After we had our coffee we got awake and we started being serious. Because I had to admit that robbers are no laughing matter. Anyway Pee-wee wasn’t any laughing matter.
“Do you think it’s a joke getting five thousand dollars maybe?” he said.
“That’s no joke,” I said. “Come on, I’m going to start in being serious. Who’s going to be serious?”
“I am,” Dub said.
“Same here,” Sandy said.
“I’ll even cry if you want me to,” I said to Pee-wee.
If you look at my specially made map you’ll see there’s a dotted line going from Beaver Chasm to Bagley Center, and it’s a dandy dotted line, too. I made it good and slow. But I like to make railroads and brooks better. All through there is woods. That dotted line is a trail. But, believe me, you wouldn’t care anything about Bagley Center. But there’s one good thing about it, I didn’t see any school there. The trail runs right into the village—it’s the only thing in the village that runs. I was wondering where Mr. Bagley lived.
“Maybe he’d be a good one to tell,” Pee-wee said, “because don’t you know how he said he was away a lot and had adventures before he came home to stay?”
I said, “No, I think we better go to the police because they’re the right ones to go to.”
There wasn’t anybody up in the village, anyway we didn’t see anybody. Only one man we saw and he was driving down the street in a wagon with milk cans. He turned around and kept staring at us. Pretty soon we came to a house where there was a girl sweeping off the porch. I guess maybe she was a Girl Scout or something like that because she had a khaki blouse on. She was busy, sweeping good and hard.