He said he didn’t know what time it was when he woke up, but he was hungry. He said it was all dark all around. He said it smelled like kerosene. No wonder. Gee, I’ve slept on balsam and moss and all kinds of things, but I never slept on cotton waste. So then, g-o-o-d night, he struck a match!
And pretty soon after that was when I heard the fire whistle.
CHAPTER XXIV—THE THREE OF US
That was the match! Talk about your baseball matches and your rowing matches. That was the world renowned parlor match. The great inventor got out just in time, with his ammunition. You know the rest.
He didn’t know how much depended on our finding him and on his telling the truth. But anyway, he didn’t seem to know about it being so serious to set a building on fire-I knew we wouldn’t have any trouble making him say what he did. Gee, he seemed to like to tell about it.
We were sitting in the car after dark on that Sunday night, when he told us about his career of glory. He didn’t tell us the way I told it to you. We had to keep asking him questions and that’s how we got it out of him. He was an awful funny kid. When he made believe about something he talked as if that thing just really happened. He said we could be partners with him in his new submarine if we wanted to.
I said, “Thanks just the same, but I’ve got the Silver Fox patrol on my hands and that’s enough.” Believe me, that’s a whole world war in itself.
He said we’d divide up the thousand dollars.
“Sure,” I told him, “and we’ll buy a couple of tons of matches.”
He seemed to think that now we were friends with him he’d never have to go back to the Home.