The Mystery of Dolphin Inlet

by James Holding

  It wasn’t long until the currents shifted the boat broadside to us, and we could make out the figure on the deck more clearly.

  In my ear, Susan whispered, “It’s Perry Osgood. Tall and thin…”

  “Yeah.” I nodded and got sand in my mouth for my trouble.

  “What’s he doing?”

  “Hauling up something, looks like. On a hand line.”

  As we watched, a round hand basket came out of the Gulf at the end of Perry’s rope, and was lifted carefully over the rail, leaking water in streams. Perry immediately squatted down on his heels and began to stir the basket’s contents about with his fingers, as though he was looking for something.

  “Specimens,” Susan said.

  “Mr. X or Hamilton Osgood must be down on the bottom, filling the basket for him. Watch the boarding ladder amidships. Maybe he’ll come up.”

  Susan didn’t take her eyes off the specimen boat. Neither did I. All at once Susan whispered, “What if Roscoe Chapin’s down there filling Perry’s baskets?”

  That was one possibility I hadn’t thought of. “Keep watching.”

  Almost as I said the words, a black-clad figure with compressed air cylinders on its back bobbed up beside the boat. The diver reached with one hand for the aluminum boarding ladder. With the other, he pushed up his face mask.

  I shifted my position a bit on the brink of our sand dune and lifted myself on my elbows to get a better look at the diver’s face.

  That did it.

  Almost my full weight rested on my elbows for a second. And my elbows were supported by the undercut lip of the little sand dune. They sank into the sand and a ten-inch section of the dune’s seaward overhang crumbled and broke away. The dislodged sand slid slowly down into the water of Dolphin Inlet at the base of the dune.

  I scrambled to keep from sliding after it, and managed to anchor myself again beside Susan.

  Susan hadn’t noticed. She said, “It’s Mr. X, Pete! The diver is Mr. X!”

  I was about to take a look at the diver myself when a gleam caught my eyes in the sand. It wasn’t six inches from my nose—where my elbows had dislodged the crescent-shaped wedge of dune top. It looked like the glint of sun on metal. Like the glint of sun on gold, in fact.

  I reached for it, plucked it from the wet sand it was half buried in. Holding it in one palm, I brushed grains of sand off its surface with my fingers. Wondering why I wasn’t saying anything, Susan turned her eyes my way. “What’s that thing, Pete?” she whispered curiously.

  I knew what it was now. It was about the size of a silver dollar and where I’d cleaned the sand off it, the shield-shaped coat of arms came up clear. Also the date: 1714. And even the letters that spelled out Philippus V around the edge.

  In a voice that sounded funny to me, I said, “It’s a Spanish doubloon, Susan. A gold doubloon.”

  She forgot to whisper. “A doubloon! Are you sure, Pete?” She reached for it. “How do you know?”

  I raised my eyes to the specimen boat in the mouth of Dolphin Inlet and the truth hit me like a ton of mullet pouring from a tipped net. I said, “I just know it, that’s all. And I know something else, too. Finally.”

  “What?”

  “I know what Perry Osgood and Mr. X are diving for out there, Susan. Not marine specimens or bottom samples or anything like that. They’re diving for sunken treasure!”

  CHAPTER 11

  A QUESTION OF LAW

  We backed away from the sand dune fast, wriggling flat to avoid being seen by Perry Osgood or Mr. X. Inside the border of the woods, I helped Susan to her feet and we skirted Chapin’s deserted car and made for Gulf Road up the overgrown track.

  For several minutes, neither of us said a word. We were too stunned, I guess. Yet neither of us doubted for a second that we’d stumbled on the truth of the queer goings-on in Dolphin Inlet.

  We were both natives of Florida, remember, born and raised in the state. And where kids from other states might have failed to make a quick connection between the golden doubloon I’d found and sunken treasure in Dolphin Inlet, it was the only explanation that made sense to Susan and me.

