“THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS REWARD!”
Toby and Phebe awaited him at the boat-yard wharf and as soon as he
had hastily secured the _Frolic_ to the stern of the _Follow Me_ and
climbed the ladder they pulled him in triumph to the shed.
“Here he is, dad!” called Toby. “Where is it?”
Mr. Tucker laid down his mallet and led the way to the desk very
leisurely. Then, while Toby and Phebe looked on with shining eyes, he
placed an envelope in Arnold’s hand. The postmark was “Moorcett, Ct.,”
and there was some printing in one corner, but Arnold didn’t stop to
read that. Instead, amidst a deep silence, he opened the envelope and
drew forth not the folded sheet of paper he expected but a roughly torn
section of newspaper. He viewed the others in bewilderment.
“Read it!” cried Toby and Phebe in chorus.
“‘Lost, on Fifth Avenue, between――――’”
“No, no! Further down!” said Toby impatiently.
“Oh, further down! ‘Three hundred dollars reward will be paid for the
return of mahogany launch _Follow Me_――――’” Arnold gasped and went back
to the beginning again. “‘Three hundred dollars’――Gee!”
“Isn’t that corking?” demanded Toby, gleefully.
“Just think of it!” exclaimed Phebe, dancing on her toes amidst the
shavings. “Three hundred dollars, Arnold!”
“But――but are you sure this is the――the――――”
“Read the whole of it, Arn!” prompted Toby, trying to see over his
shoulder. “Read it aloud!”
“‘Three hundred dollars reward will be paid for the return of mahogany
launch _Follow Me_, stolen from my landing at Hastings, N. Y., night of
April 27, and no questions asked. Built by Wells & Stotesbury, sixteen
feet long, four feet four inches beam, engine six-cylinder Thurston,
brass trimmed, name on stern, but possibly painted out. Communicate
with Paul Langham Townsend, Hastings-on-Hudson, or Eastern Launch Club,
New York City.’
“What do you know about that!” gasped Arnold, and the piece of paper
slipped from his fingers to the littered floor.
“You boys are in luck,” said Mr. Tucker. “Not that you don’t deserve
it, though; for you do. Now we’ll write to this man Townsend and tell
him to come and get her.”
“How long will that take?” asked Arnold eagerly.
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.
“It would cost a lot to telephone away up there,” objected Toby.
“A lot! Shucks; it wouldn’t have been more than a dollar, I guess! And
what’s a dollar when you’re going to get three hundred?”
“A dollar would be a lot if something happened and we didn’t get the
three hundred,” replied Toby. “That launch was stolen a long while
ago――over two months ago now――and maybe he’s given her up and has
had another one built. If he has he wouldn’t want the _Follow Me_, I
guess.” Toby’s voice sounded almost hopeful at the end, and Arnold
observed him in surprise.
“Toby, I really believe you’d rather have that launch than the reward!”
he exclaimed.
Toby’s gaze wandered. “I――I don’t know,” he murmured. “She’s an awfully
nice little boat!”
“But――but think of a hundred and fifty dollars! Why, you can――you can
do almost anything with a hundred and fifty dollars, Toby!”
“I know. It’s a lot of money. I’m not saying it wouldn’t be fine to
have it, but――――” his voice dwindled away. Arnold looked incredulously
at Phebe as he held the gate open. “Anyway,” continued Toby, “I’ll wait
until I get my hands on it before I think too much about it!”
Practice was not a great success that afternoon. In the first place,
the older boys of the town were using the school diamond and Toby’s
team had to do the best they could in a distant corner of the field;
in the second place only eight of the ten members showed up, and in
the third place Toby’s mind wandered so far from baseball that his
companions grew sarcastic and told him frankly that if he didn’t pay
more attention to the matter in hand they’d quit. Add these drawbacks
to the fact that there was a scarcity of gloves and bats, and that the
only mask they possessed had a loose wire that threatened to put the
wearer’s eye out every minute, and it will be seen that the Towners
labored under disadvantages that Saturday afternoon!
Arnold, although cordially invited to attend the rival aggregation’s
practice, had declined, stating his reason to be that he didn’t want
to learn the Towners’ signals! Consequently Toby saw no more of him
until the next day. When the Tucker family got back from church that
noon they found Arnold sitting on the front steps and holding a rather
one-sided conversation through the open window with Mr. Murphy. “I’ve
been trying to teach him to say, ‘Arnold,’” he explained, “but he just
stares and chuckles. I’m going to have dinner with you, if you’ll ask
me, Mrs. Tucker.”
“Indeed I will, then! Come right in out of the hot sun, Arnold. You
might have gone in the back door and been comfortable. We never lock it
from one year’s end to the other.”
“Heard anything yet?” whispered Arnold to Toby as Mr. Tucker unlocked
the door.
“Not exactly. Last night they sent for dad to go to the drug store.
They said he was wanted on the telephone. But either he couldn’t
understand, or the wires were bad, or something. He came stamping back
as mad as anything. But they told him it was New York calling, and so I
wouldn’t be surprised if it was he.”
“Must have been! I wish we knew whether he was coming today or not.
When is the next train, Toby?”
“Gets to Riverport at 3.12. Then it takes about half an hour to drive
over. So he couldn’t get here much before 3.45. Seems to me if he was
coming he’d have come this morning. I tried to get dad to let me stay
home from church, in case he did, but he wouldn’t see it.”
