Hastening over to the table Chick fumbled on it, and in the drawer which remained partially open.
He found a card of paper matches.
Quickly lifting the lantern slide and turning up the wick, Chick ignited a match, applied it to the burner and adjusted his light.
“Listen here—” Doe Morgan, in his corner, struggled up to a sitting posture, groaned again and then took up his own refutation of Chick’s accusation. “Listen, Chick! I ain’t a traitor, no such thing I ain’t!”
Turning, in the feeble glow of the lantern as its wick burned with a queer, fitful light, Chick’s face showed his antagonism and unbelief.
“No, sir,” the man contended, “Doc Morgan, he may be ‘queer’ but he ain’t no such a thing as a traitor, not him!”
“Look at this!”
Chick waved the rolled tracing.
“——And this!” He indicated the overturned bottle that reeked of alcohol of the cheapest kind, lying on its side at the edge of the table.
“You thought you’d celebrate getting away with the plans of the new all-metal ship, and nobody would know about it, off here in the marsh!” Chick accused Morgan fiercely. Treachery was hateful to Chick. The man had been allowed to stay around the aircraft building plant and the new airport because he was a harmless sort of scatter-brain, able to do simple chores, willing enough, and always “doctoring” people with his herb remedies, coming to the swamps for the peculiar forms of sea grasses and weed that he contended had medicinal value. He had been trusted.