Sanders laughed and shook his head in a nervous negative. “Oh, no, they won’t,” he chuckled. “The boy isn’t up there. I brought him with me. At present he’s sound asleep in a cabin not twenty feet from where we’re sitting!”
“Well, that’s a good one!” Slim laughed. “What’s the orders now?”
“We sail in two hours. I want you to come along. Go back to the hotel now and use your gentle persuasion on Bill Bolton to find out where Evans is. We’ll hold them on board until the divers have brought the stuff up from the bottom of the harbor up there. Then we can either make all three of them pay heavy ransoms, or if they’re obdurate, tie them up and drop them overboard.”
“But supposing torture won’t make Bolton tell?” argued Slim. “What shall I do with him then? You aren’t giving me much time to persuade him, you know.”
“Oh, use your air gun if you like. It’s all the same to me!”
“And let Old Evans go?”
“That’s right. He’s tired of trying to watch us up there. And that old diver of his—Jim something-or-other, hasn’t located the stuff yet. Evans thinks that he has a better bet in watching you. So mind your step when you come back tonight. The longer Mr. Evans stops in Stamford the better pleased I’ll be.”
“Okay. It’s a swell break, and the luckiest thing about it is that he can’t bring in the bulls. He and his bank would pay a pretty fine if the government found out that he was taking that gold to Europe in his yacht when von Hiemskirk captured it. Nice of the noble baron to sink it in Twin Heads Harbor, and then go to Atlanta for thirty or forty years!”
“We may be able to blackmail Evans later, after he’s paid his ransom, and we’ve got away with the gold.—Listen!” Sanders dropped his voice and began to whisper across the table.
Bill pressed closer to the skylight, and at the same time a door clicked somewhere along the deck. In a second he was crouching on hands and knees, peering into the darkness. The figure of a man swung up the companionway and paused to light a cigarette. Bill could see his thin, swarthy face, lined and scarred, as the tiny flame leaped within his cupped palms. The match spun overboard in a luminous curve, and hissed into the water. Then the man began to walk slowly along the deck toward Bill.