  We were both familiar with the many stories of treasure finds along the Florida coastline—the discovery of Spanish plate ships, sunk more than two centuries ago in the coastal waters of Florida by great storms while carrying the treasure of the New World back to Spain. And we both knew, from newspaper reports, that so many old Spanish coins, washed out of sunken treasure hulks by modern storms, had been found on Florida beaches recently by casual beach-walkers that they hardly made conversation any more. So when you put my doubloon, found on an undercut beach after a severe storm, together with secret diving activity less than a hundred yards away, you couldn’t miss it. Especially when the Osgoods seemed so allergic to intruders.

  After we’d walked a little way, Susan stopped dead still in the middle of the track. “You mean there’s a Spanish treasure ship sunk at Dolphin Inlet, don’t you?” she said quietly. “Out there where they’re diving?”

  I said, “It’s hard to believe. But it must be so, Susan.”

  She nodded solemnly. “If this was St. Augustine or Vero Beach or Fort Pierce or some place on the east coast, I’d believe it, Pete. But Perdido Key! On the west coast?”

  I knew what she was worrying about. Every Florida schoolboy knows the route of the Spanish treasure fleets lay from Havana through the Straits of Florida and up our east coast. Just north of the Bahamas, the ships usually turned eastward across the Atlantic for Spain. To find a treasure ship off Florida’s east coast was almost commonplace, now; the west coast was something new and different. I said, “A king-size hurricane must have caught this baby about Key West and driven her up the west coast this far before she sank.”

  “If there’s a treasure ship at Dolphin Inlet,” Susan said, beginning to move forward again, “no wonder the Osgoods and Mr. X are acting so funny! And trying to keep out snoopers!”

  I quickened my pace to keep up with her. “No wonder at all,” I said. “If people around here realized there was sunken treasure in Dolphin Inlet, the entire population of Perdido Key and Sarta City would be out here in a flash, bumper to bumper, standing in line to get into Dolphin Inlet. Or to cut in on the treasure. You can’t blame the Osgoods for trying to guard their privacy.”

  “Heavens, no. They’d be swamped with tourists.”

  I was thinking straighter now that the surprise of discovery was fading. “If they’ve got a treasure-hunting license from the state,” I said, “they wouldn’t have much to worry about, though. Their salvage rights would be protected…” Another thought hit me. “Hey! What if they don’t have a treasure-hunting license? What if they haven’t reported to the state that they’ve located this treasure?” Susan and I both knew that the state of Florida issues treasure-hunting licenses and that you have to give the state twenty-five percent of any treasure you salvage. Susan said, “I bet they’re keeping their treasure secret so they won’t have to give a quarter of it to the state!”

  I nodded. “That could be. And maybe that’s why they’re trying so hard to make everybody think they’re marine researchers—so they’ll have a ready-made excuse for all the diving they do.”

  We reached Gulf Road and went over to where Susan’s car was parked and got in. She didn’t start the engine right away. She pulled down the sun visor over her seat and looked in the mirror that was fixed on the back of it. “Look at me!” she said. “I’m an awful mess! Covered with dirt and sand. And I’ve ripped off a button crawling on my stomach like that!”

  I said the right thing for a change. I said, “Mess or not, you look great to me!”

  She pushed her hair back from her forehead and forgot about the mirror. “Exactly what are you supposed to do about a treasure ship when you find one?” she asked then.

  I shrugged. “I’ve never found
one, so I’m not sure. All I know is that the state gets twenty-five percent of what you bring up, or else you’re in trouble. That’s why you’re supposed to apply for a license to hunt for treasure and salvage it. So the state can keep track of what you’re doing and sort of supervise the whole business.”

  “Then we ought to tell Mr. Sebastien about the Osgoods’ treasure right away, don’t you think?”

  I didn’t say anything for a minute. I was thinking about how I’d feel if I’d found a sunken treasure ship in the bayou behind our fish market. Finally I said, “I’m not real sure I want to tell the police, Susan.”

  “Why not? If it’s against the law, what they’re doing in Dolphin Inlet…”

  “Well, wait a minute. If I found a sunken ship full of treasure and invested a lot of dough in boats and diving equipment, and even bought the property near where the treasure ship was sunk so I could salvage it easier, I’d hate to have to fork over a quarter of all the stuff I found to the state, wouldn’t you? Just because a bunch of Congressmen and lawyers or somebody up in Tallahassee said so?”

