This free talk puzzled me. He seemed not to know who we were. Could this indeed be the case? And was it a happenstance, sort of, that he had stopped here at the Ricks’ mail box, instead of a trick, as Tom had suspected?
I was not long left in doubt.
“Know a family around here by the name of Ricks?” smarty inquired.
Scoop on the moment draped himself over the mail box’s lettered cover.
“Yes,” he put in ahead of me, “we have a family [[148]]in town by that name. A man, a woman and a boy. The man is an inventor.”
“That’s the fellow I want to see.”
“Is he doing some inventing for you?” quizzed Scoop.
“Er—something on that order. What direction is his home from here?”
“Are you going to put up at the hotel while you’re in Tutter?”
“Of course.”