The fellows had a lot of fun with me the following morning. Having given me a suit of his clothes to wear, my own being too filthy for further use, Tom hunted up an article in the back of Aunt Polly’s cook book telling how to remove ink stains with sour cream. He said that if sour cream was good for ink stains it ought to be first-class for soot. So he and the others plastered sour cream all over my face. Then they rubbed me with coarse towels. But when they got through with me I was far from being white.

“It’ll have to wear off,” I said.

“Wait till your ma sees you,” grinned Scoop.

“I can powder my face,” I said, “and make it white.”

“Hot dog!” cried Tom, and he ran into his aunt’s bedroom and came back with her powder puff.

Peg was draped out of a front window. [143]

“There goes the mail man,” he cried, when I had finished powdering myself. “Maybe there’s another letter from Aunt Polly. Come on, gang.”

We went down the path lickety-cut. But there was no letter in the mail box. It was disappointing. For we had hoped for favorable news.

“Anyway,” Peg broke the silence, “no news is good news. So let’s look on the bright side.… What are we going to do this morning?—peddle soap?”

While we were talking, making our plans, sort of, an automobile came into sight from the country, a classy red roadster, driven by a boy our age. There was a screeching of brakes, and on the instant that the car came to a skidding stand-still, Tom dove from sight into a lilac bush beside the path.

“It’s young Gennor,” he hissed at us from under cover. “Watch your steps, fellows! He’s up to some trick in stopping here.”

Maybe Scoop and I and Peg would have looked less dumb if we had been allowed a few seconds to sort of prepare ourselves to greet the enemy’s chief with a graceful bow.

As it was, we stared open-mouthed. So it isn’t at all surprising that the newcomer mistook us for boobs. We looked it, I imagine. [144]

He had said something to us in stopping, but this had failed to register in our minds. And now he followed up, smart-like:

“What is this place, anyway?—a deaf and dumb asylum?”

Right off I got his measure. Smart aleck. All swelled up over his pa’s money. Sort of fed fat on the idea that he could sit in his two-thousand-dollar roadster and bark orders at common, everyday kids and make them jump around and wait on him.

Well, I’m not much of a jumper when I meet a fellow like that!

“Did you say something?” I purred, sort of letting my neck out at him.

“I asked you,” he said, “if the town up ahead is Tutter.”

“Is it?” I inquired, turning to Scoop.

“It was,” he nodded, “yesterday morning at this time.”

“Tutter’s the burg I’m looking for,” informed smarty.

“When did you lose it?” I inquired, innocent-like.

“Lose it?”

“You said you were looking for it.”

I was supposed to get wabbly knees under the [145]sharp scowl that he shot at me. But the old knee joints were out of wabbles this morning.

“Don’t git fresh with me,” he said darkly, “or I may taken a sudden notion to push your face clean through the back of your head.”

“All in one push?” I inquired, steady-like.

His legs were out of sight in the car, so I didn’t know what he measured standing up. But I figured that he wasn’t much bigger than me. And what if he was? I wasn’t scared of him.

“I guess,” he said, important-like, “that you don’t know who I am.”

“Tell me,” I returned, “and I’ll fall over in surprise.”

“My name’s Felix Gennor, Jr. I suppose you’ve heard of the Gennor Radio Corporation.”

“Yes, indeed,” I said.

“Well, that’s us,” and he sort of pumped his chest full of air like a toad. He was good! “My father,” he added, “owns the whole concern. Millionaire. Buys me everything I want. Gave me this little bus for a birthday present.”

Little bus! I wondered what he called a Ford.

“And if you like the looks of Tutter,” I said, trying to get a line on him, “is your father going to buy you that for your next birthday?”

“If the town looks good to me,” he said, “and [146]my proposition is accepted, we may build one of our factories here.”

“A radio factory?”

“Our new radio toy factory,” he informed, with an important flourish of his hand.

I caught Scoop’s signal to go cautious.

“What kind of radio toys are you going to make in this new factory?” I inquired.

“Talking toys, of course.”

“Like … cats?”

“Certainly.”

“And … chickens?”

He nodded.

“And … frogs?”

“Possibly.”

“You’re not sure about the frogs?”

“That’s a detail to be taken up later. I’m like my father,” and he swaggered his shoulders, sort of. “We don’t bother with details. We hire men to do that.”

My, but he was smart!

“I see,” I nodded. “Maybe,” I added, looking into his eyes, “you’ll give me a detail job in this new factory that you’re going to build.”

He gave a mean laugh.

“Sure thing,” he promised. “I’ll put you to work winding up our electric fans.” [147]

I wanted to tell him that he’d likely find his “fan” wound up before I got through with him. But I kept shut on that.

“Evidently,” I said, instead, “you’re the general manager and the board of directors and the vice president of the company.”

“Not—er—exactly. But I run things more or less. My father is teaching me the business. Told me I could skip school this month. He says I have a good solid head.”

“He told the truth,” I nodded.

It was good and solid, all right! Like a block of wood.

“My father went to New York yesterday morning. So I decided to come down here and close the—er—toy factory deal.”

This free talk puzzled me. He seemed not to know who we were. Could this indeed be the case? And was it a happenstance, sort of, that he had stopped here at the Ricks’ mail box, instead of a trick, as Tom had suspected?

I was not long left in doubt.

“Know a family around here by the name of Ricks?” smarty inquired.

Scoop on the moment draped himself over the mail box’s lettered cover.

“Yes,” he put in ahead of me, “we have a family [148]in town by that name. A man, a woman and a boy. The man is an inventor.”

“That’s the fellow I want to see.”

“Is he doing some inventing for you?” quizzed Scoop.

“Er—something on that order. What direction is his home from here?”

“Are you going to put up at the hotel while you’re in Tutter?”

“Of course.”

“Well, they’ll tell you at the hotel where Mr. Ricks lives.”

As the roadster disappeared into town, Tom tumbled out of the lilac bush.

“The big bluffer! Yes, he’ll build a radio toy factory, all right, if he can steal Pa’s talking frog.”

Scoop followed the dust cloud with curling lips.

“Jerry,” he said, “I’ve already made up my mind to get rich. For a fellow with money can have a lot of fun doing a lot of good. But if ever I act like that, I want you to take me out and pulverize me.”

“The pleasure will be all mine,” I grinned.

“Evidently,” continued Scoop, bending his thoughts to the situation, “he hasn’t talked with the spy or he should have known who we were. [149]And plainly he knows nothing definite about the talking frog. Jerry’s questions brought that out. But he knows that Mr. Ricks is working on a radio toy. And if we’re to believe him, he’ll be around shortly to make some kind of a proposition.”

“I don’t trust him,” Tom said darkly.

“Nor do I,” Scoop said quickly. “But we’ll listen. And maybe we’ll find out what he means by all of this toy factory talk.”

“I hope he starts something rough,” I spoke up. “Sweet doctor! It’ll be fun mixing up with him.”

Scoop caught my eye.

“Remember what I told you, Jerry? I said it wouldn’t surprise me to have the enemy send another spy down here. I didn’t miss it very far.”

“We’ll have two to watch now,” I said, “instead of one.”

On entering the kitchen a few minutes later we discovered that some one, in the time of our absence, had picked the lock on the cellar door.

Scoop’s face was as white as a sheet as he dashed down the stairs.

“It’s gone,” he cried from the cellar. “The spy has been here and dug up the talking frog!” [150]