"A request to send some things to Miss Constance Sherrill at Harbor Point."
"I never heard of Miss Constance Sherrill. To send what things?"
"Several things—among them a watch which had belonged to Captain Stafford of the Miwaka."
Old Burr got up suddenly and stood gazing down at Alan. "A watch of Captain Stafford's?—no," he said agitatedly. "No!"
He moved away and left the place; and Alan sprang up and followed him.
He was not, it seemed probable to Alan now, the James Burr of Corvet's list; at least Alan could not see how he could be that one. Among the names of the crew of the Miwaka Alan had found that of a Frank Burr, and his inquiries had informed him that this man was a nephew of the James Burr who had lived near Port Corbay and had "disappeared" with all his family. Old Burr had not lived at Port Corbay—at least, he claimed not to have lived there; he gave another address and assigned to himself quite different connections. For every member of the crew of the Miwaka there had been a corresponding, but different name upon Corvet's list—the name of a close relative. If old Burr was not related to the Burr on Corvet's list, what connection could he have with the Miwaka, and why should Alan's questions have agitated him so? Alan would not lose sight of old Burr until he had learned the reason for that.
He followed, as the old man crossed the bridge and turned to his left among the buildings on the river front. Burr's figure, vague in the dusk, crossed the railroad yards and made its way to where a huge black bulk, which Alan recognized as the ferry, loomed at the waterside. He disappeared aboard it. Alan, following him, gazed about.
A long, broad, black boat the ferry was, almost four hundred feet to the tall, bluff bow. Seen from the stem, the ship seemed only an unusually rugged and powerful steam freighter; viewed from the beam, the vessel appeared slightly short for its freeboard; only when observed from the stern did its distinguishing peculiarity become plain; for a few feet only above the water line, the stern was all cut away, and the long, low cavern of the deck gleamed with rails upon which the electric lights glinted. Save for the supports of the superstructure and where the funnels and ventilator pipes passed up from below, that whole strata of the ship was a vast car shed; its tracks, running to the edge of the stern, touched tracks on the dock. A freight engine was backing loaded cars from a train of sixteen cars upon the rails on the starboard side; another train of sixteen big box cars waited to go aboard on the tracks to the port of the center stanchions. When the two trains were aboard, the great vessel—"No. 25," in big white stencil upon her black sides were her distinguishing marks—would thrust out into the ice and gale for the Michigan shore nearly eighty miles away.
Alan thrilled a little at his inspection of the ferry. He had not seen close at hand before one of these great craft which, throughout the winter, brave ice and storm after all—or nearly all—other lake boats are tied up. He had not meant to apply there when he questioned old Burr about a berth on the ferry; he had used that merely as a means of getting into conversation with the old man. But now he meant to apply; for it would enable him to find out more about old Burr.
He went forward between the tracks upon the deck to the companionway, and ascended and found the skipper and presented his credentials. No berth on the ferry was vacant yet but one soon would be, and Alan was accepted in lieu of the man who was about to leave; his wages would not begin until the other man left, but in the meantime he could remain aboard the ferry if he wished. Alan elected to remain aboard. The skipper called a man to assign quarters to Alan, and Alan, going with the man, questioned him about Burr.