“Mr. Pitt, having an exaggerated idea of the value of a human life, is greatly upset by our accident. I appreciate his condition. If his philosophy were less tainted with sentimentality——”
“I might smile over the loss of a young, hopeful life? Thank you, that is a mental level which I hardly hope to achieve.”
I went out on deck and climbed up to the wireless house. Pierce greeted me with a sorry shake of the head.
“Gee! That was a dirty shame about poor Larson. He was the only white man in the crew. If anything had to happen why couldn’t it happen to one of the bums?”
I saw that Pierce knew nothing that might make him suspect that Larson’s disappearance was not accidental and I told him hurriedly of the conversation between Riordan and Brack which I had overheard last night.
“Oh, my God!” he groaned. “The dirty dogs! Young Larson, as nice a lad as you ever talked with, against Brack, and that gorilla, Garvin! Oh, they’re a fine bunch of crooks, the bunch in this crew. As fine a bunch o’ crooks as ever went to sea to duck the police. Brack and Riordan picked ’em, you know, in San Fran’. Wilson’s all right, and besides him I think they made just one mistake in their picking.”
“How so?”
“The nigger they got at Seattle. He’s a crook, too, but he certainly has got it in for Garvin.”
The rest of that day was a trying one to me. Save for Pierce, Wilson and myself, not a soul on board seemed to have a single serious thought about Larson’s disappearance. The weather had cleared; the wind had shifted to the south and was only a gentle breeze; the sun was shining; and to the rest of the company life aboard the Wanderer seemed like a holiday.
Chanler seemed both elated and impatient. At times he lolled in a deck-chair and chaffed me good humoredly, and the next moment he would be up, pacing the promenade nervously.