Fudge, attired in football togs, seated himself with a grunt beside the other, slammed the door and beamed about him. Fudge had very blue and very round eyes, so round that he constantly wore an expression of pleasant and somewhat excited surprise. He also had a good deal of sandy-red hair. He was ambitious to make the High School Football Team, was Fudge, and since Spring had refused all entreaties to have his hair cut. Viewing that mop of hair one would have doubted the necessity of the head-guard which he dangled in one hand.
Dick started up again and traveled cautiously yet briskly through B Street, but not until he had everything adjusted to his liking and one hand on the bulb of the horn did he indulge in conversation, although Fudge, unperplexed by problems of gears and levers, chattered busily.
“Gordon promised to stop for me,” he confided, “but he didn’t, and I didn’t know it was so late. I was writing.”
Fudge paused as though inviting curiosity. Eli said “Honk! Honk!” hoarsely before he chugged across Main Street, and Dick asked, “Another story, Fudge?”
Fudge nodded carelessly. “Yes, and it’s going to be a peach. It—it’s a detective story, Dick. I meant it to be just a short one, but it’s turning out to be quite long. I guess it’ll be a regular novel before I get through with it. Detective stories are lots of fun to write. Maybe I’ll read some of this to you some time, Dick.”
“Thanks,” replied the other gravely. “What’s it about, Fudge?”
“Oh, about a murder and a peach of a detective chap named ‘Young Sleuth.’ You see, this old codger Middleton was found murdered in his library, surrounded by oodles of money. There was only one window in the room and that was all barred over with steel bars. And there was only one door and that was locked on the inside and they had to break it open. How’s that for a situation? You see, having his money all scattered around showed that he wasn’t killed for that, don’t it? And the barred window and the door locked on the inside—get that, Dick? On the inside, mind you!—thickens the plot a bit, eh?”
“Rather!” agreed Dick, anxiously viewing a buggy half a block ahead. “How did the murderer get in, Fudge?”