“That’ll make the time pass until supper is ready,” agreed the young inventor, so they took their station near the main gangway and watched the passengers hurrying up.  There were many going to make the trip to Mexico it seemed, and later the boys learned that a tourist agency had engaged passage for a number of its patrons.

“That fat man will never get up the slope unless some one pushes him,” remarked Ned, pointing to a very fleshy individual who was struggling up the steep gangplank, carrying a heavy valise.  For the tide was almost at flood and the deck of the steamer was much elevated.  Indeed it seemed at one moment as if the heavy-weight passenger would slide backward instead of getting aboard.

“Go give him a hand, Rad,” suggested Tom, and the colored man obligingly relieved the fat man of his grip, thereby enabling him to give all his attention to getting up the plank.

And it was this simple act on the part of Rad that was the cause of an uneasy suspicion coming to Tom and Ned.  For, as Eradicate hastened to help the stout passenger, two others behind him. a man and a boy, started preciptably at the sight of the colored helper.  So confused were they that it was noticed by Ned and his chum.

“Look at that!” said Ned in a low voice, their attention drawn from the fat man to the man and youth immediately behind him.  “You’d think they were afraid of meeting Rad.”

“That’s right,” agreed Tom, for the man and youth had halted, and seemed about to turn back, Then the man, with a quick gesture, tossed a steamer rug he was carrying over his shoulder up so that it hid his face.  At the same time the lad with him, evidently in obedience to some command, pulled his cap well down over his face and turned up the collar of a light overcoat he was wearing.  He also seemed to shrink down, almost as if he were deformed.

“Say!” began Ned in wondering tones, “Tom, doesn’t that look like—­”

“Andy Foger and his father!” burst out the young inventor in a horse whisper.  “Ned, do you think it’s possible?”

“Hardly, and yet—­”

Ned paused in his answer to look more closely at the two who had aroused the suspicions of himself and Tom.  But they had now crowded so close up behind the fat man whom Eradicate was assisting up the plank, that he partly hid them from sight, and the action of the two in covering their faces further aided them in disguising themselves, if such was their intention.

“Oh, it can’t be!” declared Tom.  “If they were going to follow us they wouldn’t dare go on the same steamer.  It must be some one else.  But it sure did look like Andy at first.”

“That’s what I say,” came from Ned.  “But we can easily find out.”

“How?”

“Ask the purser to show us the passenger list.  Even if they are down under some other names he’d know the Fogers if we described them to him.”

“That’s right, we’ll do it.”