“I wouldn’t have had such a thing happen for anything,” mused Mr. Hammond. “With the ship full of newspaper correspondents lapping everything up for copy! But we can’t side-step. We will have a meeting right after breakfast.” To avoid crowding the salon, Mr. Hammond divided the meeting. The passengers, officers, and three engineers met first. Mr. Hammond laid the case before them, and each man was searched. Afterward the crew and the rest of the engineers gathered. There was a general demand, led by Wally, for a search of everybody’s personal belongings. Committees were formed, every garment was examined, every cushion probed, hangings taken down, books and magazines gone over leaf by leaf. The crew’s quarters were searched. Men in their soft overalls and felt shoes swarmed over the catwalks in the vast hull and looked in every conceivable place where a packet of papers might have been hidden. A cloud rested on the Moonbeam. Everyone was anxious and angry. The case seemed more flagrant on account of David’s popularity. Not a man of the ship, officers, passengers or crew, who was not wholly devoted to the young captain. Everyone rejoiced in his success. The manner in which he had piloted the ship through storm and calm aroused in them an unselfish pride. They were back of him, ready to do anything. Yet here someone had stolen from him something more than money. They had stolen his hopes and his ambitions. David had spent every leisure hour for months on his invention. There was a time limit on the entrants for the contest. All papers must be in the hands of the judges no later than the fifteenth of July, ten days after they were scheduled to reach Lakehurst. The plans could not be reconstructed in ten weeks. During the morning Doctor Sims and David met in the passageway. “Well, young man, whom are you suspecting?” demanded the professor. “No one,” replied David. “I’ve been advised to look for a motive.” “Correct; but there might be several motives. Jealousy, vanity, the desire for money or fame, revenge—a wide choice.” “Envy, hatred, and malice all point just one way with me,” said Red, when David repeated the professor’s words to him, “but it can’t be. Wally wouldn’t dare do such a thing.” “Oh, Lord, there you go on Wally again! What in thunder would he do such a crazy fool thing for? Why, he even owns shares in the Moonbeam.” “Yeah?” sneered Red. “And what’s it got him, the poor devil? Write-ups and interviews perhaps, but underneath is the sting of being cooped up with a bunch of people that can’t abide the sight of him. Can’t you see, you blind bat, that he’s never on the in with them? Not on the poker, or pools, or their jokes, unless he butts in. And he feels it. You come along, and it’s ‘Hi, captain, join us,’ and ‘Come over with us and sit down, captain,’ and so on. I swear, sometimes I am sorry for him, even if his grandfather did swap farms with my grandfather.”