“Is that lock of hair your mother’s, too?” asked Nelson, with a thin touch of sarcasm.
“No, not my mother’s. There was a girl—I cannot say her name. Somehow it just won’t pass my lips. We were to be married on the first of June. The arrangements were made, the guests invited. Then, on the very last evening, there came a ring at the door. I answered it, and it was a message from—from her. She said she was going to marry another, a banker’s son.”
After telling his story as if it were the plot for an old-fashioned farce, he excused himself for a moment, and went inside the shack. When he came out again, he was in much better spirits.
“Oh, well,” he concluded, “maybe it was all for the best. I surely do appreciate that you went to the trouble of returning my wallet, when there was nothing intrinsically valuable in it. Most young people would never have bothered. I guess I had you fellows sized up properly before—good character, fine, upright homes. I wish I could do something for you in return.”
“Maybe you can,” said Ted promptly, jumping at the chance. “You can tell us where to find the professor.”
Their friend looked very thoughtful. Evidently he did feel that he owed them something; or possibly he might have been worried that they knew about the money and might tell.
“I wish I could get you to forget it, but I see that you won’t. As I told you before, I’m rather new around here, and I don’t want to exceed the bounds of the hospitality extended to me. But maybe I just might take a chance. Let me make it plain to you that there’s no possible way for you to find the professor. Things aren’t done in that fashion around here, and if they were it would be the worse for you. The only thing to be done is to let the professor find you.”
“How do we do that?” questioned Nelson with interest.
“Are you game to spend the night here in my place?”
The boys looked at each other. Neither was expected home for certain, so they knew the adventure was possible for them, if they cared to undertake it. But a night in a hobo town? “You’re sure that’s the only way?” asked Ted.
“I’m positive,” said the tramp firmly.
“Then I guess we stay,” Nelson agreed, with an air of resignation. “But won’t it be kind of crowded?”
“Oh, I think the two of you can manage on the bunk. I’ll find some other lodgings for the night.”
It was still only the middle of the afternoon. The boys wandered around in the more open places, feeling sure their presence would not be welcome if they chanced to stumble upon some of the hidden shacks in the brush. Nor did they feel they could leave the spot. If they did—if they took the chance of calling home or sending any other messages—they felt somehow that this would be regarded as a suspicious circumstance, and that their chance of meeting the professor would be considerably lessened. They did meet a few of the other inhabitants of the village, mostly on their way to the brook to fetch water, and found them by no means unfriendly.
As the afternoon waned, the boys returned to the shack, and their friend presently appeared.
“Grub in fifteen minutes,” he announced, which was welcome news to them. For all they knew, they might have had to go hungry until morning.
With twilight near, a bonfire was lit in a clearing, and now a good many more of the inhabitants—whether newly arrived or not the boys did not know—put in their appearance. Everyone was to cook his own supper, but there was a general sharing and exchanging, too. Nor did the boys feel particularly out of place. Their presence there was accepted as normal. (“As though somebody had given his approval of us,” Ted whispered.) No questions were asked of them, and they could have participated in the general talk if they chose.
Soon bacon was sizzling in half-a-dozen frying pans, and the aroma was very appetizing. Their host also had a loaf of clean baker’s bread, in a waxed wrapper. The boys decided to confine themselves to bacon sandwiches, which were very good, and they ate their fill. All around them the group of hoboes ate heartily, gobbling down their food with relish.
“I wonder if any of these fellows is the professor,” Nelson murmured.
“Shh!” Ted cautioned him, fearing they might be overheard. He felt that it wasn’t a wise thing to discuss the professor.
Ted and Nelson found there were three chief topics of conversation: criticisms of the government, sports, and “travel arrangements.” This last was often a mystery to the boys, for the references were cryptic. Big Jake—evidently a railroad detective—was spoken of as being unfriendly, and an inquirer was advised to take another route. Certain towns were mentioned as being best to avoid, offering the possibility of jail sentences to vagrants, but there were also numerous places where generous handouts for a hungry man were to be had. Few of these men appeared to live more than one meal ahead at a time. None of them gave an impression of being at all vicious. They seemed to have been battered about by life, and not quite had what it takes to fight back.
The sports talk was very much the same as that of any group of men or older boys—with one exception. The scores they mentioned were about a week old, and the boys easily guessed they were dependent upon chance papers picked up along the road rather than the radio.
Ted got a special kick out of the political talk. It appeared that these men had one genuine beef—they were indignant that the social-security program had not been extended to cover them. At first glance it seemed unreasonable to expect to benefit from a program to which they had never contributed. But as the discussion proceeded, Ted felt they had some small measure of justice on their side. It was unfair to say they had never worked, when, in one fashion or another, they all managed to support themselves—which is, of course, the principal goal of work.
“The trouble is,” Ted whispered to Nelson, “nobody would be able to tell for sure when one of these fellows retired. It would be hard to notice the difference.”
