“How the dickens did you contrive to give us the slip a year ago?”
Margate smiled derisively.
Patsy knew that he was exceedingly proud of his evil exploits, and he felt sure that he would answer the question. His chief motive for asking it, however, was to gain time in which to consider his own situation, and to devise, if possible, a way of escape from the fate that threatened him.
“That puzzles you, does it?” said Margate, still with a sinister smile.
“Very much,” Patsy frankly admitted. “How did you accomplish it?”
“Oh, you Carters are not the whole shooting match,” Margate coldly answered. “If Chick Carter’s bullet had struck me half an inch lower, nevertheless, it would have ended me,” he added, pointing to the scar on his head.
“I guessed that much,” nodded Patsy.
“But ‘a miss is as good as a mile,’” said Margate. “It knocked me out, and I pitched overboard. Luckily, however, the chill of the water instantly revived me.”
“But you did not rise to the surface,” said Patsy. “Chick was dead sure of that.”
“Not for some little time. It was not necessary.”