“As between losing some millions, and all,” spoke Tom, as judicially as he could, “I should say it would be better to risk some of the money and keep on after Mr. Delavan himself.”
“If that’s the way it appears to you, then do so,” replied Eben Moddridge, slowly, hesitatingly. “Oh, dear, I simply can’t think when I am so nervous.”
“This is a funny sort of an associate to take into a big money deal,” thought Halstead, wonderingly. The young skipper discovered, later, that Moddridge was a power in Wall Street simply because he had inherited more millions than he was capable of handling. He was valuable when men wanted more money for financial operations than they themselves controlled. Moddridge was in the present big Delavan deals simply because Moddridge had discovered that he could always trust Mr. Delavan.
So Tom headed for Cookson’s Bay, making that shallow little body of water in less than an hour. Another hour was spent in lowering the port boat and in rowing Moddridge both to the little island and to the main shore. It was a sparsely settled region. Only one of the cottages on the little island was occupied, and that only by a bachelor who admitted that he had been asleep at the time when the two motor boats had dodged about the island. He aided, however, in searching the other two cottages, but no sign was found of Mr. Delavan or of his probable captors. The search was continued on the main shore, with no better results.
“Now, we simply must get back to East Hampton,” urged Moddridge, and Halstead was reluctantly of the same opinion.
“If Frank can’t be found soon,” chattered the nervous one, as the “Rocket” headed toward her pier at East Hampton, “and if the news becomes public, then every stock he is heavily interested in will go away down on the Stock Exchange.”
“Why, people will think there’s something queer about the disappearance,” Moddridge explained. “Take the P. & Y. Railroad, for instance. Its capital is eighty million dollars. Delavan owns fifteen million of that himself. He’s the president, biggest stockholder, and the virtual czar of that railroad. If Frank can’t be found, what will folks be apt to think? Why, simply that he has been guilty of criminally mismanaging the railroad, for his own profit, and that now he has fled to some foreign country to hide away from the American law. P. & Y. stock will take a fearful drop.”