He thought no one was near to laugh at him.

It was late afternoon in May. The rain had been swept from the sky and the clouds were being torn to shreds by the wind which whipped the overcoat about his legs and carried the spray to sting his eyes. The one venturesome gull vanished from this place of rock and water, cliff and narrow beach, and when Bony turned his back to the sea, the wind pressed against him in effort to make him run.

Split Point is not unlike the distended claws of an angry cat’s paw, forever thwarted by Eagle Rock standing safely out at sea. Bony surveyed two of these claws rising sheerly from the beach for a hundred feet and more, and then at the less precipitous slope of paw rising to the base of the Lighthouse. At the base of the right cliff two caves offered cold shelter, and within the rock funnel in the face of the left cliff the wind swirled grass and dead bush round and round without cease. At his low elevation, he could seeall the Lighthouse save its foundation upon the grassy sward, a tapering white stalk holding aloft the face of glass beneath the cardinal’s red hat.

Thirty years before, Split Point Light was changed from manual to automatic control, since when it is inspected four times annually by an engineer from the Commonwealth Lighthouse and Navigation Department.

On March 1st an engineer had begun his tour of inspection at nine in the morning. He found the Light in perfect operation, and saw nothing to indicate anything unusual until he discovered the body of a man entombed in the thick wall.

Before nightfall that same day, the investigators from Melbourne were like ants in a piece of rotten wood. They dusted for fingerprints, and they searched high and low for the dead man’s hat, his boots and his clothes. Subsequently, they interviewed a hundred people, and scratched their heads over the result. Hope that they would swiftly draw an ace murderer from the pack dwindled till finally the only card they held was the Joker.