"No," scoffed Darrin; "you're too hungry."

"I'm going to see what the excitement is about, anyway," muttered
Hazelton, starting forward off a run.

One by one the other boys yielded to curiosity and started at
a jog-trot for the corner where the crowd was gathered.

"No; the poor fellow isn't crazy in the ordinary sense of the
word," Dick heard a tall man, finely dressed in black, say to
some of the bystanders. "He's harmless enough, and his mind isn't
permanently astray, if only he can have prompt and good care.
But he's inclined to get away by himself and ponder over his
inventions. If he leads a too solitary life long enough he may
be past the possibility of a cure one of these days. That is
why Colonel Garwood is so anxious to find his son, and offers
such a handsome reward for information."

"Some one missing?" asked Dick in a low voice.

"Yes," nodded a man in the crowd. "A crazy inventor is lost,
or he's loose, at any rate, and his old father is trying to find
him. There is a reward of twenty-five hundred dollars for the lucky
fellow who finds this inventor with the monkey wrenches in his
brain."

"What does the man look like?" asked Dick.

The tall man in black overheard the question and wheeled quickly.