Part 6

"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."

*CHAPTER XIV.*

*A LIVELY TIME.*

"You don't mean it, Rex?" asked Midkiff, seriously. Cloudman and Hicks were open mouthed.

The motorboat began to sputter. They saw Quibb pottering about in her cockpit, the red spark of his cigarette showing plainly as the boat moved slowly out from the island.

She had crossed not more than a cable's length of the placid sound when there was a dull pop and a flare of light. Enos Quibb squealed affrightedly and tumbled sternward, seemingly surrounded by a halo of flame.

"Great Scott!" shouted Cloudman, bounding shoreward. "He's touched off his gas tank with that fool cigarette!"

What had caused the explosion aboard the motorboat did not matter. It was the effect that held the attention of the Walcott Hall boys, who stampeded to the edge of the water after Cloudman. Before any of them reached the shore, Enos Quibb had pitched backward still yelling, over the boat's stern, and disappeared under the surface of the water.

The boat, now well alight, kept on its way across the sound. There was no other craft in sight save the boats belonging to the two parties of campers on Storm Island.

Kingdon's wits were quite as active in this emergency as they were while he was bandying words with the unfortunate constable. He hesitated not an instant in hauling on the mooring line of the _Spoondrift_.

"Come on!" he commanded. "Get aboard and help me up with a hand's breadth of sail, you fellows. Maybe Quibb will drown if we don't look sharp."

"In this calm sea?" sniffed Midkiff, though first to assist his friend.

"You can't tell. Maybe he can't swim."

"He doesn't seem able even to float," squealed little Hicks. "I don't see him come up."

"Keep your eye on the place he went down--hullo! Blacky to the rescue!" exclaimed Rex suddenly.

One of the canoes was darting from the direction of the other camp, and Horace Pence, alone in it, was making his paddle fly. Before Kingdon and his mates were fairly aboard the catboat the canoe was over the spot where Enos Quibb had disappeared.

"He'll get him, King," said Cloudman.

"No chance for us doing the rescue act," Rex observed.

"Get a move on, you fellows!" commanded Rex. "Never know what may happen----"

"There he is!" shouted Hicks from the shore. "He's come up."

"There's a pretty breeze," said Kingdon. "Up with the sail! I wish I'd tinkered with this old engine instead of fooling around on shore to-day."

Midkiff gave the flywheel a sharp turn. The spark began to sputter.

"What's the matter with that?" cried Red. "And she pos-i-tive-ly refused to say a word out there when that squall struck us yesterday."

"Great!" laughed Kingdon. "Give her some gas. That's the boy! Never mind the sheet."

The _Spoondrift_ began to move, and Kingdon shoved the tiller down. Hicks shouted again from the shore:

"That man's goin' to have him overboard! There--she--blo-o-ows!"

The constable, perhaps more frightened than hurt, had come to the surface, blowing bubbles and sputtering like a bad exhaust. The moment the canoe came within reach, he had seized its gunwale.

Only one thing could happen then--to a canoe. She dipped and shipped several buckets of water. Pence began to bawl:

"Wait! Let me give you a hand, you idiot! Don't tip her like that."

But Enos Quibb bore his weight on the frail craft, and he was heavier--with all the water he had swallowed--than Horace. The latter could not balance the fragile craft, and, just as little Hicks let out his bellow, the canoe went over, and the black-browed youth was shot in a perfect parabola over the head of the sinking constable.

The latter went down again. It was plain that water was not his natural element. He remained under longer than Pence; but when he came to the surface for the second time, Pence seized him.

"Now we'll see some fun," prophesied Phillips as the _Spoondrift_ slowly moved toward the spot. "Quibby has lost his head completely."

"And no great loss," muttered Midkiff. "Maybe he'd get some sense."

"Hush! Hush! This is a serious moment," breathed Kingdon, manipulating the tiller with care.

And it _was_ a serious moment for the two struggling in the water. Quibb got a strangle hold almost immediately on Horace Pence, and they went under. Pence was a strong swimmer, but a person needs a chance to breathe if he is going to do anything in the water.

Their heads again showed above the surface, and the constable let out a gurgling yell. Horace was grimly silent. In that very exciting moment Kingdon felt a thrill of admiration for the leader of the other camping party.

