while Bermagui accommodation was taxed to its utmost, and the official search was maintained for three weeks.

  No wonder that Mr Blade began to think that the missing angler was a world figure incognito. After Light went back to Sydney in one of the planes, and the search parties were disbanded, Wilton and Joe continued to search for evidence of the fate of the Do-me, and Constable Telfer confided in Blade when telling him that Sergeant Allen had received instructions to remain on the “job” until recalled.

  October passed out in calm and warm weather. But November quickly produced a nor’-easterly which raged for days and kept the launches idle and the few anglers in the hotel bar.

  After that one terrible night and day of vigil Mrs Spinks became almost normal. Almost but not quite, for her mind appeared to have become permanently deranged on one matter. She refused to believe that the Do-me was lost and that her son was dead. She took advantage of every opportunity to escape from the watchful care of her daughter and would hurry to the headland to search the ocean for sight of her son’s launch coming home. Often she called in on Mr Blade to request him to send to a passing ship a wireless message asking the captain to tell her son to return at once as his underclothes were due to be changed.

  The neighbours and others felt pity and little wonder because in her belief that the Do-me had not gone down Mrs Spinks was firmly supported by Marion, whose mind had not been affected by the tragedy. The only change to be observed in Marion was the absence of her flashing laughter. She would shake her head when people proffered sympathy and say:

  “Bill’s not dead. I’d know it if he was dead.”

  The sixth day of November was indelibly printed on Blade’s mind by visits he received in the afternoon from Jack Wilton and, later, a visiting angler, a Mr George Emery. Wilton did not expend time in preliminaries.

  “I’ve come to see you about Marion and Mrs Spinks,” he said, his brown eyes a little troubled but his mouth determined. “They’re in a bad way—about money. As you know, old man Spinks was a boozer and left the family well in debt when he died. It was only then that Bill got a square deal from life and began to pull things together. The building of the Do-me put him in debt again, but he had cleared this off just before the Do-me vanished.

  “Other times Marion would have got a job somewhere, but now she has to look after her mother more than ever she did after the old man pegged out. I’m in love with Marion. Been that way since we were kids at school. And I wanted her to marry me—want her to marry me now—but she couldn’t make up her mind about it. And now she’s not trying. I want you to do me a favour. Will you?”

  “Of course, Jack.”

  “Well, I’ve been thinking of getting up a subscription to help them two, but it wouldn’t do for me to run it, Marion being a bit proud and independent. I’ve got here a hundred quid. Just took it out of the bank. You could say you had received it from a rich sympathizer in Sydney or somewhere.”

  Placing the money in a compact bundle on the table, he put down beside it a smaller sheaf of notes, saying:

  “This is from my partner, Joe Peace. There’s twenty-seven quid in it. That makes a hundred and twenty-seven. If you could raise another twenty-three to make the total a hundred and fifty, it could be suggested to Marion that she take over Nott’s shop. Mrs Nott wants to go to Melbourne to live, and she’s willing to sell for a hundred and fifty and the balance at interest.”

  Blade’s gaze moved from the eager face to his typewriter. He did not look up when he asked:

  “Would Miss Spinks go into that business, do you think?”

  “I think so—so long as I had nothing to do with it. We were talking about it last night. She says she thinks her mother wouldn’t be so restless if she had to prepare the teas and suppers and make the meat-pies.”

  “Very well, Jack. I’ll raise the balance.”

  “Thanks, Mr Blade. I thought you’d help. You’ll keep me and Joe out of it?”

  “Yes, as you wish it.”

  Blade saw that his visitor waited, but hesitated, to suggest something further.

  “You can depend on me to do everything I can to help Miss Spinks and her mother,” he said encouragingly.

  “Good! And—and would you keep an eye on the books and things? You see, Marion and me aren’t good at that part of it.”

  “I shall be glad to, Jack.”

  Wilton rose to his feet, his face swept clean of trouble.

  “Things is going to be droughty with us this summer,” he said, thoughtfully. “Not with the ordinary people, but with us launch-men. Two of my bookings for the swordies have been cancelled and the others have had bookings cancelled too. Me and Joe will have to take to the beach-netting for salmon for the factory. It’s a blasted shame we can’t sell tunny. There’s millions of ’em about now. All from six-to fifteen-pounders.”

  Blade smiled.

  “I don’t think we need worry much. Jack. The Do-me affair will blow over by Christmas now that the newspapers have shut down on it.”

  Wilton had not been gone ten minutes when Mr Emery entered. He was portly, important, and now burned scarlet by the wind and sun and sea-spray. He advanced with hand outstretched.

  “I’m leaving for Sydney, Blade. Business calls and all that. Blast business! Should have gone yesterday, you know, but this fishing gets into a man’s very bones.”

  “Well, I hope you will come again soon.”

