"Yes. It broke loose from its bearings and has rolled right back to where it stood."
"You don't say so?" exclaimed Frank, with something of a shock.
"Yes, it has," asserted Daley, "only it's the greatest wreck of bricks and plaster now you ever saw."
"No one hurt, I hope?"
"No, except old Dobbins' feelings. He's capering around at a great rate, saying that the town, or the county, or the government, will have to pay him for the damage."
"The movers couldn't have understood their business very well to have such a thing happen." said Frank.
"Looks that way," acceded Daley, and they parted at the gateway of the Jordan home.
Frank advised his aunt of the state of affairs and went back to bed.
Naturally he was curious to have a view of the wrecked house. He got up early before breakfast and took a stroll over to the scene of the disaster.
The lad, too, thought of his lost knife and bore that fact in mind.
He gave up all hopes of recovering the knife, however, as he reached the spot where he believed he had lost it the afternoon previous. Where the Dobbins house had been anchored on the hillside the ground was torn up and disturbed as though a cyclone had passed over the place. At the bottom of the hill, jammed half way through the rickety old stable, was what was left of the dismantled house.
Miss Brown made Frank stay in the house and study from eight until ten every morning. With all the exciting thoughts that were passing through his mind, Frank found it difficult to fix his attention on his books that morning. He was glad to get out of the house when ten o'clock came. His pet pigeons were his first care. Then he started for the post-office, hoping that he would find a letter from his father.
"Hi, Frank," a voice hailed him as he made a short cut through a little grove at the rear of the house, and a familiar form emerged from some bushes.
"Why, it's Mr. Dobbins!" exclaimed Frank in some surprise. He had expected to find the miserly old fellow in the depths of despair over the loss of his house, but Dobbins was grinning and chuckling at a great rate.
"So 'tis Frank," he bobbed with a broad smile. "Was looking for you."
"What for, Mr. Dobbins?"
The old man blinked. Then he laughed in a pleased, crafty way and put his hand in his pocket.
"See here," he cried, and Frank noticed that he held three coins in his palm. There was a twenty, a ten and a five-dollar gold piece.
"Um-m," observed Dobbins. "Double eagle a good deal of money, isn't it now, Frank?"
"Why, yes," assented Frank wonderingly, and the old fellow picked out the twenty-dollar gold piece with his free hand and put it in his vest pocket.
"It would be extravagant for a boy to squander even as much as ten dollars, hey?"
Frank did not answer, for he could not surmise what the old fellow was getting at.
"So, if you'll consider this five-dollar gold piece the right thing,"
resumed Dobbins, "you're mightily welcome to it, and say, Frank--you're a bully boy!"
"How's that?" inquired Frank.
"Oh, you know," asserted Dobbins. "Take it quick, before I change my mind."
"Take the five dollars, you mean?" questioned Frank.
"Exactly."
"Why should I do that? You don't owe me anything."
"Don't?" cried Dobbins. "Why, boy, I owe you everything. No nonsense between friends, you see."
"I don't see--" began Frank.
Old Dobbins placed a finger beside his nose in a crafty, expressive way. He winked blandly at Frank, with the mysterious words:
"That's all right, Frank, boy. No need of going into particulars, but--you know right enough. Mum's the word. Take the five dollars."
CHAPTER VI
AN ASTONISHING CLUE
"But I don't know," declared Frank forcibly, "and as I have _not_ earned any five dollars, of course I can't take it."
"Sho!" chuckled old Dobbins, dancing about Frank, as spry as a schoolboy and poking him playfully in the ribs. Frank had to smile.
"See here, Mr. Dobbins," he observed, "it appears to me that you feel pretty lively for a man who has just had his house all smashed to pieces."
"That's just it--that's just it," retorted Dobbins in a tone almost jubilant. "Where would I be if it hadn't happened? Why, boy, when I think of what you've done, I--I almost would adopt you--that is, if you weren't too big an eater."
There was some mystery under all this, Frank discerned. He wanted to get at the plain facts of the case.
"I'm afraid I don't entirely understand," he began when his eccentric visitor interrupted him.
"Ho! ho!" he guffawed. "You will be _sharp_, you young _blade_, won't you? Got some _temper_--hey? True as _steel_--hi! When the rope gave out you _cut_ for it--ho! ho! ho!" and the speaker went into spasms of merriment over his own wit.
"'Blade, temper, steel,'" quoted Frank. "Are you getting off a pun, Mr.
Dobbins?"
"Put it that way if you like," returned Dobbins cheerfully. "There was a knife. That's the long and short of it, don't you see? A boy's pocket knife. It sawed the big moving cable. Snap! Bang! Away went the house.
Whose knife? Aha! Dear me--who can tell? Sly, hey--Frank, boy? We ain't going to tell. No need of it. Artful dodgers--ho! ho! ho! Take the five dollars."
Frank gave a vivid start. He was partly enlightened now. He had mislaid his knife near the house that had been anchored on the hill side. Somebody had found it and had cut the cable with it.
"What you are getting at, then," said Frank, "is that a knife cut the rope loose?"
"Ah, just that."
"And my knife?"