"Hit him a clump on the head!" shouted Red Phillips, leaning over the catboat's rail as she approached the imperiled pair.

Horace, however, was in no position to do that. He had his right arm around the constable, holding his head above water; and, as the man continued to struggle, his rescuer needed his other hand, as well as his feet, to paddle with. Besides, to strike a really heavy blow while in the water is all but impossible.

"Here, Mid! Take the hel-lum!" cried Kingdon.

He had already kicked off his canvas shoes. As his roommate seized the tiller, Rex poised on the dipping rail and took a long dive. He merely skimmed under the surface of the water, rising directly beside the overturned canoe.

"'Ray! Rex! King! King!" cheered Peewee from the shore. "That's the lad!"

Midkiff brought the catboat sharply around, and shut off the engine. Kingdon had seized the now weakly struggling Quibb.

"Let him go--I've got him," he advised Horace Pence. "The boys will give you a hand over the rail, and then we'll get this fellow aboard."

But Pence needed no help, once freed of the incubus of Enos Quibb. He scrambled aboard, while Kingdon raised the constable so Red and Cloudman could get hold of him.

"Oh, boys! boys!" gasped Enos. "I'm drownded!"

Kingdon was laughing at him as he climbed aboard. "You would have been, all right, if it hadn't been for Blacky here," he said. "You want to remember him in your will, Mr. Squibb."

"Quibb," corrected Enos faintly.

"Excuse me, Fibb. Hold on, Pence! Where you going?" asked the Walcott Hall youth as the black-browed one started forward with the boathook.

"Want to spear that canoe. I can get her over--and yonder's the paddle," Horace responded.

"Why so hurried a departure?" demanded Kingdon, smiling at him. "Aren't we hospitable enough?"

Horace made no answer, quickly drawing the overturned canoe within reach. Cloudman helped him, and they soon had the canoe out of the water, emptied, and again on its keel.

"Why the rush?" Kingdon asked.

Pence, still speechless, got into the canoe with care. His paddle was within reach, and he seized upon it. Then he drove the canoe back toward his own camp at an easy clip.

"Social sort of a beggar," grumbled Red Phillips. "Didn't even stop to thank us for saving him from a watery grave."

"Better get after that launch, Rex," Midkiff said. "She's still burning."

"Right-o!" agreed the curly-haired chap. "If she keeps on she may bump her nose into those rocks across the sound. See if you can start our engine again, Jawn."

The _Spoondrift's_ engine, after some sputtering, concluded to pop regularly, and Rex went back to the helm. The speed of the catboat under its auxiliary was not great; but the breeze was so light that they would have made small progress by hoisting sail.

The constable crept down into the cockpit, coughing and ill.

"You're not much of a fish, Mr. Squibb," Kingdon said, smiling at the man cheerfully. "You'd ought to do your sailing in a shallow spot."

"And you ought to do your smoking ashore," advised Midkiff. "What's the idea of carrying a lighted cigarette near your gas tank?"

"It leaked," said Enos feebly.

"What leaked? The cigarette?" chuckled Red.

"There's a leak somewhere--no fear," Kingdon said with grimness. "Any grown human being who would smoke one of those things--and near gasoline--Well! You want to have a care, Squibb."

"Quibb," faintly corrected the constable.

"Is it your launch?" Cloudman asked.

"Yes," Enos said gloomily. "And I guess 'twon't be wuth much. Oh! I'm jest as sore as a bile where I was burned."

"Gosh!" drawled Phillips. "You're like the man that tried to commit suicide. You was somewhat undecided whether to burn or drown, I s'pose."

"No laffin' matter," whined Enos.

They overhauled the launch without much trouble, for her engine had gone dead. Only the woodwork in the stern was scorched; but the tattered awning had gone up in smoke. There was little serious damage done.

"Better luck than you had a right to expect, Mr. Constable," Kingdon told him cheerfully. "Don't believe you'd better go on to your destination to-night. We'll tow your launch back to our anchorage, and give you some supper. You'll be welcome."

"Wal;--I dunno but I'd better," Enos groaned. "Oh! them burns do smart."