  “I’m from Tallahassee myself, Pete. And Daddy’s a lawyer, remember? So what can I say?”

  I laughed. “Nothing personal, Susan. Only I think I’d rather let the Osgoods hang onto all the treasure they can bring up than tip off the cops that they’re maybe gypping the state.”

  “Why, Pete, you’re completely irresponsible!” She smiled her crooked smile at me. “And yet… I feel a little bit the same way myself.”

  “Anyway, they’re probably just trying to keep claim jumpers and hijackers out of their hair.”

  “I bet that’s what he is,” Susan said.

  “Who?”

  “Roscoe Chapin! He’s a crook! That’s why he’s been spying on the Osgoods and Dolphin Inlet. He knows about the treasure ship!”

  Leave it to Susan to come up with the answers. I thought she was probably right. It would explain why Chapin had been wandering in Dolphin Inlet woods and diving at the inlet itself. I said, “We’ve already told Mike about Chapin. And he gave us a quick brush. Even if Chapin’s a claim jumper or a hijacker, he still hasn’t done anything Mike can pinch him for.”

  “How about the Osgoods and Mr. X, then?”

  “We just decided their treasure is none of our business, didn’t we?”

  Susan turned the ignition key and the starter whirred. We started south toward Fiesta Village.

  We watched the road ahead of us, both too busy thinking about Dolphin Inlet and what lay on the Gulf bottom there to say anything more for a couple of miles.

  Then Susan tossed her hair and gave me a look. “You know something, Pete?” she said. “We’ve found out part of what’s happening at the inlet, about the treasure ship, but there’s still some pretty sinister stuff going on there that we don’t understand a bit.”

  “You mean like who is Mr. X? And where is Hamilton Osgood? Sure. All the more reason for not telling Mike Sebastien anything more. I already asked him those two questions, and he brushed them off, too.”

  “Then what’ll we do, Pete?”

  “Keep an eye on the inlet ourselves is all I can think of,” I said, winking at her because I knew how much she was enjoying this local mystery of ours, the city girl on a country vacation.

  She had a different idea. “Listen. Daddy is going to be here in an hour. He’s a lawyer. He knows a lot of government people in Tallahassee. And he’ll know all about the treasure-hunting laws in Florida, I’m pretty sure. So why don’t we tell him about Dolphin Inlet and see what he says we should do?”

  I went for that, hook, line and sinker. “Susan,” I said, “you’re not only a painter, a detective and a good-looking bird, but a good thinker, too! Only one thing. You’ll have to tell your father about Dolphin Inlet. Because if I take any more time away from my job at the fish market, Gloria will skin and fillet me with a dull knife and feed me to the cat!”

  CHAPTER 12

  SUNKEN TREASURE

  I didn’t hear what Susan’s father thought about Dolphin Inlet until the next morning.

  I was scaling four speckled trout (they’re called weak-fish up North) when the phone in the fish market rang and Gloria, who was waiting on Mrs. Haggerty, answered it. She got that look in her eye and said, “Hoo-hoo, Pete! It’s for you. Guess who?” She didn’t even muffle the receiver.

  I grabbed the phone from her without waiting to rinse the fish scales off my hands, and said, “Hello?”

  “Pete?” It was Susan.

  “Yeah, Susan,” I answered in a low voice. “Don’t mind my sister’s kidding.” I gave Gloria a mean look.

  “I’m used to it,” Susan said. “Daddy teases me about everybody who so much as looks at me. He’s been needling me about you ever since he arrived and I told him about Dolphin Inlet. Anyway, what I wanted to tell you, Mr. Simons in Tallahassee just called Daddy back a few minutes ago…”

  “Mr. Simons?”

  “Yes. He’s a friend of Daddy’s who’s a trustee of the Florida Internal Improvement Fund.”

  “Oh. You said he called your father back. Does that mean your father called him first?”

  “Of course. Last night.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Break it down for me. First, what did your father think about our Dolphin Inlet story?” I looked over my shoulder. “Make it fast, Susan. Mrs. Haggerty is waiting for her trout.”

