"You was just dopey!" the captain argued. "Your nerves was shook up from bein' in the water so long, and the skeer of the collision."
Though there seemed no use to make an investigation, Merriwell began one immediately. He felt sure that Barney Mulloy was somewhere in Glen Springs.
"I know that I saw him!" was his persistent declaration.
"And heard him walk!" added Hodge. "I can swear to it."
"Yes. And though the thing is so strange, it makes me feel better, for I am sure now that Barney is not dead."
"But he looked like a ghost!" Bart admitted. "I'm with you, though, to the end in this thing. We'll go to the bottom of it."
Questioning the people of the village yielded no better results. Everybody agreed that no person answering to the description of Barney Mulloy had been in Glen Springs. Some of them were even more nervous and indignant than the landlord, for almost the sole remunerative business of these people was the keeping of summer boarders, and they feared that gruesome reports about the place would drive guests away.
"Mr. Hodge and I are coming back here to-night," Merriwell said to the landlord. "Perhaps we shall bring some of these friends with us. It seems useless to continue the investigation now, and I want, besides, to ask some questions at Sea Cove. The launch is all ready to return to Sandy Hook, and the officer in command says that his orders require him to return there without further delay. But we will come back to-night."
The landlord's face did not give the proposition an eager welcome, though one of his business tenets was never to turn a guest away.
So the launch steamed away to Sandy Hook, leaving Glen Springs and its strange and unsolved puzzle behind.