Page:Boys of Columbia High on the Ice.djvu/81

Rh question without betraying any unusual interest.

"Why, yes, now that you speak of it, there was such a fellow talking with somebody over the wire. I didn't pay much attention to him. It was none of my business so long as he stuck his little five-cent piece in the slot before he started work. I even reckoned he might be one of the telephone men that were around here last week."

"What made you think that?" asked the boy.

"Oh! perhaps it was the way he talked—just brushed in, remarked 'I want to use the telephone a minute,' and when I said 'all right' he stepped into the booth. Say, what do you know about him." and the clerk looked inquiringly at Lanky.

"Nothing," replied the other. "That's what's ailing me. He was talking with me over the wire. I met him yesterday up near Rattail Island, where he was fishing through the ice. He did me a little favor, and when he called me up here it was to add to the debt. But while there's something familiar about his looks I can't for the life of me place him. Didn't you know him, Socrates?"

The drug clerk had been born and brought up in Columbia, and was supposed to be acquainted with about every soul in town, by sight at least. He shook his head in the negative.

"Don't believe I ever saw him before, Lanky," was his disappointing reply.