Chapter XIII Rex Owns Up
“I’d like to know what’s on your mind,” quizzed Phillips. “It appeared right foolish to me.”
“What seems idiotic, Tobasco?” drawled Kingdon beginning to scrape away the ashes of the old fire so as to lay a new one over which supper might be cooked.
“Look here!” exclaimed Midkiff, quite warm. “Why didn’t you show that man the letter from the Manatee Company, and let him go about his business?”
“He’s gone about his business, Jawn—hasn’t he?”
“He’s gone to stir up trouble for that gang up at the other camp,” said the big fellow.
“Oh, hooky!” chuckled Peewee Hicks. “Was that what you was up to, Rex? Just making trouble for Horrors and his crowd?”
“Then you really want ’em put off?” asked Red slowly. “After what you said to me about that slim chap being such good baseball timber?”
Whistling softly, Kingdon made no reply. Cloudman said, with confidence:
“We don’t none of us know what he’s up to. He’s got something in his sleeve.”
“Something up his sleeve?” queried little Hicks wonderingly.
“Well, it doesn’t matter,” Midkiff said, much displeased. “That constable is bound to come back here and pick a quarrel unless King shows him the letter. What’s the matter with you, anyway? You’re as mysterious as——”
“As Mysterious Billy Smith,” chuckled Red, who couldn’t hold a grouch long. “I bet it’s a joke. Tell us, you Blue-Eyed Beauty. Let us chortle, too.”
“You’ll chortle when the time comes,” Kingdon told him, with a grin that was quickly effaced, however, by a serious expression of countenance. “Now, come on and help get supper. How about those flapjacks you promised?”
But Cloudman advised against the cakes, and canned beans again became the main staple when the meal was announced. Kingdon tossed up some “panbread,” and there were canned peaches to eat with it. They were making out a pretty good supper when the put-put-a-put of the motor-boat was heard again.
“Here we have Mr. Quibb the rural Sherlock,” said Peewee. “What will we do to him, Rex? Invite him to supper, or drown him?”
“I vote against wasting food,” declared Red. “There isn’t enough for guests, anyway.”
“Where’s your hospitality, Phillips?” demanded Cloudman. “Of course we’ll feed him. He deserves something after the way he’s been rigged.”
“Now, show him that paper, Rex, and let him go,” advised Midkiff seriously.
“Hey, you!” yelled the constable from the water.
“Straw, you!” returned Peewee. “Come ashore and join us.”
“If I come ashore,” threatened the redoubtable Quibb, “you’ll all move mighty lively out o’ there. Didn’t I tell you to git?”
“We’re hard of hearing, Mr. Constable,” drawled Kingdon, without even turning around to look down at the wrathful officer. “Better come up and talk it over.”
“I’ll come up there and do suthin’ ter you, ye fresh kid, that ye won’t like!” threatened Quibb, as he hopped ashore and tied the boat’s painter securely to a sapling.
“And I wouldn’t blame him,” rumbled Midkiff. But he stopped eating and watched the man narrowly as he approached Kingdon. Midkiff was half a foot taller than Enos and much more muscular.
“I wanter know why you raskils ain’t makin’ no move ter git out o’ here?” demanded the constable, glaring at Rex, whom he considered the principal and leader of the crowd.
“Why, now,” drawled the blond chap, “I didn’t really think there was any need of doing so.”
“What d’ye mean?” snapped the constable. “You ain’t got no right here——”
“No more than those other fellows?” suggested Rex.
“They’re all right. They told me the truth. I knowed who they was before.”
“And who are they?” asked Kingdon softly, while his friends stared at Enos Quibb in amazement.
“They’re them fellers that the Manatee Company said could camp here for the summer,” declared the constable.
“They told you so?”
“They did. They told me so before, when I come here.”
“That they were Rex Kingdon and party?” demanded the blond chap from Walcott Hall, quite seriously.
“Murder!” gasped Red Phillips. “What do you think o’ that?”
“The gall of them!” exclaimed Midkiff.
“Prithee, hush,” advised Rex, with a gesture. “Tell me, Mr. Quibb, do they claim to be Mr. Kingdon and friends?”
The constable swelled so with importance that he seemed about to burst, “I want yeou to understand that I know my business,” he said. “I didn’t take their word for it. I seen the permit.”
“What permit?” burst from Midkiff.
“From the Manatee Lumber Company, of course,” Quibb told him. “I seen it.”
