WORKING OUT THE PUZZLE
JED, amid all the excitement, deftly captured with the boat-hook the
painter of the small boat, then towed that little craft astern, making
it fast.
Captain Tom now manœuvred the “Rocket” alongside of the floating coat.
The straw hat was also recovered and pulled aboard.
“They’re his—both the hat and the coat!” cried Moddridge, in shaking
accents. “See, here are even letters belonging to Delavan in this
pocket!”
The nervous one never looked nearer to swooning than he did at that
moment. He tried to rise, but would have tottered backward had not Joe
Dawson caught him and steadied him.
“Easy, sir. You’ll best keep your wits now, all of ’em,” counseled Joe,
quietly. “If there’s any work to be done, you’ll have to direct it, you
know.”
With Joe’s aid Eben Moddridge reached the rail. Then Joe brought a
chair and Mr. Moddridge sat down.
“You can’t see the—the—poor Delavan?” fluttered Moddridge, in the
greatest agitation, as he stared out over the waters.
“We haven’t sighted Mr. Delavan as yet,” Captain Tom replied. “But you
may be sure, sir, we’re going to make a most thorough search.”
“Prentiss, help me below,” begged Moddridge, his face still ashen white
and his teeth chattering. “I—I can’t stand any more of this.”
Indeed, the poor fellow’s looks fully bore out his words as Jed helped
him below.
“Put him in a berth,” Tom murmured after them. “Better stay with him
for the present, Jed.”
Then the “Rocket” was started on a very slow cruise over all the waters
nearby. After a few minutes Captain Halstead began to feel that further
search, especially in the fog, would be useless. Yet he continued the
hunt for more than an hour. No further traces, however, were found of
the boat’s owner—or late owner. Which?
Every few minutes Jed was sent up to deck to ask uselessly for news.
“How’s Mr. Moddridge getting along?” queried Captain Tom, at last.
“If he does any worse,” confided Jed, “he won’t live to reach the pier.
I never saw a man more unstrung. He keeps insisting that he knows Mr.
Delavan is dead—drowned.”
“And I’m almost equally positive that nothing of the sort has happened
to Mr. Delavan,” Tom Halstead retorted.
“You——?” gasped Jed, wonderingly, but could go no further, his
astonishment was so intense.
“I’m of the same opinion as Tom,” Joe Dawson added, quietly.
“You two have been talking it over, then?” Jed queried.
“Not very much,” Joe replied. “But there are some things about this
case that look mighty queer for a drowning.”
“But it looks,” protested Jed, “as though Mr. Delavan had accidentally
tipped the boat and gone overboard.”
“When you once begin to think,” retorted Joe, stubbornly, “it looks
like nothing of the sort.”
Jed Prentiss looked wonderingly from one to the other, but Tom cut in
with:
“Take the wheel, Joe, and keep the whistle sounding, for the fog is
still thicker than I like to see it. I’m going below to talk with Mr.
Delavan’s friend. Jed, you’ll be more useful on deck, at present.”
Moddridge was lying in a berth in the cabin, moaning and holding a
handkerchief over his eyes.
“I’ve come to ask you what I’m to do, sir?” Tom called briskly,
thinking thus to rouse the nervous one to action.
The only response was another moan.
“Come, rouse yourself, please, and think what’s to be done in your
friend’s interests,” urged the young skipper.
There was another moan, before Moddridge answered, in a sepulchral
voice:
“Don’t ask me, Halstead.”
“Right! I guess I won’t,” Tom rejoined, thoughtfully. “You’re so
utterly upset that I guess I can furnish better instructions myself.”
“Oh, yes, please,” begged the other, helplessly. “And leave me alone,
Halstead, or else keep quiet.”
“But I’ve got to ask some questions, sir, and you’ll have to answer
them,” Tom went on. “So, sir, it seems to me that you will do best to
come on deck, into the open air.”
“Do you—you—really think so?” faltered the stricken one.
“It will be much better for you to be in the air, Mr. Moddridge.”
“I’d go if I could, but I feel that I simply haven’t the strength to
get there,” mumbled the nervous man.
“I’ll show you how,” responded Captain Tom, briskly, almost cheerily.
