Mr. Tucker laughed. “Well, we’ll write this minute, and I guess he’d ought to get it this afternoon. Then, if he’s as anxious as you are, Arnold, he’s likely to be around pretty early tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir! And—and could you say, ‘Bring reward with you,’ or something like that?”
“I guess he’ll have a checkbook handy,” replied Mr. Tucker. “Now, the question is where’ll we send the letter to? New York or Hastings?”
“Hastings, dad,” advised Toby. “He mightn’t be at that club today.”
“That’s so. All right. Elbow room, Phebe! Where’s that pesky pen got to? Oh, here it is. I wonder if there’s a piece of paper here. You don’t happen to see—— Oh, thanks, daughter. Now, then! ‘Mr. Paul——’ What’s the middle part of it, Toby?”
“Paul Langham Townsend.”
“An awful lot of name, ’pears to me. ‘Mr. Paul Langham Townsend, Hastings-on-Hudson, N. Y. Dear sir: This is to inform you that your launch the Follow Me is at Tucker’s boat yard, Greenhaven, L. I., and same can be had by calling and paying reward advertised in the——’ Hold on! What paper’s that now?”
“You can’t tell, sir,” said Arnold. “Better just say ‘in paper.’”
“All right. Got to scratch out ‘the’ though. ‘Reward advertised in paper. Respectfully yours, Aaron Tucker.’ There we are. Now where’s an envelope?”
They dropped the letter in the postoffice at twenty minutes after nine, just in time for the collection, and spent the succeeding half-hour figuring how long it would take Uncle Sam to get it across to New York and then up the Hudson to Hastings. Arnold said they had been silly not to telephone Mr. Townsend instead of writing to him. “Then maybe he’d have come over here this afternoon,” he added.