Roy Norton

“ Come and help me to smash in the door of your cabin. There's a man in there. Here! You two men stand by that window there, and two more by the next, and by the next one for'ard. If any one tries to climb through, get him!"
Jimmy seemed to understand and rushed after me as I returned to the door. Together we threw our entire weight against it, and the inside bolt snapped at the second impact, and we stumbled inside. A man tried to escape past us, but my steward caught him around his knees and brought him flat to the deck. ”

“ SET the telegraph over to full-stop, and let the Esperanza float with the outgoing tide. I ran down to Martin's cabin, and rapped on the door. There was no response. I sent my steward for a master-key and felt the wards of the locks turn beneath my fingers, and tried to open the door that I had never entered since Martin, with his peculiar insistence on privacy, came aboard. ”

“ I had rather tolerantly accepted his first statements that he was being watched, and taken the whole dose with a grain of salt, believing that one who suspects all men and everything about him might make a mountain out of a mere mole-hill ”

“ He wiped his hands on a piece of waste, said he felt rather out of gear, climbed up over the gratings, and went on deck. He was gone from the engines for about a half-hour, and came back in a rotten temper, and told the third that the engine-room looked like an Irish pigsty, and that if he could have his way he'd go through some of them down there with his boot. And I know the reason for that, I think! I changed the lock on my cabin door with my own hands, after that affair in the Atlantic Basin, because it doesn't do to take too many chances on an old lock! ”

“ It must have been a man from either the engine-room, a fireman, or a coal-passer, because it's not likely that any other hand would have left the smear."
"Quite true," he said quietly, and for an instant we eyed each other with the same thought in our minds. We had but one new man aboard, the engineer, John Klein. ”

“ There's something wrong about this"—and as his face became blank, I added—"Jimmy!"
His hands fell to his sides and he stood as if transfixed. Then his eyes fell upon the blinds that I had been tearing away with my fingers, and he made a step toward his cabin.
"I got a note from you asking me to come to an agency in Second Avenue, and that you wouldn't sail until you got another man," he said. "You put at the bottom of it, 'Urgent. Come at once. It's important for your work.' See! ”