Boy Scouts on Motorcycles Part 10

"If you don't deliver it in five minutes," declared the officer, "I shall call the American consul!"

The official made no reply.

"You can read this code, I suppose?" he asked of Ned.

"Certainly."

"Well, I'll communicate with the manager, and if he says it is all right I'll give you the message and take your receipt for it. Will that answer?"

"It must, I suppose," replied the officer.

The obdurate official left the room.

"Gee, but it's close in here!" Jimmie declared, in a moment. "Seems like a hop joint in Pell street."

"There is opium in the air," the officer said. "See if you can find a window."

Jimmie found a window opening on a large court and lifted the lower sash. Then he called to Ned.

"I don't like the looks of this," he said. "If they should try to hold us here, what?"

"They won't do that."

"Oh, they won't tie us up, I guess," said the little fellow, "but they may delay our departure."

"Go on," smiled Ned.

"An' communicate with the ginks that have been chasing us ever since we left the submarine," concluded the boy.

"In time, Jimmie," Ned answered, "you may even get into the thinking row. I have been wondering ever since we came in here if we were not with enemies instead of friends."

"I can soon find out," declared Jimmie.

"Yes? How, may I ask?"

"I'll rush out into the other room an' try to get to the street. If there's anythin' in the notion we have, they'll turn me back."

"You might try that," smiled Ned, and the officer clapped a hand on the boy's shoulder and declared that he was a "brick."

So Jimmie hustled out into the front office. The listeners heard sharp words, and then a slight scuffling of feet. Then next instant the boy was pushed back through the doorway.

"What is the trouble?" asked the marine of the a.s.sistant, whose flushed face showed in the half-open doorway.

"You'll all have to be identified before you can leave here," was the curt reply. "You have asked for important state dispatches, and we want to know what your motive is."

"My motive is to get them," replied Ned, coolly.

"Wait until you prove your right to them," said the other, and the door was slammed shut. Ned stepped back to the window and looked out into the court. The walls were four stories high, and there seemed to be no pa.s.sage out of the box-like place. The officer suggested that he force his way through the outer office and reach the American consul, but Ned did not approve of this. He thought there must be some other way. Then a hint of that other way came from the court in the call of an owl.

"That's a Boy Scout signal, and not a bird!" almost shouted Jimmie.

CHAPTER VIII

THE MESSAGE FROM WASHINGTON

"Surely," the marine officer said, in answer to the boy's exclamation, "that is a genuine, feathered owl. No boy could make so perfect an imitation."

"It's Dutchy, all right," insisted Jimmie. "I've heard him make that noise before. Now, how did he ever get to Tientsin, and how did he locate us?"

"It doesn't seem possible that it is Hans," Ned said. "How could he make the journey on foot, through a country suspicious of every foreigner? And how comes it that he chanced on this building?"

"Didn't he know that you were expecting instructions from Washington while on the way to Peking?" asked the officer.

"I did not know, myself, that I was to receive instructions while on the way until I met you," Ned replied. "If Hans is indeed here, he has either blundered into his present position or gained pretty accurate information from some one unknown to me."

"If he is here?" repeated Jimmie. "Of course he is here. I'm goin' out in the court an' give him the call of the pack!"

"What does he mean by that?" asked the officer of Ned. "Call of the pack?"

"The call of the Wolf pack," answered Ned. "We both belong to the Wolf Patrol, of New York."

"And you think Hans, if it is he, will understand?"

"Of course!" scorned Jimmie.

The little fellow was about to step out of the low window to the floor of the court when a mist of light appeared at one of the glazed windows on the opposite side. The three watched the illumination with absorbing interest for a moment.

"Hans must be up there," Ned, muttered, "although I would almost as soon expect to find him up in a balloon."

"I reckon you'll find an owl with wise eyes and feathers up there, if you wait," said the officer, with a smile. "The boy you refer to never could have traveled here alone."

"You just wait," advised Jimmie.

Presently the mist of light centered down to three small flames, apparently coming from three narrow twists of paper, burning in a row in front of a window on the second floor. Jimmie grasped Ned's arm as the three tiny columns of flame showed for an instant and then vanished.

"There!" he said. "Do you know what that means?"

"It is a warning of danger," Ned muttered.

"Say that again," exclaimed the officer. "What kind of a game is this?"

"It is a Boy Scout warning," Ned replied. "In the forest three columns of smoke express the warning. How did this German boy learn all this?"

he continued, turning to Jimmie.