Tom Slade on a Transport Part 12

"Mr. Conne, who's in the Secret Service, got me mine," Tom said.

"Who did he recommend you to?" asked the detective.

Tom hesitated a moment. "To Mr. Wessel, the steward," he said.

"Humph! Too bad Mr. Wessel died. You'll both have to go to the guardhouse."

Tom saw there was no hope for him. For a moment he struggled, drawing a long breath in pitiful little gulps. If he had followed Mr. Conne's advice he would not be in this predicament. But where then might the great transport be? Who but he, captain's mess boy, had saved the ship and showed these people how the light----

"It makes me feel like----" he began. "Can't I--please--can't I not be arrested--please?"

Neither man answered him. Presently the door opened and four soldiers entered. One of them was "Pickles," who had nicknamed Tom "Tombstone,"

because he was so sober. But he was not Pickles now; he was just one of a squad of four, and though he looked surprised he neither smiled nor spoke.

"Pickles," said Tom. "I ain't--_You_ don't believe----"

But Pickles had been too long in training camp to forget duty and discipline so readily and the only answer Tom got was the dull thud of Pickles' rifle b.u.t.t on the floor as the officer uttered some word or other.

That thud was a good thing for Tom. It seemed to settle him into his old stolid composure, which had so amused the boys in khaki.

Side by side with his brother, whom so long ago he could not bear to see "licked," he marched out and along the pa.s.sage, a soldier in front, one behind and one at either side. How strange the whole thing seemed!

His brother who had gone out to Arizona when Tom was just a bad, troublesome little hoodlum! And here they were now, marching silently side by side, on one of Uncle Sam's big transports, with four soldiers escorting them! Both, the nephews of Uncle Job Slade who had died in the Soldiers' Home and had been buried with the Stars and Stripes draped over his coffin.

Two things stood out in Tom Slade's memory, clearest of all, showing how unreasonable and contrary he was. Two lickings. One that made him mad and one that made him glad--and that he was proud of. The licking that his brother had got, when he could, as he had told honest Pete Connigan, "feel the madness way down in his fingers." And the licking his father had given _him_ for not hanging out the flag.

"_Zey must be all fine people to haf' such a boy_," Frenchy had said.

He hoped he would not see Frenchy now.

But he was to be spared nothing. The second cabin saloon was filled with soldiers and they stared in amazement as the little group marched through, the steady thud, thud, of the guards' heavy shoes emphasized by the wondering stillness. Tom shuffled along with his usual clumsy gait, looking neither to right nor left. Up the main saloon stairway they went, and here, upon the top carpeted step sat Frenchy chatting with another soldier. He was such a hand to get off into odd corners for little chats! He stared, uttered an exclamation, then remembered that he was a soldier and caught himself. But he turned and following the little procession with astonished eyes until they disappeared.

The guardhouse was the little smoking-room where Tom and Frenchy had sat upon the sill and talked and Frenchy had given him the iron b.u.t.ton. Into the blank darkness of this place he and his brother were marched, and all through that long, dreadful night Tom could hear a soldier pacing back and forth, back and forth, on the deck just outside the door.

FOOTNOTE:

[2] The custom of putting arrested persons in the "brig" on liners and transports was discontinued by reason of the danger of their losing their lives without chance of rescue, in the event of torpedoing. The present rule is that the guardhouse must be above decks and a living guard must always be at hand.

CHAPTER XV

HE DOES MOST OF THE TALKING AND TAKES ALL THE BLAME

Tramp, tramp, tramp--all through the endless, wakeful hours he heard that soldier marching back and forth, back and forth, outside the door.

Every sound of those steady footfalls was like a blow, stinging afresh the cruel wound which had been opened in his impa.s.sive nature. He was under arrest and under guard. If he should try to get out that soldier would order him to halt, and if he didn't halt the soldier would shoot him. He wondered if the guard were Pickles.

He did not think at all about his deductive triumph now. And he did not care much about what they would do with him. He wondered a little what the soldiers would say--particularly Frenchy. But if only his brother would talk to him and ask about their mother he could bear everything else--the dashing of his triumph, the danger he was in, the shame. The shame, most of all.

He did not care so much now about being Sherlock n.o.body Holmes--he had had enough of that. And no matter what they thought of "Yankee Doodle Whitey," _he_ knew that he was loyal. Let them think that all his talk of Uncle Job and the flag and his father's patriotism was just bluff--let Frenchy think he had been just deceiving him--he could stand anything, if only his brother would be like a brother to him now that they were alone together.

