“Are you hurt badly?” inquired Kennedy.
Dana said nothing, but backed away. Kennedy advanced, insisting on looking at the wounds. As he looked he disclosed a semicircle of marks.
“Not a dog bite,” he whispered, turning to me and fumbling in his pocket. “Besides, those marks are a couple of days old. They have scabs on them.”
He had pulled out a pencil and a piece of paper, and, unknown to Phelps, was writing in the darkness. I leaned over. Near the point, in the tube through which the point for writing was, protruded a small accumulator and tiny electric lamp which threw a little disc of light, so small that it could be hidden by the hand, yet quite sufficient to guide Craig in moving the point of his pencil for the proper formation of whatever he was recording on the surface of the paper.
“An electric-light pencil,” he remarked laconically, in an undertone.
“Who were the others?” demanded Andrews of Dana.
There was a pause as though he were debating whether or not to answer at all. “I don’t know,” he said at length. “I wish I did.”
“You don’t know?” queried Andrews, with incredulity.
“No, I say I wish I did know. You and your dog interrupted me just as I was about to find out, too.”
We looked at each other in amazement. Andrews was frankly skeptical of the coolness of the young man. Kennedy said nothing for some moments.