“I sent her to her cabin,” Miss Serena stated. “She was greatly disturbed about this affair.”
“Oh!” said Larry, slowly, “she was?”
“Yes, but she is a high-strung girl,” argued the lady; and during the silence that followed, she turned to her relative.
“Atley,” she told the millionaire, “we are getting nowhere. For my part I believe that the emeralds have already been destroyed!”
“Destroyed!”
“Certainly. That seemed to be the purpose, in the London hotel. A person as clever as that must have planned this entire affair and has undoubtedly accomplished his wish and vanished long ago—or else he can never be caught because we have no way to discover him.”
“He ought to be caught and punished,” Jeff argued. “That-there set of emeralds was too precious for us to let somebody do a thing like this-here.”
“We know who was on the yacht,” Larry agreed with Jeff. “At least we can try to find out who threw the emeralds off.”
“We know,” Dick broke in. “Don’t you remember that Miss Serena recognized the maid—Mimi—by her uniform?”
“Then why don’t we go and question her?” Larry suggested. “Make her tell what she knows!” A murmur of assent broke out among the seamen who were naturally anxious to be cleared of any possible suspicion.