“Say, what’s going on up there?” called the voice of Mr. Dalton from the lower hall. “It’s too early to be hiding Christmas presents. What are you doing? I’d like my supper!”
“Oh, Dick!” exclaimed his wife. “Uncle Tod is gone!”
“Gone!” there was a note of alarm in Mr. Dalton’s voice.
“I mean he’s gone away, and he didn’t say where, and he doesn’t want it known and he got such a queer message—”
“I’ll show it to you,” broke in Rick, racing down the stairs with the cabbage leaf, the rock and the bullet.
“Hum!” mused Mr. Dalton when he had looked at them. “Some of Uncle Tod’s jokes!”
“No, I think not,” was Mrs. Dalton’s opinion. “Here’s a letter he left.”
Mr Dalton whistled softly when he had read this.
“Tell me all about it,” he suggested. “We can talk while we eat supper.” And when the story was told him, from the time of Rick’s hasty run home in alarm over Ruddy, to the discovery that Uncle Tod had secretly disappeared, Mr. Dalton agreed that it was rather puzzling.
“Well, I take it that the scare about the possibility over Ruddy being shot, poisoned or stolen away has nothing to do with Uncle Tod’s going,” said Rick’s father. “How about it?”