The Mystery of Swordfish Reef. Arthur W. Upfield
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Bony novels by Arthur W. Upfield
1 The Barrakee Mystery / The Lure of the Bush
2 The Sands of Windee
3 Wings Above the Diamantina
4 Mr Jelly’s Business/ Murder Down Under
5 Winds of Evil
6 The Bone is Pointed
7 The Mystery of Swordfish Reef
8 Bushranger of the Skies / No Footprints in the Bush
9 Death of a Swagman
10 The Devil’s Steps
11 An Author Bites the Dust
12 The Mountains Have a Secret
13 The Widows of Broome
14 The Bachelors of Broken Hill
15 The New Shoe
16 Venom House
17 Murder Must Wait
18 Death of a Lake
19 Cake in the Hat Box / Sinister Stones
20 The Battling Prophet
21 Man of Two Tribes
22 Bony Buys a Woman / The Bushman Who Came Back
23 Bony and the Mouse / Journey to the Hangman
24 Bony and the Black Virgin / The Torn Branch
25 Bony and the Kelly Gang / Valley of Smugglers
26 Bony and the White Savage
27 The Will of the Tribe
28 Madman’s Bend /The Body at Madman's Bend
29 The Lake Frome Monster
This corrected edition published by ETT Imprint, Exile Bay in 2020.
This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publishers:
ETT IMPRINT & www.arthurupfield.com
PO Box R1906,
Royal Exchange
NSW 1225 Australia
Copyright William Upfield 2013, 2020
First published 1960.
First electronic edition published by ETT Imprint 2013.
First corrected paperback published by ETT Imprint 2018.
Reprinted 2019.
ISBN 978-1-925706-66-6 (pbk)
ISBN 978-1-922384-51-5 (ebk)
Digital distribution by Ebook Alchemy
Chapter One
A Calm Day
A depression which had been hesitant to move on from the south-eastern coast of Australia, and thereby had for a period of days sent mountainous seas crashing against the rock-armoured headland protecting the township of Bermagui, finally passed away over the Southern Tasman Sea. Its influence rapidly waning, the wind shifted to the north, the spring sunshine became warm, the grassy slopes back from the river gleamed like velvet, and Jack Wilton and his partner, Joe Peace, continued their work on the hull of the Marlin.
At high tide a week earlier the sleek ocean launch had been hauled to the foot of a narrow beach well inside the river’s mouth. Like many rivers along this coast the Bermaguee has teeth in its mouth in the shape of a bar, a bar perfectly safe to navigate in all weather save when the easterly gales roar across the great bay into which flows the river. The bar is something of a dividing line: outside it is the ocean, a despot of capricious moods; inside it the river provides shelter for many fishing launches, their slender jetty, a huge fish-trap, and migrating birds.
Although the tuna season was in full swing, Wilton had taken the opportunity provided by a week’s gap in his engagements with anglers to clean and treat the hull of his twenty-eight-foot-long marine engine-driven launch. After the tuna season would follow the more important swordfishing season, lasting from December to April. There would be little chance for a clean-up then; besides, at the end of long days at sea the anglers liked to be speedily taken back to port.
Work on the Marlin was completed this calm day the third of October; at midnight when the tide was high the craft would be refloated and taken to her berth at the jetty. Of the dozen launches that lay o’nights against this splinter of iron-bolted baulks of timber, eight had been there all this day. The other four had taken anglers to sea after the vast shoals of tuna and kingfish, anglers who came from Melbourne and Sydney, and as far afield as New Zealand, England and America.
The two men at work on the Marlin were unable to see the river’s mouth and the bar hidden from them by the low promontory protecting river and estuary. They could see a stretch of the straggling settlement of Bermagui. The main part of the township nestled in the lee of a greater headland that, like the smaller one guarding the river, pointed northward along the coast. They were able to observe the truck being driven along the road to Cobargo, see it stop at the shore end of the jetty, observe two men step from it. Even at this distance they could recognize the owner of the garage, Mr Parkins, who was the assistant weight recorder to the honorary secretary of the Bermagui Big Game Anglers’ Club, Mr Edward Blade, who now accompanied him.
“First of the launches must be coming in,” remarked Jack Wilton, owner of the Marlin.
Joe, his mate, stared from beneath bushy grey eyebrows at the two weight recorders now walking along the jetty to its seaward extremity where was erected the beam to take the scales and fish. Two women stood talking to a launch-man on his craft, and several day visitors followed the weight recorders.
“Likely enough to have been a good day out there,” Joe said, his voice deep and penetrating even in the open. “I think this job will do for another nine months.”
He was a ponderous man, this Joseph Peace. His movements were sluggish and deliberate—until agility was demanded of him when the Marlin was bucking like a cork on a mill-race. The curious could not have discovered anyone in Bermagui who had ever seen Joe wearing either a hat or boots. Memory would have had to be placed on the rack to recall having seen Joe freshly shaven. The half-inch stubble of greyish beard seemed permanently halted in growth, but to balance this oddity his complexion defied the tanning effects of sun and wind; which was more than could be said of his dungaree trousers and the woollen pullover that betrayed many harsh washings. His small grey eyes were at the moment calm from mental contentment, and the strong and stubby fingers went downward to draw from the leather belt about his vast waist one of the two wooden pipes invariably carried there. Slowly, he said:
“The Do-me might go on the market if Mr. Ericson buys land here, and builds himself a house and buys himself a launch for Bill Spinks to run for him year in and year out.”
Brown eyes surveyed Joe quizzingly, brown eyes set in an alert brown face. Jack Wilton was young and strong and lithe, of average height, and as clean as the sea which was as much part of his existence as the air. Joe became a little truculent.
“Well, if it turns out as you say Marion Spinks says so, Bill Spinks won’t have no more use for the Do-me.”
“Perhaps not, Joe. Supposing Marion’s right? Supposing Ericson does buy that land and builds a home on it, supposing he does buy himself a good launch