“I suppose this is the young gentleman who succeeded in trapping me. I must take off my hat to the Boy Scouts,” and he smiled with an awful pleasant kind of a smile and held out his hand to Pee-wee.
Well, you should have seen Pee-wee. It was as good as a three-ringed circus. He stood there as if he was posing for animal crackers. And even the detectives looked kind of puzzled, but all the while suspicious.
“Are you the spy-catcher?” the old gentleman said to Pee-wee, but Pee-wee looked all flabbergasted and only shifted from one foot to the other.
“I hope you don’t mean to kill me with that belt-axe?” the old gentleman asked. But Pee-wee just couldn’t speak.
“He must be a telephone girl—he doesn’t answer,” I blurted out, and even the detectives had to laugh.
“Gentlemen, if you will step inside, I’ll make full confession and then give myself up,” the old man said; “for I see there is no use in trying to escape the Boy Scouts. It was I who wrote that treasonable memorandum and I may as well tell you that I have a wireless. I will give you my whole history. I see that my young friend here is a most capable secret service agent.”
“We’re only small boys—we belong to the infantry,” I said, for I just couldn’t help blurting it out.
Well, we all went inside and I could see that the Commissioner and the detectives kept very near the old gentleman as if they didn’t have much use for his laughing and his pleasant talk. I guess maybe they were used to that kind of thing, and he couldn’t fool them.
When we got into his library I saw books all around on the shelves, hundreds of them I guess, and the desk was covered with papers and there was a picture of Mark Twain with “Best regards to Mr. Donnelle,” written on it. Gee whittaker, I thought when I looked around; maybe Mr. Donnelle is a deep-dyed spy all right, but he’s sure a high-brow.
“You’d have to take an elevator to get up to him,” I whispered to Pee-wee.