“You should worry about me,” he said; “I just have to limp a little, that’s all.  I’m a swell looking Silver Fox, hey?” And then he gave me a push and rumpled my hair all up and said, “You won’t be ashamed of me on account of my honorable wounds, will you?  I was a punk scout to go and do that.”

Gee, I didn’t know what to think, because it wasn’t anything to be laughing at, that’s sure.

“Do what?” I said.

“Run right into that ditch.”

“Is that what you meant you did—­when you told me?” I said, kind of disappointed.

“Sure it is,” he said, “I’m a swell scout, hey?  Going headlong into a ditch!”

I just listened to him and I felt pretty bad, because now I saw that was what he meant.

Then he gave me another shove and he said all happy like, “But I’m the champion boy sleuth all right.  Look at this—­here’s your two bucks and Skinny never took it at all”?

“I—­I know he didn’t,” I said.

“How did you know,” he shot right at me.

“Because,” I started to say and then he rumpled my hair up some more and began talking and never gave me a chance.

“Because it was right in that copy of Treasure Island that’s laying there,” he shouted, “and I’m one big gump, that’s what I am!  I got that copy of Treasure Island out of the library this morning, because you were telling me about it, and right there in the middle of it was your plaguy old two buckarinos!”

Just for a minute I looked at him and I knew it was just like he said, because he was laughing—­he was so blamed happy about it.

Oh, boy, didn’t I feel good!

“How in the dickens did it get there?” he said.

“That’s one puzzle,” I answered him.

“Anyway, you’ve got your two bucks back.”

“A lot I care about that,” I said; “jiminy, I’ve got something better than two dollars, and that’s friends, you can bet.”

Then I showed him the stain on the page of the book and we both sat there gaping at it and thinking.

“I’m hanged if I know,” Westy said; “it would take Tom Slade to dope that out.”

“Maybe Skinny was looking at the book and shut it with the two dollar bill inside,” I said.

“How about the stain?” Westy asked me.

“Jingoes, it’s a puzzle,” I said.

All of a sudden he laid the book down open and laid the bill on it and then he laid the oar-lock on the bill.  Then he just sat there like as if he was studying.  Pretty soon he said, “We have to get a new copy for the library, anyway.  Do you mind if I make another stain on this one?  I’ve got a sort of an idea.”

“Go ahead,” I said.

So now I’ll tell you just what he did and you’ll see how it solved the puzzle.  And, believe me, you’ll have to admit that Westy’s a pretty smart fellow.  If you have an old book you don’t care anything about, you can even try it and you don’t even need an oar-lock.  Westy turned to a new place in the book and then he laid the bill down on the right hand page.  Then he laid the oar-lock on the bill.  “That’s just exactly what you did when you laid the bill down in such a hurry that night you were fixing Skinny up.  You laid it on the open book just like that—­see?”