“We could not prove to the satisfaction of a court that Beeman deliberately tried to aid a fugitive to escape,” broke in Tremaine, rather impatiently. “Haight, we’ll let this captain keep his passage money. I’ll make the amount good, for, at least, Beeman promptly and properly foiled Dixon’s effort to destroy himself. So keep your passage money, Captain Beeman.”
“I thank you, sir,” cried the commander of the “Buzzard,” his eyes lighting up with pleasure.
“None the less, Captain,” went on Tremaine, dryly, “my private opinion is that you would have gone on laughing at us had the fates favored you.”
“You wouldn’t have got the money again, if I could have prevented it,” sneered young Mr. Dixon. “I’d have burned it, only I saw I hadn’t time. I’d have thrown the satchel overboard, but I knew it would float. The only weight I could find was my revolver, and I knew that wouldn’t be heavy enough to make the satchel sink with all that paper in it.”
“You’re going back to Port Tampa, aren’t you, Captain?” demanded one of the policemen of Beeman. “We are not going to arrest you, but we may want you as a witness.”
“I’ll go back to the port,” nodded the commander of the “Buzzard.”
As Oliver Dixon stepped over the rail and onto the deck of the “Restless,” he hung his head, his gaze wandering along the seams of the deck. Mrs. Tremaine and Ida averted their eyes. Dixon was led below. With one of the policemen he was locked in the very port stateroom in which he had committed the theft of the ten thousand dollars.
For he afterwards admitted drugging and robbing Henry Tremaine. He also acknowledged that it was he who had sprung and fastened the door that had almost smothered Captain Halstead in the air chamber compartment.
When the two white men and the two negroes whom Captain Tom had brought in triumph out of the Everglades were arraigned for trial for their various offenses against the law, they confessed that they had constituted the once famous “Ghost of Alligator Swamp.” This ghostly business of theirs had been carried on for the purpose of frightening hunters and cottagers away from Lake Okeechobee that their camps or bungalows might be robbed of any supplies. Occasionally, too, Uncle Tobey had succeeded in charging a goodly fee for “exorcising” the ghost away from one bungalow or another, and these fees Uncle Tobey had always divided with the members of the gang. These members of the gang were all sent to the penitentiary for offenses committed in the past. Uncle Tobey, too, was “put away” on a charge of swindling.
Sim confessed that Oliver Dixon had met him in the woods, that night, and had urged him to abduct Captain Tom Halstead, representing that Henry Tremaine would readily pay three thousand dollars for the young man’s safety. In Tom’s absence Dixon had hoped to put his own plans through.