“But how did he know that we were there?” Barry inquired.
“He said that someone who knew the place had been up there lately and saw the boys in the lodge. I asked him if they had done anything to hurt the place, and he said no, but that he thought it was wrong to allow boys to camp there.”
“Well, he certainly has a nerve!” said Mr. Garrison. “That property doesn’t belong to him, and he has nothing to say as to what shall be done with it.”
“He wants it badly enough and as good as told me tonight that he will have it,” Mrs. Morganson said.
“He is very discourteous about it all,” frowned Barry’s father. “I stopped him tonight and asked him why he does not come to me. He said it is a free country and he prefers to go to you directly.”
Mrs. Morganson smiled a quiet smile. “Probably he thinks he can win me over, or even scare me. He is offering a very low price for the lodge, and I am not going to sell it at his figure. He knows the value of the property and could make a lot out of it, but I am not going to give my hunting lodge away. Now I’d like to hear Barry’s story.”
Barry told the owner of the hunting lodge what had happened while they had camped at Lake Arrowtip. “The only thing that we regret,” he finished, “is the fact that we did not catch the man after we saw him go into the tool shed. We feel that if we could have had a few days longer, we would have learned the secret of the place.”
“It is too bad that your short vacation came to an end when it did,” acknowledged the lady. “But I think you did a fine bit of work as it is. Of course, I have believed all along that some human being is doing this unpleasantness, and not any ghostly being. The mystery is, who is doing it and why?”
“Do you believe that Mr. Brand Curry is doing it to lower the value of the lodge?” Barry asked slowly. Mrs. Morganson smiled at his father as she shook her head.
“Your father and I have wondered about that, but we do not believe that it is so,” she said. “Mr. Curry is always here in town, and we cannot believe that the lodge is so dear to him that he keeps a sort of scare agent up there all the time. Just as soon as any party goes into the lodge, either in winter or summer, the annoyances begin. That would seem to indicate that whoever does it lives close by there all the time. We know that Mr. Curry is anxious to have the place, but so are three other business men who are offering better prices than Mr. Curry is.”