The Mackinaws were flecked far and wide over the lake, and a dirty smudge
on the blue showed where the Far Harbor and Beaverton boat had gone over
the horizon. But there, over the point and dangerously close to the
land, hung another smudge, gradually pushing its way like a writhing,
black serpent, lakewards. Thus I was rudely jerked back to face the
problem with which we had left the island that morning.
I snatched the neglected glasses from the deck and hurried aft to join my
client on the overhang, but a pipe was all they revealed above the bleak
hillocks of sand. My client turned to me with a face that was white
under the tan.
"Crocker," he cried, in a tragic voice, "it's a blessed police boat, or I
never picked a winner."
"Nonsense," I said; "other boats smoke beside police boats. The lake is
full of tugs."
I was a little nettled at having been scared for a molehill.
"But I know it, sure as hell," he insisted.
"You know nothing about it, and won't for an hour. What's a pipe and a
trail of smoke?"
He laid a hand on my shoulder, and I felt it tremble.
"Why do you suppose I came out?" he demanded solemnly.
"You were probably losing," I said.
"I was winning."
"Then you got tired of winning."
But he held up a thumb within a few inches of my face, and with it a ring
I had often noticed, a huge opal which he customarily wore on the inside
of his hand.
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