“I’m very glad to hear that,” Rex told him. “He is a fine man, one of the best and, if you’ll turn your heads so as to hide your blushes, I’ll tell you that he was very favorably impressed with you.”
“I wish you were going up with us,” Bob declared a little later, after they had talked over the matter of the “ghost.”
“Don’t I? But it’s impossible just now. You see we’re tremendously busy at the office and father’s not at all well and I’ve simply got to stick for awhile. Maybe in a couple of weeks I can get away for a few days and if I can be assured you’ll see me just as quick as I can get there. I can smell the spruce and the pine right now to say nothing of the fun of hunting down that ghost.”
“Mr. Stokes said he was a rich man, is that right?” Bob asked.
“He’s worth several millions. Why?”
“Well, you see, he offered to pay us a thousand dollars in case we are successful and five hundred if we’re not and it’s a pretty big sum of money to pay a couple of boys and—”
“Don’t you worry about that,” Rex interrupted laughingly. “The money’s nothing to him and you needn’t hesitate to take it. I fancy he’d pay a million right this minute to have the mystery cleared up.”
“That’s all right then. I just wanted to be sure about it.”
“I suppose Sherlock has the matter all figured out,” Rex laughed nodding at Jack. “You notice that he hasn’t said much. Regular ‘still waters run deep’ sort of fellow.”
“But when he does talk it usually makes sense,” Bob declared with a proud look toward his brother.