“No, Mr. Anderson. I owe you one. I should have known those thieves had taken over your house without your permission. Did they come back?”
“They certainly did. I was warned to keep out of the way, but there wasn’t any shooting. Your husband and the other FBI agent got there just in time to relieve the Earl, as he calls himself, of his gun. Without it he was nothing.”
“He’s my boss,” the runaway boy spoke up defiantly.
“Was,” Horace said. “He won’t be any more. Why don’t you give me the whole story? How did you get mixed up in this racket? You’re the boy who took that green car the other day and came back with a typewriter, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, the boss wanted one in a hurry. He had some letters to write.”
“And so he told you to go out and steal one?”
“Yeah, that was my job. If he told me to get anything I went out and got it. I didn’t ask questions. He’d cased that house and spotted some other stuff he wanted, too, but I didn’t have time to pick it up. The boss understood. He ain’t a bad guy.”
“Boy, you have a lot to learn,” Horace commented, shaking his head.
It was Danny who retrieved the lady stick, as he called it. He went into the pond after it before anyone could stop him and came out dripping wet.
“See, it isn’t hurt much,” he announced, presenting it to Judy. “The lady’s got a couple of tooth marks in her cheek, and the end where the leg screws into the table is chewed a little, but we can fix that, can’t we, Dad?”