Bony - 07 - The Mystery of Swordfish Reef

by Arthur W. Upfield

  “I’ve thought it all along,” Joe stoutly maintained. “I never took to that blue-nose Nova Scotia-man. Me—when the times comes, I’m gonna tear ’is guts right out. ‘Peace,’ ’e says to me one day on the jetty. ‘Peace,’ ’e says, ‘I’ll have you to know that I’m Captain Malone to you.’ ’Im, a captain! Stiffen the crows! Why, Whiskers ’Arris on the A.S.1 never wants ’is men to call ’im Captain ’Arris. Skipper’s good enough for ’im.”

  Meanwhile Bony had gone up on deck to discover that the rain had stopped and that rifts in the spinning clouds supported the promise made by the barometer. Dusk was falling on a world weary of the wind but freshened by the rain.

  Protected by the arms of the land, the jetty was situated on the north shore of the lower reach and within half a mile of the roaring bar. It was but half the distance to the big house built on the hill-side to which wound a road from the jetty’s base. There were no other houses to be seen, and already in the windows of this one lights were gleaming. The landscape was losing its features, and the hill summits were hidden by the low cloud mist. Faintly Bony could hear dogs barking.

  During his promenade round and round the Dolfin’s spacious decks, he peered often at the paintwork. Its colour was, of course, a silver-grey, and his keen eyes at once registered the fact that the paint was comparatively fresh and expertly applied. Once he halted to scratch the paintwork of the raised saloon roofing. He used his thumb-nail. He could discern no grey paint beneath the silver-grey. He was finding it most diffi­cult to connect the Rockaways with the disappearance of the Do-me until he recalled Rockaway’s handshake. Then he found it less difficult.

  On going below he found clothes drying before two radiators, and the lights switched on in the saloon, the gangway between the cabins, and farther for’ard in the men’s quarters from which drifted the voices of his launchmen. He called them to the saloon. Telling them to be seated, he began a long questioning regarding Wapengo Inlet, the depth of water in it, roads to it, streams running into it. From this emerged the fact that Joe Peace was far more familiar with Wapengo Inlet than was Jack Wilton. He had years before prospected the country for metals and timber suitable for railway sleepers. When the night black­ened the opened port, he said to Joe:

  “It’s almost dark now, and I want Jack to assist me in making a thorough examination of this launch. Meanwhile I would like you to keep watch from the jetty, and to let us know instantly should you hear anyone approaching. We shall be some time, and you will not be able to smoke. Is there such a thing as a torch on the Marlin?”

  “Two,” Wilton replied. “But there’s plenty aboard here, in the cabins, everywhere to hand.”

  Bony smiled, saying:

  “If the batteries of one or more were found to be ex­hausted someone might wonder why they were used for so long.

  Joe chuckled in his deep-chested way.

  “Good for you, Bony,” he said, with vast admiration. “Never give a shark a chance to bite you. I’ll get them torches, and then I’ll mount guard.”

  “How old is Joe, about?” Bony inquired of Wilton.

  “Not as old as he looks, and tougher than he looks, too. He’s about fifty, no older. He’s a hell of a good man on a launch, and he can shift about quicker than anyone would think by looking at him.”

  “Have you known him long?”

  “Most of my life. He used to work for my old man when I was a shrimp.”

  “Ah! I’m glad he’s dependable, for one day I may want to depend on him very much. With regard to this search of ours, I want you to devote yourself to all lockers and receptacles. Remember to replace everything exactly as you find it. You may discover something you recognize as once belonging to the Do-me, or once in the possession of either Spinks or his mate. If you found a paint-brush, for instance, still stained with dark grey paint …”

  “Might find such a brush in that shed on the shore back of the jetty. That’s where all the paints and oils are kept.”

  “Oh! Do you happen to know the lay-out of the house? Ever been inside it?”

  “Twice. But only as far as the kitchen.”

  “How many servants are employed?”

  “There’s the housekeeper, a thoroughly bad-tempered old bitch, a man cook, a butler, and Malone and Marshall. When the Rockaways have parties they get extra help from Bermee or Cobargo.”

