The chief darted a black look at Keighley under the peak of his cap. “No one’s left this boat since that fire. I looked her up.”
“No,” Keighley admitted, unabashed. “But he’s left off makin trouble.”
“Now listen to me, Dan,” Borden broke out. “I’ve come back to the department and I’m counting up my friends. Those that ain’t with me are against me. That’s the way I look at it.... You know as well as I do that if I don’t pound these men, they’ll think I’m afraid of them—and they’ll get to work and knife me.”
“Well—that’s true, too,” Keighley reflected. He glanced up at the Jersey shore and down at the deck again. “I wish yuh’d leave them be, though, chief. I got the best crew in the department, now.”
The chief shook his head. “They didn’t leave me be. I can’t let up on them. You know what they’d think.”
“Well,” Keighley said, looking out over the river, “I’ll tell yuh. The man that was at the head of it—” He blinked the water from his eyes and peered into the wind—“in this crew—” He raised his arm slowly and pointed. “What’s that?”
Through the traffic of ferries, car-floats and lighters that crowded the shore, he could see a big freighter drifting down the piers with a flotilla of tugs about her. “What’s the matter? Is she afire?”
The chief watched her. “Looks like it, don’t she?”
There was no answer. He turned to see that Keighley had left him; and he followed back to the wheelhouse, where he found the captain standing at the pilot’s elbow with the glasses at his eyes.
“It’s a Baltic-American boat, all right—the Hessen,” Keighley said. “No fire ashore. They pulled her out of her dock, I guess. I don’t see much smoke on her. Lay us alongside, Tom.”