Bledsoe and I joined the chief engineer in the captain’s dining room, where he was eating roast beef and mashed potatoes. Bemis was still up on the bridge—Bledsoe explained that the captain would stay up there until the ship was out of a tricky channel and well into the middle of Lake Superior. We three were the only ones in the dining room—the other officers ate with the crew. Handwritten menus at our plates offered a choice of two entrees, vegetables, and dessert. Over baked chicken and broccoli I talked to Sheridan about my accident.

The chief agreed that he had cutting torches of different sizes on board, as well as every possible variety of wrench. “But if you’re asking me to tell you if any of them were used last Thursday, I couldn’t. We don’t keep the tools under lock and key—it’d be too time-consuming to get at them.” He buttered a roll and ate a chunk of it. “We have eight people on engine-room duty when the ship’s at sea and all of them need to get at the tools. We’ve never had any problems and as long as we don’t I plan to keep free access to them.”

No liquor was allowed on the ship, so I was drinking coffee with dinner. The coffee was thin and I poured a lot of cream into it to give it some flavor.

“Could someone have come onto the ship, taken some tools, and brought them back without anyone noticing?”

Sheridan thought about it. “I suppose so,” he said reluctantly. “This isn’t like the navy where someone is always on watch. No one has to stay on board when we’re in port, and people come and go without anyone paying attention. Theoretically someone could go to the engine room without being caught, assuming he knew where the tools were. He’d have to be lucky, too, and not have anyone come on him by surprise … At any rate, I’d rather believe that than that one of my own men was involved.”

“Could one of your own men have done it?”

Again, it was possible, but why? I suggested that someone—perhaps Phillips, for example—had hired one of the crew to do his dirty work. Bledsoe and Sheridan discussed that energetically. They were both convinced that they’d gotten rid of their lone bad apple when they fired the man who put water in the holds last month.

Sheridan felt great confidence in the men under him. “I know my judgment could be wrong, but I can’t imagine any one of those guys deliberately sabotaging somebody’s car.”