The boys seated themselves comfortably in the office chairs, and listened to the music.
“You needn’t think you’re going to get Henry Burns to go off with you,” the colonel said, finally. “It’s half-past nine now, and his bedtime is ten o’clock. I wonder where he is.”
Arthur Warren chuckled quietly to himself. He could have told the colonel just where Henry Burns was at that moment; that he was busily engaged in conveying a certain basket of supplies from outside the kitchen window, up a pair of back stairs, to his room on the second floor above.
“You go and keep an eye on Colonel Witham,” he had said to Arthur Warren, “and if he starts to look for me, you go to the door and whistle.”
Which accounted for the sudden appearance of all the Warrens and Tom and Bob in the presence of Colonel Witham.
Fifteen minutes elapsed, and one by one they had all disappeared.
“Good riddance,” was the colonel’s mental ejaculation when he found them gone.
Great would have been his amazement and indignation could he have but seen them, a few minutes later, seated comfortably on the bed in Henry Burns’s room. It was approaching ten o’clock.
“Where’s Bob?” asked Henry Burns, as the boys quietly entered, and he made the door fast behind them.
“Hm!” said Tom, shaking his head regretfully. “It’s a sad thing about Bob. It’s too bad, but I don’t think he will be here, after all.”