“You’re something of a doctor in this sort of thing, Grey?” It was more assertion than query. At least, he didn’t wait for an answer before adding:
“Old Steve’ll show you the tools, and I needn’t say that the quicker we get way on the schooner, the better.
“Meanwhile,” he went on, and his tone varied not a whit from its evenness, “I guess I’d better take a minute now getting this flipper back into commission.”
He withdrew his left hand from his jacket pocket, where it had been hidden, and I believe that that incident told me more of Carl Stroth than I ever could have learned otherwise.
“You see,” he explained simply, “one of the lads, in his eagerness to cut adrift a while back, missed his aim a trifle.”
He unbound a tight-wrapped handkerchief. It was a nasty cut to look at, for the blade had found the fleshy part of the palm between wrist and little finger. The cut was clear to the bone.
“Good heavens, Mr. Stroth!” I cried. “You’d better wash that clean immediately. Have you any peroxide of[Pg 49]——”
His answer was a clear laugh, genuine and boyish. Then he mounted the ladder with the agility of an acrobat. One hand to the rungs is no light feat in itself.
TO BE CONTINUED.