“Why, what’s wrong with it?”
“Oh, the house is all right—a big barn of a place. But Dad has it locked up like a prison. There are solid wooden shutters to all the ground floor windows, and he keeps them barred day and night. We got in through an underground passage from the garage.”
“That does sound queer. Who else was there?”
“Nobody. Dad’s camping out in that house alone. Naturally, I wanted to know all about it.”
“What did your father tell you?”
“Not a darn thing! He told me not to ask questions. Said the less I knew, the better off I’d be. Sunday night somebody tried to break into the place. Dad fired at him through an upper window, but the man got away, I think.”
“It looks as if Mr. Evans were hiding from something or somebody,” Bill said thoughtfully.
“It certainly does,” acquiesced Charlie. “But I couldn’t find out a thing. He wouldn’t let me go out of the house alone the whole time I was there.”
“Funny business. When did you leave?”
“Monday night. That noon after lunch, Dad told me to turn in and go to sleep—said he had a job for me that night. He woke me up for supper, and afterwards he told me he wanted me to fetch you up there. He said ‘Tell Bolton I need him—need him badly. Say that I know he will be going back to Annapolis in about a month, and I hate taking time from his holidays. But tell him that this job won’t take long and that I believe it will be even more exciting than that Shell Island business, or the affair of the Flying Fish.’”