Stan rejoined, “Looks like three to me. We’ll know who did it later when Dad gets a chance to have the F. B. I. look them up in the fingerprint files!”
Back at the boat wharf a group of men argued over the discovery that the handle to the tender’s motor was no longer rubber covered!
“Where were you while it happened?” Hegarty demanded of an abashed thin chap who had been left at the tender.
“Just went in town on an errand, boss, and come right back!” he confessed.
“Well, whoever did that must have had a good reason and——”
One of the men in business suits with Hegarty gave a low curse of anger.
“Fingerprints is what they wanted whoever done it!” he said aloud.
“That’s it!” cried Hegarty. “And I bet it was them kids! Come on; what are we waiting for. Let’s get going after them!”
But the boys had been gone some time now, and the racing rowboat, overloaded and hard to manage, circled the harbor without any luck while the valuable minutes passed. Then Hegarty was put aboard the Sea Hawk.
“Get under way, boss?” asked a sailor at the controls on the bridge.