“I’d give a thousand dollars to fathom it,” roared Johnny Kent. “And Bill Maguire just sits across the table and grins like a wooden figger-head.”
“I suppose ye have no Chinamen in your village,” ventured O’Shea.
“Nary a Chink. I’ll bet the children never saw one.”
“And where could we find the nearest one, Johnny? ’Tis our business to dig up a cock-eyed lad that will impart to us the meaning of the message that was carved into the back of Bill Maguire. Nor will I know an easy minute till we have the information.”
Johnny pondered a little and then spoke up with sudden hopefulness:
“Once in a while I’m so sagacious that I surprise myself. The Chinese ambassador spends his summers on the coast at Poplar Cove. It’s no more than an hour from here by train. He’s a fat, sociable old party, so they tell me. And where could you find a better man to solve the riddle of Bill Maguire?”
“You score a bull’s-eye,” cried O’Shea. “And he will have secretaries and such, and we will let them all have a try at it.”
“But how will you show ’em Bill’s back? Draw it on paper, or get a photograph made?”
“Nonsense! Bill will take his back along with us. We will produce the original human document.”
The engineer was inclined to object to this, but the edicts of Captain O’Shea were to be obeyed, and to argue was to waste words. The Perkins boy was summoned from the barn and instructed, by means of thundering intonations, to stand guard over the farm at peril of his life. He spent his nights at his own home and had missed the excitement of the capture of Bill Maguire, wherefore the secret was safely hid from his inquisitive eyes and ears. He gazed at the robust, silent stranger with rampant curiosity, but learned nothing beyond the fact that his employer proposed to be absent for the day with his two guests.