“Where have you been?” he inquired.
“Oh, sort of loafing around up-country—killing time!”
He squinted at me sourly.
“I can’t say that you’re doing any great credit to my training, young Sidney!”
“You are right, Captain Vose, but I’m turning over a new leaf and I’m out to make good. I am hoping that I can do something in the case of Anson C. Doughty so that I can get back into the diving business and keep on the job hereafter.”
“Then you’ll go back to diving and keep out from under plug-hats, will you?”
“Yes, sir!”
He looked at me for a long time and then he pulled out a letter.
“This here,” he said, tapping it, “is something more about that Golden Gate treasure. There’s a new crowd on the rampage about it. From somebody in the old crowd they have got hold of my name. I came nigh trying it on once, as I have told you. But it’s a gamble; I am old and I don’t want it. You are young and there’s nothing as yet for you on the Atlantic coast, and you might grab in on this. They want an Eastern diver because the divers out there are tied up with the big concerns and can’t be depended on to keep their mouths shut—so this letter says.”
“Probably it’s a pretty uncertain proposition, sir.”