Dismounting from that rather casual accommodation on the following day, the two friends found Pearlington to consist of a windowed packing-box inhabited by a hermit in a brass-buttoned blue. This lonely official readily identified the subjects of Average Jones’ inquiry.
“I guess I know your friends, all right. The dago was tall and thin and had white hair; almost snow-white. No, he wasn’t old, neither. He talked very soft and slow. Used to stay off in the reeds three and four days at a time. No, ain’t seen him for near a week; him nor his boat nor the young fellow that was with him. Sort of bugologists, or something, wasn’t they.”
“Have you any idea where we could find their camp?”
The railroad man laughed.
“Fine chance you got of finding anything in that swamp. There’s ten square miles of it, every square just like every other square, and a hundred little islands, and a thousand creeks and rivers winding through.”
“You’re right,” agreed Average Jones. “It would take a month to search it. You spoke of a boat.”
“It’s my notion they must have had a houseboat. They could a-rowed it up on the tide from the Kills—a little one. I never saw no tent with ’em. And they had to have something over their heads. The boat I seen ’em have was a rowboat. I s’pose they used it to go back and forth in.”
“Thanks,” said Average Jones. “That’s a good idea about the houseboat.”
On the following day this advertisement appeared in the newspapers of several shore towns along the New Jersey and Staten Island coast.
A DRIFT—A small houseboat lost several days ago from the Hackensack Meadows. Fifty dollars reward paid for information leading to recovery. Jones, Ad-Visor, Astor Court Temple, New York.