Jones, seeing us searching, helped, his revolver in one hand and a
lighted match in the other, handling both with an abandon of ease
that threatened us alternately with fire and a bullet. But there
was no key.
"It stands to reason, miss," he said, when we had given up, "that,
since the key isn't here, it isn't on the ship. That there key is
a sort of red-hot give-away. No one is going to carry a thing like
that around. Either it's here in this cabin--which it isn't--or
it's overboard."
"Very likely, Jones. But I shall ask Mr. Turner to search the men."
She went toward Turner's door, and Jones leaned over me, putting a
hand on my arm.
"She's right, boy," he said quickly. "Don't let 'em know what
you're after, but go through their pockets. And their shoes!" he
called after me. "A key slips into a shoe mighty easy."
But, after all, it was not necessary. The key was to be found,
and very soon.
CHAPTER X
"THAT'S MUTINY "
Exactly what occurred during Elsa Lee's visit to her brother-in-law's
cabin I have never learned. He was sober, I know, and somewhat dazed,
with no recollection whatever of the previous night, except a hazy
idea that he had quarreled with Richardson.
Jones and I waited outside. He suggested that we have prayers over
the bodies when we placed them in the boat, and I agreed to read the
burial service from the Episcopal Prayer Book.
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