"You're going to have the benefit of every doubt, my boy," the captain assured him soothingly. "But now you'd better go to your room and try to pull yourself together. We're all upset, and talking won't do us any good until we've got something else to go on. But you have got to promise me that you'll leave Ditty alone."
"I'll leave him alone if he leaves me alone."
"That is all I ask. I'll warn him to keep away from you."
Drew released Ruth's hand. She threw herself on her father's breast, and the young man groped his way to his room. Once there, he sat down and tried to face calmly the terrible indictment that had been made against him.
He did not delude himself as to the bits of circumstantial evidence that might be used to piece out that indictment to make it plausible.
What was Ditty's motive? He racked his brain in vain to find it. There was, to be sure, the row upon the pier, but that had been only a trifle, and the world would never believe that for anything like that a man would swear away the life of another.
The previous quarrel between him and Lester Parmalee seemed to establish the fact that there was bad blood between them. There was the cut upon his head, received at the very time that Parmalee disappeared. There were the blood stains on the cane, carrying the inference that that stick in the hand of Parmalee had inflicted his wound. He owned a revolver, which would bear out Ditty's statement that the mate had been intimidated by it. Then there was his own savage attack on Ditty, which showed his hot and impetuous temper.
He groaned as he saw what could be made of all these things in the hands of a clever district attorney. He could see the picture that would be drawn for the benefit of the jury. The old, old story—a beautiful woman with two young and ardent suitors; one quarrel already having occurred; a meeting in the dark; a renewal of the quarrel; an attack by the weaker with a cane; the blow that turned the stronger into a maddened beast and prompted him to grasp his frail rival and throw him into the sea. What was more possible? What was more probable? Jealousy had caused thousands of similar tragedies in the history of the world.
And when to these damaging circumstances was added the testimony of a declared eye-witness who seemed to have no sufficient reason for lying, what would the jury do?
Drew shuddered, and his soul turned sick within him.