“I can get leave all right,” he shot at me.
“And what are you going to do with the—the treasure—when you get it, if I may ask?”
“We’re going to turn it over to June Sanderson,” said Tom.
“Then we’re going to marry her and live happily forever after,” said Brent. “With the money from the Pathé News I’m going to get my laundry.”
I said, “Tom, if you ask for leave of absence from Temple Camp to spend the summer in such a fool enterprise you put yourself on a level with freaks and fanatics the country over. You’ll have every boy scout up in that place laughing at you⸺”
“Let ’em laugh,” said Tom decisively.
“Let me ask you,” I continued, “did you ever know of any one finding hidden treasure? Did you ever know any one that knew any one that ever heard of any one who was personally acquainted with anybody that ever really found any hidden treasure—did you?”
Brent said, “That’s rather a long question; let me think a minute.”
“If you could just name me one person,” I said. “Why, there was a young fellow, a millionaire’s son, who fitted up a yacht and went down off the coast of South America fishing for a sunken Spanish galleon. He ended in an insane asylum. There was a man in Massachusetts who had some inside dope on where Captain Kidd bunked some bars of gold and stuff—Baxter, his name was. They wouldn’t take him for service overseas because he was mentally deficient.”
“Thanks muchly,” said Tom. “You don’t have to be connected with this.”