"Stuck to him and kept him from drowning till you could pick 'em up, did he--what?" was his commentary on the story. "Then what happened?" "Oh, nothing much--or nothing very different. Of course, Mac favored the fellow all he could, after that; gave him the light end of it when there was any light end. But he didn't get his chance to even up right until we got to St. Louis." Here, apparently, was another overlooked item in the list of things to be considered, and Broffin grappled for it. "How was that?" he asked. "I don't know for a certainty. But I put it up that the fellow took Mac into his confidence--a little--and told him he wanted to make a run for it as soon as we hit the levee at St. Louis. He hadn't got his pay; we always hold the 'rousties'' money back till we're unloaded, if we can; so Mac advanced it, or claimed that he did." It was Broffin's business to put two and two together, and at this conjuncture the process was sufficiently simple. With a hundred thousand dollars in his possession, the make-believe deck-hand would not be foolish enough to run even a hypothetical risk for the sake of saving the bit of wage-money. Broffin's next query seemed wholly irrelevant. "Do you carry any nippers or handcuffs on the _Belle Julie_, Maurice?" he asked. "Yes; I believe Mac has an odd pair or so in his dunnage; in fact, I know he has. I've seen him use 'em on an obstreperous nigger." From the handcuffs Broffin went off at another tangent. "Of course, so far as you know, nobody on the boat suspected that the fellow who called himself Gavitt was anything but the 'roustie' he was passing himself off for? You didn't know of his having any talk with any of the upper-deck people?" "Only once," said the day-clerk, promptly. "When was that?" "It was one day just after the 'man-overboard' incident, a little while after dusk in the evening. I was up here in the texas, getting ready to go to supper. Gavitt--we may as well keep on calling him that till you've found another name for him--Gavitt had been cubbing for the pilot. I saw him go across the hurricane-deck and down the companion to the saloon-deck guards; and a minute later I heard him talking to somebody--a woman--on the guards below." "You didn't hear what was said?" "I didn't pay any attention. Passengers, women passengers especially, often do that--pull up a 'roustie' and pry into him to see what sort of wheels he has. But I noticed that they talked for quite a little while; because, when I finished dressing and went below, he was just leaving her." Broffin rose up from the bunk on which he had been sitting and laid a heavy hand on Maurice's shoulder. "You ain't going to tell me that you didn't find out who the woman was, Clarence--what?" he said anxiously.