ed were
fishermen he had seen during their trip to the pier with Cap'n Mike.
Evidently some of them were taking the day off because of the hearing.

The room was actually a small courtroom. Like most courtrooms, it had
a low fence dividing the spectators from the participants. At a table
inside the fence, Tom Tyler was seated with four other men. Rick
guessed from their appearance that they must be the members of his
crew. One had an arm in a sling and he remembered Cap'n Mike had said
the wreck had caused one broken arm.

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 compassion 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