“You don’t suppose he’s been and gone away again?” gasped Arnold. “You
don’t suppose he――you don’t suppose he’s taken the launch?”
“Of course not! He wouldn’t do that, and――――”
But Arnold had flown down the steps and across the road and was already
hiking through the boat yard! He returned presently, perspiring and
panting, but vastly relieved, to report the prize still there. The
boys, and Phebe too, for that matter――and perhaps the older folks in
spite of their unnatural calm――were too excited to do justice to Mrs.
Tucker’s very hearty Sunday dinner. Arnold kept glancing at the old
mahogany-framed clock on the mantel, while Toby, although he tried
not to appear impatient, turned his head toward the window every time
footsteps or carriage wheels sounded in the road below.
But when Toby had proclaimed a quarter to four as the earliest possible
moment at which Paul Langham Townsend could reach Greenhaven, he had
failed to take into account that magic chariot, the automobile, and so
when, just as Mrs. Tucker was serving one of her biggest and juiciest
rhubarb pies, a big, dust-covered car came to a stop at the gate, no
one was prepared for it.
Less than an hour later the _Follow Me_ was out of sight around Spanish
Head, the dust-covered car was gone again, and Toby and Arnold and
Phebe were staring awedly at a marvelous slip of blue paper, which bore
the legend: “Pay to the order of Tobias Tucker and Arnold Deering Three
Hundred Dollars!”
That little piece of paper looked far too tiny to mean what it said!
“It’s a pile of money, isn’t it?” muttered Toby thoughtfully. “But he
seemed awfully glad to get his launch back.”
“He’d have paid more than this, I guess,” responded Arnold. “I dare say
he’d have given us five hundred if we’d said we had to have it!”
“Why, you’re a regular Shylock, Arnold!” exclaimed Phebe.
“I’m not either,” answered the accused indignantly. “But we had a right
to ask more if we’d wanted to. That’s business.”
“I don’t think it’s business,” said Toby quietly, “to make money from
people’s misfortunes. I sort of wish we’d just let him have his boat
and not said anything about the reward.”
“That’s nonsense,” replied Arnold vigorously. “Mr. Townsend has lots of
money and it was worth three hundred dollars to him to have his launch
back. And if it hadn’t been for us he wouldn’t have got it again. He’s
satisfied, Toby. Don’t you worry.”
“What’ll we do with this?” asked Toby. “We have to put it into a bank
or something, eh?”
“Of course. I’ll get father to cash it, if you like. Then we’ll each
take half. We have to sign our names on the back, though. Let’s do it
now. You sign first, because he put you first.”
But Mr. Tucker, overhearing from the window, vetoed that plan. “You
boys had better give that check to me now,” he said. “Tomorrow’s
plenty of time for indorsing it. Remember this is the Lord’s day,
Toby.”
So they yielded up the fascinating slip of engraved paper, but
that didn’t stop them from talking about it or discussing their
plans, although, to be exact, it was Arnold only who dwelt on the
matter of expenditure. “I am going to have your father build me a
twenty-one-footer, Toby, like the _Sea Snail_ he built for Mr. Cushing.
She’s a dandy! I suppose it would cost more than a hundred and fifty
dollars, but father said yesterday he’d help me pay for it. Then you’re
going to show me how to sail it.”
“Mr. Cushing’s _Sea Snail_ is a knockabout,” said Toby. “Wouldn’t you
rather have a boat with a cabin house?”
“It would cost a lot more, Toby. No, I don’t think so. I guess father
wouldn’t let me do any cruising, and just for sailing around here a
boat like the _Sea Snail_ would be fine. Maybe next year I’ll have the
_Frolic_ housed in forward. I could, you know. It wouldn’t be any trick
at all. I suppose your father wouldn’t like me to ask him about the
boat today?”
“I’m sure he wouldn’t.” This from Phebe, and very decidedly. “He never
likes to talk business on Sunday. You’d better wait until tomorrow.”
“All right. Say, Toby, you haven’t said what you’re going to do with
your half of the money. You could fix up the _Turnover_ and get a new
engine for her, if you wanted to.”
But Toby shook his head. “I haven’t decided――yet,” he answered slowly,
“but I think I’ll just――just keep it.”
“Now who’s the Shylock?” demanded Arnold triumphantly.
“That’s very different,” said Phebe. “That’s just being saving.”
“I don’t mean that I’m going to keep it forever,” explained Toby
defensively. “But I’m going to keep it until I find out what I really
want to spend it for. If you put money in a bank they’ll pay you
interest, won’t they?”
“Yes, but you won’t get much on a hundred and fifty dollars,” replied
Arnold carelessly. “They pay three or four per cent., and that would
only be about five or six dollars a year.”
“Six dollars a year,” remarked Toby thoughtfully, “would be a dollar
and a half for three months, wouldn’t it? Well, a dollar and a half
will take you fifty miles on the railroad.”
“But who wants to go fifty miles on an old railroad?” asked Arnold.
“Well, I was thinking I might. Would you mind asking your father to
take my hundred and fifty and put it in a bank for me? He’d be likely
to know of one that was perfectly safe, wouldn’t he?”
“Sure! He knows dozens of banks. Why, he has accounts in two or three
himself!”
“Then you might ask him to pick out the one he knows best,” said Toby
anxiously. “I wouldn’t want to lose that money!”