“There is no person who has not at some time heard seemingly mysterious rappings, which were afterward found to be of the most commonplace origin.”
“Well, there was that mum-moaning cry. You heard it, didn’t you?”
Rodney admitted that he had. “With more time at my disposal,” he asserted, “I opine I would have looked around for the cause of it.”
“How about the white figures Crane and I saw on the island?”
“Imagination sometimes plays right peculiar tricks with the eyesight.”
“But we saw them. Yes, we did,” corroborated Sile earnestly. “I’ll swear to that.”
Piper listened to this colloquy, his eyes bright, his manner that of one keenly interested.
“Comrades,” he announced, rising to his feet and posing, “I shall remain forever unsatisfied if we leave Phantom Lake with this mystery unsolved. I propose to find the solution.”
“Oh, yeou’ll do a lot in that line!” sneered Crane. “Yeou’ve had a swelled head ever since yeou was called to give testimony in court at Stone’s trial. Before that you never done anything but talk, and yeou ain’t done nothing since then. That was an accident.”
Sleuth’s lips curled scornfully. “Envy! Jealousy!” he declared. “The opportunity has not since presented itself until the present occasion for the full exercise of my acumen.”
“Wow!” whooped Springer. “Ac-cac-caccumen! That’s going some. Gee! Pipe, when you’re at home you must sit up nights to study the dictionary.”
“In command of English pure and undefiled,” retorted Sleuth, “you are plainly extremely limited.” Then he strolled off by himself and spent at least a full hour in deep thought.
Some time before sunset Jim Simpson reappeared in the punt and landed at the Point.
“Told ye I’d get round if I could,” he said, stepping ashore. “Didn’t know but the old man would raise objections and have something else for me to do, but when I told him what had happened to me, he give me a good dressin’ down for being keerless, and then said that you chaps could have any blessed thing you wanted that he owned. Say, the old gent ain’t sech a bad feller, though he nigh works me to death sometimes. Soon’s I come of age, you bet I’m goin’ to hit out for myself. Livin’ on a farm ain’t what it’s cracked up to be, I tell ye that. I’ve got the truck for ye here in the bo’t.”