“From me? How?”
“The shots. You said you had heard shooting. Now, I let off both barrels of my shotgun, no more. I did think that I heard shots after that, but my sinking boat was making such a racket—the exhaust pipe was smashed when they ran me down—and I was so infernally busy handling that canoe, that I didn’t notice them. You did. How many were there? You’d notice the difference between the bang of my shotgun and the crack of rifles, too.”
The girl nodded, and lifting her eyes, stared out toward the blue mass of Garden Island on the horizon.
“There must have been five or six shots,” she said slowly. “Now I think of it, I believe that two did come sometime earlier—that was what drew my attention. Yes, and the others were different. They sounded more like the deep crash of an automatic pistol than the sharp crack of a rifle. But how can that help you? I couldn’t see what happened. I can’t swear—”
“You’re not expected to!” Hardrock responded, and felt through his pockets for a match. “The thing is, to make sure of what you heard. Somebody else was out there—a third boat—”
He broke off sharply. From his pocket he drew a strange object; then recognition came into his eyes as he stared at it. It was the pennant-shaped canvas he had taken from the boat at the Booth dock.
CHAPTER V
“That’s funny!” he exclaimed, staring at the scrap of canvas. The girl glanced at it, then gave him a puzzled look.
“Why?”
“You know what it is?”