CHAPTER VII.—PIE THAT LIVED IN A GLASS HOUSE.
“Then,” Alex suggested, “we’d better be getting the Rambler into the water and sailing away. If the officers should decide to hold us as witnesses, we’ll have a fine time on the Columbia, I don’t think.”
“That is just what I have been telling Gran,” replied Clay, “but he seems to think that he ought to part from us here. He says he has no money to share the expense of the trip with us, and that he will not be what they call a star boarder on South Halstead street, Chicago—one who never misses a meal or pays a cent. I like his independence, but I’d like better to have him with us. Suppose you go and talk it over with the lad. He’s pretty blue over something this morning.”
“Perhaps he wants to get away from us because he thinks we will be suspected of knowing something about this robbery and followed,” suggested Alex, all his suspicions coming to the front once more.
“And perhaps he wants to get away because he knows that we’ll suspect him of taking the films. We’ve just got to keep him with us, for a time, anyway,” the boy added. “We’ll tie him down if necessary!”
“Well, the very best thing I can suggest at this time,” Clay decided, “is to forget the films, and the train robbery, and the way the boy came to us, and go on about having fun with the Columbia river. Doesn’t it seem that way to you? To get away is surely the easiest way to escape any trouble connected with the robbery. I’ll go and tell Case about it, and we’ll just cut everything out but the fun we’re going to have on the river.”
“All right!” Alex agreed. “There never was any photographs taken in the pass, and there never was a train robbery at the summit of the Rocky mountains, and no boy ever came to us out of a dark canyon at night! Say but we’ll have a lot of forgetting to do!”
“And Gran is not to know a word of what we have been talking?”
“Not a single, solitary word! Didn’t we agree that there never was any films, and that there never was a robbery, and that Gran came to us out of the clouds, dressed in red and purple, with his pockets stuffed with treasury notes? Trust me to forget it all when I’m talking with him.”
Clay went forward and drew Case aside, leaving Gran alone on the prow, and Alex promptly engaged him in conversation. The stranger was still insisting on leaving the party there, when Captain Joe, who had been running about the car for some moments, uttered a growl and started off on a run toward the cluster of houses nearest the river.