“Shhh,” Pee-wee said, “maybe he isn’t dyed so very deep—there’s different shades of dyes.”
“Maybe he’s only dyed a light gray or a pale blue,” I said.
Then Mr. Donnelle got out a big fat red book that said on it “Who’s Who in America” and, jiminy, I’m glad I never had to study it, because it had about a million pages. I hate biography anyway—biography and arithmetic. Then he turned to a certain page.
“Now, gentlemen,” he said, “if you will just read this I will then consent to go with you,” and he smiled all over his face.
The four men leaned over and began reading, but Pee-wee and I didn’t because they didn’t ask us and Boy Scouts don’t butt in.
“I bet it tells all about German spies and everything, and now he’s going to make a full confession,” Pee-wee said; “maybe our names will be in the New York papers, hey?”
“They’ll be more likely to be in the fly-paper,” I said; “there’s something funny about this.”
“I bet he was going to blow up some ships,” Pee-wee said.
“I bet he’ll blow us up in a minute,” I told him; because I could see that he was saying something to the men while they all looked at the book, and that the whole four of them were laughing—especially Mr. Ellsworth.
“It was the elder boy who discovered it,” I heard him say, smiling all the while.