As he finished speaking, Bancroft and the boys appeared.
“We’ve found the trouble with the radio!” cried Tom. “And it’s all right now. They’d cut the lead-in wire where it passed through an insulating tube and had spliced the insulation together, and on the radio compass they’d taken out a section of wire and replaced it with a bit of stick covered with the insulation where it was connected to a binding post.”
“I’ll say they’re clever rascals!” exclaimed Rawlins. “Well, we can hear any messages they send now even if we don’t want to send.”
“Personally, I’m sorry that Sam butted that man Robinson overboard,” remarked Mr. Pauling who had been deep in thought. “He’s bobbed up twice in the nick of time to save your life, Tom, and each time he’s killed a man who would have been more valuable alive than dead. Not that I blame him--I owe him a greater debt than I can ever hope to repay--but I do wish that if he’s destined to rescue you from every scrape you get into that he could do it without always destroying our evidence. I’d give a great deal to have a chance to put a few questions to that Robinson.”
“And I’ll bet my boots to a tin whistle he wouldn’t have come across with any information,” declared Rawlins. “I’ve been putting two and two together and I’ve a hunch he’s the chap who called himself a ‘Yank’ when the boys heard him talking on the tramp back in St. John. He was too blamed clever to give away anything and maybe, after all, these men are telling the truth and he was planted on the Devonshire and his friends seized the ship. That would account for their letting Robinson and a boat’s crew get away--just to board us you see. By glory, it’s such a mixed-up plot within a plot that it’s sure got me guessing.”
“Jove, that may be so,” cried Mr. Henderson. “If so, it would explain several puzzles. He may have intended to escape alone and let the rest of the crowd sink or swim with us. ’Twould have been fairly easy for him to do that--just drop over the side and be picked up by the sub at some prearranged spot--whereas a crowd of twenty-two men would have a hard job to clear out undetected.”
“Well, he dropped over all right,” chuckled the diver. “Only I’ll bet the sub wasn’t standing by to pick him up.”
“Perhaps we can solve part of the mystery when we reach Trinidad,” said Mr. Pauling. “If the Devonshire is overdue, we can be fairly sure she was seized. Whereas if she arrives with her real officers and crew, we’ll know it was all a frame-up. But we’ll owe an apology to her company in that case.”
Rawlins uttered an ejaculation and springing up rushed from the room.
“Well, I wonder what’s struck him now!” exclaimed Mr. Henderson.