“That’s the end of it,” Clay went on. “Now, who’s ready to give the answer? Who rowed Gran away? Why? What word had he started to write when he stopped?”
“You’ve got me going!” Alex exclaimed. “I’m no mind reader!”
“What about it. Case?” asked Clay. “What’s your answer?”
“I’m just out of answers,” Case laughed, though there was a worried look on his face. “Look here!” he went on, “we’ve been trying to escape the mystery stunt ever since we returned from the Amazon. Now, suppose we quit guessing and wait for the answer? No one knows a thing about that boy, and that’s the answer, so far as I know what it is!”
Clay and Alex exchanged significant glances when Case was not looking in their direction. They both had a suspicion as to what the word beginning with “f” would have been had it been completed!
Their supposition that the word would have been “films” increased their wonder and added to the mystery. To tell the truth, they had both believed that, for some purpose of his own which he would be able to explain satisfactorily later on, Gran, had removed the films from the kodak, and now, if their suspicions were well founded, he was asking, under strange circumstances, that they be well taken care of!
Case went into the cabin and found the fish safe under a tin, secured by a heavy weight, on the table. Teddy was sniffing about, and Captain Joe was reproving him for his inquisitiveness by biting at his inch or so of tail.
“Now,” Alex said to Clay, “what about it? The message from Gran, the message sent adrift in the river and caught by you, seems to indicate that the boy never took the films—that he thinks we still have them in our possession—that he considers them very important! If he didn’t take them, who did? Say,” he went on, with a look into the cabin, where Case was getting out dishes and fighting the bear cub to keep him off the table, “isn’t it about time we annexed the wisdom of Case? The only reason we had for keeping all this from him was that there would be no talk about it which Gran might overhear.”
“Of course we’ll tell Case,” Clay replied, “but I thought that there never were any films, never any robbery at the pass, never any long-armed man talking with Gran in the cedar canyon!”
“All right!” grinned Alex, “I’ll tell Case, and then we’ll cut it all out of the menu. We’ve got to do it in order to have any fun on the Columbia river. But where will Gran end up if this thing keeps on?”