At Poughkeepsie they made a landing at the wharf. Here expressmen were
moving trunks about, a few stragglers waiting for some boat peered
through the gates like prisoners; there was a general air of bustle and
a "city" atmosphere about the place. A few people gathered about,
looking at the _Good Turn_ and watching the boys as they made their way
up the wharf.

"Boy Scouts," they heard someone say.

There was the usual good-natured curiosity which follows scouts when
they are away from home and which they have come to regard as a matter
of course, but the big yellow flag seemed to carry no particular meaning
to anyone here.

They walked up to the station where they asked the operator if he had
seen the searchlight message or heard anything about it, but he had not.
They inquired who was the night watchman on the wharf, hunted him out,
and asked him. He had seen the light and wondered what and where it was.
That was all.

"Foiled again!" said Roy.

They made inquiries of almost everyone they saw, going into a nearby
hotel and several of the stores. They inquired at the fire house, where
they thought men would have been up at night who might be expected to
know the Morse code, but the spokesman there shook his head.

"A fellow who was with us got locked in a freight car," Roy explained,
"and we signaled to people up this way to stop the train."

The man smiled; apparently he did not take Roy's explanation very
seriously. "Now if you could only get that convict that escaped down
yonder----"

"We have no interest in him," said Roy, shortly.

He and Tom had both counted on Poughkeepsie with its police force and
fire department and general wide-awakeness, and they went back to the
_Good Turn_ pretty well discouraged, particularly as the good people of
whom they had inquired had treated them with an air of kindly
indulgence, smiling at their story, saying that the scouts were a
wide-awake lot, and so forth; interested, but good-naturedly skeptical.
One had said, "Are you making believe to telegraph that way? Well, it's
good fun, anyway." Another asked if they had been reading dime novels.
The patronizing tone had rather nettled the boys.

"I'd like to have told that fellow that if we _had_ been reading dime
novels, we wouldn't have had time to learn the Morse code," said Roy.

_"The Motor Boat Heroes_!" mocked Tom.

"Yes, volume three thousand, and they haven't learned how to run a gas
engine yet! Get out you