  “Oh! Well, I told Daddy everything yesterday. And he said right away that probably the Osgoods and Mr. X are carrying on a perfectly legitimate salvage operation. If there’s really a sunken Spanish treasure ship there at all. He thinks that’s possible, but not probable.”

  “It’s there,” I said. I hadn’t a doubt about that.

  “Anyway,” Susan went on, “Daddy said before we get all excited about it, the obvious thing to do was check up on the Osgoods and find out for sure whether they had a treasure-hunting license and had reported their treasure find to the state.”

  I said, “Hold it a minute, and let me finish Mrs. Haggerty’s fish. I’ll be back in a flash.” I put the phone down and went over to the cleaning table and finished Mrs. Haggerty’s trout, because she was beginning to shuffle her feet and pretend to cough the way a lot of women do to show their impatience. Gloria wasn’t paying her much attention, either, for Gloria was openly listening to my end of the telephone conversation. When Mrs. Haggerty left with her fish, I got back on the phone.

  “Susan? So your father called this Mr. Simons and asked him to check in Tallahassee, is that it?”

  “Yes. And Mr. Simons said he would. And he did. This morning, first thing. And he just called back. There’s absolutely no record in the files of a treasure-hunting license being issued to anyone named Osgood. And no treasure find has been reported by anybody from Perdido Key.”

  “Well,” I said. “Then that leaves us where?”

  “Daddy thinks the same as you did, Pete. That maybe the Osgoods and Mr. X are keeping their treasure hunting quiet to fend off curiosity-seekers and robbers.”

  I grunted. I said, “So what’s your father think we ought to do? Anything?”

  Susan laughed. “Oh, yes, his call created a good deal of curiosity in Tallahassee as you can imagine, and the Internal Improvement Fund is sending Mr. Simons down here to Perdido Key today on a plane. Another man named Professor Harris is coming, too. He’s from the Florida State Museum in Gainesville.”

  I felt a twinge of uneasiness. If the state was sending an investigator to Dolphin Inlet, and a professor along with him…

  “What’s he a professor of?” I asked Susan.

  “Underwater archaeology, or something like that.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. The official wheels were really beginning to roll. My feeling of uneasiness got worse, because I knew I was responsible for the whole thing. Susan and I, that is. And here we
re the authorities charging down to Perdido Key on the basis of nothing but an informed guess on the part of a couple of kids. I didn’t like it.

  Susan was talking again. “So Daddy wants to know if you won’t come to supper at our cottage tonight, Pete. He wants to talk to you about Dolphin Inlet. And so do Mr. Simons and Professor Harris. And they want to see the gold doubloon you found yesterday. You can come, can’t you?”

  “I-I guess so,” I said. “What time?” I was thinking that I’d finish work at six and I’d have to take time for a good shower to kill the fish smell…

  “Seven o’clock?”

  “Okay. I’ll be there.”

  “Good. Isn’t it all terribly exciting, Pete?” She gave her musical laugh.

  I said, “It sure is. All I hope is, we’re right about the treasure ship, Susan. Otherwise, we’re dead!” I hung up.

  * * * *

  We didn’t have dinner in the Frosts’ cottage after all, because Mrs. Frost thought it was too cramped for six people to eat in their little dinette, so we had a fancy dinner at the Freebooter Restaurant and went to the Frosts’ cottage afterward to talk.

  All the decorations in the restaurant are pirate stuff, and the waiters wear pirate costumes and one gold earring each, and the prices on the menu are in pieces of eight instead of dollars. I ordered a New York cut steak, medium, before I found out what a piece of eight was worth and that my steak was going to cost Mr. Frost over six bucks in American money! I was too embarrassed to change my order. Anyway, the steak was delicious. Susan ordered scallops and I was glad to see they were the real article. Sometimes you order scallops and what you get is lumps of dog shark meat instead. Most people can’t tell the difference.

  Susan’s father was a shortish man with red hair and a big tough-looking jaw. His chin had a hollow in the middle of it and his eyes kind of pinned you to the wall when he looked at you.

  His friend, Mr. Simons, the trustee from the Improvement Fund, was round and fat and bald and used two-dollar words a lot. The first joint of his ring finger was missing and I wondered whether he’d lost it cleaning fish, maybe, when he was young.