“Oh, in California,” was the reply.
“Hum, you keep far enough away from them,” commented Anderson; “and, by the way, I’ve got a bone to pick with you. You got me discharged over your borrowing of that key.”
“What!” exclaimed Gradbarr, with genuine surprise. “Fired? How’s that? Although, now I come to notice it, you do look a bit mussed up. Bin in a fight?”
“Why no,” was the sullen rejoinder. “What made you think that?”
“Well,” grinned Gradbarr, “men don’t generally roll in the mud if they can help it, and by the looks of you that’s what you’ve bin a-doin’. But tell me about how you come to be fired. If it’s my fault, I’ll make it right with you.”
Anderson soon related his own version of how he came to be discharged. He was in an angry, reckless mood, and did not care how loud he talked, so that he had for a listener Jeb Sproggs, the landlord of the hotel. Jeb listened with open mouth and ears to Anderson’s description of the “young whelps,” as he termed them, who had accompanied Mr. Lockyer, meaning, of course, Ned and Herc. “And there was an old geezer, too,” he went on; “looked like some sort of a retired fisherman.”
“Why them fellows is registered here,” put in the landlord, as Anderson concluded. “Yep,” he continued, “their names is Strong, Taylor, and the old feller’s called Marlin.”
“Then they weren’t mere butt-in visitors to the yard as I had them figgered out to be,” cried Anderson.
“Why no,” said Sproggs, discarding a badly mangled toothpick. “As I understand it, them lads is here on special duty connected with that diving boat. They’re in the Navy.”
“The Navy!” exclaimed Gradbarr. “Then I may be too late.”