was fine, the sea smooth. There was no sign of interference from any quarter.
Yet the worried lines which creased Gregory's forehead deepened. It had been that way often of late at devil island. No matter how clear the sky appeared, the shadow of El Diablo bulked dark and sinister across the sunlit horizon. Something would happen out there to-night. He felt sure of it. He should have gone with the fleet. But how could he? He was far down the coast with the new boats when they left.
Diablo, he realized sharply, was getting on his nerves. Were the obstacles which he had encountered about the island due to something more than a mere defense of good fishing grounds? It was not the first time he had asked himself the question. There was something wrong at El Diablo. He could not shake off the feeling. As he sat down to wait for the evil tidings he felt sure would come, he took up an unopened letter from Hawkins which had been on his desk two days. A part of the letter caused him to read it the second time.
"So I got to nosing around and incidentally tumbled on to something which I think may be of interest to you. Would it surprise you to know that Mascola does not own a single fishing-boat? It did me, though I might have known it if I had remembered the federal statute which prohibits any but American-owned fishing vessels from operating in American waters.
"Rock and Bandrist own the alien fleet. Mascola, you
see, is an alien. Bandrist apparently is not. I wish by the way you'd tell me all you can of that bird. I'm looking up Silvanus myself. I'm on the trail of a pretty good story, Cap, if it works out all right. Shouldn't be surprised if I might not drop in on you any time. If I do, I'll want a boat to go over to Diablo. Keep this all under your hat. It isn't censored."
For some time Gregory stared at Hawkins' letter. The information gleaned from its contents shed a new light upon El Diablo. Bandrist and Rock were in cahoots. Both were interested in keeping him away from Diablo. Something was wrong on the island. It was Mascola's job to keep strange craft from going there to find out. With the words strange craft, his mind flashed to a new tangent. To his half-closed eyes came a vision of a long gray hull, running dark, gliding through the water toward them like a destructive shadow. Bronson had said it looked like the Gray Ghost. What was the Gray Ghost? Where did she clear from? And what was her purpose in putting in in the dark to Hell-Hole?
The questions multiplied with the smoke-wreaths and in the blue haze which enveloped him, Kenneth Gregory beheld his vague and intangible suspicions gradually crystallizing into three fundamental hypotheses: Something crooked was being pulled off at Diablo. Rock and Bandrist were back of it. The isolation of the island was threatened by the increasing activities of the American fleet in that vicinity. Mascola's opportunity was only a means to an end.
Gregory's frown deepened. What Rock and
Bandrist were doing at Diablo concerned him in itself, not at all. In so far as it related to Mascola's interference, however, it was all-important. Mascola was the one man who stood between him and his cherished dreams. If Rock and Bandrist were behind Mascola, as he imagined, would it not be pursuing a "cart before horse" policy to continue his expensive militant opposition to the Italian? Why not fathom the motive which lay behind Mascola's action? If Diablo held a secret, the guarding of which threatened his business existence, why should he not as an American citizen take the initiative and——