Pretty soon we reached the house and, good night, it wasn’t any house at all; it was a house-boat. And I could see the fixtures for a wireless on it, only the wires had been taken down.
Then Mr. Donnelle said, “Boys,” he said, “this is my old workshop and I have spent many happy hours in it. But I don’t use it any more and if you boys think you could all pile into it, why you are welcome to it for the summer. It has no power, but perhaps you could tow it behind your launch. Anyway you may charter it for the large sum of nothing at all, as a reward for foiling a spy.”
“I—I kind of knew you were not a spy all the time,” said Pee-wee.
Well, I was so flabbergasted that I just couldn’t speak and even Pee-wee was struck dumb. We just gaped like a couple of idiots, and after a while I said, “Cracky, it’s too good to be true.”
“So you see what comes from collecting books for soldiers and for keeping your eyes open,” Mr. Donnelle said; “you have caught a bigger fish than you thought. Now suppose I show you through the inside.”
Now here is the place where the plot begins to get thicker and, believe me, in four or five chapters it will be as thick as mud. We were just coming up to the house-boat to go aboard it, when suddenly the door flew open and a fellow scampered across the deck and ran away.
I could see that he had pretty shabby clothes and a peaked cap and I guess he was startled to hear us coming. In just a few seconds he was gone in the woods and we all stood gaping there while the boat bobbed up and down, on account of him jumping from it. But I got a squint at his face all right, and I noticed the color of his cap and how he ran, and I’m mighty glad I did, because that fellow was going to come into our young lives again and cause us a lot of trouble, you can bet.
Mr. Donnelle said he was probably just a tramp that had been sleeping in the boat and he didn’t seem to mind much, only he said it would be better to keep the door locked.
“Maybe he might have been a——” Pee-wee began.
“No siree,” I said. “We’ve had enough of deep-dyed villains for one day, if that’s what you were going to say.”