THE MYSTERIOUS ROWBOAT
Fred Cunningham turned away from the crowd and walked over to where
Irene Rich was tying the last of the bundles when Frank shot this
decidedly pointed shaft at him.
This action on Cunningham’s part reacted on Frank’s mind, and he, now
amazed at what he had said and the result it had produced, grew quiet
while he made his preparations to get aboard the _Rocket_.
Minnie Cuthbert came over to his side while he was making ready to
cast off from the river bank.
“Frank, may I ride back with you to town? I’d like to go up the river
instead of riding back in a car.”
“Surest thing you know!” he exclaimed. Not only was he delighted to
take Minnie along because he wished her company, but he also felt
that Cunningham would realize that he had not done so much damage as
he thought.
“Won’t you please tell me,” she asked when they had got away from
shore and Lanky, Paul, and Ralph had gone forward to allow the two to
be alone at the cockpit, “what you meant when you said what you did
to Fred? And why did he turn and leave so suddenly?”
“I wish I could tell you, Minnie. But right now I may not tell you
the truth. I am guessing at some things. That wild guess may be right
and it may be wrong. At any rate, it had an effect that surprised me.”
“What does it all mean? Has it anything to do with that robbery
at Mrs. Parsons? I’ve heard so many things dropped that I am very
curious.”
The _Rocket_ had swung far out into the middle of the stream and
under the increasingly expert hand of Frank Allen, it turned its nose
toward Columbia, past the dredge which was cutting a channel close to
one of the islands, and, as the golden glow of the sun fell aslant
the quiet waters of the Harrapin, they were started for home, weary
of the day’s picnic, but wide awake, all of them, to the new things
which had opened up in this quick exchange of words.
At the bow of the boat, Paul, Lanky, and Ralph were close together,
whispering exchanges about the most recent happening.
“What do you think Frank knows?” Paul was asking.
“I don’t think he knows any more than we do,” answered Lanky. “But
he made a wild guess, and he seems to have struck home. This fellow
Cunningham knows a whole lot more than we have been thinking he does.”
At the cockpit Frank and Minnie were standing.
“Yes,” he replied to her question, “it had something to do with the
Parsons robbery, but I don’t know just yet what its real significance
is.”
“Why so mysterious about it, Frank? You know I am not going to say
anything.”
“Well, Minnie, you tell me what you have heard. Tell me what
Cunningham has told you about me, and then maybe I can put two and
two together.”
“He hasn’t talked about you, Frank. You know very well that I would
never stand for anything of that kind.”
Frank had hoped that he would learn something that Fred might have
said about him in an effort to hurt him in the eyes of Minnie
Cuthbert, but now it appeared that he had been too careful or too
shrewd to say anything, or that Minnie was hiding something from
him—and he did not believe the latter.
“Did he not tell you what occurred over in the rooms of the chief of
police in the hearing yesterday afternoon?”
“Not a word. What happened?”
“Hasn’t he told you that I stand suspected of knowing something about
this robbery?”
Minnie gasped in amazement at this question.
“You have something to do with it? Have you really, Frank? What is
it? Surely you are not implicated——”
“Do you think I am?” he looked straight into her eyes as he put the
question.
“Oh, Frank, please forgive me! I did not mean to hurt you! Did not
mean it that way! Only what you said so surprised me that I had to
ask for more.”
“What I want to know is whether Cunningham told you that I was
suspected of knowing something about it. Or did he say anything else
that might injure my reputation?”
“No, I do not recall that he said anything except one time this
morning when we were talking about your pitching the games, and he
said something about the brunette at Bellport being so interested in
you—and that you were interested in her. You were over there after we
got back from Rockspur, weren’t you?”
“Yes, on father’s business. I went to see no girl—brunette or blonde.”
Frank’s mind was much relieved that the coolness had been caused by
this rather than anything else. He had felt all day that Cunningham
was poisoning the girl’s mind against him by implicating him in
some manner in the Parsons case. But now that the coolness had been
produced by Cunningham’s very sly connection of this brunette,
whoever he meant, with himself—that was another thing.
Minnie asked again what it was that Frank had done to be implicated
in any manner, but Frank merely asked her to await developments.
“This much is certain, Minnie: I don’t know a thing about that
robbery, but I certainly propose to know something. And I am not
going to be long about it, either.”
Paul, Lanky and Ralph heard the statement of their friend, and
they saw in his tense expression, his firmness of manner, the same
determination to win which they had seen often enough on the athletic
field to recognize at a glance.
“Trust Frank to get to the bottom of the affair,” remarked Ralph.
“I sure hope so,” came from Paul.
They reached Columbia at dusk, warped easily into the boat-house, and
made for home, Frank walking out with Minnie.
“Gee, I’m glad Minnie and Frank have made up,” said Lanky, as the
three boys walked up to town ahead of the young couple. “Not that
they’ve had a fuss, but that Cunningham fellow has been throwing sand
on the track. I wish I could find a first-class reason for punching
his eye for him.”
“Why not on general principles?” laughed Ralph.
“No—I want something very specific, so that I can feel that I have a
job to finish well.”
The other two boys felt largely the same way toward the good-looking
stranger who had forced himself on them.
Parting for the evening, with their plans laid for the next day, they
went home, while Frank and Minnie took their time, chatting gaily
about things in general, Minnie taking a little more pains to keep
away from Cunningham as a subject for conversation.
“But he is such a nice boy,” she thought to herself, when Frank had
bade her good-bye. “I am sure he isn’t quite so great a villain as
Frank seems to think.”
