Three quarters of an hour later, when Jerry brought the bag back, the Crummies were still crackling happily. Not a word of conversation had been overheard.
CHAPTER XV
A Matter of Brain Waves
Barby, Jan, and Scotty were kind to Rick, which annoyed him considerably. If they had scolded him for bad judgment, called him a chucklehead, or even ignored him, it would have been all right. But they all had to reassure him and tell him it could have happened to anyone, and so on, and on. All of which made it unbearable.
He was more sure than ever that the houseboaters and barber were connected, but he still had no clear evidence. Of course he had made a report of the day's activities to Steve, who at least hadn't tried to be nice about it.
"An agent can't always think of everything," was Steve's comment. "But he can try. Sometimes, when he fails to take a factor into consideration, he gets away with it. Sometimes he fails. Sometimes he ends up dead, because of his poor judgment. Be glad your lives weren't hanging in the balance."
Rick took the lesson to heart. He wouldn't make the same mistake twice.
On the evening of the cereal fiasco, Parnell Winston returned to Spindrift after another visit to Dr. Chavez. He called Steve Ames and spent a long time talking to the JANIG agent. Then he called the project team and the boys into the library.