Jerry spoke to a man who seemed to be someone of authority, and they were directed to seats in the front row. Across the aisle Rick saw Mrs. Tyler and the little girl who had been with her on that first night. The captain's wife looked pale, but she seemed composed. Then he switched his glance to the captain himself.

Tom Tyler seemed thinner in the few days since the wreck of his ship.

He stared at the table before him, seemingly oblivious to the murmur of voices in the room. Rick felt compa.s.sion for him. If the theory proved correct, Tom Tyler was the victim of unscrupulous men who had wrecked his ship deliberately, just to remove danger from their path.

He speculated about what might have caused the actual decision to wreck the _Sea Belle_. There was only one sensible conclusion.

Captain Tyler must have used the trawler to spy on Brad Marbek.

Wrecking the ship would serve a double purpose: it would remove the possibility of further spying on Brad and it would warn Tyler that the smugglers meant business. After that, simply telling him that his family would suffer if he kept on would strike home. Until the wreck, he probably had been inclined to treat Kelso's warning lightly.

A door to the left of the judge's rostrum opened and three men came out. One was a Coast Guard commander. The other two were civilians. A whisper from Jerry informed Rick that they were officers of the United States Maritime Commission.

Rick turned to see if the Kelsos or Brad Marbek were in the room. He was curious about Cap'n Mike, too. While he was searching the rows of faces, the procedure started. A clerk got up and announced something about the hearing being held before the duly authorized board of inquiry in the case of the wrecking on Smugglers' Reef of the motor vessel _Sea Belle_, of so many tons, and such and such a registry number, Thomas Lee Tyler, master, holding licenses numbers so and so.

Jerry nudged Rick and pointed to the camera. Rick nodded and inserted a flash bulb. He caught the clerk's eye and held up the camera. The clerk frowned, then motioned him to come inside the rail. Rick did so and snapped a picture of the tribunal. Then he turned and got a photo of Tom Tyler and the men at his table, with the audience in the background. He looked at Jerry. The young reporter nodded, indicating that two pictures would be enough.

Rick resumed his seat.

The middle man on the platform leaned over and asked, "Who is representing Captain Tyler?"

Tom Tyler stood up. "No one, sir."

A murmur ran through the courtroom.

"Captain," the man asked, "do you mean you have come into this hearing without counsel?"

"Sir, I'm pleading guilty to whatever the charge is. I don't need a lawyer for that." Tyler sat down again.

There was whispered consultation among the three on the bench. Then the spokesman leaned forward again.

"Captain, as I understand the facts presented by the officers who investigated, if you plead guilty you will, in effect, state that you deliberately wrecked your ship. If you so state, your insurance company will have no recourse but to ask your arrest on a charge of barratry. Do you understand that?"

Tyler's shoulders straightened. "If that's the way it is, sir, I guess that's the way it is. I'm pleading guilty."

The murmur in the court rose.

Rick leaned over to Jerry. "He's scared stiff. He must be, to take this lying down."

But if the Kelsos had threatened Mrs. Tyler and their little girl, there wasn't much else he could do. Wrecking the trawler had shown him they were capable of carrying out any threat. Rick was glad he had had presence of mind the night before to say that other people knew he and Scotty were going to Creek House. He was sure that had the Kelsos and Brad thought that no one else knew, their fate would have been much different.

A hand fell on his shoulder. He looked up into the face of the officer who had been at the door.

"You Rick Brant?"

He nodded.

"Cap'n Mike is outside. Says it's urgent. He wants you and Don Scott."

"We'll come right away," Rick said. He leaned over and explained to Jerry. "We'll meet you outside. Come on, Scotty."

As quietly as possible he and Scotty left the room just as the spokesman for the board declared that the hearing would proceed.

Cap'n Mike was on the steps in front of the town hall. His weathered face lit up at the sight of the boys and he greeted them with a note of worry in his voice. "Come on down to the sidewalk out of earshot of these folks," he said in a low tone.

They followed him to a place where the crowd thinned out, then Rick asked, "What's the matter, Cap'n? Anything important come up?"

"Important? I'll say it's important!" Cap'n Mike leaned forward. "Jim Killian has disappeared!"

CHAPTER XII

The Missing Fisherman

Captain Jim Killian, the fisherman who had been closest to Brad Marbek and Tom Tyler, and who might have been able to say finally whether Rick's theory was true or not, was missing!

"Cap'n, are you sure?" Rick asked.

Cap'n Mike nodded soberly. "Sure as I can be. That's why I had to talk to you boys."

"When did you discover he had disappeared?" Scotty queried. "You said he had been visiting his mother."

"That's just it. Took me all this time to remember." Cap'n Mike shook his white head. "Reckon I'm getting old. His mate said he'd gone to visit his mother, so I thought no more about it. Until this morning.

Then I remembered. Jim Killian never knew his mother. He was brought up by an uncle and aunt, both of them dead ten years now. Struck me all of a sudden. It had sort of been nagging at the back of my head that something was fishy about that mate's story anyway, so this morning I went to his house and I collared him."

"Did you get anything out of him?" Rick asked eagerly.

"Not much. Jim Killian showed up at his trawler the morning after Tom Tyler wrecked the _Sea Belle_. He just told the mate to shove off without him, and said if anyone asked, he was visiting his mother, who was sick. And I'm sure that's all the mate knows, except that he knew Jim Killian didn't have a mother."

Rick pursed his lips thoughtfully. "He showed up himself? Then he must have left of his own free will. At least he wasn't kidnapped. But why would he run away?"

His eyes met Scotty's and he knew his pal was thinking the same thing.

"He was threatened," Scotty said.

"Looks like it. Suppose he had let a word drop that night about something being a little off the beam about Smugglers' Light?" It sounded reasonable to Rick. "The Kelsos would have paid him a visit for sure."

Cap'n Mike wagged his head sadly. "I sure pinned a lot of hope on Jim Killian. After you explained what might have happened to Tom, I was sure Jim might have something real useful to add. But it looks mighty bad now."

"Mighty bad," Rick agreed. Their effort to catch the Kelsos red-handed had boomeranged on them and now what might be proof of their theory had vanished.

"We'd better find him," Scotty said.

"How?" Cap'n Mike asked hopelessly. "We can't go to the police, 'cause Jim went off of his own will, which he has a perfect right to do."

For a moment Rick was about to suggest that they could have the police hunt him as a material witness, then he rejected the idea.

Witness to what? Tom Tyler had admitted running the _Sea Belle_ on the reef purposely, or next thing to it. No, the only solution was to find Captain Killian. But where to begin?

"Put yourself in his place," he suggested to Cap'n Mike. "You've known him a long time. If you were hiding out, where would you go?"