."

"I wonder what has become of him?" puts in Vee, restin' her chin on the
knuckle of her forefinger and starin' into the fire.

"Him?" says I. "Most likely he's back in St. Petersburg, Florida, all
dolled in white flannels, givin' the tin-can tourists a treat. That
would be Rupert's game."

I don't know as you remember; but, in spite of Killam's havin' got
balled up on the location of this pirate island, and Vee and me havin'
to find it for him, he came in for his share of the loot. Must have been
quite a nice little pot for Rupert, too--enough to keep him costumed for
his mysterious hero act for a long time, providin' he don't overdress
the part.

Weird combination--Rupert: about 60 per cent. camouflage and the rest
solemn boob. An ex-school-teacher from some little flag station in
middle Illinois, who'd drifted down to the West Coast, and got to be a
captain by ownin' an old cruiser that he took fishin' parties out to the
grouper banks on. Them was the real facts in the life story of Rupert.

But the picture he threw on the screen of himself must have been
something else again--seasoned sailor, hardy adventurer, daredevil
explorer, and who knows what else? Catch him in one of his silent,
starey moods, with them buttermilk blue eyes of his opened wide and
vacant, and you had the outline. But that's as far as you'd get. I
always thought Rupert himself was a little vague about it, but he would
insist on takin' himself so serious. That's why we never got along well,
I expect. To me Rupert was a walkin' joke, except when he got to
sleuthin' around Vee and me and made a nuisance of himself.

"How completely people like that drop out of sight sometimes," says Vee,
shuttin' up the album.

"Yes," says I. "Contrary to old ladies who meet at summer resorts and in
department-stores, it's a sizable world we live in. Thanks be for that,
too."

But you never can tell. It ain't more'n three days later, as I'm breezin
through a cross street down in the cloak-and-suit and publishin' house
district, when a taxi rolls up to the curb just ahead, and out piles a
wide-shouldered gent with freckles on the back of his neck. Course, I
don't let on I can spot anybody I've ever known just by a sectional
glimpse like that. But this was no common case of freckles. This was a
splotchy, spattery system of rust marks, like a bird's-eye view of the
enemy's trenches after a week of drum fire. Besides, there was the pale
carroty hair.

Eve