“I guess so,” Eddie said, smiling. “No one ever catches any fish out over the sand bar. The fish hang around in the deeper water.”
“Well, we don’t care much for fish, anyway,” Roy said.
“Then why do you go fishing?” Teena wondered.
“We do it to get away from kids who ask silly questions,” Simms said curtly. “Now beat it and leave us alone.” He tossed the two fishing poles onto the dock and climbed out of the boat.
“Sure, mister,” Eddie said. “We didn’t mean to bother you.”
“Don’t get sore, kids,” Roy said. “Simms is a little sunburned, that’s all. Makes him cranky.”
The tall man was sunburned, all right. Eddie had noticed that. But then, he had expected it. Neither man boasted any kind of a tan, and the sun had been hot all afternoon.
Eddie also had noticed something else. It struck him as strange, although he didn’t know what to make of it. The metal tube which he had noticed in the bottom of the boat when they had first met the men in the cove was no longer in sight.
If it had contained a collapsible fishing rod as he had guessed, why wasn’t it still there in the bottom of the boat? Eddie was certain the men hadn’t put in to shore between the time they had left the cove and now. If they had he and Teena would have noticed it from the lighthouse.
A metal tube like the one Eddie had seen earlier in the bottom of the rowboat simply would not disappear. Perhaps it hadn’t contained a collapsible fishing rod, as he had guessed. If not, what was in the cylinder?