“Look here! Hasn’t this thing gone far enough, Walter? Here you arrive at the station in a s’picious condition when your patrol is up, one of the surfmen picking you up, and a brandy flask is found in your pocket. A letter too is missing, a letter from the deestrick superintendent, who will make us a visit in five days, and I s’pose it is a special matter he wants me to look into. It puts me in a pretty fix. You—you—you.” The keeper was stumbling about in his effort to find the word he wished to use. He was angry at the loss of the letter, knowing that it might contain directions whose neglect would seriously damage him in the opinion of his superior. While he was irritated by a sense of his loss, Walter was indignant at the thought that he could be supposed to carry a brandy flask with him for tippling purposes. His bright hazel eyes were full of fire–flashes, and he threw back his handsome head in the pride of innocence.
“Cap’n Barney,” he asserted, “I am very sorry that letter can’t be found. I think it will be found, but if it should not turn up to–day I will write to the superintendent and tell him frankly of all that happened, of my misfortune last night, and ask him to write to you, saying that I am sorry for troubling him, and as for the other matter—”
“Yes,” said a voice breaking in suddenly, “that’s fair enough.” It was Cook Charlie’s voice. He had come upstairs, unobserved by the keeper and Walter. “You see, Cap’n,” he continued, and in that tone of voice which was peculiar to Charlie and was like “oil on troubled waters,” “I am part to blame ’bout this letter business. Walter had it last night, and wanted to hand it over then, but I told him jest to hold on to it, that the mornin’ would do. Of course, you work hard, and you were sick—and everybody knows you have enough on your mind to make a hoss sick, and there isn’t a more faithfuler keeper on the coast—and of course, I did not want to disturb ye. Blame me as well as Walter. Oh, it will turn up! Besides, he has offered to do the fair thing in writing to the superintendent, and that relieves a faithful keeper like you, and nobody could do more.”
Under the skillful stroking of Cook Charlie’s words of praise, Keeper Barney’s agitation rapidly subsided, and the hard, angry lines in his face began to fade away.
Walter now spoke; “As for that brandy flask, I have no idea how it came in my pocket. It is my coat, I allow, but I don’t own what’s in that pocket. There is some mistake here, and it was put in accidentally or somebody is trying to harm me. You can dismiss me if you want to, but I want the superintendent to investigate this whole matter, and if you will wait until he comes—no, turn me off now if you think it fair when I have had no chance to turn round, you might say, and speak for myself.”
“It is Joe Cardridge who says you were not jest right when he found you last night.”
“Does he say that I had been a–drinking? Then it’s a lie. Let me see him! Where is he?”
“Quiet, Walter! You have got friends.” This was a new voice, Woodbury Elliott’s.
By this time, all the crew were upstairs. The loud talking had attracted one curious head above the railing that guarded the stairs running up from the kitchen, then another head, then a third, till finally they all had stolen up stealthily, for no matter what etiquette might have demanded, the curiosity of human nature inherited from Eve (and Adam also) was a stronger motive, and there they were in a rough circle about the keeper and Walter.
“Quiet!” said Woodbury softly to Walter again. “Cap’n Barney, let me say a word why I think you should let this thing hang over until the superintendent’s visit, that is supposin’ you had made up your mind to discharge Walter.” He then proceeded to review the whole case, beginning with the slanderous stories whispered about Walter, and closing with a reference to the mysterious discovery of the flask in Walter’s pocket. Against everything that looked suspicious, he put Walter’s previous good character and excellent record.