“So he does! I hadn’t seen through that at all,” said George. “Thank you. That makes it almost a certainty that he meant ‘the men about him,’ his jailers, were fat. We have to find his jail, and our best chance is to find his jailers. To tell us to look for ‘lean and hungry’ men in this country of hard-riding, thin, slim, slender, lean, lank, scrawny men, would serve no purpose. But fat men are scarce enough to be noticeable. Besides, Patterson is a mere mountain of flesh; Thorpe himself is not actually fat, but is dangerously near it. He laid so much stress on this, coming back to it four times, that he must have meant it for a big, plain signpost for our guidance. That settles it. He has men about him that are fat. And we’d better look for them. Mr. Pringle, will you take the lines?” “The head of the table is wherever Wes’ sits down, anyway,” remarked Beebe loyally. “It is moved and seconded that Mr. John Wesley Pringle be elected--er--Sole Electee of the Most Ancient Society of Good Men and True,” said Leo. “All in favor will rise or remain seated. Contrary-minded are not members and will kindly leave the room. It is unanimously carried and so ordered. Gentlemen, Mr. Pringle!” “The Society will come to order,” said the Sole Electee severely. “Some good man and true will please state the object of the permanent session and, also, how and why and what he proposes to do first.” “Hadn’t we better get some detectives to work,” ventured Billy, “and join forces with Tillotson’s lawyers?” “No detectives,” said Pringle hastily and decidedly. And “No lawyers,” echoed George with equal decision, adding: “Please excuse Mr. Pringle and myself from giving the reasons for our respective vetoes. But they are good ones.” “Then we are to depend on our own resources alone?” demanded Leo. “Exactly. That’s the way the farmer in the second reader got in his wheat. Let us by all means have Fools for Clients and Every Man His Own Detective; that’s what makes the guilty quail,” said Pringle darkly. “If we four can’t do the trick for love, no man can do it for hire. And there will be no defalcation or failure for fear, favor or funds or through any fatal half-heartedness. We four friends for our friend unconditionally, without regard for law or the profits, man or devil, death, debt, disgrace or damnation! To the last ditch--and then some!”