“But what has that got to do with Joe’s father?” asked Blake.
“Too much, I’m afraid, lad. It was said that the light here was allowed to go out some nights, so the false light would be more effective.”
“Well?”
“Well, Nate Duncan had charge of the light at night after I went off duty. And it was always when I was off duty that the wrecks occurred.”
“Do you mean to accuse Joe’s father of being in with the wreckers?”
“No, lad. I don’t accuse anybody; I’m too old a man to do anything like that. But ugly stories began to be circulated. Government inspectors began to call more often than they used to, inspecting my light—my light, that I’ve tended nigh onto twenty-five years now. I began to hear rumors that my assistant wasn’t altogether straight. He was said to be seen consorting with the wreckers, though it was hard to get proof that the men were wreckers, for they pretended to be fishermen.
“Then come a day when, with my own eyes, I saw Nate Duncan walking along the beach with one of the men who was said to be at the head of the wrecking gang. I could see that they were quarreling, and then Nate knocked the man down. He didn’t get up right away, for, as I said, Nate was strong. I knew something would come of that, and I wasn’t much surprised when that day Nate disappeared.”
“Disappeared?” cried Blake.
“Went off completely, and left me alone at the light. I tended it all night, same as I had done before, many a time, and the next day I reported matters, and I had a new assistant—the same one I have now.”
“But that doesn’t prove anything,” said Blake. “Just because Joe’s father, and a man suspected of being a wrecker, had a quarrel, doesn’t say that Mr. Duncan was a wrecker, too.”