Red stared angrily at the fire. The girl threw him a teasing glance as she sang low:
“Come, play with me.”
“All right!” he exclaimed almost fiercely, “I’ll play with you to-morrow and the day after if need be; anyway until the kidnapers catch up with us or we are able to leave the island.”
“If you care to row,” Ed suggested, “it’s not too rough in the harbor. If you were to wear my canvas coat and cowboy hat—” He turned to Red. “If you went out before dawn and if Berley, here, sat low in the stern, no one would know but that it was just old Ed and his dog. You could play around among the little islands all day and be safe.”
“Shall we?” Berley’s tone was almost wistful. “We’ll take a lunch and eat it on the rocks.”
“Might be worse,” Red admitted. “Rowing will at least keep me in trim for the great day. And now for some sleep!” He disappeared behind the narrow curtain that led to one of the cubby-hole bedrooms in Ed’s cabin.
“The great day,” he whispered to himself, as he slid beneath the covers. That day now seemed very, very far away. But quite unconsciously he was losing his feeling of long weariness. The spring of youth was flooding back through every nerve and fiber of his being. “If only I could get a whack at that line,” he thought dreamily. “If only I could!”
* * * * * * * *
The person banging at Drew Lane’s door was none other than the person known as the Rat. Drew was surprised to see him. The Rat, like others of his kind, seldom appeared unless called. The object he unwrapped before the young detective’s astonished eyes was, he thought, worth a trip half way round the world. It was the shoe that had made the invisible footprint on the sleeping car sheet. Once Drew’s eyes fell upon it, he sat and stared. A full minute had passed into eternity before he could say:
“Where did you find it?”