“Say, there’s old Captain Winters sitting over there,” he said. “He’s the boy that can tell you what you want if anybody can. He’s a regular old man gossip, and there isn’t much that gets away from him, I can tell you. If he ever wrote a book and put in it all he knows about people in this town, you bet your life there’d be things doing. Come over and I’ll introduce you.”
He slipped from behind the desk and walked across the lobby, with Dick at his side, approaching a little, weazened-up old man who was reading a paper in an armchair close by one of the big windows.
“Captain Winters,” he said, “I’d like you to meet Mr. Merriwell, who is looking for some information about a party in town. I told him you’d be able to give it to him if anybody could.”
The old man peered at Dick over the tops of his spectacles, extending a palsied hand.
“Pleased to meet you, young man,” he piped in a shrill voice. “Pleased to meet you. Fred’s a great boy to talk. Mebbe I know a thing or two about folks, but I ain’t telling it all. He, he! I wouldn’t dast. What was it you was wanting to find out?”
“I’m looking for a man named Scott Randolph, Captain Winters,” Dick smiled. “I think he lives somewhere on the outskirts of town.”
“Scott Randolph!” the old man said sharply. “Why, I’m surprised at ye, Fred. You’d oughter know who that is. He’s the one that come here seven or eight years ago an’ built that crazy house like a fort in the mountains off Bonnet Trail a piece.”
“Oh, is that the man?” the clerk exclaimed. “I didn’t know his name was Randolph. Well, I guess you can tell Mr. Merriwell how to get out there. I must go back to the desk.”
He left them and Dick dropped into a chair beside the captain.
“Folks call it ‘The Folly,’” resumed the old man with the peculiar zest and relish of a born gossip. “It’s built like a fort, with bars to the winders and a door like a safe. Nobody knows what he does there, but they do say he invents things. Folks going by has heard enjines going fit to kill, an’ onct Jake Pettigrew, that keeps the store in Duncan, seen a great flame o’ fire shoot out o’ the roof. Whatever he’s doing, he ain’t up to no good, you can depend. It’s agin’ nater an’ the Bible to fool with the powers o’ darkness.”