Mr. Bagley said, “Yes, sir, we found him lying in the bottom of the chasm—dead. Both of his legs and one of his arms were broken. We found his coat a few yards from where his body lay; it was caught on a clump of brush.” All of a sudden, Mr. Bagley leaned away over toward us and whispered, “And my father’s oilskin dispatch container with his will in it was gone. Was gone!” Then he sat up straight and just looked at us.
I said, “Gee, that was funny.”
“You call it funny!” Pee-wee shouted. “Don’t you even know when a thing is serious?”
Mr. Bagley just kept looking at us, kind of dark and suspicious like. I saw Dub sort of move as if he was uneasy for fear Mr. Bagley was thinking we knew something about it. Then Sandy asked him if it was ever found.
“It was never found,” he said, sort of slow like, and very serious. “And that’s the mystery. The oilskin dispatch container presented to my poor father by an overseas boy who carried a message from General Pershing to the British commander in it was gone from the pocket of my father’s coat—and with it his last will and testament.”
We were sort of scared, he looked at us so serious. He just kept looking at us. Then he said, “But I want you boys to know that if that will had been found, I would have been glad to sell all that woodland to Temple Camp, as sure as my name is Saul Bagley. I am for the Boy Scouts first, last and always. But I can’t be held responsible for the meanness, and the stubbornness, and the lack of public spirit of a crew of undeserving beneficiaries under a former will of my poor father, now can I?”
That’s just what he said; he used dandy big words.
CHAPTER VI
WHERE THERE’S A WILL
Jiminies, up to that time I never knew how near Temple Camp had come to getting that land. Because Mr. Saul Bagley sure was strong for the Scouts. He was mighty nice the way he spoke about Mr. Temple and all the councilors and trustees. And oh boy, didn’t he roast the people that owned the land! They were his cousins, but anyway, he didn’t have much use for them.
Pee-wee said, “Maybe those cousins knew about that will where he left everything to you and maybe they waited for him when he was on his way home and maybe they—maybe they did something to him, hey? So you wouldn’t get all the property and everything; hey? Maybe they got the will.”