“Then, if he’s one of the fellows who tried to tempt me last night, he’s working for or with the very crowd that have caused Mr. Delavan to vanish,” breathed the young captain. Feeling that his excitement must be showing in his eyes, Halstead forced himself to cool down a good deal.
“That fellow you asked about claims his name is Ellis, and that he’s on a Brooklyn newspaper,” murmured the “Sun” man, drifting by the young motor boat captain.
“Thank you,” acknowledged Tom Halstead, courteously, yet almost indifferently. To himself, however, as the real reporter strolled away, the boy muttered:
“Ellis, eh? And a Brooklyn newspaper? What a cool liar the fellow is!”
Though they had now waited but a few minutes after giving up young Halstead as a bad interviewing job, the reporters were now once more besieging the desk clerk to send their cards up to Eben Moddridge.
“It’s no use, gentlemen, I tell you,” insisted the clerk. “I’m not to let anyone near Mr. Moddridge until he informs me that he is at leisure.”
“That fellow who calls himself Ellis is the only one who doesn’t insist at all,” muttered the young skipper, covertly watching the game.
Bye and bye, however, “Ellis” drew two of the real reporters aside, engaging them in low, earnest conversation. The other reporters joined the party, all hands talking together for some fifteen minutes. Then once more the “Sun” reporter, as soon as he could do so without attracting attention from his comrades, sauntered up to Captain Tom, standing on the veranda just outside the entrance.
“That fellow Ellis claims to have a whole lot of inside track,” whispered the “Sun” man. “He tells us he knows that Francis Delavan, overcome with remorse at having looted the assets of the P. & Y. Railroad, drowned himself near the mouth of the inlet this morning. He claims that the body has been recovered, but that an effort is being made to keep it from the coroner.”