“Sure. But, look, there’s a sort of ladder over there. Climb out, and I’ll tell you how I came to be here, and you can tell me something about yourself.”
Tom lost no time in clambering up the rough contrivance for getting in and out of the mushroom cellar. Then he followed his newly found friend to the small room in which the men who had captured him had first questioned him.
“Reckon I got you out of quite a scrape, didn’t I?” asked the clown, regarding Tom with a quizzical sort of look.
“I should say so,” rejoined the boy gratefully. “If it hadn’t been for you I don’t know what would have happened to me. But you almost scared the life out of me, too,” he added truthfully. “What gave you the idea?”
“Well, you see, it was this way. After Sawdon ducked out I had no place to go to, so I was wandering along the road, thinking that maybe I could give a show some place and pass the hat to get some other clothes, when I saw this old house. It was getting late, so, thinks I, there’s my Walled-off-Castoria. I walked in and went into one of the upper rooms, where I lay down for a snooze. I must have slept a long time, I reckon, for when I woke up I heard voices below.
“I listened with my ears wide open, and what I heard showed me mighty quick that two fellers were carrying out some bit of rascality. So all at once I hit on the idea of being a ghost. I reckon what one of them fellers said about the place being haunted gave me the idea—and so I gave those yells that you heard, and it certainly worked.”
“It certainly did; and I thank you for it,” laughed Tom, “but it scared me as badly as it did the bad men, almost.”
“Well, it’s hard to please everybody, as the feller said when they kicked at his carrying Limburger cheese on the street car. But now tell us what you are doing here, sonny.”
Tom told him as much of his adventures as he thought advisable. When he had finished the clown exclaimed:
“So you’re one of the kids that rescued that boy from the balloon?”