“When I was a boy scout,” said Brent, “I learned that I must never allow papers to be littered about. So I picked these up while you were chasing shadows. Well, I suppose there was no harm in four people being here⸺”
“Oh no, I heard there were only three,” snapped Tom. “That doesn’t go at all; I heard there were only three. Of course, this doesn’t really, definitely prove anything—these targets—but it’s gol blamed funny! It looks as if there were four people here that November, doesn’t it?... What do you say?” he added, addressing me. He seemed to be quite aroused.
“Does it make any difference how many were here?” I asked.
“No, but a mystery is rather nice,” drawled Brent.
“I don’t understand it at all—I don’t,” Tom said. “You ask anybody in Harkness, or up at Keeseville, how many were here and they’ll tell you three. That’s what the surveyors told me. That’s what Hick Collison, the game warden, told me. That’s what Mr. Temple understood from Mr. McClintick and his broker—that there were only just the three men here, for a little hunt. Why I’ve heard it a hundred times!”
“Well, I don’t suppose these targets really prove anything,” I said. “We might have known that Brent would find something to engage his attention up here. Now he can play Young Sleuth, the boy detective, while the rest of us are working.”
But Tom would not accept this view, and he refused to take a humorous squint at what seemed to me a matter of no importance.
“I can’t understand it at all,” he said, as he fell to looking at the targets again. “It’s got me.”
“I have a suggestion,” said Brent.
“Yes, what is it?” Tom snapped.