  “And who, do you think, would be doing the renovations?”

  “Lawson, I expect, from Bermagui. He generally does the renovating and repair work.”

  The examination of the Dolfin began from its bow where was a small hold to take the anchor and chain. Aft of this hold was a larger one in which were stowed a set of sails, stores, and drums of oil for the engine. The men’s quarters were given minute attention, and this same thorough care was being applied to the examination of the sleeping cabins when Joe appeared, silently, to say that someone was approaching along the jetty.

  “Go for’ard,” Bony hastily instructed, easily falling into the seaman’s pronunciation of the word “forward”. He himself passed aft to the saloon where he lay on the settee, lit a cigarette and took up a journal. He had barely settled when he heard foot­steps on the jetty, and then the thrump of a man’s boots on the deck above. The man descended the steps to the saloon en­trance, and casually Bony half rose and looked round to see the man Dave Malone.

  “Good night, Mr Bonaparte.” Malone said, unsmilingly.

  “Good evening,” responded Bony, mildly surveying the man.

  “Mr Rockaway sent me along to ask if you had everything needful.”

  “Everything. We lack for nothing. Please convey my thanks to Mr Rockaway, and say I am most comfortably lodged and appreciative of his kindness.”

  “All right. Good night, Mr Bonaparte.”

  “Good night.”

  Bony listened to the retreating footsteps until they were silenced by distance. Then he sprang for the steps and passed up on deck where he could again hear the departing footsteps. Joe came to stand with him.

  “You stay here again, Joe, while we finish the examination down below.”

  An hour later the search was completed. It had produced no result.

  “I’d like to look inside that paint and oil shed, Jack,” Bony said when they were smoking and sipping coffee in the saloon. “Earlier in the evening I heard dogs near the house, so perhaps it would be unwise to examine the inside of the shed just now. I wonder now. Could you go along to it very early in the morn­ing on the pretext of wanting to borrow a piece of waste or something?”

  “Soon find an excuse,” assented Wilton.

  “Then go soon after daybreak and look for traces of dark-grey paint on brushes, in tins, and other receptacles. Now I’m off to bed.”

  Immediately Bony lay down in the luxurious bunk with its guard-rails of burnished copper, its pillows of down, its super­fine blankets, he slept. It seemed to him that he slept only a moment when he was awakened by Wilton to see sunlight streaming in through the open port. In Wilton’s right hand was a paint-brush.

  “Found it with a lot of others standing in water to prevent them going hard,” he said, triumph in his voice and eyes. “Look!”

  Bony’s lips parted. His teeth gleamed. It was quite clear that when last used the brush had applied dark-grey paint.

  “Grey kalsomine,” Wilton explained. “A cold water paint.”

  “Were there any other brushes showing this colour?” he asked.

  “Two. Like this one, both six inches wide. Good for fast work. There’s a heap of paint-tins and drums beyond the shed, but I didn’t like being seen poking about it. There were no kalsomine packets or any kalsomine liquid, in the shed.”

  Bony sat up and reached for the box of cigarettes he had brought overnight from the saloon.

  “You have done very well, Jack. How’s the weather?”

  “The sea’s down. We can get over the bar as soon as you like. The sky’s clear and the wind is coming from the south’ard.” />
  “Then after breakfast, we will start back for Bermagui. I’ve a lot of work to get through in the shortest possible time. There will be no fishing today.”

  When, at seven o’clock, neither Rockaway nor his launch-men had appeared, Bony wrote a polite note of thanks and left it on the saloon table. At half-past seven the Marlin was at sea, heading northward for Bunga Head, a long swell coming abeam, a short chop and a following wind assisting her.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Who Did It?”

  SHORTLY AFTER ten-thirty the secretary of the Bermagui Big Game Anglers’ Club announced the weight of Bony’s second swordfish. The crowd on the jetty raised a cheer, and, when the Marlin was finally moored, strangers to Bony shook hands with him, and others asked for his autograph.

