Forcing an entrance was not difficult, and just as the lads got inside the rain began.
There was a rough but comfortable sitting room in one end of the boathouse. Lorry, who was familiar with the place, left Matt and McGlory near the door which they had forced open, and groped his way to the sitting room, where he lighted a tin lamp.
There was a smell of stale cigarette smoke in the room, and the walls were papered with pictures of prize fighters, sailboats, race horses, and "footlight favorites," all cut from newspapers and magazines. This, and the acrid odor of cigarettes, attested sufficiently the taste of the owner of the boathouse.
There were chairs enough to seat the three boys comfortably.
"Somebody has been here, pards," declared McGlory, "and not so very long ago, either."
"He's a Sherlock Holmes, all right," grinned Lorry. "How do you suppose he knew that, Motor Matt?"
"Oh, go on!" growled the cowboy. "Your friend George is a cigarette fiend. Why do you reckon the windows were draped like that?"
There were two small windows in the sitting room, and each was covered with a double thickness of canvas, battened down on all sides.
"Give it up," said Lorry. "Ollie must have been having a game of cards here with some of the boys, and probably he didn't want anybody looking in."
"Ollie?" murmured Matt, startled, suddenly remembering that, at the time of the attempted robbery on the Waunakee road, Big John had addressed his youthful companion as "Ollie."
"Yes, Ollie Merton," answered Lorry; "he's the fellow who owns this place."
"Why, he's about my build, rather dark, and with a face that's not much of a recommendation; but Ollie's been a good friend of mine, just the same."
Matt was convinced that the Ollie he had met on the Waunakee road, under such evil conditions, was the same Ollie who had papered that rude little sitting room--and had left behind him the reek of his cigarettes.
"What are you asking about Ollie for?" inquired Lorry curiously.
"We'll get to that in a few minutes," said Matt. "Just now I want to hear how you fellows came to leave the cabin on the creek, and what sort of a coincidence it was that enabled you to come to my rescue, out there on the lake."
"I reckon we can explain that a heap easier than you can explain how you came to be lashed hand and foot and jammed between the thwart and the engine of a burning boat," returned McGlory. "You didn't get back to the cabin, that was one of the things that bothered George and me, and we couldn't savvy the why of it; then, all at once, we spotted our old friends, Ross and Kinky, standing among the oaks and piping off the cabin. _Was_ it a jolt? Say, speak to me about that. 'That means trouble,' said George, and I allowed that he had rung the bell.