Just then Lorrimore came along, poking his head into the galley. He suddenly uttered a sharp exclamation and reached an arm to a black silk cap which hung from a peg on the boarding above the stove.
"That's Wing's!" he said, in emphatic tones. "I saw him make that cap himself!"
CHAPTER XXV
CLEAR DECKS
The bit of head-gear which Lorrimore had taken down assumed a new interest; Scarterfield and I gazed at it as if it might speak to us. Nevertheless the detective when he presently spoke showed some incredulity.
"That's the sort of cap that any Chinaman wears," he remarked. "It may have belonged to any of them."
"No!" answered Lorrimore, with emphatic assurance. "That's my man's. I saw him making it—he's as deft with his fingers, at that sort of thing, as he is at cooking. And since this cap is his, and as he's not amongst the lot there on deck, he's the man that you, Middlebrook, saw escaping in the boat. And since he is that man, I know where he'd be making."
"Where, then?" demanded Scarterfield.