"I'm sorry," Harry answered with a chuckle. "I should have waited until the rest had gone."
Mr. Barclay regarded him severely, though his eyes twinkled.
"Your smartness is going to make trouble for you by and by," he said. "Go and see what that Siwash is doing about our supper."
Harry moved away, but presently came back to announce that the meal was ready. When it was over the boys strolled off toward the reef, leaving the men sitting smoking on the beach.
"That boy of yours told me what seemed a rather curious thing last night," said Mr. Barclay, and he briefly ran over what Harry had related about the man with the peculiar shoulder.
Mr. Oliver listened in evident astonishment.
"It's the first time I've heard of the matter," he exclaimed. "What do you make of it?"
"In the meanwhile I don't quite know what to think. If that man is boss of the gang it explains a good deal that has been puzzling me, but I must own it's considerably more than I expected. The general idea was that he'd cleared out of the country, which would have been a very natural course in view of the fact that he'd probably have been sandbagged if he'd show himself after dark on any wharf of two of the coast states. Anyway, your son's description was quite straight. He seemed sure of him."
"Harry's eyes are as good as yours or mine," said Mr. Oliver with a smile. Mr. Barclay wrinkled his brow.
"There's a point that struck me—though I can't say if it explains the thing. The boy's only young yet, he has imagination and, it's possible, a fondness for detective literature, like the rest of them. Now we'll assume that he had heard of a certain sensational case—a particularly grewsome crime on board an American ship—and the arrest of the rascal accused of it. I needn't point out that the fellow only escaped on a technical point of law and that his picture figured in some of the papers. Isn't that the kind of thing that's likely to make a marked impression on the youthful mind?"