“You mean, it might have been an officer’s, Don?” cried Mercedes Colby, leaning forward in her deck chair.
“Or a petty officer’s or even a cabin steward’s,” responded the young commander. “That really isn’t much to go on in naming a suspect, you see.”
“I’m sure, Winslow,” said Captain Riggs stiffly, “that every commissioned officer here aboard is above suspicion. As for the enlisted personnel, of course, I can’t be sure. There were some replacements made in the crew before we shoved off from Guantanamo, and a spy might have come aboard with them. About the only thing we can do is to check their enlistment records.”
“The very idea I was about to suggest!” agreed Michael Splendor. “Suppose you and Commander Winslow look through the papers now, Captain, and let us know what you find. Meantime, Lieutenant Pennington and I will try to entertain Miss Colby. We’ll meet again at mess, this evening, if nothing happens before then.”
When Don and the captain had gone below, the man in the wheel chair turned his keen blue eyes on the two young people beside him.
“Sometimes, me friends,” he said earnestly, “I have a hunch that some great thing is going to happen. And happen it does, despite every circumstance against it. In this case me hunch is that the Scorpion’s power will be broken, and himself a prisoner, six months from this very day!”
A low whistle from Red Pennington greeted Splendor’s statement.
“But those were almost my own words to Don this morning!” the stocky lieutenant exclaimed. “Thanks to Don Winslow, we’ve matched every move the enemy has made with a better one. The Scorpion must be desperate, right now. And desperation usually goes before a flop, doesn’t it?”
“Very often, it does,” replied Michael Splendor cautiously. “But I’m afraid the Scorpion is more angry than desperate at this moment, for all the damage we have done him. 'Tis rather because of that code letter, and the opening it gives us, that I’m so hopeful of success. As you recall, it tells us there is to be a meeting of Scorpia members in San Francisco, with Cho-San himself in charge!”
“And who,” asked Mercedes Colby, as Splendor paused, “is this person you call Cho-San?”