When they got back to the camp both boats were carefully moored and far enough apart so that they would not scrape sides in the night. Kingdon was prepared with a first-aid kit, and he anointed the burns of the victim of the accident, while Red Phillips heated up some canned beans and some of the panbread for him.

Mr. Quibb elected to sleep aboard his own boat. When he had departed for the night and the boys crowded together at the tent opening, there was a general--and somewhat excited, if low-voiced--discussion.

"It's so, I suppose," Kingdon yielded finally. "Our black-browed friend, Horrors, has got the permit. Swiped it out of my jacket pocket up there at the diamond. I am positive it was in my coat when we went up there."

"Sure!" cried Peewee. "This constable tells us he saw it. Of course Horrors displayed it as his own."

"Then he's posing under your name, Rex," Midkiff said, in anger.

"I tell you what!" said Phillips. "Let's go over there and take it away from them. The cheap scrubs! I bet that letter isn't the first thing they've stolen."

"No, Larry," Kingdon said quietly, and shaking his head. "That isn't the way to go about it. I've got a better scheme than that."

*CHAPTER XV.*

*WHAT'S SAUCE FOR THE GOOSE.*

Kingdon invited the woebegone Quibb to breakfast the next morning. The constable had passed a painful night, being scorched rather seriously on neck and arms.

"I wouldn't have that surly old boy around for a minute," Red Phillips growled, as he helped Rex prepare the morning meal.

"Don't be so ha'sh, Larry," Kingdon advised. "'Soft words butter no parsnips,' but they help a lot, just the same. Don't you see, too, that it's the part of wisdom for us to make a friend of this tin-badger. We should be as wise as serpents but harmless as doves."

"Huh! Don't see it! If you'd just be reasonable and let us all go over there to that other camp and wade into that bunch."

"Would that prove anything?" chuckled Kingdon. "Even to a country constable?"

"Well!"

"Your idea of proving the case smacks of ancient times, my child. It might have worked well five or six hundred years ago," his blond friend said lightly. "'Trial by force of arms,' or something like that. But it isn't done now, Larry; it really isn't done--not in the best circles."

"Great snakes!" rejoined the red-haired youth. "You're the coolest fellow, Rex, to let that Horrors take your name----"

"The black-browed villain!" chuckled Kingdon.

"And let him get away with it!"

"He hasn't got away with anything yet," was the quick rejoinder.

"I'd like to have you show me why he hasn't," returned Red. "He's got that permit and made a monkey of this constable."

"Well," drawled Kingdon, "I don't mind that, you know. Squibb is no relation of mine."

"But why all the tenderness for Horrors? He didn't even thank you for getting him out of his pickle last night."

"Presume he was too full of gratitude for speech."

"He was--like fun! He didn't have the decency to thank you. A fellow that would steal----"

"Hush-a-by-baby!" chided Kingdon. "Old Mid and I pilfered their canoes, didn't we?"

"That was only in fun."

"This is going to be fun before we are through with it, my dear fellow."

"Ah--well----"

"Let it go at that," advised his blond friend cheerfully. "Leave it to yours truly to pull all the chestnuts out of the fire. We must not get into further trouble with the Sheriff of Nottingham. Go on, Red; call him up to breakfast."

So the constable remained to eat with the Walcott Hall boys. If there was a good deal of quiet fun thrust at him, Enos Quibb did not know it. Aside from his high opinion of his own importance as an officer of the law, he was rather a thick-skinned individual.

He seemed to feel, however, that there was something due his hosts. He stood about after breakfast and coughed for a time, finally blurting out:

"Wal, of course, you boys understand I ain't got nothin' personal against you. Quite the contrary--yes, sir! Ye sartainly did me a good turn last night. And I'd like ter do you a good turn in _re_-turn."

"Fly to it, old boy," Peewee Hicks urged. "Put us down in your will for a good fat sum."

Enos did not give heed to this chaff. He added:

"Of course, I know you boys ain't got a mite of right on this island. That Kingdon chap showed me his permit, fair an' square, over to t'other camp. Dunno where _you_ got them letters and that wallet with his initials on it that ye give me a peek at," he pursued, looking at Kingdon. "'Tis abeout as much as my job's wuth, I guess; but I'll try not ter see ye over here when I pass by. But I wish ye _would_ find some other place ter camp on."

