The grocer looked at him quickly from under his bushy eyebrows.
"What made ye ask that? Some folks say he is. Say, are you one o' these here detectives? Be you after Carder? Pete's a boy they took out of an asylum, and if he'd ever had any care he wouldn't be bandy-legged and undersized, but don't you say I've told ye anything, 'cause I haven't."
Ben smiled into the startled, suspicious face. "Not a bit of it," he answered. "I'm just motoring about these parts on a little vacation, and I got out of cigarettes, so I called on you."
"There's Pete now!" exclaimed the grocer eagerly, hurrying out from behind the counter and to the door.
Other of the neighbors recognized the Carder car and came out to question the boy, who by the time he entered the grocery found himself confronting an audience who all asked questions at once. Pete's shock of hair stood up as usual like a scrubbing-brush; he wore no hat, and his dull eyes looked about from one to another eager face. Ben had strolled back of a tall pile of starch-boxes.
"Is it true an areoplane come down in Mr. Carder's field yisterday?" The question volleyed at the dwarf from a dozen directions.
He stared at them all dumbly, and they cried at him the more, one woman shaking him by the shoulder.
"Look here, shut up, all of you!" said the proprietor; "let the boy do his business first. Ye'll put it all out of his head. What d'ye want, Pete?"
The dwarf drew a list out of his pocket and handed it to the grocer upon which the bystanders all fell upon him again.
As Ben regarded the dwarf, he felt some reflection of Geraldine's compassion for the forlorn little object in his ragged clothes, and he realized that it was a wonder that the poor, stultified brain had possessed enough initiative to carry out the important part he had played in their lives.