There it would be easy for Doc, sweeping up, to find them, to abstract any—or many.
“But he might have told the truth about not ‘celebrating,’” he said, thoughtfully. “He never has any money to buy big bottles of alcohol. If he had been paid by anybody for the new designs, he wouldn’t have had the one I discovered. He must have been waiting for somebody else to come.”
He recalled the course of events that had transpired. Had the “other man” come? Was it he who had played ghost? Chick wondered, clutching his torn, soggy coat as tightly about him as possible. Not that it warmed him much; but the act was involuntary as his mind focused on the weird apparition he had seen.
Instinctively his eyes went to that dark, gloom-crowded corner of the hovel.
In a lull of the storm he seemed to hear something gurgling, slapping, like water against pilings. It was too clear to come from the channels beyond the closed door.
“I wonder—if there was a trap door—” he meditated.
Summoning his courage he walked over to the corner. To his surprise he discovered, in the gloom that had concealed it, an unclosed flap of the flooring, leaning back against the wall. In the dull light from the lantern it had not been noticed, against the similarly dark wall boards.
“It’s a trap door to steps so the boatman can get down to the dories he keeps tied under the place,” Chick decided.
He did not care to explore the mysterious depths below, however.
Closing the square of flooring on the fury of the water beneath, he returned to his chair.