"
Fred gasped audibly this time. Driggs surveyed his face with
a keen, tantalizing gaze.
"Mebbe 'twas your father, then, who was in the yard last night,
and who refused to answer the policeman's hail," suggested the
boat builder. "I'd better go up to his office and show him these
things and ask him, I guess."
"But I don't believe my father will know anything about it," spoke
young Ripley huskily.
"Then your father will want to know something about it," Driggs
went on. "He's a man of an inquiring turn of mind. Let's run
up to his office together and ask him."
"No, no, no!" urged Fred, his face growing paler.
"Then why were you here last night?"
"I wasn't here," protested the boy.
"Perhaps I can tell you why you were here," Driggs went on, never
losing his affable smile. "You don't like Dick Prescott, and
you don't like his boy friends. Prescott has been too many for
you on more than one occasion. But that is no reason why you
should enter my yard after midnight. That is no reason why you
should want to do harm to a war canoe or to any other property
that happens to be in my yard. I really don't know whether you're
to be blamed for being a glib liar, Ripley. You've never given
yourself much practice at telling the truth, you know. But I
have this to say: If anything happens to that canoe, or to anything
else here, I shall make it my business to get hold of Officer
Curtis, and he and I will drop in and show your father this chisel,
and this piece of paper that it was wrapped in.
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