The Burton home was a sort of country seat near the outskirts of the city and was bordered on the east by half a mile of seashore. A small natural harbor added much to the curious interest of the surroundings, being sufficient to accommodate comfortably the 50-foot power yacht owned by Mr. Burton. This harbor was well sheltered by hilly projections, except at one point where the shore dropped down almost to the level of the sea and afforded a good landing place. Here a quay had been built for the yacht. So well protected with bluffs was the cove that the heaviest gales hardly rocked the little vessel in its mooring. Under the brow of the largest bluff had been constructed a pile-supported shed for sheltering the boat in winter.
Ferncliffe is a manufacturing and fishing seaboard town. Half a mile from the Burton home are the municipal docks, where fishing boats tie up and where steamers stop to receive or unload passengers and freight. In the summer months a considerable business of this kind is done.
The house in which the Burtons lived was a large, square, comfortable, white frame dwelling, rather southern in style. Mr. Burton had several men in his employ constantly. One of these was Det Teller, half-sailor, half-farmer, who had worked for the banker-farmer several years. Det was an interesting character. He knew “everything and the whole world.” He had been around the world twice as a seaman and was skilled in the tying of sailors’ knots and the weaving of sailors’ yarns.
His nickname was a “short” for Deuteronomy. Det’s father had been very religious and had given bible names to all his children. The retired sailor was now fifty years old. Six years previously he had discovered in a servant of the Burton family a former girl schoolmate with whom he had been in love twenty-odd years before, and he married her and entered Mr. Burton’s employ as farm foreman. A house was built especially for them on the premises.
Det was really a bright and valuable fellow. In six years he had learned “all about” his employer’s business and could “run any branch of it except the bank.” He was a short, long-armed, broad-shouldered, powerful man, whose natural alertness and jovial disposition seemed not to have been affected seriously by the burden of two score years and ten.
Mr. Burton had owned the yacht, Jetta, for two seasons. It had been named for the boys’ five-year old sister. Det was mate and part of the crew of the vessel, and during the outing months of the year his capacity of farm foreman was almost forgotten, or left in other hands. Originally intended only as a private pleasure craft, the Jetta, under the enterprising ambition of the “wireless twins,” had become, in the last summer, a recognized excursion boat, identified inseparably with the outing happiness of many of the inhabitants of Ferncliffe and neighboring towns. Guy and Walter made up the complement of the crew and acted as joint skippers who usually followed the instructions of the mate. Mr. Burton was merely owner and made no attempt to interfere with the management of the craft when aboard with the mate and one or both of the young captains.
On the morning when Guy and his mother boarded the train for New York city, another passenger of peculiar interest here bought a ticket for the same destination. He was a tall, thin, sharp-eyed, well-dressed man, wearing a high-crowned derby hat and large angular trowel-shaped patent leather shoes. He had had business in Ferncliffe and stopped several days at the Chenoweth House, the best hotel of the place. On the day of his arrival he had read with interest the following local item in the Ferncliffe Gazette:
“H. G. Burton has decided to send his son Guy to London for treatment of his eyes. Guy and his mother will sail from New York in a week. The boy’s eyes will be treated by the famous Dr. Sprague.”
The stranger had registered at the hotel as Stanley Picket of New York. He had planned to return home on the day when he read the above item, but the information it contained caused him to alter his plan. He remained in Ferncliffe until Mrs. Burton and Guy started for New York, when as we have seen, the train bore him also as a passenger.
Walter and Guy noticed the tall, well-dressed man on the platform before the train pulled in, little dreaming what an important part he was destined to play in their affairs within the next few months.