I felt that strange
sensation of mingled reality and unreality which comes sometimes in dreams,
and I rather think that Roger felt it, too, for we turned simultaneously to
look again into the iron safe. But again only its painted walls met our
eyes.
The gold actually was gone.
Roger started up. "Now how did Falk manage that?" he cried. "I swear he
hadn't time to open the safe. We took them absolutely by surprise--I could
swear we did."
I suggested that he might have hidden it somewhere else.
"Not he," said Roger.
"Would Kipping steal from Captain Falk?"
"From Captain Falk!" Roger exclaimed. "If his mother were starving, he'd
steal her last crust. How about the bunk?"
We took the bunk apart and ripped open the mattress. We sounded the
woodwork above and below. With knives we slit the cushion of Captain
Whidden's great arm-chair, and pulled out the curled hair that stuffed it.
We ransacked box, bag, cuddy, and stove; we forced our way into every
corner of the cabin and the staterooms. But we found no trace of the lost
money.
It seemed like sacrilege to disturb little things that once had belonged
to that upright gentleman, Captain Joseph Whidden. His pipe, his
memorandum-book, and his pearl-handled penknife recalled him to my mind as
I had seen him so many times of old, sitting in my father's drawing-room,
with his hands folded on his knee and his firm mouth bent in a whimsical
smile.
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