"No one knows." The redhead's face clouded over. "He just disappeared quite a long time ago-well before Christmas. We've looked all over the place for him. I'm afraid he must have tried to swim over to the islet where Norm has his tank-we sometimes went there without him- and got picked off by a shark, though it doesn't seem very likely. The swim would be only a few yards, and I've never seen a live shark that close to shore. He just vanished."
"That's queer. Have you looked in the woods?"
"Some. You can't search there very well. Still, if he'd been there alive, he'd have heard us; and I can't think of anything that would hurt him there."
Bob nodded, and spoke half to himself. "That's right, come to think of it; there aren't even any snakes here." More loudly he asked, "What's this about Norm's tank? Is he going into competition with Pacific Fuels?"
"Course not," returned Hay, looking up from his job of bailing. "I cleaned out one of the pools on the reef a little way from the beach and fenced it off, and have been putting things in it to make an aquarium. I did it just for fun at first, but there are some magazines that want pictures of sea life, and I've sent for some color film. Trouble is, nothing seems to live very long in the pool; even the coral dies."
"I suppose you haven't seen it since the boat was out. Let's go over now and have a look."
"I've been swimming over every day or two with Hugh or Shorty. It's still not doing so well. I don't know whether we could get there and back now before supper; we must have been working a long tune on the boat, and the sun's getting down a bit." The other boys looked up, noticing this fact for the first tune; their parents had long since given up trying to keep them from exploring any part of the island inside the reef, but they had some sort of regulation about meeting mealtimes. Without further remark Rice headed the boat back toward the creek, and the rowers began to take longer strokes.
Bob rowed without thinking much. Everywhere he turned there was lots to see, but none of it seemed to bear on his problem; the Hunter seemed to feel that Teroa should be tested, of course, but even he had no definite suspicion-it was simply that the boy was going out of reach. The thought reminded him of the talk he had had with Charlie that morning; he wondered whether the Polynesian boy had found Rice during the lunch hour.
"Anyone seen Charlie Teroa today?" he asked.
'"No." It was Malmstrom who answered. "He comes a couple of days a week for navigation, but this isn't one of them. Think he'll ever use it?"
"Not for anyone who knows him." Rice's voice was scornful. I'd rather hire someone likely to stay awake on the job."
Bob concealed a smile. "He seems to get some work done in that garden of his," he remarked.
"Sure, with his mother watching and his sisters helping. Why, he went to sleep with a boatload of dynamite last fall, when they were clearing the east passage."
"You're crazy!"
"That's what you think. They sent him in alone for a case, and told him to stand by when he got back, and twenty minutes later my father found him moored to a bush on the reef, sound asleep, using the case for a foot-rest. He was lucky there weren't caps aboard and that he wasn't where a wave could have knocked the boat into the reef."
"Maybe that wasn't luck," Bob pointed out. "He knew he didn't have caps, and figured it was safe enough where he was."
"Maybe; but I haven't let him live it down yet." Rice grinned mischievously.
Bob looked at the redhead, who was rather short for his age. "Someday he'll throw you in the drink, if you don't stop riding him. Besides, wasn't that stowaway business your idea?"
Rice could have asked with some justice, what that had to do with matters, but he just chuckled and said nothing. A moment later the boat's flat bottom grated on the beach.
Chapter XI. SLIP!
BOB REMEMBERED after he got home that he had forgotten to ask Hay about the doctor's book, but reflected that there was plenty of time tomorrow. There probably would not be much of actual help in it anyway. He spent the evening in the house for a change, reading and talking to his parents; and the Hunter perforce did nothing but listen and think. The next forenoon was little better, from the detective's point of view; Bob worked around the house in the morning while his friends were in school, and neither of them thought of any means of getting Teroa long enough for a test. Bob, it is true, suggested leaving the Hunter near the other's home in the evening and coming back the next day, but the alien refused under any and all circumstances to place himself in a situation where Bob could see him either going or coming. He was sure what the emotional effect would be. Bob couldn't see it, but was convinced when the Hunter pointed out that there was no way for him to be sure that the mass of jelly which would return to him after the test was actually the detective. The boy had no desire whatever to let their quarry get at his own body.
The afternoon was distinctly better. Bob met the others as usual, and they repaired immediately to the boat. There was no time problem on this occasion, and they set out northwest, paralleling the shore at a distance of a few rods, with Hay and Colby rowing. The new plank had swelled, and there was very little leakage this time.
They had well over a mile to go, and they had rowed most of it before the Hunter fully understood the geography which he had been picking up in snatches from the conversation. The islet on which Hay had made his aquarium was, as he had intimated, close to the beach; it was the first section of the reef which curved away to the north and east from the end of the sand strip where the boys usually swam. It was separated from the beach itself by a stretch of water not twenty yards wide, a narrow channel which was protected from the breakers by other ridges of coral a little farther out which barely appeared above water. This channel, the Hunter judged, must be the one in which the dog was supposed to have been taken by a shark; and remembering the monster he had ridden ashore and seeing the seething currents among the ridges on its seaward side he shared Rice's doubts about that theory.
The islet itself was composed of coral, which had accumulated enough soil to support some bushes. It was not more than thirty or forty yards long and ten yards wide. The pool was at its widest part, almost circular, and about twenty feet across. It appeared to have no connection with the sea that raged a few yards away; Norman said he had blocked up two or three submarine passages with cement and that waves broke high enough and often enough at high tide to keep it full. As he had said, it was not doing welclass="underline" a dead butterfly fish was floating near one side, and the coral that composed its walls showed no sign of living polyps.
"I thought it must be some sort of disease," he said, "but I never heard of one that attacks everything alike. Have you?"
Bob shook his head. "No. Was that why you borrowed that book of the doc's?"
Norman looked up sharply. "Why, yes. Who told you about that?"
"The doc. I wanted to find out something about viruses, and he said you had the best of his books on the subject Are you still using it?"
"I guess not. What got you interested in viruses? I read what it had to say about 'em and couldn't get much out of it."
"Oh, I don't know. It was something about nobody being able to decide whether they were really alive or not I guess. That sounded pretty queer. If they eat and grow, they must be alive."
"I remember something about that-" At this point the conversation was interrupted, sparing Bob the need for further invention.