  Mr Emery beamed, but was explosive.

  “Come again! Hang it, Blade! I couldn’t keep away if every launch in Bermagui disappeared. I’m coming down for the swordies early in January. It’s a bit rough on those women, anyway. Saw them last evening on the headland when we were coming in. The daughter was trying to persuade the mother to go home with her, or it looked like it.”

  It was then that Blade had inspiration. He first bound Mr Emery to confidence and then related what had transpired between Wilton and himself. Mr Emery said, less explosively:

  “Give me a pen.”

  He wrote his cheque hurriedly, and rose to his feet, saying:

  “Give them two fellers back thei
r savings. If I can’t still make three hundred pounds before breakfast I’m losing my punch. So long, and if you can spare a minute any time drop me a letter saying how the fish are going. I’m only living for the swordies in January.”

  He shook hands, beamed and departed, leaving Blade a little breathless and staring down at the cheque he had drawn in Marion’s favour for three hundred pounds. The figures were written with extreme care, but the signature was familiar to the secretary, although he was unable to read it. Blade was astonished but not amazed, for swordfishing is a rich man’s sport, and rich men sometimes are philanthropic.

  Marion Spinks and her mother were in possession of the refreshment shop and small store by the middle of November. The girl’s hopes were justified; so long as Mrs. Spinks could be kept busy she appeared not to worry about her son’s clean underclothes. There were occasions, however, especially towards evening, when Mrs Spinks would slip away to the headland, and then Marion had to run to Mrs Wilton and ask her to “mind” the shop whilst she went after her mother.

  Shortly before four o’clock on the afternoon of the 20th, there appeared rounding the headland to reach the steamer wharf a rusty and disreputable ship of some two thousand tons. The only respectable portion of her was her bridge, white-painted and almost entirely glassed in. On either side of her blunt bow was the cipher A.S.3.

  It so happened that, when the A.S.3 hove into sight of those about the only street of Bermagui, Edward Blade was talking with Detective-Sergeant Allen and Mr Parkins, the garage proprietor, outside the club secretary’s office.

  “Hullo! What does she want in here?” demanded Mr Parkins, a keen-eyed man of fifty. “I haven’t seen one of those trawlers here for a long time.”

  “So that’s a trawler, it is?” mildly inquired Sergeant Allen, the very sight of this ship arousing memory of his excessive sea-sickness.

  “Yes,” Blade answered him. “It might be that one of her crew has met with an accident. There must be something serious, for her captain to call here. Let’s go along and find out.”

  The three men walked along the street, past the hotel, deserted at this time of day and of the week, and so reached the edge of the wharf as two men in a small boat were returning from having taken a rope hawser to the mooring buoy. The captain was giving megaphone orders to his crew.

  The ship was being gently “edged” to the wharf front with the aid of propeller and winch. The actions of the men hinted that the ship’s stay at Bermagui was not to be overlong. Immediately aft of the bridge was the wireless cabin, and in the doorway of this was standing the operator, a young man who appeared either delicate in health or still suffering from seasickness. The captain having done with his megaphone, Blade shouted:

  “Anything wrong, Captain?”

  “Nothing much,” came the shouted answer. “I’m wanting the constable. Suppose he’s about?”

  “Well, no, he’s out of town this afternoon. Had a mutiny?”

  The crew were passing a gangway from ship to wharf. The captain left his bridge, gained the deck, and passed along the gangway to Blade and his companions.

  “When will the constable be back?” demanded the trawler captain. “Can’t stay here in port all day.”

  “Not until this evening, Captain. But if you have trouble of any kind, here is Detective-Sergeant Allen, who will take charge of it.”

  “Oh, good day, Sergeant. Please follow me.”

  The captain recrossed the gangway, followed by Allen with Blade and Parkins. The small procession made its way across the littered deck to the bridge entrance where it was calmly surveyed by the first mate. Blade had noticed whilst they were on the main deck how the crew stared at them, and as he mounted to the bridge he noticed the fixed expression on the face of the wireless operator and received a shock from the look of stark horror in the young man’s eyes. The captain halted beside the ship’s wheel at the foot of which a piece of old tarpaulin lay heaped as though it covered a small object. Grimly the captain said:

  “At two-thirty this afternoon, I gave the order for the trawl to be brought inboard. The trawl had been down on the sea bottom for one hour thirty minutes, when the course of the ship had been roughly parallel with Swordfish Reef and half a mile inshore of it. Among the fish and other stuff in the trawl was this—”

  He bent down swiftly and snatched up the piece of tarpaulin.

  Mr Parkins cried loudly:

  “Good lord!”

  Blade whistled, and Sergeant Allen hissed between his teeth.

  Grinning up at them from the bridge flooring was a human head.

