"Yes, but——"
"Never mind! Just do what your Uncle Tom says. Now it's dinner time and I reckon Monsieur's starved—he always is! So I'll take my treasure box—oh, by the way, you're not supposed to be in the cockpit, so don't stir around!"
As he picked the thing up I saw that it was a little iron safe about ten inches square—everybody knows the kind. Although small, it was heavy and quite complete, possessing a combination lock of no small merit. In the captain's quarters that Tommy and I now used as a dressing room I had noticed a safe similar to this, and asked if it were the same, whereupon he laughed, saying:
"Yes. Gates keeps his pipes in it, but I got him to flip the combination on 'em for to-night. Well, here goes!" And a few minutes later as he descended the stairs, I, with repressed excitement, stepped back to the cockpit, taking a chair where I could see without being seen.
The dinner had scarcely begun when Monsieur, looking about, asked:
"Where's my boy Jack?"
"Where's Jack?" Tommy repeated, in a voice unnecessarily loud, I thought. "Didn't you know about Jack? Why, he's in bad shape—maybe die, for all I know!"
I must say that the professor looked genuinely concerned, and would have left at once to doctor me had not Tommy sternly interposed. Across the carpeted floor of the dim passageway that led past the staterooms I now saw a thin streak of light, as if some one had quietly opened a door an inch or so. Since this happened to come from Doloria's room, I suspected the Indian woman of listening.
"Don't you go near him or he'll jump overboard, I tell you," Tommy was saying. "He wouldn't let you, and you couldn't help him, anyhow; no one can, poor old Jack! When the Princess stopped speaking to him, and he saw the game was up,—well, his heart kind of broke!"
"Pardieu, I am sorry—I am sorry," the professor shook his head.