“Remember what Dad always said, John—study the situation, look for clues before disturbing things too much, in a case like this!”
This they now did, making notes of how things were, accurate sketches showing the positions of each object; and then they looked for fingerprints. They were rewarded only by the discovery of a pair of rubber gloves at the foot of the steps. Large sized gloves, they had been tossed aside by the intruder as he left, in a hurry. Stan recovered enough of the fingerprint powders to bring out smudges on various objects but could find no prints. The man who had been aboard the yacht had been lucky, if not careful.
The things were then picked up and set to rights, and Stan was the first to voice an opinion of what had been the purpose of the search.
“From what I see, John,” he said, “Dago may have been sent aboard here to go through our letters and personal things and to destroy the camera. There might be something among the things to show that we were purposely looking up Mr. Nevens, you see. If Dago found nothing, our claim of being merely pleasure-bound would appear more reasonable. The breaking of the camera was probably Dago’s idea!”
“But if Dago came aboard, how did he get here?” John wanted to know. “By the shores of the Red Sea—he didn’t swim it, for his clothes were dry when we passed him.”
“Probably made it in a boat, of course.”
“Where’s the boat, then? And why would he be on the path instead of back at the boat-house, then?”
For answer, Stan dug out a pair of binoculars from a closet and went up on deck. Keeping the cabin between him and the direction of the boat-house, he studied the shore line close by as if looking for something. It took several minutes, but at last he sucked in his breath hard and handed the glasses to John.
“See that spot over there, John?”
“Oh, yes, I see—there’s a punt hidden under the overhanging branches of a tree! And that is how Dago came aboard!”