When night fell, the boys, with nothing better to do, retired to the shack. They lay down on the bunk, and made themselves as comfortable as they could on its lumpy surface. But it was far earlier than their normal bedtime, and they did not feel at all sleepy. There was a quiet hum of country night life about them. They felt as if they were alone, out in the middle of a wilderness.
“I wonder what makes men take up a life like this?” Ted speculated.
“One of them said he had to take up an outdoor life for his health.”
“If he had to have an outdoor walking life, why didn’t he get a job as a mail carrier? No, there has to be more to it than that. It looks to me like each of them is running away from some problem in his personal life.”
“I often thought I’d like to travel,” Nelson mused, “but I wouldn’t call this travel. What would you see? A lot of railroad tracks, and some hobo hangouts, and the inside of a jail if you weren’t lucky. No money, and not very much grub. Nature may be wonderful, but I don’t think I could appreciate it while I was hungry.”
“Oh, they’ve all got a quirk of some sort,” Ted decided. “I suppose somehow their lives just got too complicated, and they tried to go back to a simpler kind of existence.”
“If you ask me, their problems are mostly inside themselves. I wonder what the professor is like, whether he’s something special or just like all the others?”
There could be no answer to that just then, and presently they fell asleep. They were awakened in the early morning by their host, who came hurrying into the shack with good news for them.
“It’s all set, boys. The professor will see you in fifteen minutes!”
This really was good news, and they tumbled out.
“I guess the lid’s off, so I can tell you a little bit about the professor,” the tramp explained. “He really was a college professor, a very highly regarded man. He ran into some trouble with his wife, and she hit him with a huge alimony settlement. Since almost everything he earned went to his wif
e, he didn’t see any sense in earning anything, and so he ended up out here. He’s done a lot for the boys—this is one of the best-run hobo camps in the country—and I guess they’d miss him badly if he left. But I don’t think he ever intends to leave. He’s happy just doing what he’s doing.”
“Just what is that?” asked Nelson.
“Besides running the camp, he serves as a liaison man between these travelers and society. They often need a man like him to bail them out of trouble.”
Then their guide left them.
They had slept in their clothes, except for their shoes and jackets, and when they picked up the latter, Nelson felt in the pocket where he had left his wallet, then took it out and examined it.
“Somebody’s been in here!” he decided.
“Anything missing?” asked Ted, reaching for his own wallet which he had also kept in his jacket.
“No, I guess not. Money’s all there. Well, whoever it was, I hope he got some satisfaction out of examining my driver’s license, hospitalization card, and a picture of my dog!”
Ted, too, thought that his own wallet had come under someone’s scrutiny, for the various cards and memos he carried didn’t appear to be in quite the same order he had left them. Nothing had been taken, however. Neither one made a habit of carrying very much money. Ted liked to have enough so that he could stop at a hotel and pay his bus fare home, in case he got stranded somewhere overnight, and Nelson carried a little extra, bearing in mind the possibility of repairs to his car. But the money they carried had proved no attraction to the intruder.
“I didn’t hear anyone, did you?” asked Ted.
“No, but I slept like a log. I don’t think anything short of a Number-Eight earthquake would have waked me up.”
When they went to the car to get some things, they found that though the doors were locked, and the keys had never left Nelson’s pocket, it was evident that someone had been in the car. They examined the glove compartment and side pockets along with the rear trunk.
“They’re pretty thorough around here,” Nelson muttered. “This is like being in a den of thieves—except that they didn’t take anything. But they could easily have walked off with the whole works if they’d wanted to.”
“They do look like they’ve had some experience,” Ted agreed.
In a few minutes they joined their tramp friend again, and he led the way to the professor’s house. The path they took was devious, winding about where no path seemed to exist, and it ended at a little plateau on a hillside, where it would have seemed no plateau existed. They would surely never have found the place by themselves.
The shack in which the professor lived was a little grander than the others, though it was far from a palace. Most incongruous of all, a flag fluttered from a pole.
As soon as they reached the clearing, their friend left them, and they approached the shack alone. They were uncertain whether they ought to knock or not, but just as Ted raised his hand to do so, a voice called out to them:
“Come in, boys, come in.”
They entered, and found a quite comfortable living space. There was a fire roaring in the fireplace, the remains of a meal upon the table, the bed neatly made up, and most surprising of all, a large shelf of books. A rug had been spread upon the bare earthen floor.
The professor proved to be a gray-haired elderly man, erect and neat. His clothes were clean and pressed. He held out his hand and greeted them warmly.
“Hello, Ted. Hello, Nelson. I understand that you were both graduated from high school last spring, and are waiting to enter college. That’s rather a crucial and exciting time of life—I’ve seen many young men just about to start out. You’ve each a good background to help you out. You’ll find, Nelson, that your athletic endeavors will have valuable results in other fields. And Ted, you ought to go far. Some of your work on the town newspaper has already attracted considerable attention.”
“If you knew all this about us,” said Nelson, flabbergasted, “why wouldn’t you see us last night?”
