“This is a job for the police,” Big Jim told us. “You boys’ve done your part, and you’ll get credit, but there isn’t any sense in running any unnecessary risks. Let’s get to a phone quick.”
We all knew there wasn’t any sense in trying to argue Big Jim out of that idea, and it did make good sense, although it’s hard on a boy to use good sense all the time, on account of his not being used to it.
The first good sense we used was to quick carry the money down to Santa’s cabin and lock it up in his boathouse. The nearest telephone being farther on up the lake at a resort, Santa and Big Jim took Santa’s boat and motored terribly fast in that direction, leaving Poetry and Circus and Little Jim and Dragonfly and Tom Till and me standing there by the boathouse to wait till they came back from phoning the police.
I looked into Poetry’s bluish eyes and he into mine—we both feeling pretty sad. It was going to be a little fun watching the police surround the icehouse though, and seeing them capture our criminal. “It’ll be fun to watch him come out of that icehouse with his long hairy arms up in the air,” Dragonfly said, and Little Tom Till looked up from what he’d been doing, which was tucking the stem of an oxeye daisy through the button hole of his shirt—that little guy always liking to wear a wild flower of some kind,—and asked, “Watch who come out of an icehouse—what icehouse?”
And Dragonfly, being not thinking, but letting the very first thought that came into his head just splash right out of his mouth, said, “Why Old hook-nosed John—”
But that was as far as his dumb sentence got, for Circus who was quicker than a cat, whirled around and clapped his hand over his mouth just in time to stop him at the word “John.”
But it was too late to save Little Tom’s feelings. I saw a sad look come into his bluish eyes and both fists double up quick, and I knew he was both sad and mad. He looked like he knew Dragonfly meant his daddy, on account of he had called him “Old hook-nose John—,” but the part about coming out of an icehouse with his hairy arms up in the air, puzzled him. I saw him swallow hard like there was a lump in his throat, and he said, “You mean my daddy’s locked up somewhere? What for? What’s he done?”
I’d been calling John Till “Old Hook-nose” myself, when I’d been talking to the rest of the gang and when I thought about him, but somehow right that second, it sort of seemed like we ought to get a more respectable, better name for him.
I knew we had to tell Tom the truth, he having heard Dragonfly say that, but I was mad at Dragonfly for a minute, so I said, “Listen you, Dragonfly Gilbert (which is his last name), you can stop calling him ‘Old Hook-nose,’ when you’ve got a nose that turns south at the end, yourself!”
Then because Tom would have to know the truth some time, all of us helped each other tell him the whole story, which you already know. While we were doing it, Tom wouldn’t look us in the eye, but was picking blue flowers and tucking them into a little bouquet in his hand. Then he straightened up and looked all around in a quick circle like he was expecting to see the police coming. Also he looked out toward the lake like he was listening for the motor of Santa and Big Jim coming back.