Before Frank could go to the _Rocket_, even though the other boys
were up early and doing their tasks toward the day’s trip, he had to
call at the hospital to learn about his father, since the news of
the evening before had been only average, nothing to make him feel
cheerful.
“He’s getting along well, I think,” cheerily said the nurse on this
bright morning. “Had a good night’s sleep, and seems to be resting.
Go in and see him.”
They chatted for a while, Frank doing most of the talking, telling of
the day previous, the picnic, and ending by saying that he was going
out to-day to help Mrs. Parsons. As yet Mr. Allen had not been told
much of the details, merely that Mrs. Parsons place had been robbed.
Mr. Allen was a sick man.
“All ready, fellows?” asked Frank as he reached the boat-house and
saw the four boys lined up. “Let’s get her out, then!”
So the _Rocket_ was started on her voyage up the Harrapin, a voyage
of exploration for clues or direct knowledge—a voyage intended to
turn up something before the day was ended.
“Can you show us what kind of speed she’s got in her, so we’ll know
in advance whether you’re going to win against the _Speedaway_?”
asked Paul.
“Pretty coarse way you have of getting a speedy joy ride,” Frank
smiled at his good friend. “Wait until we clear out of these boats
and get past the island there and we’ll show them, won’t we, Lanky?”
“I’ll say we will! Wait a minute! I’m a sea-faring man, I am, and
I’ve got to speak correctly. You can lay to that we will sir, aye,
aye! Blow me, just show these landlubbers what she’s got in her.”
Ending this speech, Lanky bent his shoulders forward and hitched his
trousers in imitation of vaudeville sailors.
Getting past the few boats that were on the river in front of
Columbia, clearing past the first of the islands, Frank gradually
opened up the speed of the _Rocket_. Taking the very middle of the
stream, moving against the current, the bow lifted clear, and the
_Rocket_ skimmed at a merry pace for four miles, the boys uttering
exclamations of delight the while. The speed was the best that Frank
had yet gotten out of the Rocket, but at that he realized that he was
not up to the top-notch.
“The _Speedaway’s_ in for a trimming, sure!” cried Ralph hilariously.
“It’s too bad Fred Cunningham isn’t along to see this so that he
wouldn’t have to waste his gasoline.”
Making one of the wide bends of the river, seeing two other boats
beyond, Frank blew his whistle in signal, and also cut down the
speed, fearing that he might run into trouble.
“Where do we go first?” Lanky asked.
“I think the wise plan is to go up to the Parsons place and look
around. I’d like to get to the place, Lanky, where we saw that
rowboat tied, if we can find it, for I’ve an idea in my head.”
Frank only shook his head negatively when asked what his idea might
be.
“Might not be worth anything. Let’s wait until we get there and see
if I am right. If I am right, fellows, we’ve got something to think
about.” At this there came a chorus from all four, begging, pleading
with Frank to tell—to no avail.
In a short while they were standing off the shore of the Parsons
place. Frank ran a quarter of a mile up the river, and then turned
and came slowly downstream, drifting.
Lanky lay forward as far as he could stretch, his eyes glued on the
shore line. Once he looked quickly back to catch Frank’s eye, but
that young man was easing the _Rocket_ over to shore, his eyes also
fixed on the slightly inclining bank.
Touching at practically the same spot where they had landed before,
all the boys climbed out and started for the broad lawn of the
Parsons estate, Lanky and Frank finding it much easier to make their
way this time than during the darkness a few nights before.
Mrs. Parsons was on the lawn, directing the cutting thereof by a
burly laborer who was operating a hand-powered lawn-mower. To Frank’s
pleasant greeting, she replied:
“What is it that gives me the pleasure of this visit?” speaking very
frigidly.
“Clarence Wallace and I have brought three of our friends along, Mrs.
Parsons, this morning to see if there is anything we can learn here
that might lead to the capture of those men who robbed you.”
“I think the police can do that perfectly well.”
“Perhaps they can,” Frank replied pleasantly. “But it so happens that
two of us are decidedly interested in having something done at once.”
“I think something is being done,” she replied.
Frank saw that she had turned completely against him, for she had
never been so cold before to him.
“If anything is being done beyond accusing honest boys of dishonest
acts and motives, then I have not been informed, and I am much more
interested in the information than even you are, Mrs. Parsons, for,
you must remember that ‘he who steals my purse steals trash!’”
Whether the semi-quotation was lost on the woman Frank did not know,
but he was afterwards to learn.
“So far, you are here without my invitation,” she said just as coldly
as ever, “and I must ask that you leave the place.”
“We will, Mrs. Parsons, by the road at the rear of the house.”
Frank bowed politely to her and strode across the lawn toward the
road at the rear, taking pains to pass as close to the house as
possible, in order to observe.
Out on the road the boys stopped while Frank gave directions to
seek for automobile marks at the side of the road. Very slowly they
proceeded. Stopping at one point, Frank looked across the distance
stretching toward the river, his eyes carefully searching the trees
and shrubbery. Suddenly he gasped, and pointed to an opening.
“Lanky, you go down to that opening right away. When you get to it
go slowly, and back out to the river, while I watch.”
In five minutes Lanky was there, backing away through the opening.
When he reached the water’s edge, his shoulders were still visible to
Frank.
Looking to see where he was, Lanky saw a pasteboard box in which
lunch might have been, a discarded tobacco bag, and a piece of rope
on the bank. Here was where that rowboat had been tied when they came
down the river the night of the robbery!