“This?” Mr. Haskins took the snuff-box, pulled his spectacles down from his forehead on to his nose, walked nearer the window, and peered at the small silver box.
“What do you want me to tell you?” he asked after a moment.
“Is it a real old one?”
“Certainly it is. See that monogram? That’s the finest embossed work.” Mr. Haskins gave a chuckle. “I ought to know about that box, I ought.”
“Why ought you?” asked Ben.
“Well, you see, this here particular snuff-box has been in my shop some time. I sold it to a customer just about a week ago.”
“I thought perhaps you had,” said Ben, trying hard not to show his excitement.
X—LIGHTS ON THE ISLAND
The information that Ben obtained that afternoon from Mr. Haskins concerning his sale of the snuff-box gave a new direction to his thoughts. He could not follow up this new clue just yet, however, without telling the others, and this he didn’t want to do. They would be waiting for him aboard the Argo, and so, after a fifteen-minute talk with the shopkeeper, he hurried away to join them at the wharf.
One other thing he did, however, before the sailboat left Barmouth, and that was to get a canoe he owned out from a shed on the waterfront and fasten it behind the Argo. If he had the Red Rover with him—he had laboriously painted that name in orange letters on a scarlet background on the canoe—he would be able to come and go about the harbor as he wished and to leave the island without explaining his plans, as he would have to do if he wanted to take the sailboat.