“I’m very much indebted to you for exposing this masquerader,” said Fuller. “I shall have the matter inquired into. But seriously, Mr. Burnham, you made one extraordinary fluke in your deductions, which almost took my breath away. I have a man on board with red hair, and when the boat came into the harbour he was working about here. I saw him leave his work to come ashore for us. I shouldn’t be at all surprised to find that the knife belonged to him.”
“Oh, well,” Dennis laughed, “one shot right is not a bad average for a beginner, you know.”
“No,” said Hilderman, puffing a cloud of smoke, and dreamily following its ascent with his eyes, “not bad at all. Not bad at all.”
And then, the joke of the clasp-knife being played out, we admired the scenery, and conversed of less speculative subjects till we arrived at Glasnabinnie.
We were pulled ashore by the man with the red hair, and when our host confronted him with the knife he promptly claimed it.
“I think you won, Mr. Burnham,” laughed Fuller, and Dennis smiled in reply. We slid alongside the landing-stage and stepped out, and Dennis’s schoolmaster was about to slip the painter through a ring and make the boat fast. But evidently the ring was broken. The man came ashore, and Hilderman began to lead us up the path. But Dennis deliberately turned and watched the sailor. Hilderman and his companion strolled ahead while I stood beside Dennis. The man with the red hair fished among a pile of wire rope, and picked out a small marline-spike. Then he lifted a large stone, held the marline-spike on the wooden planking of the landing-stage, and hammered it in with the stone. Then he threw the painter round it, and made the boat secure in that way.
“Yes,” murmured Dennis quietly, as we turned to join the others, “I think I won.”
For the man had held the stone in his left hand.