“I’d have to do that anyway,” said Carl, without the least confusion or hesitation; “I always tell my mother everything that happens. She takes an interest in all my plans, and she’s the dearest little mother a boy ever had. But she’ll understand that it’s only meant to be a trick to catch the thief.”
“Then if you have it ready by to-morrow afternoon we might try how it works that same evening,” Tom remarked.
“I wish the time was now, I’m getting so anxious to do something,” sighed the second boy, as he again remembered how he had seen his mother force herself to appear cheerful when he came from school, though there were traces of tears on her cheeks, and her eyes looked red.
Soon after that the chums separated, as the afternoon was drawing near a close.
“I wish you luck with your work to-night, Carl,” was what Tom called out in parting; “and if any one wants to know where we’ve been, be sure and tell them that so far as we’ve been able to find out the fishing promises to be mighty fine this spring, better than for years, if signs go for anything.”
On the following day at noon when they walked home for lunch Carl showed his chum the paper. It had been carefully done, and even bore the marks of service in the way of numerous creases, and some soiled spots in the bargain.
Tom was loud in his praise.
“It certainly looks as if it had been carried in a boy’s pocket for some time,” he declared; “and it’s up to you to say how close a copy the contents are to the original.”
“I’m sure Amasa Culpepper would say it was his own crabbed handwriting to a fraction,” Carl had no hesitation in asserting. “And so far as that goes Dock Phillips isn’t capable of discovering any slight difference. If he ever picks this up you mark my words, Tom, he’s going to get the biggest shock he’s felt in many a day.”
“And you can see how the very first thing he’d be apt to do would be to look around to see if anybody was spying on him, and then hurry away to find if his paper could have been taken from the place where he hid it.”