“He may,” agreed the captain, “but no accident has been reported. The coast-guards think he may have capsized in a squall—they saw him make the sheet fast. But there weren’t any squalls; the weather was quite calm.”
“Was he all right and well when he put off?” inquired Thorndyke.
“Yes,” replied the captain, “the coast-guards’ report is highly circumstantial; in fact, it’s full of silly details that have no bearing on anything. This is what they say.” He pulled out an official letter and read: “‘When last seen, the missing man was seated in the boat’s stern to windward of the helm. He had belayed the sheet. He was holding a pipe and tobacco-pouch in his hands and steering with his elbow. He was filling the pipe from the tobacco-pouch.’ There! ‘He was holding the pipe in his hand,’ mark you! not with his toes; and he was filling it from a tobacco-pouch, whereas you’d have expected him to fill it from a coal scuttle or a feeding-bottle. Bah!” The captain rammed the letter back in his pocket and puffed scornfully at his cigar.
“You are hardly fair to the coastguard,” said Thorndyke, laughing at the captain’s vehemence. “The duty of a witness is to give all the facts, not a judicious selection.”
“But, my dear sir,” said Captain Grumpass, “what the deuce can it matter what the poor devil filled his pipe from?”
“Who can say?” answered Thorndyke. “It may turn out to be a highly material fact. One never knows before hand. The value of a particular fact depends on its relation to the rest of the evidence.”
“I suppose it does,” grunted the captain; and he continued to smoke in reflective silence until we opened Blackwall Point, when he suddenly stood up.
“There’s a steam trawler alongside our wharf,” he announced. “Now what the deuce can she be doing there?” He scanned the little steamer attentively, and continued: “They seem to be landing something, too. Just pass me those glasses, Polton. Why, hang me! it’s a dead body! But why on earth are they landing it on our wharf? They must have known you were coming, doctor.”
As the launch swept alongside the wharf, the captain sprang up lightly and approached the group gathered round the body. “What’s this?” he asked. “Why have they brought this thing here?”
The master of the trawler, who had superintended the landing, proceeded to explain.