“No; though I did understand that there wasn’t time for you to connect with the police launch.”
“Well,” said I, “granting a fiend’s viewpoint, the plan was not so bad, for it certainly would have stopped you. That craft was built stancher than most hydroplanes, and carried a terrible way on her. She’d have made a nasty-enough hole——”
“What!” He sprang erect in the sudden mount of fury at the full realization. “Do you mean to tell me that the scoundrel actually meditated——”
“Not only meditated,” I interrupted coolly. “He’d already ordered me into the punt, and set the rudder before I myself could——”
His tone lowered as he broke in on my explanation:
“So that was the reason for the fight?”
“Naturally,” I replied. “Much as my ways lie in dark places, I am not taken with such methods; where women are concerned especially.”
“Then you knew that my daughter was aboard with me?”
“I didn’t know till this minute that the young lady was your daughter,” said I. “But the inference that she was on the vessel was natural enough after I had chased you pretty well over Portland.”
Stroth made no direct reply to this. He seemed rather to be settling some course. Then he shot out abruptly:[Pg 49]