"Proctor?" cried Dick. "Why, he said his name was Bangs."
"He's been known to change his name before now, so I ain't surprised at that. But his real name is Proctor."
The watchman went on about his business, and Matt and Dick withdrew by themselves in no very easy frame of mind.
"Dowse me!" growled Dick. "Can't Carl and I be away from you for a few hours, old ship, without making fools of ourselves? But Bangs told such a straight yarn——"
"If a trap was laid, Dick," interposed Matt, "it was a clever one and I don't see how you could avoid dropping into it. It's a pretty safe guess, I think, that there has been foul play. This fellow Proctor, or Bangs, wanted the iron chest and laid his plans to get it."
"But how could he lay his plans?" muttered Dick. "Sink me if I can understand that part of it. First off, he couldn't have known we had the iron chest, seeing that we fished it out of that skiff so recently."
Matt listened thoughtfully. He was trying to figure the matter out in his own mind, but it was a difficult problem.
"Then, again," continued Dick, "Bangs was here watching for us. If he wasn't a friend of Townsend's how could he have known we were coming?"
"From what we knew of Archibald Townsend," answered Matt, "we can bank on his being honest and square. If that's the case, he'd hardly have a friend like Bangs, would he? And certainly, if he knew Bangs, he'd hardly trust him to meet us, as Bangs told you he had done."
"I'm a swab," growled Dick, with profound self-reproach, "and Carl's a swab. We've dropped into a tangle of foul play, and it don't make it any brighter because we can't understand where Bangs got the information that enabled him to carry out his plot. I had an idea that I wouldn't let Bangs touch that iron chest until you got here, but he told such a straight story that I was argued out of my original intention. Oh, keelhaul me!"