I said, “I’m not thinking of to-morrow. I’m thinking of to-day. If we have to tell he was there, it will look bad for him. If he tells himself it won’t look so bad.”
Westy said, “A tall chance we stand of getting him to tell.”
I said, “Well, if they force it out of us it will look bad for him.”
“How do you think the fire started?” Westy asked me.
“How do I know?” I said. “Maybe he dropped a match or something. But he isn’t so bad that he’d burn the place down on purpose, I know that. I’d like to know what your father and Mr. Ellsworth think. I bet they think he did it. I bet the reason they were willing for us not to talk to-day was because they think that if nobody says anything yet, they can prove something against him. Hey? I bet they’ve got some plans for to-morrow.”
“What are we going to do this afternoon?” Westy wanted to know.
“I’m going to help clear away the stuff,” I told him.
“Good idea,” he said. “Let’s round up all the troop.”
We called up most of the fellows and we went to see those who didn’t have ’phones, and we fixed it up to all go up to Willow Place in the afternoon and help. That was some afternoon. The wreckage of the shop was all over the sidewalk and the place looked like Thanksgiving dinner when Pee-wee Harris gets through with it. We started helping the men to haul boards and stuff, and parts of cars, away from the walk, and raking out the middle of the streets so as not to leave any nails and broken window glass for autos to run over. We might better be doing that than be out hiking in the woods, that’s what I told them.
About the middle of the afternoon Charlie Slausen came over. He seemed awful worried, kind of. He called Westy and me aside and asked us if we had told anybody about the night before.