“Fellows,” said Jack, “when I got up this morning, it was with the feeling that this mystery was too good to be overlooked.”
Frank’s eyes brightened.
“Just the way I feel about it,” he declared. “I told Bob when we were dressing that we were in luck, because right at the moment it was beginning to look as if we were in for a dull summer, Fortune went and put an exciting mystery on our doorstep.”
Big Bob yawned.
“Oh, you fellows don’t know when you have a 30 good thing,” he said. “I suppose you want to go and stir up a lot of trouble as you did last summer. Why can’t you let well enough alone?”
They were in the sitting room shared by Bob and Frank, and the latter picking up a handy pillow promptly smothered his big chum with it and then sat on him.
“Don’t mind him, Jack,” he panted, in the resulting tussle. “He’s always like this when he gets up in the morning.”
A spirited engagement followed, from which Jack discreetly kept apart. Presently, when the couch was a wreck and Bob had Frank over his knees and was preparing to belabor him, Jack interfered.
“Listen to reason, you fellows,” he pleaded. “I’ve got a proposal.”
“Shall we listen to the proposal, Frank?” asked Bob, now fully awake, and grinning broadly. “Or shall we muss him up a bit?”