I asked Tom a question that was trying to get out of my mind, and it was, “Where IS your daddy?” and he said, “I don’t know, but Bob does, and he’ll take Mother’s letter to him.”
It seemed like the rest of the gang ought to know Bob was up here, and yet for some reason it seemed like Poetry ought to know it first, so the very second I had a chance after I got into my tent a little later, and the lights were out, and Dragonfly had been quieted down from talking and laughing—in fact, his noisy nose sounded like he was asleep—I reached out my hand and touched Poetry and said, “You asleep?” and he whispered quietly, “Yes,” which meant he wasn’t. So I told him about Bob and he said, “That explains a lot of things.”
“What, for instance?” I asked, and he said, “It explains who opened the icehouse door and let John Till out.” Then Poetry and I decided to get up and go outside where we could talk without being heard.
I was surprised we were able to get up and out without being stopped by Dragonfly’s waking up and asking questions or insisting on going along, he not being able to let anybody have any secrets without wanting him to divide them up with him.
A good place to talk without being heard would be down at the dock, we decided, so away we went toward the lake where the waves were sighing and lapping against the shore and dock posts and making the boats rock a little—one of the boats making a little scraping noise against the dock.
“Where was Bob standing?” Poetry asked, and when I pointed to the bushes he started straight toward them. As you maybe know he wanted to be a detective some day and was always looking for what detectives and the police and the FBI call “clues”; and also Poetry was always finding one, or something he thought was one.
As soon as we were both behind the bushes, where anybody at camp couldn’t see us, he turned on his flashlight and shined it all around where Bob and Tom had been standing.
“What’re we looking for?” I asked, and he answered like he always does, “A clue.”
“What kind of a clue?” I asked, and he replied, “I’ll tell you just as soon as I find it.”
Well, I certainly didn’t expect we’d find anything, but all of a sudden I heard a sound from up the shore like footsteps coming toward us, so I said in a husky whisper, “I think I heard a clue coming from somewhere”—and then I knew I had heard one for up the path not very far away I saw a flashlight flash on and off in a very fast fleeting flash like a firefly’s flash flashing on and off down at Sugar Creek.