“Don’t stop to talk now,” said Dorothy. “Take us to the Black Arrow as fast as you can.”
In a moment we had cleared the wharves and were passing from the dirt and smells of the city on to the clear waters of the bay. As we went, Dorothy explained the situation to Tom, who fell in with the plan joyously. Once on the slim rakish yacht, he spoke.
“Now, Jim, you’re in command. Where are we going?”
“Right down the coast,” I said, “and we’ll megaphone every fisherman and yacht. It’s the men on the coasters who will know, if any one does.”
Swift as her name, the Black Arrow ploughed her way through the summer sea. Pleasantest of all assignments to sit on her deck and watch Dorothy Haldane as she talked and speculated on the problem before us. Could one man have sunk so mighty a battleship? Was there any possibility that a single man could make war on the world? Tom came up to us in the midst of the discussion, and stood listening.
“Queer this should come up now,” he said. “It was only last winter that some one was talking about something like this up at our house, one Sunday night. Who was it, Dorothy?”
A sudden look of alarm flashed across her face. She started to speak and then broke off. “Oh! I hardly remember.”
Tom persisted. “Let’s see, there was a crowd of the fellows there, and, queer thing too, John King and Dick Regnier. The same pair that were with you the other night.”
“Regnier!” That name shot across me like a bullet. The short, quick, troubled breathing of some one behind me on the night we read the letter! “Can it be!” I burst forth.
Dorothy made no pretence of misunderstanding me. “No,” she said firmly. “Dick was up to see me last night. It couldn’t have been he.”