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Page 17
"I'm off, this morning," he explained. "In an hour now. Garry, how
can I possibly reduce this mass to packing possibility?"
"Stop running around in circles!" commanded Garry, thunderstruck.
"What's it all about? Where are you going?"
"I'm going," said Kenny with his chin out and his eyes defiant, "to
hunt Brian."
Garry stared blankly at the packing litter and the tall Irishman in the
center of it wearily mopping his forehead. It was impossible to locate
the crags he must have leaped to reach his spectacular decision. They
were shrouded in mystery.
"You mean," said Garry after a while, "that you will tour vaguely off,
seeking a farm on a hill, a wood, a river, a youngster in patches and
Brian's trail of camp fires?"
"Precisely," said Kenny with detestable confidence. "See, even you
mark the clues with perfect logic."
"A farm on a hill," exclaimed Garry, "is of course a clue with absolute
individuality. So is a wood and a river."
"So," supplemented Kenny with the calm, unhurried air of one who scores
an unexpected point, "is a postmark on a letter."
Startled, Garry reached for the envelope. Kenny put it in his pocket.
"An obscure village in Pennsylvania," he explained with dignity, "where
your wood and your river will likely have definite individuality. I
shall go there."
Garry scented danger and considered the outcome in horrified dismay,
regretting his rash flurry of sympathy. It had become a boomerang.
What if Brian's prot�g� in a fit of remorse saw fit to keep his sister
posted? Kenny would indeed find clues. The possibility filled him
with foreboding.
"Kenny," he said with some heat, "I consider that you have absolutely
no right to take advantage of my letter to hunt Brian down. I'm sorry
I sent it in. If he wanted you to know where he is, he'd write you. I
wish to Heaven I'd thought of that postmark!"
"I shall tramp every inch on foot!" swore Kenny proudly. "Brian will
appreciate the spirit of the thing if you do not."
There was relief at least in that. Garry drew a long breath. If Kenny
tramped his way, another inexplicable factor in his lunacy, by the time
he reached the farmhouse Brian would be well on ahead. And Garry was
bitterly familiar with Kenny's incapacity for steadiness of any kind.
Kenny, it developed, was thinking in similar vein.
"I take it there will be an interval of waiting before remorse will
lead the kid to write to his sister," he said. "Otherwise I'd proceed
to the farmhouse at once in a flying machine."
The romance of this seemed to strike him strongly for an interval.
Then, mercifully, he repeated his intention of tramping.
"And then?" said Garry.
"Then," said Kenny with the utmost optimism, "I'll pick up his trail at
the farmhouse and from there I'll travel night and day until I overtake
him."
"And then?"
"The lad will come home with me."
"And then?"
"Good God, Garry," thundered Kenny, "I never knew anybody with such an
'And then?' sort of mind as you seem to have. There's an 'And then?'
doubt after every glorious climax. He'll be home. That's sufficient."
"What about the scrapbook?"
"I've already sent it."
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