“Here goes for them, then,” said Jolter, passing back the letter with an approving chuckle. “We’ll let them go right ahead, and in the meantime the Bulletin will do a lot of real nifty old sleuthing.”
But the Bulletin’s sleuthing brought nothing wrong to light, and work upon the big waterworks contract was begun with a rush.
In the meantime Agnes, true to her threat, was doing some investigating on her own account. She renewed her girlhood acquaintance with Trimmer’s daughter, who was now Mrs. Clarence Smythe, and with others of the Trimmer connection, and she saw these women folk frequently for the sole purpose of gathering up any scraps of information that might drop. The best she could gather, however, was that Clarence Smythe and Silas Trimmer were no longer upon very friendly terms; that Mrs. Smythe had quarreled with her father about Clarence; also that Clarence’s Trimmer and Company stock was in Mrs. Smythe’s name. These scraps of information, slight as they were, she religiously brought to Bobby. When the new waterworks began Agnes saved all the newspaper clippings relating to that tremendous undertaking, and she frequently drove out there of evenings after the workmen had all gone home; with just what purpose she could not say, but she felt impelled, as she half-sheepishly confessed to her Uncle Dan, to “keep an eye on the job.” She kept up her absurd surveillance in spite of all Uncle Dan’s ridicule, and one evening she came home in a state of quivering excitement. She called up Bobby at once.
“Bobby,” she wanted to know, “has the city decided to cut down expenses on the waterworks, or have the plans been changed for any reason?”
“Not that the public knows about,” replied Bobby. “Why?”
“The pumping station is not so big as the newspapers said it was to be. It is over thirty feet shorter and over twenty feet narrower.”
“How do you know?” demanded Bobby.
“I took Wilkins out there with me to-night and had him measure it for me with a yard-stick while the watchman had gone for his supper,” replied Agnes triumphantly.
Bobby stopped to laugh.
“Impossible,” said he. “You have measured it wrong or misunderstood it in some way or other.”