“I’m sorry,” apologized Paul, “but I thought it was so funny to find you groping around here that—”
Captain Bob grabbed him by the arm and pulled him around to the back of the house. Shaking a finger under the boy’s nose, he muttered, “You! You young upstart! Scaring me like that and thinking it’s funny.” His severity melted and he smiled. “I should imagine it would be funny,” he said, “but what brings you here, my boy?”
Paul smiled. He had not yet gotten over the humor of the situation. “I imagine that we both came here on the same hunch,” he informed the captain.
“How do you know that my hunch is the same as yours? Tell me that.”
“Suppose you tell me your hunch and I’ll tell you mine, Captain Bob,” he said. “And I’ll wager they are both the same.”
“I asked you first,” replied the old man. “If it is the same, I won’t hesitate to say so.”
“Well,” began Paul, “I happened to be looking through the newspaper files of the last two months and I noticed that three out of the last four fires occurred at houses belonging to the Jones and Jones realty company. The papers also mentioned several addresses of other houses of theirs, and I picked this one to look things over.”
“But why should there be anything suspicious about that?” asked the shrewd old man.
“I thought that possibly somebody had a grudge against the realty company or against one of the Joneses. So I thought I might as well do a little investigation.”
Captain Bob wobbled his head. “You young pups!” he muttered. “There is no getting away from you. Did I hear you say that you want to be a doctor?”