The Craig Kennedy Scientific Detective MEGAPACK ®. Brander Matthews
them still? Was there a plot to frustrate Everson’s plans? At least the best thing to do was to get out to the wreck and answer our many questions at first hand.
The Belle Aventure was a trim yacht of perhaps seventy feet, low, slim, and graceful, driven by a powerful gas-engine and capable of going almost anywhere. An hour later we were aboard and settled in a handsomely appointed room, where Craig lost no time in establishing his temporary traveling crime clinic.
It was quite late before we were able to start, for Everson had a number of commissions to attend to on this his first visit to port since he had set out so blithely. Finally, however, we had taken aboard all that he needed and we slipped out quietly past the castle on the point guarding the entrance to the harbor. All night we plowed ahead over the brilliant, starry, tropical sea, making splendid time, for the yacht was one of the fastest that had ever been turned out by the builders.
Now and then I could see that Kennedy was furtively watching Norma, in the hope that she might betray whatever secret it was she was guarding so jealously. Though she betrayed nothing, I felt sure that it had to do with some member of the expedition and that it was a more than ordinarily complicated affair of the heart. The ladies had retired, leaving us with Everson in the easy wicker chairs on the after-deck.
“I can’t seem to get out of my mind, Everson, that meeting with the Spanish girl on the street,” suddenly remarked Kennedy, in the hope of getting something by surprise. “You see, I had already heard of a little unpleasantness in a hotel cafe, before the expedition started. Somehow I feel that there must be some connection.”
For a moment Everson regarded Kennedy under the soft rays of the electric light under the awning as it swayed in the gentle air, then looked out over the easy swell of the summer sea.
“I don’t understand it myself,” he remarked, at length, lowering his voice. “When we came down here Dominick knew that girl, Dolores, and of course Kinsale met her right away, too. I thought Gage was head over ears in love with Norma—and I guess he is. Only that night in the cafe I just didn’t like the way he proposed a toast to Dolores. He must have met her that day. Maybe he was a bit excited. What she said today might mean that it was her fault. I don’t know. But since we’ve been out to the Key I fancy Norma has been pretty interested in Dominick. And Kinsale doesn’t hesitate to show that he likes her. It all sets Donald crazy. It’s so mixed up. I can’t make anything of it. And Norma—well, even Asta can’t get anything out of her. I wish to Heaven you could straighten the thing out.”
We talked for some time, without getting much more light than Everson had been able at first to shed on the affair, and finally we retired, having concluded that only time and events would enable us to get at the truth.
It was early in the morning that I was wakened by a change in the motion of the boat. There was very little vibration from the engine, but this motion was different. I looked out of the port-hole which had been very cleverly made to resemble a window and found that we had dropped anchor.
The Key of Gold was a beautiful green island, set, like a sparkling gem, in a sea of deepest turquoise. Slender pines with a tuft of green at the top rose gracefully from the wealth of foliage below and contrasted with the immaculate white of the sandy beach that glistened in the morning sun. Romance seemed to breathe from the very atmosphere of the place.
We found that the others on the yacht were astir, too, and, dressing hastily, we went out on deck. Across the dancing waves, which seemed to throw a mocking challenge to the treasure-seekers to find what they covered, we could see the trawler. Already a small power-boat had put out from her and was plowing along toward us.
It was as the boat came alongside us that we met Gage for the first time. He was a tall, clean-cut fellow, but even at a glance I recognized that his was an unusual type. I fancied that both proctors and professors had worried over him when he was in college.
Particularly I tried to discover how he acted when he met Norma. It was easy to see that he was very eager to greet her, but I fancied that there was some restraint on her part. Perhaps she felt that we were watching and was on her guard.
Dominick greeted Everson warmly. He was a man of about thirty-five and impressed one as having seen a great deal of the world. His position as purser had brought him into intimate contact with many people, and he seemed to have absorbed much from them. I could imagine that, like many people who had knocked about a great deal, he might prove a very fascinating person to know.
Kinsale, on the other hand, was a rather silent fellow and therefore baffling. In his own profession of deep-sea diving he was an expert, but beyond that I do not think he had much except an ambition to get ahead, which might be praiseworthy or not, according as he pursued it.
I fancied that next to Everson himself, Norma placed more confidence in Dominick than in any of the others, which seemed to be quite natural, though it noticeably piqued Gage. On the part of all three, Gage, Dominick, and Kinsale, it was apparent that they were overjoyed at the return of Norma, which also was quite natural, for even a treasure-hunt has hours of tedium and there could be nothing tedious when she was about. Asta was undoubtedly the more fascinating, but she was wrapped up in Everson. It was not long before Kennedy and I also fell under the spell of Norma’s presence and personality.
We hurried through breakfast and lost no time in accepting Everson’s invitation to join him, with the rest, in the little power-boat on a visit to the trawler.
It was Dominick who took upon himself the task of explaining to us the mysteries of treasure-hunting as we saw them. “You see,” he remarked, pointing out to us what looked almost like a strangely developed suit of armor, “we have the most recent deep-sea diving-outfit which will enable us to go from two hundred to three hundred feet down—farther, and establish a record if we had to do it. It won’t be necessary, though. The Antilles lies in about two hundred and fifty feet of water, we have found. This armor has to be strong, for, with the air pressure inside, it must resist a pressure of nearly half a pound per square inch for each foot we go—to be exact, something like a hundred and five pounds per square inch at the depth of the wreck. Perhaps if Traynor had been diving we might have thought that that was the trouble.”
It was the first reference since we arrived to the tragedy. “He had only had the suit on once,” went on Dominick, confirming Everson, “and that was merely to test the pumps and valves and joints. Even Kinsale, here, hasn’t been down. Still, we haven’t been idle. I have something to report. With our instruments we have discovered that the ship has heeled over and that it will be a bit harder job to get into my office and get out the safe than we hoped—but feasible.”
Kennedy showed more interest in the diving apparatus than he had shown in anything else so far. The trawler was outfitted most completely as a tender, having been anchored over the exact spot at which the descents were to be made, held by four strong cables, with everything in readiness for action.
I saw him cast a quick glance at the others. For the moment Dominick, Gage, and Kinsale seemed to have forgotten us in their interest explaining to Norma what had been accomplished in her absence. He seized the occasion to make an even closer examination of the complicated apparatus. So carefully had accident been guarded against that even a device for the purification of the air had been installed in the machine which forced the fresh air down to the diver, compressed.
It was this apparatus which I saw Kennedy studying most, especially one part where the air was passed through a small chamber containing a chemical for the removal of carbon dioxide. As he looked up, I saw a peculiar expression on his face. Quickly he removed the chemical, leaving the tube through which the air passed empty.
“I think the air will be pure enough without any such treatment,” he remarked, glancing about to be sure no one had observed.
“How is that?” I inquired, eagerly.
“Well, you know air is a mechanical mixture of gases, mainly oxygen and nitrogen. Here’s something that gives it an excess of nitrogen and a smaller percentage of oxygen. Nitrogen is the more dangerous gas for one under compressed air. It is the more inert nitrogen that refuses to get out of the blood after one has been under pressure, that