Page:Waylaid by Wireless - Balmer - 1909.djvu/317

Rh which necessitate my placing you under arrest!"

"Placing me under arrest, sir?" the young American demanded.

"Under arrest?" the girl echoed. "Oh, you mean that Mr. Manling has this time—"

"I repeat," the captain said more sternly, "I repeat, sir, that personally I greatly admire the simplicity of your scheme, by which you concealed your own money and paved the way for stealing ours. And I will not now say," he went on, turning to the girl, "whether he was capable of robbing even you, his friend, to perfect his plan, or you were foolish enough to feign your part to assist him. But in either case, I can only admire his calmness and temerity in stealing, packing, and then sending down to this ship, as his own, the box and rug delivered into the rooms of his last victim at Southampton.

"I could not say that even there he overreached himself either—had he but remembered the 'wireless.' The difficulty of 289