“Steady, now, sir. There; it’s as easy as can be.”
Tom Halstead lifted the little man bodily out of the berth, getting
a good hold on him and carrying him out to the after deck, where he
deposited the collapsed burden in one of the wicker arm-chairs.
“Now, in the first place, Mr. Moddridge,” began Tom, “try to get it
fixed in your mind that your friend isn’t drowned—that there isn’t the
least probability of any such fate having overtaken him.”
“Nonsense!” declared Eben Moddridge, feebly.
“Perhaps you think Mr. Delavan stood up in the boat, and it tipped and
let him over,” argued Tom. “But that was next-door to impossible.”
“How impossible?” demanded Moddridge, taking notice sufficiently to sit
up a little more.
“Why, the port boat, Mr. Moddridge, on account of her heavy keel, her
comparatively broad beam and other peculiarities, belongs to a class
of what are called ‘self-righting’ boats. It would take a deliberate
effort, by a very strong man, to capsize such a boat. She’s towing
astern now. After a good deal of effort we righted her.”
For a moment Eben Moddridge looked hopeful. Then he sank back once
more, all but collapsing.
“Nonsense,” he remonstrated. “Any little boat of that size can be
easily tipped over.”
“The boat can’t be capsized easily, I assure you,” Tom argued. “I know
the type of boat, and understand what I am talking about. Now, we found
the boat capsized. It probably took more than one man to do it. Mr.
Delavan could hardly have done it alone. If it took others to help in
capsizing the boat, what is more likely than that others have seized
him, and then upset the boat in order to make it appear that he had
fallen overboard and been drowned? Mr. Moddridge, are there, or are
there not, men who would be glad to seize Mr. Delavan for a while,
for the benefit of what information they might expect to frighten or
torment out of him?”
“Yes, yes, yes!” cried the nervous man, firing up for the instant and
rising to his feet full of new, brief energy. Then he sank back into
the chair.
“But I don’t believe _that_ happened,” he went on, brokenly. “I am
quite convinced that my friend was drowned by the capsizing of the
small boat.”
“Wait a few moments, Mr. Moddridge, and we’ll show you, then,” proposed
Captain Tom, turning and making a signal to Joe Dawson. “Jed, keep the
bridge deck, and sound the whistle regularly.”
Captain and engineer disappeared below, going to their room. They were
quickly back, clad only in their bathing suits.
“Now, you keep your eyes on us, Mr. Moddridge,” young Halstead
requested. “Mr. Delavan is a heavy man, but Joe and I, together, are
much heavier than he. We’ll show you how hard it is to upset a boat of
this type.”
Though the boat’s own oars had not been recovered, there was another
pair aboard that would serve. Joe brought these, while Halstead brought
the port boat alongside of the barely moving motor boat. Both boys
stepped down into the smaller craft. Joe applied himself at the oars. A
slight lifting of the fog now made objects visible for a radius of some
two hundred feet.
“Watch us,” called Tom, when the port boat was some forty feet away
from the “Rocket.”
Both boys stood up, each resting a foot on the same gunwale of that
little port boat. They bent far forward. The boat heeled; they even
forced it to take in some water from the gently rolling sea. Then, as
they stepped back, the little craft quickly righted itself.
“Now, come on, Joe,” proposed the young skipper. “We’ll both stand with
our backs to the gunwale. We’ll tip the boat, and then fall backward
into the water, just as though it were a real accident.”
Wholly at home on or in the water, the two chums went through the
manœuvre with reckless abandon. Once more they succeeded in making the
little craft heel over and take in some water.
“Now!” shouted Halstead.
Both boys lurched heavily backward, striking the water and causing the
port boat to heel more than it had done. Both splashed and disappeared
under the water, but the boat righted itself as soon as relieved of
the weight of their bodies.
Clutching the port rail of the “Rocket,” Eben Moddridge looked on in
almost a trance of fascination. A slight gasp left his lips as he saw
the young captain and engineer vanish under the waves; but they quickly
reappeared, swimming for the port boat, and climbing on board after
recovering the oars.
“Now, you ought to be convinced that this boat couldn’t have been
capsized and left floating keel-up by any accident to Mr. Delavan,”
hailed Tom Halstead, as Joe rowed in alongside.
