“You know who they were, then?”
“I can guess—a man named Radwig and another named Schultz.”
The bandaged man nodded again.
“You have named them correctly.”
“Doctor!” exclaimed Bill, “you have heard what this man has said. Can you leave him long enough to go with me to Captain Jameson?”
“Gladly, my boy. But of all extraordinary tales——”
“It is true, upon my word of honor,” groaned the injured man. “The number of the cabin is 14. The chief steward has the keys. I stole them from his desk to open the stateroom and placed them back again without his knowledge.”
“And just to think,” muttered Bill, as he and the doctor hastened from the injured man’s side, “that if it had not been for that accident we’d never have known a thing about poor old Jack’s plight till too late. After all, that feeling I had was correct.”
Captain Jameson summoned the chief steward as soon as he had heard Bill’s story and together the commander, and the others, hastened through the maze of corridors leading to stateroom 14. Theirs were the voices the boy had heard, and in ten minutes’ time he was wringing Bill’s hand and telling, to an indignant group, the story of Radwig’s outrage.
The captain’s indignation knew no bounds.