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Don Scott, asleep at full length on the houseboat's sun deck, which was also its cabin top, awoke in time to see the dark shape reenter the calm water. "Stingaree!" he exclaimed. Rick had never seen an area more teeming with life than Chesapeake Bay, unless it was the jungles of the South Pacific.
"Look right under the houseboat's gunwales," Scotty urged. "If they're directly under it, the bubbles would rise along the sides." "Why would they go under the houseboat?" Rick asked. Scotty shook his head. "Why did they come over here in the first place?" Rick had no answer. "Let's go over to the shore. Joe's men ought to be at the rowboat by now. Maybe they found the girls."
At this, coming from Nan, Johnnie had nothing to say, except that he murmured, as he walked away: "Huh! A houseboat's nothing. We've got a baby at our house, and it's got hair on its head, and two teeth!" "A houseboat's better'n a baby," was Freddie's opinion. "It is not!" cried Johnnie. "It is so!" Freddie exclaimed. "Hush!" begged Nan. "Please don't dispute. Houseboats and babies are both nice.
Now, our man held aloft a stick with the houseboat's burgee on it, and a photograph was taken that we might not forget where our diverted road came out and where to go to meet the "friggetts" that might be coming in almost any time.
Later, we could just drag until we caught the line." "It would work," Scotty agreed. "There's a new spool of heavy line on the shelf in the closet. Fifty yards. That should do." "Especially since the most we would need is fifty feet," Rick agreed. "I'll stick it in a belt pocket, just in case." Back on deck, Rick started the houseboat's outboard motors and listened critically.
Rick tensed. If the houseboaters were going to contact the barber, they would naturally try to choose a time when they could see him alone. Maybe there had been an earlier contact, and the barber had told them he would be alone today. That might account for the houseboat's moving closer to Whiteside. "Vince had gone fishing." The editor grinned.
While the others went to the house, he stopped at the lab and reported to Joe Blake that he had found a pram. The agent got what details Rick had, and passed the word to the shore team on the mainland with instructions to follow the houseboat's movements from shore. Then he went to the phone and called Steve Ames. Finally Joe hung up.
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