  Its aspect was much more horrific than those polished relics to be found in museums. Although the flesh had been removed by the crayfish and the crabs and small fish the scalp still covered the cranium, and to the scalp was still attached dark-grey hair.

  Blade knew that he felt much like the wireless operator was still feeling. He regarded Allen as a strong man when the detective bent down the closer to examine the fearful object. Mr Parkins did not move. The captain’s voice appeared to reach him from great distance.

  “This head has been in the water less than months and longer than days,” the captain was remarking. “It might belong to one of those poor fellows on the launch Do-me.”

  “There was only the head—no body?” asked Allen.

  “No, Sergeant, there was no body ... only that. I haven’t yet figured it out how it came to get into the trawl, the lower edge of the trawl being slightly above the sea bottom, if you know what I mean. By rights the trawl ought to have passed over it. Just a fluke, I suppose. Funny how murder will out, isn’t it?”

  “Funny!” gasped Mr Parkins, and the captain glared at him.

  “Murder!” Allen said softly.

  The captain again stooped, and this time when he straightened he held the relic between his hands. He held it high; held it level with the eyes of the three men. Just behind the right temple they saw a neat round hole. The captain reversed the head, and then they saw much farther back from the left temple another hole, larger and less neat.

  “Bullet-holes,” said Sergeant Allen.

  “Bullet-holes,” echoed Blade.

  “That’s what I think,” agreed the captain. “The poor feller who once had this head on his walking body wasn’t drowned. He was shot, murdered.”

  “And he was on board the Do-me,” Mr Parkins added. “Look at the hair! It must be Mr Ericson’s head.”

  Chapter Five

  Inspector Bonaparte Arrives

  DETECTIVE SERGEANT ALLEN would have made a secret of the recovery of the human head had not so many persons known of it. Besides, the officers and men of the trawler, the captain had wirelessed his owners the fact and his decision to take the relic to the police at Bermagui. Allen, however, kept the A.S.3 in port for longer than two hours whilst he took statements from the captain and first officer, the wireless operator and four of the men. When the A.S.3 was rounding the headland on her way back to her lawful business, Allen was starting in a hired car for Sydney with the head boxed and set at his feet.

  The first thing done by Blade after he left the ship was to call on Marion Spinks so that she would hear first from him of the finding of the head, and to be assured that it had not been torn from her brother’s body. The girl, neatly dressed in a blue print overall, stood quite placidly behind her counter whilst he related the bare facts, her big dark eyes concentrated on his. Still feeling shock, he was able to wonder at her calmness.

  “I don’t believe Bill is dead,” she said. “I feel that he’s in great trouble but not dead. He’s calling to me for assistance, and it makes me so that I can’t sleep at night. You see, Mr Blade, Bill and me were always kind of close to each other. When he was happy so was I, and when anything upset me he was upset, too. No, Bill’s not dead.”

  “But, Miss Spinks—”

  Blade stopped, for how could he press the assertion that the Do-me had gone down and all with her in face of that sublime belief th
at Spinks still lived? The import of her belief when allied with the bullet-holes in that head burst in his mind like a star. Who could have killed Ericson save Bill Spinks or young Bob Garroway? One or other must have shot the angler, and then if he had not shot his mate, too, taken the Dome out to sea away from all craft for the remainder of the day; returning after dark to hide her somewhere from the searchers.

  Sergeant Allen did not return from Sydney; but a detective-inspector named Handy came down, to go out with Wilton and Joe Peace for three days. He spent two days inquiring into the past of William Spinks, during which he often interviewed Marion, and tried to interview the mother, but was prevented by that woman’s quick and probably unreasoning hostility. After being satisfied about the origin of the money which had set Marion up in business, he returned to Sydney to the relief of many people in general and Constable Telfer in particular.

  As far as concerned the people of Bermagui, it seemed that the police investigation into the disappearance of the Do-me, and those with her, had been a failure, and was recognized as such. Much to Blade’s relief opinion remained strongly in favour of the missing launchmen. In such a small community everyone was familiar with everyone else’s affairs, and everyone at Bermagui knew that neither Bill Spinks not his mate owned a pistol, only a rifle which discharged a .32 bullet, and was used for dispatching sharks brought to the gaff by anglers. No motive for killing Mr Ericson could even be imagined; for everyone knew what he was planning to do and how the Spink family were to benefit by those plans.

  The first swordfish of the new season was brought in for weighing by a Mr Rockaway, who had settled at Wapengo Inlet, ten miles south of Bermagui, where he had built himself a fine house and a jetty to take his fifty-foot launch. Thereafter Bermagui tried hard to get into its busy stride for the very important big game fishing season. Christmas passed. Then on New Year’s Day six anglers between them brought to Mr Blade’s scales six swordfish and two mako sharks. It certainly appeared that Mr Blade’s hope that the shadow on Bermagui would quickly pass was to be realized.