Tom Slade with the Colors Part 17

"Oh, yes, that was Doctor Curry from Ohio," laughed the first officer indulgently. "I hunted him up on the purser's list--_he's_ all right. He flew off the handle because his baggage didn't come. He's all right, boy."

"The man that started the English scouts," said Tom, undaunted, "says if you want to find out if a person is foreign, you got to get him mad.

Even if he talks good English, when he gets excited he'll say some words funny like."

The captain turned upon his heel.

"But that ain't what I was going to say, either," said Tom dully.

"Anybody that knows anything about wireless work knows that operators have to have exactly the right time. That's the first thing they learn--that their watches have got to be exactly right--even to the second. I know, 'cause I studied wireless and I read the correspondence catalogues."

"Well?" encouraged the Secret Service man.

But it was pretty hard to hurry Tom.

"The person that put that bomb there," said he, "probably started it going and set it after he got it fixed on the shelf; and he'd most likely set it by his own watch. You can see that clock is over an hour slow. I was wonderin' how anybody's watch would be an hour slow, but if that Doctor Curry came from Ohio maybe he forgot to set his watch ahead in Cleveland. I know you have to do that when you come east, 'cause I heard a man say so."

A dead silence prevailed, save for the subdued whistling of the Secret Service man, as he scratched his head and eyed Tom sharply.

"How old are you, anyway?" said he.

"Seventeen," said Tom. "I helped a feller and got misjudged," he added irrelevantly. "A scout is a brother to every other scout--all over the world. 'Specially now, when England and France are such close partners of ours, like. So I'm a brother to that wireless operator, if he used to be a scout.--Maybe I got no right to ask you to do anything, but maybe you'd find out if that man's watch is an hour slow. Maybe you'd be willing to do that before you send a wireless."

The captain looked full at Tom, with a quizzical, shrewd look. He saw now, what he had not taken the trouble to notice before: a boy with a big mouth, a shock of rebellious hair, a ridiculously ill-fitting jacket, and a peaked cat set askew. Instinctively Tom pulled off his cap.

"What's your name?" said the captain.

"Tom Slade," he answered, nervously arranging his long arms in the troublesome, starched sleeves. "In the troop I--used to belong to," he ventured to add, "they called me Sherlock n.o.body Holmes, the fellers did, because I was interested in deduction and things like that."

For a moment the captain looked at him sternly. Then the Secret Service man, still whistling with a strangely significant whistle, stepped over to Tom.

"Put your cap on," said he, "frontways, like that; now come along with me, and we'll see if Doctor Curry from Ohio can accommodate us with the time."

He put his arm over Tom's shoulder just as Mr. Ellsworth used to do, and together they left the store-room. It seemed to Tom a very long while since any one had put an arm over his shoulder like that....

CHAPTER XIX

THE TIME OF DAY

When that flippant youth, Archibald Archer, making his morning rounds from stateroom to stateroom, beheld Tom Slade hurrying along the promenade deck under the attentive convoy of one of Uncle Sam's sleuths, he was seized with a sudden fear that his protege was being arrested as a spy.

But Tom was never farther from arrest in all his life. He hurried along beside his companion, feeling somewhat apprehensive, but nevertheless quite important.

The federal detective was small and agile, with a familiar, humorous way about him which helped to set Tom at ease. He had a fashion of using his cigar as a sort of confidential companion, working it over into one corner of his mouth, then into the other, and poking it up almost perpendicularly as he talked. Tom liked him at once, but he did not know whether to take literally all that he said or not.

"Long as you told me your name, I guess I might as well tell you mine, hey? Conne is my name--Carleton Conne. Sounds like a detective in a story, don't it? My great-great-grandfather's mother-in-law on my sister's side was German. I'm trying to live it down."

"What?" said Tom.

Mr. Conne screwed his cigar over to the corner of his mouth and looked at Tom with a funny look.

"You see, we want to meet the doctor before he has a chance to change his watch," said Mr. Conne more soberly. "If he set that thing a little after nine last night (and he couldn't have set it before), he was probably too busy thinking of getting off the ship to think of much else. And he ought to be just coming out of his stateroom by now. We must see him before he sees a clock. You get me?"

"Yes, sir," said Tom, a little anxious; "but I might be wrong, after all."

"Maybe," said Mr. Conne. "There are three things we'll have to judge by: There's his trying to get off the ship last night, and there's the question of how his watch stands, and there's the question of how he acts when we talk with him--see?"

"Yes, sir."

"Since you're a detective, remember this," Mr. Conne added good-humoredly: "it's part of the A B C of the business. Three middle-sized clues are better than one big one--if they hang together.

Six little ones aren't as good as three middle-sized ones, because sometimes they seem to hang together when they don't really--see?"

"Yes, sir."

"Where'd you ever get your eyes and ears, anyway?" said Mr. Conne abruptly.

"You learn to be observant when--you're a scout," said Tom.

Mr. Conne moved briskly along the deck, and Tom kept beside him with his rather clumsy gait. Here and there little groups of pa.s.sengers stood chatting as they waited for breakfast. Among them were a few men in khaki whom Tom understood to be army surgeons and engineers--the forerunners of the legions who would "come across" later.

"Which would you rather be," queried Mr. Conne, "a detective or a wireless operator?"

"I'd rather be a regular soldier," said Tom; "I made up my mind to it.

I'm only waiting till I'm eighteen."

Mr. Conne gave him a shrewd sideways glance, his cigar pointing upward like a piece of field artillery.

"But I hope I can work on this ship when she's a regular transport, and keep working on her till I'm eighteen."

"You haven't answered my question yet."

"I don't know which I'd rather be," said Tom.

"Hmmm," said Mr. Conne.

At the after-companionway he picked up a deck steward and asked him to point out Dr. Curry, if he was about.

"What do you suppose became of the other operator?" Tom asked, a little anxiously.

"I don't know," said Mr. Conne. "We'll have to find some one who does know," he added significantly, and Tom wondered what he meant.

"Do you think he's guilty of anything?" he asked.

"Don't know. You've knocked my theories all endways, young fellow," Mr.

Conne said pleasantly; and then he added, smiling, "You say he was a scout; I'm getting to have a pretty good opinion of scouts."