“Well, it’s all over,” said Carroll. “I’m going to New Orleans. What do you do? I suppose you’ve lots of friends who’ll be worrying about your disappearance, and medical societies and meetings waiting for you to give them speeches, Doctor Long.”
Lang softened a little to that parting smile. After all, they had been through peril together, and Carroll had almost, if not quite, saved his life after the shipwreck.
“I’m not Doctor Long,” he said with unpremeditated frankness.
Carroll’s expression hardened. He fixed Lang with a sudden, intense stare.
“Then who the devil are you?”
Lang explained briefly, almost apologetically.
“The most curious thing,” he finished, “is that I’m really one of Rockett’s creditors myself. I’ve got twelve thousand dollars of Automotive Fuel certificates in my trunk. You can imagine how interested I was, then, when you——”
Carroll listened, and then exploded into the most uncontrollable laughter.
“Double crossed, by gad!” he ejaculated, choking. “What a—a stroke of luck! You one of Rockett’s suckers? But say, it’s a good thing you didn’t let it out on board that I’d brought the wrong man. Louie’d have put a bullet into me.”
“It made no difference, after all.”