Page:The Wireless Operator with the U.S. Coast Guard.djvu/263

 missed Belford, who at once departed. Then the captain, the quartermaster, and the carpenter stepped into the chart-room and closed the doors.

“I found this hammer under the mattress of the top bunk in the wireless men’s room,” explained the quartermaster. “Black sleeps in that bunk. As I came out on deck I bumped into the carpenter, here. I thought that I had the hammer concealed, but he caught sight of it in my closed fist. It seems he has been looking for this very hammer for some days. It belongs in his tool kit.”

“When and how did you lose your hammer?” asked the commander.

“I was using it last Thursday. When evening mess gear was piped, I had not quite finished the job I was doing, and I left it lying with my work while I ate my supper. When I went back to finish the job, the hammer was missing.”

“Where were you at work?”

“Close to the stairway where the men come down from deck, sir. I pushed my work to one side, where it would not be in the way, and stepped to the table. I wasn’t away from it half an hour.”

“The hammer was where any one could get it easily, was it?”

“Yes, sir. It was just beside the stairway. Any one going up or down the stairs could have