He fell to musing on Jarrold’s strange conduct. Why had the man suddenly vanished when Colonel Minturn appeared? What was his object in the strange proposal he had made to the young wireless man? What manner of craft was this Endymion, and how was it possible that she could live in such a sea and storm?
These, and a hundred other questions came crowding into his dozing brain. They performed a sort of mental pin-wheel, revolving over and over again without the lad’s arriving at any conclusion.
That some link existed between Jarrold and the Endymion was, of course, plain. But just why he should have vanished so quickly when the Panama official appeared, was not equally evident. Jack had a passenger list in front of him, stuck in the frame designed for it.
He ran his eyes over it. Yes, there was the name:
Mr. James Jarrold, N. Y.—Stateroom 44.
Miss Jessica Jarrold, N. Y.—Stateroom 56.
Suddenly Jack’s roving glance caught the name of Colonel Minturn, U. S. A., stateroom 46. So the colonel’s stateroom adjoined that of the man who appeared to be so anxious to avoid him! Another thing that Jack noted was that, although the ship was crowded and a stateroom for a single passenger called for a substantial extra payment, both Mr. Jarrold and the army man had exclusive quarters. In the case of Colonel Minturn this was, of course, understandable, but Jarrold? Jack looked at the latter’s name again, and now he noticed something else that had escaped him before.
Stateroom 44, the room occupied by Jarrold and adjoining Colonel Minturn’s, had evidently been changed at the last moment, for originally, as a crossed-out entry showed, Jarrold had been given stateroom 53. A pen line had been drawn through this entry by the purser evidently, when Jarrold had changed his room.
Jack happened to know that Colonel Minturn had come on board at the last moment, so, then, Jarrold had changed his stateroom only when he had found out definitely that Colonel Minturn’s room was No. 46. There must be something more than a mere coincidence in this, thought Jack, but, puzzle as he would, he could not arrive at what it meant.
He was still trying to piece it all out when suddenly the door, which he had closed to bar out the flying spray, was flung open.
A gust of wind and a flurry of spume entered, striking him in the face like a cold plunge.