“A which?” Doc Carson said.

“Don’t you know a kindly old gentleman when you see one?” Pee-wee fairly screamed.

“Let’s see one,” Artie shouted.

And that’s the way it went on till Mr. Ellsworth came to Pee-wee’s rescue like he always does.  He said we should let Pee-wee have the chair.

“Here’s a couple of chairs for him,” we shouted.

“He can have the table too, if he wants it,” I said; anything to keep him quiet.

“I don’t want to be quiet,” Pee-wee screamed.

Good night, that was some meeting.  Well, pretty soon Mr. Ellsworth got us all throttled down and Pee-wee started to tell us about his visit to the kindly old gentleman.  It seemed that was one of the houses that Pee-wee called at alone and the kindly old gentleman fell for him like grown up people mostly do.  I don’t know what it is but everybody seems to like Pee-wee.  You know just because you jolly a fellow, it’s not a sign you don’t like him.  Pee-wee is one bully little scout, I’ll say that much.

“Do you want to hear about it?” he said.

“Proceed with your narrative,” I told him; “begin at the beginning, go on till you come to the end, then stop.”

“Be sure to stop,” Westy said.

Well, then Pee-wee went on to tell us about the kindly old gentleman.  He lived in a big white house, he said, with grounds around it and a big flag pole on the lawn, with a flag flying from it.  He said that the old gentleman didn’t talk very good English and he thought maybe he was a German or French or something or other.  He guessed maybe he was a professor or something like that.  Anyway, he took Pee-wee through his library, picking out the books he didn’t want, till be had given him about twenty or thirty.  Then they tied them up in a brown cord and Pee-wee took them out to the Fraud car.

Well that’s about all there was to it, and I guess nothing more would have happened, if I hadn’t untied the cord and picked up the book that lay on top.  It was a book about German history, princes and all that stuff, and I guess it wouldn’t interest soldiers much.  Just as I was running through it, I happened to notice a piece of paper between the leaves, which I guess the old gentleman put there for a book-mark.  As soon as I picked it up and read it, I said, “Good night!  Look at this,” and I handed it to Mr. Ellsworth.

It said something about getting information to Hindenburg, and about how a certain German spy was in one of the American camps in France.

Mr. Ellsworth read it through two or three times, and then said, “Boys, this looks like a very serious matter.  You said the old gentleman spoke broken English, Walter?”

That’s the name he always called Pee-wee.

“Cracky,” I said, “Pee-wee’s kindly old gentleman is a German spy.”

“Sure he is,” said Westy Martin, “and he’s only flying the American flag for a bluff, he’s a deep dyed villain.”