“Unfortunately, sir, I don’t see any other way to put the question,” young Halstead answered.
Eben Moddridge wavered, thinking it all over in an evident frenzy. While he was thus pondering Captain Tom was heading straight in for where he knew Cookson’s Inlet to be.
“It’s—it’s—bad either way,” Moddridge finally confessed. “If I delay in reaching the telephone Frank and I may lose millions through some unfortunate turn in Wall Street. And, on the other hand, if poor Frank has vanished, perhaps never to turn up again, he and I may both be ruined in the money world.”
“As between losing some millions, and all,” spoke Tom, as judicially as he could, “I should say it would be better to risk some of the money and keep on after Mr. Delavan himself.”
“If that’s the way it appears to you, then do so,” replied Eben Moddridge, slowly, hesitatingly. “Oh, dear, I simply can’t think when I am so nervous.”
“This is a funny sort of an associate to take into a big money deal,” thought Halstead, wonderingly. The young skipper discovered, later, that Moddridge was a power in Wall Street simply because he had inherited more millions than he was capable of handling. He was valuable when men wanted more money for financial operations than they themselves controlled. Moddridge was in the present big Delavan deals simply because Moddridge had discovered that he could always trust Mr. Delavan.
So Tom headed for Cookson’s Bay, making that shallow little body of water in less than an hour. Another hour was spent in lowering the port boat and in rowing Moddridge both to the little island and to the main shore. It was a sparsely settled region. Only one of the cottages on the little island was occupied, and that only by a bachelor who admitted that he had been asleep at the time when the two motor boats had dodged about the island. He aided, however, in searching the other two cottages, but no sign was found of Mr. Delavan or of his probable captors. The search was continued on the main shore, with no better results.
“Now, we simply must get back to East Hampton,” urged Moddridge, and Halstead was reluctantly of the same opinion.
“If Frank can’t be found soon,” chattered the nervous one, as the “Rocket” headed toward her pier at East Hampton, “and if the news becomes public, then every stock he is heavily interested in will go away down on the Stock Exchange.”
“Why?” asked Tom Halstead.