“Give it to me,” directed the captain.
“It looks to me,” continued the commander, after the carpenter had handed him the nail, “as though some one coming up to the deck after eating must have picked up your hammer and perhaps some nails with it.”
“I can’t say about the nails,—they were scattered about on the case,—but there is no doubt some one got the hammer.”
“It looks as though young Black got it,” said the quartermaster.
The captain dismissed the two men. “I don’t want a word said about this,” he warned them. “Be very careful that you do not mention it to any one.”
The moment he was alone the captain turned to a calendar. “Last Thursday,” he muttered to himself, “was the day we got back to New York from Boston. Henry was on duty in the wireless house every minute that evening. I don’t know that he even got any supper. I must find out what Black was doing at that hour. I guess the best way to do it is through the quartermaster.”
Again the quartermaster was called and instructed to find out from the third-class wireless man, without arousing the latter’s suspicions, at what time he ate his supper on the preceding Thursday evening. That was not a difficult thing to do. Later in the day the quartermaster engaged young Black in conversation and turned the talk to the events of their run from Boston.
“You missed your supper the night we got in, didn’t you?” asked the quartermaster.
“Not on your life,” said Black. “You don’t catch me missing anything like that. I was one of the first fellows at the table.”
“I’ll bet I’ll be one of the first there this noon,” said the quartermaster. “I’m hungry enough to eat a bear.”