"Yes," replied the prisoner.
"What did you sell b.u.t.ter at a loss for?" the inquisitor demanded. "It hasn"t been down that low anywhere that I know of since the war."
"I meant b.u.t.terine," "corrected" the "sweat subject" hurriedly.
"Well, you"ve hit it about right, by accident, of course. Now, let"s see if you know anything more about grocery business. What did you sell eggs and potatoes for the last day you worked?"
"I didn"t sell any."
"All you sold was b.u.t.ter?"
"Yes."
"You mean b.u.t.terine, don"t you?"
"No, I sold b.u.t.ter and b.u.t.terine and a few other things."
"And b.u.t.termilk and cheese," the officer amended.
No answer.
"How much did you charge for b.u.t.ter?"
"Fifty cents a pound," the prisoner replied, desperately or doggedly, it was difficult to determine which.
"Do you know that b.u.t.ter is selling now for thirty-nine or forty cents a pound?"
"Then it"s come down."
"No, it hasn"t. It"s been around forty cents a pound for several months."
The prisoner fixed his eyes on the ground and said nothing.
"The trouble is, you haven"t done your wife"s grocery shopping, or you could tell a more plausible string of lies," Mr. Buckley commented. "Now, let me tell you this: It"s been a long time since you saw the inside of a grocery store."
"If you don"t want to believe me, it"s up to you," snarled the prisoner.
"Now, Mr. Howard," the inquisitor continued, "your friends, I am told, addressed you as Captain. Why was that?"
This query stimulated a little brilliance in the fellow.
"I run a grocery boat on the river," he said. "I don"t do much clerking, but supply groceries to several stores from a wholesale house."
"So that is your explanation for not being very familiar with retail prices, is it?" Mr. Buckley inferred.
"Yes."
"Well," the Government "sweater" went on, "your story doesn"t hang together very well."
"You don"t want it to hang together," the prisoner snapped. "You"re here to make me out a liar. You don"t want the truth. You haven"t got no right to keep me here."
"He claimed the rights of a citizen of the United States and defied us to interfere with him," interposed Mr. Baker, who, together with Mr. Perry, had been listening eagerly to this quizzing process.
"How"s that?" Mr. Buckley demanded.
"Why, Mr. Perry"s son and I pulled guns on him and his three companions, when they threatened us with clubs, and this fellow pointed out what he said was the international boundary line between them and us and defied us to cross over and capture them. I made my bull-dog look at him squarely in the eye and hypnotized him over onto this side of the boundary line between the United States and Canada and made a prisoner of him."
"Where is that international boundary line?" Mr. Buckley asked.
"Right here," Mr. Baker replied, rising from his camp chair and walking about fifteen feet to the stake that the prisoner had designated as indicating the line beyond which any hostile advance must be regarded as a foreign invasion.
"Who put that stake there?" he inquired, shifting his penetrating glance from one to another of the three men before him.
"I don"t know," replied Mr. Perry and Mr. Baker almost in one breath.
The prisoner said nothing, and Mr. Baker spoke for him as follows:
"If this fellow would answer, I presume the only statement he could make is that it was put there by surveyors of the Canadian and United States Governments."
"Humph! Funny surveyor"s stake, isn"t it?" grunted the Canadian officer, "Methinks we shan"t go much farther to prove this fellow a fabricator of fairy tales. So that"s the international boundary line, is it?" he asked, eyeing the prisoner keenly.
"I was told it was; that"s all I know about it," the latter replied sullenly.
"Well that was a lucky reply if you intend to persist in your policy of evasion," Mr. Buckley declared. "I was about to denounce you as an ill.u.s.trious liar. The boundary line between the United States and Canada along here, my dear sir, doesn"t cut islands in two. If you will examine a map or chart of the Lake of the Thousand Islands, you will see that the boundary line winds like a snake, dodging the islands through its entire course in this part of the St. Lawrence river."
"It was foolish of me to swallow such a yarn as that," said Mr. Baker.
"But I called his bluff good and strong. However, I"m much relieved to discover that my credulity was imposed upon; otherwise I might be accused of trying to drag the United States and Canada into war."
All of his auditors, except the prisoner, smiled at this remark. The boys, who had just finished washing the dishes, joined the inquisition group in time to hear Mr. Buckley"s last statement and Mr. Baker"s "confession of folly."
"I think we have got as much out of this man as we may hope to get at the present time," the officer announced a moment later. "I think I had better take him back with me and you had better come along, Mr. Baker, and swear out a warrant charging him with kidnapping."
"That"s exactly what I"m going to do if my son is not returned to me to-night or early in the morning," answered the man thus addressed. "I suppose you have no objection to remaining here over night."
"Oh, no; it"ll be easier to take care of the prisoner here over night than to work overtime, going back at night, and jail him. But we"ll have to keep careful watch over him to-night and see that he doesn"t escape."
"Maybe we"d better lock him up in one of the staterooms of the yacht,"
Mr. Perry suggested.
"Yes, and keep a good watch over him all night," Cub put in. "We want to make sure those three friends of his don"t come back after dark and let "im out"
"I"ll watch with Mr. Buckley," Mr. Baker volunteered. "We"re both armed and I don"t think there"s any chance of our being taken by surprise."
"We"ll watch in two-hour shifts," Mr. Buckley proposed. "In that way we"ll keep fresh and on the alert, so that there"ll be less danger of being taken by surprise."
"Very well, that"s agreed upon, if it"s satisfactory to Mr. Perry," the officer announced.
Further attempts to get information out of the prisoner, bearing on the whereabouts of the place of concealment of Mr. Baker"s son, were unavailing, and at last they separated into two parties for the night, Mr. Buckley and Mr. Baker taking charge of the prisoner on board the Catwhisker and Mr. Perry and the boys distributing the sleeping quarters among themselves in the camp.