“The permit!” chorused Midkiff, Cloudman, Phillips and Little Hicks.
“A letter from the lumber company permitting ‘R. Kingdon and party’ to camp on Storm Island for the summer?” asked Kingdon, softly.
“That’s what I said,” declared Enos importantly. “You fellers needn’t think you kin gull me. I know——”
“Are you sure the permit was valid?” asked the blond youth, just as seriously as before.
“Huh?”
“For instance,” he said, “was it typewritten on a Manatee Lumber Company letter-head?”
“Of course it was!” snapped Enos. “Think I’m a idiot?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say it out loud,” returned Rex pleasantly. “Do you know the company’s letter-head when you see it?”
“Think you are so smart!” cried the constable. “Look at this.”
He drew forth the letter he had received from the company announcing the coming of the camping party to the island. The lumber company gave Quibb a small present each year to look out for Storm Island and see that nobody without authority landed there.
“My goodness, Rex!” whispered Midkiff. “What do you make of this?”
Kingdon made no immediate reply. He was looking seriously at the constable, whose inflamed face was not far from his own.
“You are quite convinced, Mr. Constable,” he said politely, “that the party over yonder is the one mentioned in your letter?”
“Of course I am. They got the permit. They showed it to me.”
“But you did not see it when you interviewed them on a previous occasion?”
“I didn’t ax for it,” admitted Enos, “when I was here before. But I’ve seen it now. You ain’t got no right on this island, and off you go.”
“Mr. Quibb,” Kingdon said, “you’re being fooled. I’m the ‘R. Kingdon’ referred to in that letter and in the permit. Don’t suppose anybody over at that other camp declared himself to be Rex Kingdon?”
“Huh? Not in so many words, mebbe,” said the puzzled constable.
“I do so declare. Here! I have letters to prove it. Here is my bill-case with my initials stamped on the flap of it. What do you say to that?”
Rex had flashed these articles as he spoke—and so rapidly that Quibb stood open-mouthed, staring.
“You may not believe that I am the ‘R. Kingdon’ named in your letter; but give me a week and I will prove it to your satisfaction.”
“But—but them other fellers?” demanded Enos weakly.
“Oh—now! Don’t ask me about them,” Kingdon said easily. “I haven’t got to swear to their identity, have I?”
“But they’ve got the permit.”
Midkiff began to murmur again. Kingdon turned on him quite savagely.
“Will you keep still, Jawn? You’re a regular old Betty.” Then to Quibb he said: “There is nothing in your letter, Mr. Constable, and nothing in the permit, limiting the number of Mr. Kingdon’s camping party? Am I right?”
“Why—er—no. That’s so.”
“So I thought,” said the suave Kingdon. “I tell you we are members of the party permitted to land and camp here. Never mind if those other fellows have the permit; we have just as good right to be here, and we’ll show you.”
“It don’t sound reasonable to me,” grumbled Enos Quibb. “One of you two parties is lyin’—an’ lyin’ like all git aout! I ain’t goin’ ter be fooled. I’m too smart a man for that. None of you schoolboys can bamboozle me.” His chest swelled until there was danger of his shirt losing its buttons.
“We wouldn’t think of such a thing,” declared Kingdon.
“Huh? Well, I tell ye I know those other fellers are all right. I saw their permit. I’ll give you fellers till mornin’, when I come back along from Collings P’int. No longer! Ye hear me?”
“Thank you, Mr. Squibb,” said Rex, meekly.
“Quibb!” snarled the constable.
“Certainly. Fribb; thank you. But I know you’ll think differently about it when you’ve had a good sleep.”
Enos turned away. He was fumbling a cigarette that had evidently been given him at the other camp. Now he lit it, puffed it importantly, and scrambled down to his boat, and went aboard.
“Why be such a dunce, Rex?” demanded Red, tartly. “Haven’t you strung the man along far enough? Show him your letter from the Manatee Company.”
“Yes,” Midkiff echoed. “Why keep up a poor joke?”
“What are you trying to do, King?” demanded Cloudman.
“He’ll only come back and bother us again,” said Peewee Hicks apprehensively. “What’s the idea?”
Enos, fussing with his flywheel, was out of earshot when Rex spoke.
Rex chuckled. “I’ve lost the permit, fellows, I don’t know when, or how. I’ve got to stall along until I can get a letter from the lumber company.”