“You see,” said Dobbs, as they walked down toward his house a little later, “I’ve got to go down to New York anyhow, and you might as well run around with me. I dare say you’d like to see police headquarters, and some other places, anyway. There are lots of things to photograph down there.”
Dobbs lived in a little wooden cottage near the bank of the Hudson. It was painted a bright blue. Allan thought there was something peculiar about the house, and he became fixed in this opinion after seeing more of it. There was a stretch of tree-grown ground back of the house. In the front garden three stalks of corn and four sunflowers were ripening. In the hallway was a big iron dog, painted blue like the outside of the house—with some of the left-over paint, Allan guessed. In the back parlor were five canaries in cages, all singing in a great clatter of high notes; and a small, but very hoarse-voiced red and green parrot in the corner shouted, “Hello Central!” when he saw Dobbs and Allan. Mrs. Dobbs, a fat little woman, sat sewing at a window, with a white cat in her lap.
“Where’s Sporty?” asked Dobbs.
“I don’t know,” replied Mrs. Dobbs. “He bothered me to let him paddle, so I put on his trunks and turned him loose.”
“Probably he’s drowned then,” said Dobbs.
But Mrs. Dobbs only laughed softly, and went on with her sewing.
“‘Must I put on my Sunday clothes?’”
Allan and the detective found Sporty down at a little inlet of the river near the house. He wore red-striped bathing trunks, and was sailing a boat, which he pushed into her proper course with a long stick.
“Say, Pop,” Sporty called out, when he saw his father, “I wish you’d buy me a steamboat.” Then Sporty noticed Allan and the camera, and looked curiously at the black box.