“I—I am convinced—_almost_,” chattered Moddridge, excitedly.
“Then please take our word for whatever you can’t quite realize,”
begged the young skipper, as he clambered aboard the “Rocket.” “Come
on, Joe, we’ll get into dry clothes. Mr. Moddridge, be sure of one
thing: if any accident happened to Mr. Delavan, there were others
present when it happened.”
With that parting assurance Halstead and his chum vanished below.
Almost incredibly soon they were once more on deck, appareled in dry
clothing. Jed then went to bale out the port boat, which was next
hoisted to her proper davits.
As Captain Tom, still thinking fast and hard, took his place at the
wheel, Eben Moddridge, even though he moved somewhat shakily, managed
to climb the steps from the after deck and take the chair nearest to
the young skipper.
“Halstead,” he queried, hoarsely, “you even went so—so—far as to
declare that you d-d-don’t believe Frank Delavan to be drowned.”
“I don’t believe it in the least,” Captain Tom declared, stoutly. “Now,
Mr. Moddridge, if we’re to be of real help to you, you must answer some
questions, and you must answer them fully and clearly. Will you do so?”
“I—I’ll try.”
“On your honor as a man, sir, do you know of any reason why Mr. Delavan
should _want_ to disappear, leaving behind the impression that he had
been drowned?”
“G-g-good heavens, no!” shuddered the nervous one. “Want to disappear?
Why Frank Delavan has every reason in the world for wanting to keep in
close touch with New York, and with me, his associate in some present
big deals.”
“Then, if he has disappeared, as seems evident, it must have been
through the compulsion of some other parties?”
“Yes—most absolutely, yes!”
“Mr. Moddridge,” pursued the “Rocket’s” young skipper, impressively,
“have you any idea who those other persons are?”
Moddridge’s face worked peculiarly for a few seconds, before he
replied, slowly, hesitatingly:
“I might suspect any one of a score of men—perhaps almost the same
score that Frank Delavan might name under the same conditions. But I
pledge you my word, Halstead, that I do not know enough to suspect any
one man above all others. It would be all guess-work.”
Hesitatingly as this response had been delivered, Tom, watching his
man, felt certain that Eben Moddridge was trying to speak the truth.
“Then,” said the young skipper, at last, very deliberately, “since it’s
a pretty sure thing, in our minds, that Mr. Delavan wasn’t drowned
through accident, there can’t be much sense in trying further to find
his body. Instead, our search must be after those who may be holding
him, against his will, aboard some craft in these waters.”
Joe, listening nearby, nodded his approval of this decision.
“We can’t do much, though, until this confounded fog lifts,” groaned
young Halstead.
Just as he was reaching to sound the whistle once more Captain Tom’s
hand was arrested by a sound that made Joe and Jed also start slightly.
Then out of the fog, three hundred feet away, going at fifteen miles an
hour, or more, glided swiftly the same long, narrow racing craft they
had encountered the day before.
That strange craft crossed the “Rocket’s” bow, at least a hundred and
fifty feet away.
“Racer ahoy!” bawled the youthful skipper, in his loudest voice.
But the swift craft vanished into the fog on the other side.
Was it fancy, or were all three of the young motor boat boys dreaming
when they believed that back from that swift-moving racer came a sound
of mocking laughter?
“Get into the engine room, Joe,” shouted Captain Tom. “Jed, up forward,
on lookout!”
With that the young skipper swung around his speed control. The
“Rocket,” obeying the impulse, leaped forward, then gradually settled
down into a steady gait, while the young skipper strenuously threw his
steering wheel over.
“What are you going to do, Halstead?” demanded Eben Moddridge, leaping
to his feet as he caught the infection of this new excitement.
“Do?” uttered Captain Tom. “That’s the same craft that hung about us
yesterday, plainly trying to nose into our secrets. The same craft that
afterwards tried to play a trick on us to make us reach East Hampton
late. And just now the fellows aboard the stranger laughed at us. What
am I going to do? Why, sir, we’re going after her, going to overhaul
her, if there’s the speed in the ‘Rocket.’ We’ll even try to board that
stranger, Mr. Moddridge, and see whether Francis Delavan is aboard
against his own will!”