"Wrong trail!" exclaimed Alexander, briefly. Then, suddenly turning to Margaret, he added:
"Here, kiddie! Hand me that journal-thing you've doped out. I want to give it the once-over!" He studied it thoughtfully for several minutes, tugging viciously the while at a long lock of red hair that always hung over his eyes. The rest all kept very quiet, watching him expectantly. Presently he issued his ultimatum:
"There's one other piece of business that you all seem to have pretty well given the cold shoulder—this song and dance about some plot in Bermuda that the Alison kid says she was mixed up in. Have you ever thought of doping that out?"
"No, we haven't," admitted Corinne. "I did think once of hunting it up, but the whole thing was so awfully vague that there didn't seem to be any use. What could you hunt up, anyway? You'd have to read up a lot of Bermuda history, and even then you probably wouldn't strike a thing that had any bearing on it!"
"You never can tell!" remarked the boy, wisely. "Me for this job, from now on! Where's that library joint you get all your books from, Corinne? Little Alexander's going to join the army of high-brows!"
"You can take my card and use it, Alexander, or I'll get you the books myself," Corinne kindly offered.
"Thanks awfully, but nothing doing!" he returned. "This kid gets right on the job himself when he strikes the trail. All I want to know is how you break into the place. If you put me wise to that, yours truly will do the rest!"
In the course of the next few days, Alexander became a duly enrolled member of the nearest public library, and his family was edified to behold him deeply immersed in the most unusual occupation of literary and historical research. As he ordinarily touched no volume of any nature except his school-books (and these only under severe compulsion!), the spectacle was all the more amazing. Baseball and other absorbing occupations of his street life were temporarily forgotten. He would lie for hours flat on his stomach on the couch, his heels in the air, pushing back his rebellious lock of hair, and mulling over the various odd volumes he had brought home from the library. At intervals he could be heard ejaculating: "Gee!" "Hot stuff!" and remarks of a similar nature.
But of his discoveries, if indeed he had made any, he would have nothing to say, conceding only that, when he had found anything of interest, a meeting of the Antiquarian Club should be called, and he would then make his disclosures in proper business form. This was absolutely all they could draw from him. The twins reported to Corinne at school that Alexander was certainly doing (for him!) a remarkable amount of reading; and it was not all about Bermuda, either, as they had discovered from the titles of his books. American history also figured in his list, and other volumes whose bearing on the subject they could not even guess. They also expressed their wonder at the curious change they had noticed in his manner toward them.
"Oh, Alexander's all right!" Corinne assured them. "You've always misjudged that little fellow, girls! He's got heaps of good in him! Of course, he's a little rough and slangy, and a terrible tease, but most boys are, at his age; and some are lots worse. He's a gentleman at heart, though. You can tell that by the way he treats Margaret. He's always just as gentle with her! But you've never taken him right. You get awfully annoyed when he teases you, and that's just exactly what he wants; it tickles him to pieces to see you get mad! If you'd only take him up good-naturedly and give him as good as he gives you, you'd find yourselves getting along heaps better!"