“Well,” says Plunk, “what are we goin’ to do about it?”
“Nothin’,” Mark says, “but wait and keep our eyes open.”
It was a pretty serious business, we thought, with Mr. Tidd away and nobody to depend on but just the Ku Klux Klan. Still, considering what we had done off and on, we believed we were pretty well able to look after things in a pinch.
We hurried up Binney’s horse and got home in plenty of time for supper. In the evening I went over to Mark’s, and we put in the time putting a brand-new padlock on the shed where the turbine and the drawings and things were. That made us feel safer. So when it got too dark to play around outside we went in and fussed with a lot of stuff Mark had and looked at books. Along about half-past eight Mrs. Tidd brought in a big plate with fried cakes and apples and hunks of maple sugar on it, and we attended to that the way it ought to be attended to. Afterward I went home.
I went to bed and fell asleep right off. I got to dreaming, and it seemed like somebody was whistling the Ku Klux Klan whistle to me and I was tied up so I couldn’t come or even speak—one of those funny kind of dreams when you feel as though you couldn’t even wink, and yet can’t figure out what it is keeps you so still. And all through it I kept hearing the whistle and straining and trying to get up, but it wasn’t any use. After a while it seemed as if somebody was trying to blow me up with dynamite or something. There came an awful crash in the dream, and I woke up standing in the middle of the floor. I was shivering and scared so my teeth chattered. Then I heard the Ku Klux Klan whistle again, and something came smack against my window. I guess that was the explosion I heard in my dream. I stuck my head out and there stood Mark Tidd, looking as big as all get out, with the moon shining down onto him as white as silver.
“What’s the matter?” I called to him.
“Q-q-quick!” he says. “Come down. Somebody’s busted into the shed and s-s-stole dad’s t-t-turbine.” He was so excited he stuttered like anything.
“G’wan!” I says.
“It’s gone,” says he.
“What time is it?”