“Go get yourself a brace more of doughnuts, John,” Stan said, chuckling, “if you can get schemes like that out of a doughnut! Just my idea too, exactly, and that’s what we’ll do. Let’s go over to Main Haven for the fun of it, to kill time.”
“Swell!” was John’s single comment.
The Water Witch was cruising quietly along save for the hum of taut rigging and the splash and run of water along her sides, for she was trim of line, fast, and able. Main Haven was a small port of call on the nearest point of the mainland. It would take all the rest of the day to reach it and return, and the skipper of the Water Witch did not want to get back till nearly dark. There would be watchful eyes upon the hilltop backbone of Porpoise Island, if Stan’s suspicions were correct, and he was already afraid Mr. Nevens suspected them too.
And Stan was not far wrong.
Back at the cove Mr. Nevens, in the seclusion of his private office in the back of that wonderful cabin, was confronting a nervous, apprehensive Dago.
“Well, did you do as I told you to, Dago?” Mr. Nevens inquired mildly, sitting back with his feet upon his desk and a cheap cigar in his mouth.
He’d never been able to take to expensive smoking, had the peculiar Mr. Nevens. Cheap black cigars were still a pleasure to him. It was a throw back to his earlier days when he had been somewhat less than well-padded with money and power——On the walls of his den were odd things: a cartridge belt and brace of six-guns slung in open scabbards. The handles of each gun had crude notches, several notches. A big sombrero also hung upon a big peg.
Dago, big and hulky, stirred nervously upon his great feet before the stare of the tall, lean, much older man.
“I got out the punt, poled along under the trees round the cove, without any noise. When I gotta to the boat, I climbs aboard like you said——”