“I don’t know,” was the rejoinder, “but one thing I can tell you, he is a slick enough customer to be able to do almost anything.”
“From the way he fixed that carburetor and those plugs it certainly appears that way,” commented Joe, looking up from the frying pan; “why do you suppose he wanted to delay the Nomad, anyhow?”
“To mum-mum-make a further sus-sus-search through the Professor’s trunks, I guess,” was Ding-dong’s reply.
“What! He was looking in my trunks?” cried Mr. Jenkins.
“Yes, sir; Ding-dong caught him at it,” put in Joe.
“The cunning scoundrel! He is cleverer than even I thought,” cried the professor. “In one of my trunks was a working model of the wireless torpedo. If he secured that it would be of invaluable aid to whoever had the plans. In fact, without it as a key they would have some difficulty in following out my calculations and designs.”
“So that was the reason he was so anxious to come ashore with us!” cried Nat, a light breaking in on him; for it would have appeared more reasonable to suppose that, having rifled the professor of his papers, the thief would desire to keep on the high seas. “I see it all now. He knew that your trunks would be shipped ashore with you, Professor, and in some way he also knew that they held what he hadn’t yet obtained, the working model. He must have calculated that on the way between the Iroquois and the shore he would have time to ransack your baggage and get hold of it.”
“And his desire to lay hands on it gave him nerve enough to tamper with the engine and endanger his own life as well as ours in that gale,” supplemented Joe.
“It is all as clear as day now,” cried Nat; and then in a chagrined voice he muttered, “What a pack of boneheads we’ve been! Just think, we had him right in our power and he’s slipped through our fingers like so much water!”
“Never mind,” consoled Dr. Chalmers, “you couldn’t very well have acted on what knowledge you had up to the time that Professor Jenkins recovered consciousness. I think, in fact, that——Hark!”