CHAPTER XI
LARRY MEETS A FARMER
“Say, that doesn’t make any sense!” exclaimed Detective Nyler, as he stared at the few words, and parts of words on the torn note. “I don’t see what good that’s going to do, after all our success in finding it.”
“No, it doesn’t make sense,” agreed Larry. “But I think I can make something of it.”
“What?”
“Well, in the first place I believe the stolen boy is referred to. Of course it might be some other stolen boy, but, knowing that Parloti had an interest in forcing Madame Androletti to come to terms about the property in Italy, it is evidently her boy who is referred to.”
“Probably,” agreed the detective, “and yet that word we take for ‘boy,’ might be some other one. You can see that the two other words are only partly here. Maybe ‘boy’ is part of a word.”
“Yes,” assented Larry, “but there are very few words in ordinary use that end in boy, except, of course, such as bell-boy or copy-boy or errand boy, or some of those. There is carboy, to be sure, one of those big bottles they put acids in, and hautboy, but——”
“What in the world is a ho-boy?” asked the detective, pronouncing the word as Larry had done, but which is not the way it is spelled. “I never heard of one.”
“A hautboy,” explained the young reporter, “is a sort of musical instrument, like a clarionet. I don’t believe Parloti’s correspondent meant that, though, of course, he might. I think he referred to the stolen boy.”
“So do I,” agreed the detective. “But what do you make of the rest? ‘Ocated’ isn’t a word, and neither is ‘ot.’”