  Joe’s estimated weight was remarkably close, for the fish scaled at five hundred and eighty-one pounds. Suspended from the hoist at the head of the jetty it looked enormous, and sub­sequent pictures of it hanging on the town triangle, with Bony standing close beside it and holding one of Blade’s spare rods, were even more impressive as the angler was dwarfed to almost a third its length. He did not get away for some time, having to submit to amateur photographers and more autograph-hunters.

  The entire township was thrilled by his capture, and for three days people from inland towns and farms came to see and photograph it. The fame which came to Bony was to have repercussions he could not have foreseen.

  Showered and shaved and dressed in usual day clothes, he spent an hour in Blade’s office where he received reports from the secretary and Wilton concerning matters he thought it best for them to inquire into. After lunch he wrote at length to his wife and to the Chief Commissioner in Sydney, posting these letters himself. Later he visited Nott’s Tea Rooms, where he was waited on by Marion Spinks. She exhibited just that degree of interest which caused Bony to suspect that had the fate of her brother been less uncertain his fine capture would have been given intense enthusiasm. He asked her if she still felt that William Spinks was not dead, and her answer was the same.

  He was wondering what reliance could be placed on this example of affinity between twins as he walked up to the headland with his brief-case under an arm. He was no mocker of unexplained mental phenomena, being conversant with the astonishing power of telepathy possessed by his mother’s people, and himself often having been guided aright by what he called intuition.

  In him intuition was divorced from impressions of people and things. One of the first lessons he had learned in his pro­fession of crime investigation was never to permit impressions of men and women to blossom into such importance that they swayed him to form judgements not based on cold facts. The final analysis which places a man on trial is not gained by im­pressions of his personality obtained by his accusers. They know well that the Lombroso school of criminology, defining criminals by their heads and countenances, is wholly in error; that your smiling, easy-mannered handsome man is often capable of slitting a human throat, and that your low-browed, ill-favoured man will just as often ask another to put an injured horse or a dog beyond its agony.

  The point in any investigation arrived when a particular person came to the screen of Bony’s mind for intimate examina­tion. This was when a correlation of facts offered the possibility of this particular person having been in the position of being able to act in a particular manner. Such an examination was always due to facts and not to impressions.

  This afternoon he found shelter from the wind (which would have teased his papers) among the scrub facing the sea­ward edge of the grass-crowned headland, and some distance back from its blunt apex facing to the north. He was here able to look out over the sea to the long eastern horizon, as well as to the north where the summit of Montague Island and its light-house seemed to be fugitive from the massive Dromedary Mountain.

  The sea was blue and green, and speckled with white horses running northward to ride down the long rollers still coming westward after the commotion of yesterday’s storm. A hundred feet below where he lounged the grey and brown armour of the headland was being ceaselessly splashed by a white paint which gave no hope of permanency. Bony’s remarkable eyes found the mast of two launches supported apparently not by a craft but by the hair-like line of the meeting of sea and sky. A third launch trolled miles out from the Brothers rocks, and Bony’s mind was pricked with a pang of envy. Yet resolutely he exorcised the devil that was trying to tempt him from legitimate work.

  He lay over on his chest and pressed his eyes to his crossed forearms the better to shut out memory of the sea and those launches trolling for swordfish, as well as to rest his aching eyes from the reflected glare. In this pseudo darkness he was able to throw upon the screen of his mind the picture of that key plan evolved by Blade and himself from the maps completed by the launchmen and from information received. On this plan the sea had been forced to retain the tracks of five motor-launches, a small steam launch, a trawler and an overseas liner. He con­tinued to have faith that here was hidden a clue of vital im­portance once he obtained a lead indicating it.

  Bony’s belief that Time was his greatest ally was once more justified by the discovery of Spinks’s rifle on board Rockaway’s Dolfin. It did not occur to him that this was a lucky coinci­dence: that if the storm had not arisen, if the swordfish had not taken his bait-fish when it did, they would not have been forced to shelter inside Wapengo Inlet, would not have met the Rock­aways and been offered the hospitality of the Dolfin. If the rifle had not been presented to him by Time, Time eventually would have given him another lead. Time has been pictured as an old man, but Bony visualized Time as being a fair woman much like Dame Fortune who, if ignored, will bestow her many gifts.

