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 sea-sickness. 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—”