“Oh, yes,” Dick replied in a dry voice, “he is competent enough.”
Pink's eyes brightened. “Sure thing,” he said, “I can run her easy.”
Dick glanced at Pink, then dropped his eyes again. The boy had heard only the words; he had not caught the thoughts that were passing between his captain and the special agent. To Dick this decision, coming in the lull after the excitement, coming after what seemed to him proof of his innocence, sounded like the judge's sentence. Through the hour or two that followed, during the dinner on the steamer, after the launch had gone back into the harbor with Pink and his crew, even when the old side-wheeler had raised her anchor and started on her lumbering way around through the Straits and up Lake Michigan to Chicago, Dick, lying dressed in his berth, was trying to puzzle out the meaning of Beveridge's words and of the momentary confusion that had accompanied them. And it did not raise his spirits that, after each struggle with the problem, his thoughts were directed to Annie. Perhaps Beveridge himself, if he had laid his thoughts bare, could not have helped him much. For it was not reasoning that had shown him the tactical folly of allowing Dick to come sailing gloriously in to Annie's very front door,—red shirt, neckerchief, and all the appurtenances of a hero; it was the instinct that made it impossible for him to resist holding every advantage that came to his hand. Beveridge had done a big thing. He had run down—killed or captured or driven out of the country—several members of the most skilful gang in the history of smuggling on the Great Lakes. He had done it alone. He was even beginning to put down his surprise over the capture of Henry Smiley, and to feel that Henry was the one man he had been after from the first. Yes, he had made his success—the thing left was to win Annie. And to do this he must not only see her before Dick could see her; he must also arrange that Dick's appearance on the scene, when all the delays had been exhausted, should be an inglorious one. Some of his finest work was yet to come. In thinking it over, lying in his berth in the room next to Dick's, their heads not two feet apart, he fell asleep with a smile on his lips. And never had the Foote seen such sleeping as followed. When all three men, accusers and accused, had slept through the afternoon and on through the night, when they failed to hear even the breakfast gong, Captain Sullivan began to wonder if they meant to wake at all.
Afterward, for a day or two, all three, Beveridge, Dick, and Henry, were very quiet. They sat yawning in deck chairs, or dozed in their berths. But during this time, thanks to the sunny skies and the peaceful lake, and thanks to Beveridge's elation and good-nature, to Henry's surprising cheerfulness, and to the difficulty Dick found in showing the depth of his feelings, the relations of the three were growing more and more pleasant. By common consent they avoided discussing the chase or its cause.
On the afternoon of the last day out, Dick and Beveridge sat smoking on the after deck. The Foote was rumbling slowly down the coast somewhere below Milwaukee, and should make Chicago before midnight if nothing broke in the engine room. They were discussing the Michigan peach crop when Henry drew up a chair and joined them.
“Would you mind telling me,” said Henry to Beveridge, filling his pipe as he spoke, “what you are going to do with Dick, here?” So Henry was the one to open the subject. Dick's lips drew together and his hand trembled, but his eyes were steady.
Beveridge was evasive. “What am I going to do with him?” he repeated.
“Yes. You will have a good deal of say about that, won't you?”
“Why—yes, and no.”
“Now that you know he had nothing to do with it, you 'll be able to get him right off, won't you?”