“In two or three days. You have one lighter.”
“We have. I want to know if the tug——”
“The damage is not serious,” the other broke in.
“Then I’m to understand she’s back in port?”
A broken murmur answered, but by and by Dick caught the words, “Not longer than two days.”
Then he rang off, and pushing Jake’s chair out of the way, shut the door.
“It’s plain that they don’t mean to tell me what I want to know,” he remarked. “The first man might have told the truth, if they had let him, but somebody pulled him away. My opinion is that the tug’s not at Adexe and didn’t go there.”
They went back to the hotel, and Dick sat down on a bench in the patio and lighted his pipe.
“There’s something very curious about the matter,” he said.
“When the tug left us she seemed to be heading farther off shore than was necessary,” Jake agreed. “Still, the broken water wouldn’t matter so much when she had the wind astern.”