CHAPTER XX.

THINKING THINGS OUT.

“Gr-e-a-t jumping Je-hos-o-phat!”

The words fell from Percy Simmons’ lips as Ralph, in a low tone, read the despatch to his chums.

“Diamond smuggling! Your dad!” gasped Harry.

“It’s-it’s-well, it’s got me beaten!” choked out Ralph impotently.

“Here, give me a blank,” he demanded of the operator impatiently. The man shoved one over. Ralph seized a pencil and wrote feverishly. This was the message he wrote:

“Just got your despatch. An outrage. But many things that have occurred here appear to be connected in some way with your dilemma. We are beginning to get down to brass tacks. Wire me again as soon as possible to Dexter Island.—Ralph.”

There was a motor boat that brought despatches among the islands, charging a good stiff price for such service, but price wasn’t worrying Ralph just then.

“Send that!” he said brusquely, shoving the despatch under the inquisitive operator’s nose. “I want the reply sent to Dexter Island the instant it comes.”

“Well, of all the idiocy,” he burst out angrily, after he had perused his father’s despatch once more. “For pure, unadulterated blunderers, commend me to these Canadian authorities. It’s all clear enough to me. They have been on the trail of diamond smugglers. I guess the authorities on both sides of the line have been cooperating. In some way that we don’t know, some of the operations of the gang have been traced to Dexter Island——”

“The _Artful Dodger_!” exclaimed Harry.

“Yes; perhaps they suspected that boat and traced her there, or heard of her being seen in that vicinity. Then when dad left hurriedly for Montreal I suppose they leaped at the conclusion that he must be one of the gang, and at once arrested him. Can you beat it?”

_“You cannot_,” said Percy Simmons with deep conviction; “you can’t even tie it.”

“What is to be done now?” asked Harry, with a note of despair in his voice.

Complications were surely piling up thick and fast for the Border Boys. Even in their most exciting times on the southern frontier, they had never encountered such a tangle of inexplicable happenings as that into which they now found themselves plunged.

“We’ll stick to the program I just outlined,” said Ralph. “It’s all we can do. If the authorities are on the lookout for the diamond smugglers, and if,—as we have every reason to suspect,—Hawke and Malvin are members of the gang, their arrest will be the first step in Dad’s exoneration.”

As there was nothing to be gained by lingering in Cardinal, the little party hastened down to the _River Swallow_. They found the lights burning, everything ship-shape, and Malvin and Hansen standing at the gangway ready to receive them. As Harry looked at Malvin’s respectful, courteous smile of greeting, he could not help repeating to himself a line from Hamlet that he had learned in school, to the effect that a man may “smile and smile but be a villain still.”

Acting under Ralph’s instructions, not one of the boys gave the faintest sign that they suspected anything. Ralph addressed some perfunctory inquiries and orders to Malvin, and then told him that he could cast off as soon as he got the order. It came as soon as Percy Simmons hailed the young skipper through the speaking tube, and told him that everything was all right below in the engine room.

A few minutes later, the _River Swallow_ had left the lights of Cardinal behind her and was shaping a swift, sure course for Piquetville.

“Wonder if Malvin suspects anything?” wondered Harry aloud to Ralph as he stood beside the young skipper in his accustomed place on the bridge.

“Blessed if I know,” was Ralph’s response as he twisted the wheel and made the fast craft meet a swirl of some small rapids they were passing through.

“You don’t appear to be worrying about it!”

“No, to tell you the truth, I’m not. So far as Malvin’s feelings are concerned, I don’t know and I don’t care.”

“But, Ralph, hasn’t it struck you that if they suspect our intention, they are likely to try to overpower us?”

“Well, I did think of that, too.”

“If they chose, they could make it hot for us. There’s not much doubt that Hawke is on board, concealed forward somewhere, and he is probably armed. So, probably, are the other two. We haven’t any weapons of any kind.”

“And we wouldn’t use them if we had,” rejoined Ralph. “I learned out west that the man who carries the most weapons is by no means the most formidable. A man, or a boy, who carries a pistol is a coward, and more than that, he is a dangerous coward.”

“Then you have no fear of Malvin trying reprisals?”

“Not the least. In the first place, he wouldn’t dare to do anything like that. It would be simply putting his head in the halter.”

“And in the second place?” asked Harry, for Ralph had paused.

“Well, in the second place, Malvin is not that sort of a man. His pose is the meek and mild. The butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth-sir sort of an attitude. Not but what snakes in the grass like that aren’t dangerous, but they rarely, if ever, resort to personal attack unless they are mighty sure of coming out on top.”

“I hope you are right,” replied Harry, “but if it should come to a shindy, I’ve got a notion that we might come off only second best. There are three of them and——”

“Three of us,” smiled Ralph. “I’ve an idea that even without weapons we would prove a match for them. But, as I said before, Harry, there’s little fear of matters coming to that pass. Malvin & Co., in the first place, must have probably guessed that the Canadian authorities did not listen very warmly to our tale of woe. In such a belief, they probably think they are perfectly secure in anything they may do.”

“But they know that we suspect them.”

“You hit the nail on the head there,” rejoined Ralph rather seriously. “That’s the worst part of the situation. If Malvin hadn’t overheard us and found out that we were on to his little game, it would have been as easy as rolling off a log to nab the whole boiling, or at least this particular part of it.”

“You think there are more in the game, then? The same thing has occurred to me.”

“I’m sure that there must be more in it. The outfit on board that _Artful Dodger_, for instance. Those fellows must have been students of Dickens to have thought that name out, but it’s a good one, all right.”

“Yes, it sure fits that fly-by-night craft to a T,” agreed Harry.

“I wonder if we’ll ever see her again,” mused Ralph, as the _River Swallow_ drove onward through the night.

In the distance the lights of Piquetville began to bob up. They were not far from their destination.

“I don’t know,” rejoined Harry, “somehow I’ve got a notion that we shall encounter her again, somewhere and sometime.”

“I have the same idea,” agreed Ralph.

Both boys were right. They were fated to see the night-loving craft of the St. Lawrence again, and that before very long. Their next meeting with her was destined to be under circumstances which were to be indelibly imprinted upon their minds.