“Perhaps he thinks that he ought to be drawing a regular salary because of that paper he’s got hidden away, and which is worth so much to Amasa Culpepper, as well as to you. To keep him quiet it may be, the old man is paying him a few dollars every week on the sly, even though he refuses to come down with a big lump sum.”
“Tom, would it be right for me to have another talk with Dock, and make him an offer?” ventured Carl, hesitatingly.
“Do you mean try to find out what the sum is he asked Amasa to pay him?” questioned Tom; “and agree to hand it over to him just as soon as the stock of the oil well company can be sold, after your mother gets it again?”
“Yes, like that. Would it be wrong in me? anything like compounding a felony?” Carl continued.
“I don’t see how that could be wrong,” the other boy answered, after stopping to think it all over. “You have a right to offer a reward and no questions asked for the return of your own lost or stolen property.”
“Then I’d like to try it before we settle on leaving town, Tom.”
“It would do no harm, I should think,” his chum advised him. “The only danger I can see would be if Dock took the alarm and went to Mr. Culpepper, to tell him you were trying to outbid him for the possession of the paper.”
“That would be apt to make him come to time with a jump, wouldn’t it?” said Carl.
“Unless he got it into his head that Dock was only trying to frighten him into meeting the stiff price at which he held the paper,” said Tom. “He might make out that he didn’t care a pin, with the idea of forcing Dock to come down.”
“Yes, because he would believe Dock wouldn’t dare put his neck in the noose by confessing to us he had stolen the paper. Then would you advise me to try the plan I spoke of?”