“Ah, but I didn’t know it last night. Won’t you sit down?”
The chairs looked a little bit rickety, but they took a chance and sat down gingerly. The professor caught Ted’s glance toward the bookshelf.
“Oh, my friends keep me well supplied with reading material. I need it for research on my book.”
“Are you writing a book about hobo life?” asked Ted.
“No, nothing like that. It’s a very dry treatise, I’m afraid, but it may prove of some value to persons working in its field. I trust you spent a pleasant night?”
The boys agreed that they had, but did not mention their nocturnal visitor, being sure the professor knew all about that.
“I have been informed of the purpose of your visit here,” the professor began. “It touches upon a point over which we have a good deal of concern. It is our best intention to preserve the peace of our small, happy community by avoiding any possible clash with the denizens of the law. As you are probably aware, we here are in technical violation of the vagrancy laws—very unfair laws, I may state. I have serious doubts that the Supreme Court would uphold them, but unfortunately we’ve never had the funds to support a test case.
“However, we have reached a kind of tacit agreement with the police. They are not very anxious to arrest our members, since it would simply mean supporting them for a few days at county expense, and then requesting them to move on. We on our part undertake not to break the law ourselves—overlooking the illegal vagrancy laws—or to harbor persons that do. That is why I am most concerned that you have apparently accused one of our associates of purloining a package from a place known as the Dutch Mill.”
“Oh, we didn’t really mean to accuse anyone,” Ted explained hastily. “We just thought there was such a package, and that a tramp—I mean one of your associates—may have taken it. We saw him jumping from a window at the mill, but we aren’t sure whether he took anything with him or not. We’d just like to know.”
“I understand, Ted. I may say at once that as of this moment I do not know whether there is any truth in your charge. However, I shall certainly check into the matter and ascertain the facts. If you will leave your address with me, I shall see that you are informed of the outcome by letter, at the earliest possible moment.”
Ted felt disappointed. He had had this kind of brush-off often enough before. People always said they would write, or call back, and usually that was the last you ever heard. If other people did that, what could you expect of a hobo? The professor must have understood, for he said:
“I told you, Ted, that I would write, and if I say it, then you may rely on it.”
He sounded sincere about it. But whether he was or not, there was nothing Ted could do about it.
He wrote out his address on a slip of paper, although he felt fairly sure that their nighttime visitor had already secured it for the professor. But the pretenses had to be maintained, and he handed it over. This seemed to be the end of the conference, and they rose to go.
Then another thought flashed across Ted’s mind, and he turned back. Among all this group of tramps or “associates,” surely every nook and corner of the state must have been penetrated at some time or other. And if this professor knew everything that was going on, wasn’t it likely he might know about every place as well? Mightn’t he know the location of the missing waterfall? At least it wouldn’t hurt to ask, and Ted couldn’t think of any other authority who was more likely to know the answer.
“Professor, do you know any place where there’s a twin waterfall?”
“A twin waterfall? Certainly not. No such place exists.”
He nodded in dismissal, and thanking him, the boys took their departure.
CHAPTER 18
THE FLOATING TOWN
As the boys drove away from Hoboville, they wondered just what the professor wou
ld be able to do for them.
“He said he’d write,” Ted emphasized, “and so I suppose there’s nothing we can do until we see whether he does or not.”
“But will he know for sure?” Nelson pondered. “He isn’t exactly a king. Maybe even he doesn’t know everything that’s going on.”
“Oh, I think he’ll find out all right. I have an idea that he has a widespread, loose-knit organization, mostly operating by word of mouth. I’ll bet the professor knows everything that’s going on in that camp and other related camps. But I’m not sure he’ll tell us. His chief concern is to protect the camp and his men, and he might tell us only as much as he thinks is good for us to know.”
“You giving up on your waterfall yet?” asked Nelson.
“No, I’m not giving up,” said Ted firmly. “Didn’t you think it was kind of funny the way the professor answered my question? He didn’t say he had never heard of it. He said definitely there is no such place. How could he be sure there wasn’t any such place, unless he was familiar with every possible spot in the whole country? It sounded as if he knew exactly what I was referring to.”
“You’ve got a funny mind, Ted. He said there definitely wasn’t any such place, and that makes you think there is one.”
“I guess that’s about the size of it,” Ted admitted. Nelson often had a way of making his ideas sound absurd, but Ted clung to them anyway, until he was able to put them to the test.
Then there came a few days of impatient waiting for the professor’s letter. Finally it came, almost as soon as it could reasonably have been expected. It was another of those dreary, rainy days, and the ink on the envelope ran slightly as Ted brought it in from the mailbox. He opened it and read:
Dear Ted:
Having checked into the matter which we discussed a few days ago, I am now able to state that your surmise was quite correct. One of our associates did inadvertently possess himself of such a package, secreted at the place you mentioned. It is now our intention to return this package to you, with the expectation that you will see to it that it ultimately comes into the proper hands.
The Counterfeit Mystery Page 14