The Mystery on the Mississippi

cotton. See?”
    “No, sir, I don’t,” Trixie said solemnly. “But to get back to that man who jumped overboard—”
    “Forget that for the present, Trixie. I’m going on watch now. Come up to the pilothouse for a clear view of the river. It’s a beautiful morning.”
    As the Catfish Princess faithfully prodded its long tow toward Cairo, Captain Martin, sensing the restlessness of his visitors, talked.
    “The river’s in my blood. It’s been in my blood since I was a baby, for I was born in sight of the Mississippi. I was a lad of ten, running errands on the levee in St. Louis, when I made up my mind that life on the river was for me. Steamboats carried freight and passengers in those days. I got a job watching the roof of the pilothouse on the Crazy Nell , because sparks from the engine could set a boat afire. I was scared to death on my first job—scared I wouldn’t make good.
    “I was young. I didn’t touch a hundred pounds on the scales. I tried to lift the chains and heavy ropes, but I couldn’t make it. I couldn’t even lift a bag of grain. I kept at it, though, and when I was fifteen, I was toting big loads and getting ten cents an hour. That wasn’t much, but I had my keep on the boat. On shore, I could get dinner on the waterfront for twenty cents, and a movie cost a nickel. I could outfit myself in used clothes for a dollar, in a store on the wharf, and pick up a pair of shoes for a quarter.”
    “New shoes?” Mart wondered.
    “Oh, no! Used shoes, but with a lot of wear still in ’em. Well, after that I worked as a deckhand, still on the Crazy Nell. Then I got to be a steersman.”
    “Then you became a pilot?” Trixie asked.
    “No. It took me three years before I got a pilot’s license. By that time, I knew every inch of the river, every bend, every cliff, the ghost trunk of every sycamore—you ought to see one of them shine out in the searchlight on a foggy night. I could even shake hands with swamp frogs and call ’em by name. I was one pretty chesty kid when I got my first license. It was up to me, then, to steer my boat safely through the channel into Memphis port. I was a scared kid then, too. Now I’ve also got licenses on the Ohio, the Missouri, the Tennessee, and every tributary that flows into the near three-thousand-mile length of the Mississippi—the Ouachita, Bayou Mason, Yazoo, Sunflower.... When the diesel engines came on, I was whipped for a while. Now I’m all right, but I still like the churn of the paddle wheels and the lonesome call of a steamboat whistle on a winter night.”

    In their cabin, an hour or so before they were to leave the boat at Cairo, Trixie told Honey, “Of course, we know, both of us, that this business on board the Catfish Princess ties in with Pierre Lontard.”
    “Sure it does,” Honey agreed, “but how?”
    “I’m not sure. He was on board. That I know, even if Captain Martin doesn’t think anyone jumped overboard. He was after my purse and those papers. How he came to be on board, I don’t know. Dan swears someone jumped over him and ran across the deck. There are only three staterooms in our corridor—ours and the boys’ and the Aguileras’.”
    “That’s right. And that tray Mr. Aguilera was carrying still sounds suspicious to me.”
    “Another thing, too, Honey. Why did Mrs. Aguilera seem so interested in my purse when I stumbled out there on the barge?”
    “Well, you can forget any idea you may have that she made you stumble. Didn’t she risk her own life to pull you back? No, I think she’s perfectly all right.
    She’s been so kind and friendly. Maybe her husband’s a queer one, but I don’t even have any reason to say that. Captain Martin never questioned their explanation of the tray.”
    “You must remember that Captain Martin doesn’t know anything at all about the Lontard business. I was going to tell him, till I remembered how much fun he made of our detective agency.”
    “He didn’t mean anything by that. Most grownups don’t take us seriously till they know of the good work we’ve done—you, especially.”
    “Maybe so. Something else bothers me. I wish Mrs. Aguilera hadn’t heard me give the Bob-White whistle.”
    “Well, it really is supposed to be a secret. If that bobwhite hadn’t whistled from a nearby field on shore...” Honey mused.
    “I know. And when I heard it, I just answered, without thinking. After I’d done it, I felt sort of silly and thought I had to say something. I