  On this occasion Time had been generous with her gifts to him. He had ignored her, wanting only the thrill of fighting fish, and she had insisted with her gifts on recalling him to the work which had brought him to Bermagui. Beside the rifle, she had presented him with several large-sized paint-brushes which pointed to the key plan on which was the track of a mysterious steam launch painted dark-grey, or warship grey. Had Blade and he not evolved that plan, the paint-brushes in Rockaway’s shed would have had no significance whatsoever. The rifle could easily be explained. It could be said that a member of the Dolfin’s crew had found it on a beach, or beside a road, and was en­tirely ignorant of its connection with the Do-me.

  The importance of the rifle, however, was greatly emphasized by the discovery of the paint-brushes which formed the genesis of a trail that became more easy to follow the farther it went.

  Bony had observed that the colour scheme of Rockaway’s house was white and light-brown. His launch was painted a silver-grey, whilst his jetty was treated with a preparation con­taining tar. The house builder and decorator at Bermagui, named Lawson, had informed Blade that the interior of Rocka­way’s house had been “done” by him during August, and that nowhere had grey paint of any shade been used in the work.

  For what purpose, therefore, had those several large paint­brushes in Rockaway’s shed applied paint of a warship grey shade?

  Blade’s interview with the house decorator had produced further information of paramount interest. Rockaway had told Bony that he regretted being unable to entertain him at his house because it was in chaos due to the work of interior reno­vation. Lawson said he was not doing this, did not know who was doing it, and was not aware that it was being done. He had built the house, and since then had effected all repairs and reno­vations. He doubted that renovation was being carried out at this time.

  Question: Was the renovating work being done with those several brushes still stained with dark-grey paint? If so, was not dark-grey paint an unusual colour to apply to the interior of a house?

  Question: If Rockaway’s statement regarding the condition of his house was false, what lay behind it? It was obvious that he was naturally generous, a true sportsman who would throw his house wide open to an angler experiencing adverse conditions, and n
ot wishing to invite Bony to his house he had done the next most generous thing by presenting him with the use of his luxurious launch. The offer of hospitality had not been sought, nor had it been expected. Perhaps a few provisions to be grate­fully returned at a future date, yes, when the engine cabin of the Marlin would have provided shelter for the night, if little comfort.

  Again the key plan was screened. On 3rd October the Dolfin put to sea early to engage in swordfishing as there were two rods mounted in her stern. The trawler people last saw her at eight am when she disappeared in the haze of the south-east. At approximately twenty minutes after noon of this day the officer of the watch and the quartermaster on duty on the liner Orcades sighted a small steam launch painted warship grey. They did not remember sighting the Dolfin at any time during their passage up the coast.

  Was there not reason to assume that, after the Dolfin had been lost sight of by those on the trawler, those aboard her had hurriedly painted her a warship grey with those several large brushes found by Wilton in Rockaway’s shed? They could have fashioned a funnel with a length of stove piping, and have put up the hinged mast having a shorter top-joint. The fact that the Orcades passed close to the grey-painted steam launch, reported to be longer than the average fishing launch, might have been engineered by those on the disguised Dolfin to attract attention and so divert possible suspicion from the Dolfin normally painted silver-grey.

  Further to all this, Bony possessed authority to assume that Rockaway had pre-knowledge of the Do-me’s shark fishing trip to Swordfish Reef.

  The evening prior to the disappearance of the Do-me, Rock­away’s truck was repaired by Mr Parkins, the garage owner. In the main bar parlour of the hotel, Ericson entertained several anglers and Blade that evening. Blade recalled that the prospec­tive trip to Swordfish Reef was lengthily discussed. He remem­bered, too, seeing in the hotel both Malone and Marshall, Rock­away’s launchmen.

  There are three small parlours opening off the main bar, in another of which that evening lurked Joe and Eddy Burns, and according to Burns he distinctly remembered hearing Malone’s harsh voice from the interior of the third parlour. So that Malone and Marshall could easily have heard the discussion in the main parlour about the trip to Swordfish Reef the following day. Through Malone, Rockaway could have learned that night of Ericson’s intentions.