It was a strange, unreasonable feeling.

Once, only once, in the long night, he tried to make his brother understand.

"Maybe you won't believe me, but I'm sorry," he said; "if you ain't asleep I wish you'd listen--Bill. Now that I told 'em I feel kind of different--I _had_ to tell 'em. I had to decide quick--and I didn't have n.o.body--anybody--to help me. Maybe you think I was crazy---- Are you listenin'?"

There was no response, but he knew his brother was not asleep.

"It ain't because I wanted 'em to think I was smart--Bill--if you think it was that, you're wrong. And anyway, it didn't show I was so smart--you was smarter, anyway, if it comes to that. I got to admit it.

'Cause you thought about it first--about using the dish. It served me right for thinking I could deduce, and all like that, anyway. You ain't asleep, are you?"

"Aw, shut up!" his brother grunted. "You could 'a' kept me out o' this by keepin' yer mouth shut. But you had to jabber it out, you----. And they'll plug me full of lead."

A cold shudder ran through Tom.

"I got to admit I'm a kind of a (he was going to say _traitor_, but for his brother's sake he avoided the word). I got to admit I wasn't loyal, too. I wasn't loyal to you, anyway. But I had to decide quick, Bill. And I saw I _had_ to tell 'em. You got to be loyal to Uncle Sam first of all. But--but---- Are you listening, Bill? I ain't mad, anyway. 'Cause Adolf Schmitt's most to blame. It ain't--it ain't 'cause I want to get let off free either, it ain't. I wouldn't care so much now what they did to me, anyway. 'Cause everything is kind of spoiled now about all of us--our family--being so kind of patriotic----"

His brother, goaded out of his sullenness, turned upon him with a tirade of profane abuse, leaving the boy shamed and silent.

And all the rest of that night Tom Slade, whose hand had extinguished the guiding light, perhaps, to some lurking submarine; who had had to "think quick and all by himself," and had decided for his Uncle Sam against his brother Bill, sat there upon the leather settee, feeling guilty and ashamed. He knew that he had done right, but his generous heart could not feel the black, shameless treason of his brother because his own smaller treason stood in the way. He could not see the full guilt of that wretched brother because he felt mean and contemptible himself. Truly, the soldier had hit the nail on the head when he said, "You're all right, Whitey!"

And now, suspected, shamed, sworn at and denounced, even now, as his generous nature groped for some extenuation for this traitor whose scheme he had discovered and exposed, he found it comforting to lay the whole blame and responsibility upon the missing Adolf Schmitt.

"Anyway, he tempted you," he said, though he knew his brother would neither listen nor respond. "Maybe you think I don't know that. He's worse than anybody--he is."

_You're all right, Whitey!_

CHAPTER XVI

HE SEES A LITTLE AND HEARS MUCH

Toward morning, he fell asleep, and when he awoke the vibration of the engines had ceased, and he heard outside the door of his prison a most uproarious clatter which almost drowned the regular footfalls of the soldier.

He had heard linotype machines in operation--which are not exactly what you would call quiet; he had listened to the outlandish voice of a suction-dredge and the tumultuous clamor of a threshing machine. But this earsplitting clatter was like nothing he had ever heard before.

The door opened and he was thankful to see that the soldier outside was not one of his particular friends. He was silently escorted to the wash room, in the doorway of which the guard waited while Tom refreshed himself after his sleepless night with a grateful bath.

The vessel, as he could see, was moored parallel with the abrupt brick sh.o.r.e of a very narrow ca.n.a.l, with somber, uninviting houses close on either hand. It was as if a ship were tied up along the curb of a street. Up and down the gang planks and back and forth upon the deck hurried men in blouses with great, clumsy wooden shoes upon their feet and now Tom saw the cause of that earsplitting clatter; and he knew that he had reached "over there."

Down on the brick street below the ship, a mult.i.tude of children, all in wooden shoes, danced and clattered about, in honor of the ship's arrival, and the windows were full of people waving the Stars and Stripes, calling "Vive l'Amerique!" and trying, with occasional success, to throw loose flowers and little round potatoes with French and American flags stuck in them, onto the deck.

All of the houses looked very dingy and old, and the men in blouses who pushed their clods about on this or that errand upon the troopship, were old, too, and had sad, worn faces. Only the children were joyful.