Captain Joe looked gravely up at the boy and wagged his stump of a tail. His eyes said that he knew all about it, and could explain everything if he only had the gift of speech!
“Did some one come aboard and get it, Captain Joe?” the lad asked, half convinced, in his misery, that the dog could explain the mystery.
The dog seemed to understand the question, for he sniffed at the rail of the boat, appeared to pick up a scent, sprang over the cabin, and sat down on the aft deck to look steadily into the river.
“Oh, he did!” Alex cried. “He came in over the prow, climbed over the cabin, dropped down on the aft deck, snatched the money, and dove into the river. I understand, old boy! But why didn’t you stop him?”
Captain Joe, recognizing the tone of reproach, slunk back over the cabin and lay down on the prow, a favorite resting-place. Teddy laid the strip of oiled silk at Alex’s feet and looked up with twinkling eyes, as if inviting the boy to pick it up and have a romp with him!
“You poor little beastie!” Alex exclaimed. “If you could only talk for a minute I’d soon know where the money went to! I believe Captain Joe might tell me more if he wasn’t so lazy!” he added, going back over the cabin and calling the dog to him. “I believe that stern deck is haunted!” he added.
This time he gave the silk to the dog and waited to see what he would do with it. Captain Joe was undecided for a moment. He seemed to think Alex a very foolish boy for handing him such a rag as that to pick up a scent from! Then he went to the aft deck and laid the silk down on the extreme edge of the low railing. Teddy snatched it off and began romping with it, much to the disgust of the anxious boy. Hopeless!
“Fine old watchdog you are!” Alex exclaimed. “Next thing you know, some one will come on board and steal your ears! You let Don on this deck, and permitted him to sleep here, you ornery cur, and never said a word to us about it! Now you’ve let some pirate come here and steal more money than I’ll ever be able to pay back—not if I live to be a thousand years old! I didn’t think it of you, Captain Joe!”
The dog slunk away, and Alex sat down to the bitterest time of his life. What could he say to Don when he returned and asked for the money? What could Don say when questioned regarding the honesty of his motives in taking the handbag and the notes from Trumbull? He could not restore the money, and therefore his assertion that he had taken it only to place it where it belonged would look decidedly flat.
Alex was too honest to think of denying that he had taken the money from its hiding-place in the sand, although no one knew that he had done so! He could only admit taking it and tell the story of its loss—a story which he feared no one would believe! The fifty thousand dollars were gone, and the boy believed that his chance for an honorable career had gone with them.