Ralph leaned back in his chair and watched the twinkling lights ashore. It was a beautiful night, calm, peaceful and starlit. The water shimmered like a sheet of silver. Hardly a ripple disturbed the mirror-like surface of the St. Lawrence, which, at this point, was fully two and a half miles wide, a mighty lake of swift flowing water.
It was delightful to be seated there in the River Swallow’s comfortable cockpit. But somehow Ralph did not think much of the scene about him. His mind was busy with the dilemma of which his father’s despatch had informed him.
What an odd turn of fate it seemed, that, while he and his chums were on the trail of a gang of miscreants who had been using Dexter Island as a rendezvous, his father should be arrested in Montreal for the very crime which they were trying to lay at the door of Malvin and Co.!
“I wonder how long this sort of thing has been going on,” mused Ralph; “probably for some time, perhaps ever since Malvin, two years ago, entered my father’s service. I remember Dad congratulated himself on obtaining a man of such education and refinement to handle the River Swallow. He was rather astonished, too, that a fellow who was so intelligent and apparently well educated should be willing to take such a post. It’s all clear enough now.
“The job Dad gave him afforded Malvin just the opportunity he wanted to carry on his smuggling schemes without being suspected of a connection with any such dealings. No wonder he had it in for us when we came and deposed him from his position of boss of the River Swallow! It meant that he could no longer have things all his own way. That henceforth he would be liable to be watched, and that the visits of the Artful Dodger to Dexter Island would be likely to be observed and suspicion aroused.”
He had been watching the lights of the tender as the speedy little craft sped toward the shore. Now he saw them pause alongside the yacht club dock and come to a standstill.
“The boys have got ashore,” he thought, “in a few minutes they will be in consultation with the customs authorities. Then we shall see what the next step in this little drama is going to be. I rather think that, by this time to-morrow, Messrs. Malvin and Co. will have seen a great light.”
In the meantime, Harry Ware and Percy Simmons had made their boat fast and clambered up on the dock.
A man in a uniform that they recognized as that of a U. S. Customs Inspector stepped up to them the instant they set foot on shore.
“Off the River Swallow?” he asked.