TELLS ABOUT MY TALK WITH MR. ELLSWORTH
After they were gone, Mr. Ellsworth told me that I shouldn't get so
excited about nothing. I have to admit that's the way I often do.
I said, "Do you know what that's a key to?"
He said, "It's a key to a padlock. I have an idea that perhaps it fits
the padlock on that locker in the house-boat--the one that was always
locked."
Jiminy, I never thought of that until just then when he spoke about it.
It made me feel awfully queer. Anyhow, I guessed right off that he was
right, because probably it fell out of Lieutenant Donnelle's pocket
along with the change that he spilled all over the deck. There was a
kind of a lump in _my_ throat now.
I said, "Skinny gave you the money so we ought to believe him when he
says he just put the key in another pocket and forgot about it."
"Why, surely," he said, "I'm not suspecting him of anything. Neither is
anyone else. The only thing that puzzles me is, how the key happened to
be on the deck where he found it. We swabbed the decks so thoroughly
before leaving Bridgeboro. One of our boys might have dropped some
change and never known it But how did the key happen to be there? We
know how it happened in Alfred's pocket, but how did it happen on the
deck? We scouts claim to be observant, and yet that key was right on
the deck from Bridgeboro all the way down to St. George. That's the
queer thing."
Oh, boy, didn't I feel guilty. Especially I felt guilty because Mr.
Ellsworth was so nice and pleasant about it. Because all the while I
knew where that key came from, and it seemed just like lying not to
tell. Gee, I was kind of sorry now that I promised Lieutenant Donnelle
that I would never tell about him coming there. I couldn't say
anything, so I just kept still.
All the while Mr. Ellsworth kept looking at the key and thinking and
humming a tune to himself. Pretty soon he said, "You don't happen to
know where Alfred went when he disappeared, do you, Roy?"
I said, "No, I don't; all I know is I couldn't find him."
"He was gone for four or five hours," he said, very slow, as if he was
sort of thinking.
I guess I felt just about the same as Skinny did now. Anyway, I was all
shaky and it was hard for me to get started saying anything.
Then I said, "Mr. Ellsworth, Skinny went off because he was all scared
and excited, and he wanted to be all alone by himself. Often I've felt
that same way. I felt that way after I passed my second class tests. I
don't deny he's kind of freaky. I think he just went off in the woods.
You know yourself it's in the Handbook that trees are good companions.
He just wanted to be alone. I bet he wasn't a hundred yards from camp.
Skinny's kind of queer, you know that."
Then Mr. Ellsworth just laid down the key and put stamps on two or
three letters and said "All right, Roy, just see that these get mailed,
will you?"
He didn't say what he was going to do and I guessed he wasn't going to
do anything. And even suppose he did, what was the harm?
But just the same I felt awful queer and shaky. I guess maybe it was
because I couldn't come right out and tell him the plain truth about
that key.