Skippy reached out and grasped Toby’s damp flannel shirt sleeve in agony.
“Pop, it wasn’t you—I know it—I just feel it!” he cried. “I can tell from all you told me about him grinnin’ like from the time you got inside the room.” He hesitated a moment, then: “You don’t remember him makin’ a sound at all?” he asked, anxiously peering into his father’s face.
“Not one sol’tary sound, Sonny—I didn’t hear a one!”
Skippy sighed and again took up the task of steering the little motor boat upstream. His tired young face, however, had taken on a new look of resolution.
“You’re tired, Pop, an’ I’m gonna take you back to the Minnie M. Baxter. Then I’m gonna turn this kicker straight back and head her downstream again an’ I’m goin’ aboard that Apollyon an’ explain the whole thing. I’ll tell ’em everythin’ like you told me an’ I bet they’ll believe it all right ’cause they’ll see that my Pop couldn’t kill anybody.”
Toby said nothing but continued to rock back and forth with his head in his hands.
“Maybe—maybe you’re not so tired an’ you’d turn ’round with me an’ go back an’ tell ’em, huh Pop?” Skippy returned anxiously.
“Skippy,” Toby cried hoarsely, “jest now I wanta go back ter the Minnie M. Baxter an’ think. Like a good boy don’t talk about it no more till we get there, hey?”
Skippy, bewildered, promised that he wouldn’t, and let the little kicker out to the best of her ability. From time to time he heard the miserable sighs of his father, and over and over again he told himself the story of Josiah Flint’s strange death just as Toby had told it. But with each recurring thought, a strange suspicion asserted itself and clamored so hard in the boy’s conscious mind that he was forced to recognize that it was a doubt, a small one, but nevertheless a doubt of his father’s story.
And by the time they were once more on board the Minnie M. Baxter, Skippy was fearful that possibly, after all, his father might be the actual murderer of Josiah Flint!