McLagan agreed.
“It seems that way,” he said, with an assumption of indifference. “Yet I’ve a sublimely foolish notion there’s something queer behind that wreck. And the notion’s got hold of me good.”
“Queer, eh?” Goodchurch’s eyes narrowed, and he surveyed the cigar in his fingers reflectively. Then he chuckled quietly. “Yes,” he went on. “Insurance. And that’s not in my work—once my report is sent in to my chiefs.”
McLagan bestirred himself. He realised the official horizon of this otherwise excellent man. He stood up.
“I told you I’d got a notion,” he said simply. “Well, I got more. And I’m wondering if you’ll help me out on it. I’ve an idea, more than an idea—a conviction, in fact, that the name of that bunch of wreckage has been changed. It was changed on purpose. Real, desperate purpose. If we can locate the owners and anyone else interested in the Imperial of Bristol, we shall get back of a darn ugly story that’s liable to get your department jumping on a red-hot trail. That’s why I came along now. It’s to give you that before I go right up into the country on a survey that’s going to keep me busy till the summer’s nearly through. I daresay by the time I get back the storming will have left nothing of that wreck on the rocks. It don’t matter. Her story don’t lie in her now. It lies in the owners and crew who are the folks that need finding. You broadcasted before for the other name. Will you do it for this? Will you send it to the newspapers? And pass it right on to any old region that can pick it up? I’d be glad, an’—grateful.”
Goodchurch laughed. He realised the oil man’s earnestness, but it left him quite unaffected.
“Sure, I will, Mac,” he said cordially. “How did you locate the change of name? What’s the story you reckon to discover?”
The other shrugged his heavy shoulders as he flung his cigar stump into the cuspidor.
“It’s clear enough—with the suspicion of it in your mind. I got a close look at the painted names on the boats, and life belts, and anything that had the ship’s name on it. Mostly the change has been made good. But, like all things of that nature, it was a long job and the folks doing it maybe got weary of it. In two cases, at least, I recognised the old name had been painted or scraped out—some of the letters, and others substituted. I’m sure, dead sure.”
“And the story?”