The scout who had been ready to catch the missile now stepped over to look at it, and in ten seconds a dozen scouts were crowding around Tom and craning their necks over his shoulders.
“Somebody’s initials,” Tom said without any suggestion of excitement.
“Maybe—maybe it was that kid who was kidnapped,” Pee-wee vociferated.
“Only his initials are A. H.,” Tom answered dully.
“No sooner said than stung,” piped up one of the scouts.
“What’ll we do with him? Keep him?” asked another.
“What good is he?” Tom said, apparently on the point of scaling the turtle into the lake. “Some scout or other cut his initials here, that’s all. I don’t see any use in keeping him; he isn’t so very sociable.”
“Lots of times you crawl in your shell and aren’t so sociable, either,” Pee-wee shot back at him. “I say let’s keep him for a souvenir.”
“We’ll have a regular Bronx Park Zoo here pretty soon,” a scout said. “We’ll have to give him a name just like Asbestos.”
Tom set the turtle on the ground and everybody waited silently. But the turtle was not to be beguiled out of his stronghold by any such strategy. He remained as motionless as a stone. Pee-wee gave him a little poke with his foot but to no avail. They turned him around, setting him this way and that, they tried to pry his tail out but it went back like a spring.