through in having a relative under similar circumstances, as I related in "Batting to Win."
"I don't believe it," declared Frank. "To my mind I'd sooner suspect this Mendez. He seems a fishy sort of character."
"Oh, I think he's straight," declared Tom. "I made some inquiries about him while I was having grub. It seems some of the fellows here have been buying stuff of him—last year when he was traveling around the country. He bears a good reputation, and Hendell's father, who owns part of Crest Island, was telling me that the property owners looked up his record well before they let him succeed old Jake Blasdell as caretaker."
"Hum!" mused Frank. "It doesn't look as easy as it did at first, in spite of these clues, Tom."
"That's right. Say, I'm not as much of a detective as I thought. I wonder if that jeweler could be double-crossing us?"
"What do you mean?" asked Sid.
"I mean could he have lost the box of jewelry overboard before his boat was carried away by the flood? If he did, he could make up the story that he left it in the locker, and that someone else got it when the boat was wrecked."
"That's possible, though not probable," admitted Frank. "Fellows, my advice is that we put these things away, and forget all about them to-night. In the morning we may see matters
