The Golf Course Mystery

CHAPTER 1. PUTTING OUT

There was nothing in that clear, calm day, with its blue sky and its
flooding sunshine, to suggest in the slightest degree the awful tragedy
so close at hand that tragedy which so puzzled the authorities and
which came so close to wrecking the happiness of several innocent
people.

The waters of the inlet sparkled like silver, and over those waters
poised the osprey, his rapidly moving wings and fan-spread tail
suspending him almost stationary in one spot, while, with eager and
far-seeing eyes, he peered into the depths below. The bird was a dark
blotch against the perfect blue sky for several seconds, and then,
suddenly folding his pinions and closing his tail, he darted downward
like a bomb dropped from an aeroplane.

There was a splash in the water, a shower of sparkling drops as the
osprey arose, a fish vainly struggling in its talons, and from a dusty
gray roadster, which had halted along the highway while the occupant
watched the hawk, there came an exclamation of satisfaction.

"Did you see that, Harry?" called the occupant of the gray car to
a slightly built, bronzed companion in a machine of vivid yellow,
christened by some who had ridden in it the "Spanish Omelet." "Did you
see that kill? As clean as a hound's tooth, and not a lost motion of a
feather. Some sport-that fish-hawk! Gad!"

"Yes, it was a neat bit of work, Gerry. But rather out of keeping with
the day."

"Out of keeping? What do you mean?"

"Well, out of tune, if you like that better. It's altogether too perfect
a day for a killing of any sort, seems to me."

"Oh, you're getting sentimental all at once, aren't you, Harry?" asked
Captain Gerry Poland, with just the trace of a covert sneer in his
voice. "I suppose you wouldn't have even a fish-hawk get a much needed
meal on a bright, sunshiny day, when, if ever, he must have a whale of
an appetite. You'd have him wait until it was dark and gloomy and rainy,
with a north-east wind blowing, and all that sort of thing. Now for me,
a kill is a kill, no matter what the weather."

"The better the day the worse the deed, I suppose," and Harry Bartlett
smiled as he leaned forward preparatory to throwing the switch of his
machine's self-starter, for both automobiles had come to a stop to watch
the osprey.

"Oh, well, I don't know that the day has anything to do with it," said
the captain a courtesy title, bestowed because he was president of the
Maraposa Yacht Club. "I was just interested in the clean way the beggar
dived after that fish. Flounder, wasn't it?"

"Yes, though usually the birds are glad enough to get a moss-bunker.
Well, the fish will soon be a dead one, I suppose."

"Yes, food for the little ospreys, I imagine. Well, it's a good death to
die serving some useful purpose, even if it's only to be eaten. Gad! I
didn't expect to get on such a gruesome subject when we started out.
By the way, speaking of killings, I expect to make a neat one to-day on
this cup-winners' match."

"How? I didn't know there was much betting."

"Oh, but there is; and I've picked up some tidy odds against our friend
Carwell. I'm taking his end, and I think he's going to win."

"Better be careful, Gerry. Golf is an uncertain game, especially when
there's a match on among the old boys like Horace Carwell and the crowd
of past-performers and cup-winners he trails along with. He's just as
likely to pull or slice as the veriest novice, and once he starts to
slide he's a goner. No reserve comeback, you know."