“Absolutely sure,” said Floyd, with his voice of cold certainty. “I’ve seen him often enough in New York to know him. I ought to—I had twenty thousand dollars in his cursed company.”
“And I lost all I had saved up,” put in Carroll eagerly. “It wasn’t so much—only about seven thousand dollars. Rockett broke us all, the captain, too. Jerry had to mortgage his ship.”
“And your young friend in the white sweater?” Lang inquired. “Has he lost his savings, too?”
Floyd smiled faintly.
“That’s Louie Bonelli—‘Louie the Lope,’ they call him in Harlem. No, I don’t think Louie ever had any savings, but he’s been very useful to us, as you’ll see, and he’s going to share with the rest of us.”
Lang leaned back, trying to look indifferent. He had never seen the fraudulent promoter, whose flight had taken all his own savings, but he had seen newspaper portraits, and he vaguely remembered an elderly man with a heavy, big-boned countenance, who might very well be this very man aboard the Cavite. This unconscious patient of his had a strong, audacious face, such as would have fitted the great wrecker.
“Dr. Long,” said Floyd impressively, “all we want is justice. We only want to get our own back. We never expected to get a dollar out of it. It came by chance. Carroll and I were in New York. Louie was down around New Orleans, for reasons best known to himself, and he happened to spot Rockett at Pass Christian.
“All the cops were sure he’d left the country, but he hadn’t. He’d grown a little beard, and browned his face and arms, and he had a bungalow and a fruit-and-truck ranch on the Gulf coast, and he dressed in overalls and really worked at his fig trees and orange grove. He must have had it all ready for months before, and it was the best sort of hide out, considering the sort of high roller he’d been up North—a spender, a prince, a man who couldn’t walk but had a new car every week.
“Louie wasn’t quite certain, but he sent for Carroll and me, and we came down. It was Rockett, right enough. Then we called in Jerry Harding, who was running his little freighter along the coast. We held a council. We knew Rockett had his plunder planted somewhere, and was lying low till the storm blew over a little. Well, what do you suppose we’d do? What would you’ve done yourself? Have him arrested, and take a chance of getting a dividend among the creditors—five cents on the dollar? We didn’t see it that way. We studied his movements, his way of life. We hauled the ship close inshore one night, went up to his shack, and held him up. He lived all alone, and it was a mile to the next house. We put it to him—what was he going to do about it? All we wanted was what we’d lost. He could keep the rest, for us.
“He was as stubborn as the devil. Can’t you see it in his face? He denied that he was Rockett, denied everything. Finally he turned silent, and wouldn’t speak at all. So we gave him the third degree.”