"Nothing doing. We're just wedded to Storm Island," Kingdon declared.

"Wal, if anybody sees ye and tells me abeout it, course I gotter take notice _then_. Guess I'll go," finished Enos, evidently much disturbed in spirit. Descending the steep shore to his launch, he got under way this time without accident, and the motorboat chugged away.

"I'll be hanged," muttered Red, "if I'm not rather sorry for the old lad, after all."

"Rex! You've got to send to the lumber company and get a copy of that permit," Midkiff declared with vigor. "Show those fellows up----"

"And get them put off the island?" drawled Kingdon.

"Why not?" Cloudman asked.

"Oh--well--I've another use for that bunch," said Rex. "Why use the rough stuff when guile and strategy--to say nothing of intrigue--are on tap?"

"Aw, drop that, Rex!" begged Midkiff.

"Why so, Grouch? That Horrors chap has got the laugh on us. He got it without honor, to be sure; but he didn't use a blackjack or brass knuckles. Shall we have it said of us that a crowd like that worked something fancy on us, and we had to volley with a knock-down-and-drag-out argument? Say not so! We got away with their canoes, they filched our permit. Tit for tat. Should we cry baby? Where's your sporting instincts?"

"Sporting instincts!" repeated Midkiff with disgust.

"Great snakes alive!" grumbled Red. "Listen to him rave."

"Needn't put me on the same plane as those fellows over yonder," objected Hicks, with a comic show of virtuous importance.

"Reckon you're too easy on 'em, Kingdon," said the Western lad. "That affair of the canoes wasn't serious. Stealing our permit and posing as the rightful owners of it is sure different."

"If your morals are as weak as your reasoning," laughed Kingdon, "I'm sorry for you chaps. What's sauce for the goose is good gravy for the gander."

"Oh, have it your own way; you always do, you blue-eyed mama's darling!" cried Larry Phillips. "No use fighting you. You'd raise a row if you didn't have the biggest apple and the reddest candy cane."

Derision left Kingdon unruffled. Opposition in any form made no difference to him when he once had a course of action mapped out. As he intimated, he had future use for Horace Pence and his friends on Storm Island. Just what this was Kingdon had no intention of divulging at the moment.

The fellows of the other camp kept well away from the Walcott Hall boys that day, and the next. Rex and his friends on either day went up to the clearing in the center of the island for short practice only, and they saw nothing of Pence and his comrades.

Kingdon insisted upon knocking down the engine of the catboat and going over the parts carefully. Both he and Red knew a good deal about automobile engines, and this was not so much different.

"It looks to your Uncle Edison Marconi," quoth Rex finally, "as though the main trouble with this bunch of junk is that, in a moment of hallucination, the owner mentioned it as an 'engine.' Old age has crept over this machine, and Father Time has left his indelible mark on certain parts of it. They must be renewed if we are to place any dependence at all in this form of motive power this summer."

"To get down to cases," scoffed Midkiff, "you want some new parts?"

"The engine does," Kingdon said sweetly. "I, personally, am fairly new."

"Quite," agreed Red. "And fresh."

"How're you going to get the parts?" Cloudman asked practically.

"Go after them to Blackport. To-morrow, if 'tis fair and there's a breeze ruffling the surface of yon sound."

"All of us going?" questioned Midkiff. "Who's to watch camp?"

"That's right," Phillips said. "I don't trust those chaps yonder."

"They have been keeping away from here, all right," Peewee observed.

"That isn't saying they wouldn't come over and grab all our stuff if we left it unguarded," Red said.

"Don't you think we'll have to risk that sometime, Red?" Kingdon asked.

"Not if you have that gang put off the island as you should," put in Midkiff with tartness.

"Now, is that so?" mocked Rex. "They could hang around and do us plenty of damage if they were put off, I suppose? If we are going to spend our entire summer worrying about a lot of amateur pirates like them, we'll have a fine time--I don't think."

"Well, they've robbed us once."

"And you have embraced Quaker doctrines, Rex," Red added, with some sharpness. "Turn the other cheek stuff, and all that."