"We'll stay away from the Kelsos and Brad Marbek. Don't worry about that," Rick assured him. "But we're not giving up, are we, Scotty?" "Not on your life," Scotty replied flatly. Jerry's car bounced over Salt Creek Bridge and sped toward the Seaford turnoff. The boys had phoned him early in the morning and found that he had learned about Tom Tyler's hearing during his routine phone calls to the Seaford authorities, and that he was going down to cover it. They had met him at the Whiteside dock, and on the way down had brought him up to date on their part of the case, including their humiliating experience of the night before. "So your theory about smuggling must be wrong," Jerry said. "Otherwise, you'd have found something." "I'm not convinced," Rick argued. "It's still the only answer that fits." "Then where were the smuggled goods?" "We could have gotten there too late," Scotty reminded. "If it was a small shipment, it could have been unloaded and disposed of before we showed up." "Disposed of? How?" Jerry wanted to know. Rick recalled that he had heard the sound of oars while in the cabin. Red and Brad had rushed out right away, too, after hearing a hail. "They might have taken the stuff up the creek," he mused. "They might even have had a truck waiting at the bridge. There's not much traffic, so it wouldn't be too great a risk. And even if a car came, they could pretend the truck was changing a tire or something until it passed." "That's reasonable," Jerry admitted. "Did you talk it over with Cap'n Mike?" Rick grinned ruefully at the memory of the two soaked, bedraggled, filthy specimens who had knocked on Cap'n Mike's door last night. "We were in no mood even to think about it," he said. "But we did find out one thing. Cap'n Mike said it would be easy for anyone to disconnect Smugglers' Light and then reconnect it. All he would need would be an insulated screw driver." "And that's not all," Scotty added. "He said Tom Tyler was first one back from the fishing grounds eight times out of ten because the _Sea Belle_ was the fastest boat in the fleet and the best handled." The more Rick thought about it, the more he was convinced that his theory of the wrecking of the trawler would hold water. Cap'n Mike had plugged up another hole, too. Rick had wondered about the backside of the light. He had noticed that there was a red sector on the townside, a common method of construction on lights of that sort. On Cap'n Mike's chart, shaded areas showed how the light worked. It was visible from the seaside in an arc of 180 degrees. It was dark in the quadrant toward the marsh and red in the quadrant toward the town. But warehouses and pier sheds blocked off the light from almost all of the town except Million Dollar Row, and since the red portion would be out for only a short time, it was long odds against anyone noticing it or investigating if they did. "It's pretty sound," Rick said. "Only I wonder if we'll ever prove it?"