CHAPTER XIII—WE ARE IMPLICATED
I guess we had been going about fifteen minutes when Brent said, “Let’s see those papers you were telling us about.”
Pee-wee felt in the side pocket and then in the opposite side pocket and then began shouting, “They’re not here! They’re not here! The papers are stolen!”
“Good night,” I said, “the plot grows thicker.”
“Maybe Harry has them in his pocket,” Grove said.
We looked behind, but the Ford wasn’t in sight.
“The papers are stolen! The papers are stolen!” Pee-wee kept shouting, “There’s a plot! Hurry up, drive faster! I bet it was that soda clerk in Bennett’s.”
“The papers aren’t so necessary,” Grove said.
“Sure they’re necessary,” Pee-wee screamed; “that letter reveals the secret. Drive faster!”
Brent didn’t drive any faster, he just laughed; and all the while the rest of us were rooting around, trying to find the papers.
“Look under the seat,” Grove said.
We got up from the back seat and lifted it and Pee-wee poked his head around underneath and groped with his hands.
“Is he there?” Brent asked him.
“Who?” Pee-wee hollered.
“The soda clerk from Bennett’s,” Brent said.
“No, but the mystery grows deeper,” Pee-wee shouted. “Give me the flashlight—quick. There’s some buried treasure here! Look! Here are some spoons. Here’s a silver thing like they have hot chocolate in! He put them here—look! I knew he was a villain!”
Grove and I, who were in the back part of the machine, looked into the space under the seat, and good night, as sure as anything, there was a silver bowl and some spoons in a box all lined with plush. The flashlight made them all bright Just as I was looking, Pee-wee opened a big plush box and there was a gold watch and a dandy long pearl necklace and a lot of other things.
“Now, what have you got to say?” he shouted in my face.
Brent looked around, kind of laughing, but he didn’t bother to stop the car. I guess he was too anxious to get to Utica.
“What do you think it means?” Pee-wee said, in a kind of whisper. “We’d better wait for them to catch up, hey?”
“Wait nothing,” Brent said, all the while laughing.
I said, “I think it means that Harry’s people were bringing the stuff home in the car from somewhere, maybe, and forgot to take it out; that’s what I think. If the rest of them are as careless and happy-go-lucky as he is, that’s probably what happened.”
“He isn’t careless and happy-go-lucky,” Skinny piped up. He was half asleep under the big buffalo robe, and his voice sounded awful funny, as if he were talking in his sleep.
“Maybe Harry stole them,” I said.
Good night, off went the buffalo robe and Skinny sat up like a jack-in-the-box. “He didn’t!” he shouted.
I guess we were all too tired and sleepy to think much about those things that Pee-wee had discovered. Pretty soon our young hero was sprawling on the floor of the car, dead to the world and Skinny was sound asleep on the front seat under the buffalo robe. Grove and I stayed awake, but we didn’t talk much.
It was nearly four o’clock in the morning when we got to Utica and we stopped at a hotel where there were sheds for automobiles. Oh, boy, weren’t we some sleepy bunch! Brent ran the car under one of the sheds and then we all staggered into the hotel. While we were waiting for our rooms, along came the Ford with Harry and Brent’s patrol. They could hardly stand up, they were so sleepy.
He was an awful nice fellow, that hotel man was. He said he didn’t know where he could put eleven people, but he guessed as long as we were scouts, we wouldn’t mind bunking up. So he gave us three rooms and I had Pee-wee and Skinny wished onto me.
The clerk said, “When would you like to be called?”
“Calling won’t do any good,” Harry said; “you’ll have to scream. I think we’ll wake up about ten o’clock to-morrow morning.”
“It’s to-morrow morning already,” I told him; “everything is all mixed up; we’ll have to have lunch for breakfast; we should worry.”
But anyway, I woke up earlier than I thought I would—that was about nine o’clock. Pee-wee woke up while I was getting dressed, and we decided that we’d go out and take a little walk around the city. We went out very quiet, so as not to disturb Skinny.
I guess none of the rest of the fellows were up; anyway, we didn’t see anything of them. We went up the street and stopped in a candy store and got a couple of sodas. I took raspberry, because it’s red—that’s my patrol color. While we were drinking them, Pee-wee said:
“Did you ask Harry about those things?”
I said, “I did not; we were all too sleepy. You should worry about those things.”
When we were finished we took a walk around the town, just for fun, looking in windows. I guess it was about half-past ten when we started back. When we had almost got to the hotel we heard a boy calling, “Extree! Extree! Big robbery! Extree!”
So we bought one, and the first thing we saw was an article with a big heading that said DARING BURGLARY and underneath it said HOME OF JUDGE WEST ENTERED. TWO MISCREANTS HELD.
This is just what the article said, because we kept that paper:
The summer home of Justice Willard E. West in Crystal Falls was entered some time between one and two o’clock this morning by means of a kitchen window, which had been forced open.
Property consisting of jewelry and silverware to the amount of about two thousand dollars was taken.
It was not until the burglars were leaving the house that Judge West’s young daughter, hearing a sound on the lower floor, aroused her parents, who immediately investigated and found that a cabinet in their daughter’s room had been rifled as well as the sideboard in the dining-room, from which several articles of value had been taken.
The judge immediately ’phoned to the village authorities, and as a result of their prompt action, two men who were lurking near the railroad station were arrested.
One of them had in his possession a wallet containing about fifty dollars in bills, which the judge identified as belonging to him. Constable Berry of Crystal Falls, believes that there was a third man implicated in the job, because none of the missing property, except the wallet and a few small articles of silverware, were found upon the two men under arrest. It is supposed that they were frightened away before their work was completed, but a search of the premises both inside and out, failed to reveal a large silver punch bowl, which is missing and the jewelry case of Elsa, the judge’s young daughter. This, it was stated, contained a necklace of pearls valued at nearly a thousand dollars.
An incentive to the capture of the third man is offered by Judge West, in a reward of five hundred dollars, for the return of this precious keepsake.
I just stared at Pee-wee, and he stared at me.
“G-o-o-d night!” I said, “the plot grows thicker.”
“Those are the very things,” he said; “it’s a mystery.”
“It looks as if we were the third man,” I told him.
“Who?” he wanted to know.
“The eleven of us,” I said.
“How do you explain it?” he asked me, all excited.
“I don’t explain it,” I said; “but I know one thing, and that is, I’m going to get back and tell Harry as soon as I can, before the whole crew of us are arrested. Harry’s going to have a mechanic look the car over this morning. Suppose that mechanic should——”
That was enough for Pee-wee; he started up the street scout-pace, and I guess he must have been pretty excited, because he passed right by an old empty sardine box and didn’t even bother to pick it up.