Tom Slade with the Colors Part 18

"But those finger-prints----"

"Were his," concluded Mr. Conne.

Tom was greatly puzzled, but he said nothing. Soon Dr. Curry was pointed out to them. He was pacing up and down the deck, and paused at the rail as they neared so that they were able to get a good look at him. He was tall and thin, with a black mustache and a very aristocratic hooked nose. Perhaps there was the merest suggestion of the foreigner about him, but nothing in particular to suggest the German unless it were a touch of that scornfully superior air which is so familiar in pictures of the Kaiser.

"So that's the Doctor, is it?" Mr. Conne commented, eyeing him with his cigar c.o.c.ked up sideways. "Looks kind of savage, huh?"

But the doctor's savage mien did not phase Mr. Conne in the least, for he sauntered up to him with a friendly and familiar air, though Tom was trembling all over.

"Excuse me, would you oblige me with the time?" Mr. Conne said pleasantly.

The stranger wheeled about suddenly with a very p.r.o.nounced military air and looked at his questioner.

"The time? Yes, sir," he said, with brisk formality and taking out his watch. "It is just half-past six."

Mr. Conne drew out his own watch and looked at it for a moment as if perplexed. "Then one of us is about an hour out of the way," he said sociably, while Tom stood by in anxious suspense. "According to the alarm clock down in the store-room, I guess _you're_ right," he added.

"What?" said the pa.s.senger, disconcerted.

"According to the time-bomb down below," repeated Mr. Conne, still sociably but with a keen, searching look. "What's the matter? You suffering from nerves, Doctor?"

The sudden thrust, enveloped in Mr. Conne's easy manner, had indeed taken the doctor almost off his feet.

"I do not understand you, sir," he said, with forbidding dignity and trying to regain his poise.

"Well, then, I'll explain," said Mr. Conne; "you forgot to set your watch when you left Cleveland, Doc, so there won't be any explosion down below at nine o'clock, and there won't be any at all--so don't worry."

He worked his cigar over into the corner of his mouth and looked up at his victim in a tantalizing manner, waiting. And he was not disappointed, for in the angry tirade which the pa.s.senger uttered it became very apparent that he was a foreigner. Mr. Conne seemed quietly amused.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "ACCORDING TO THE ALARM CLOCK DOWN IN THE STORE-ROOM, I GUESS YOU'RE RIGHT." Page 144]

"Doc," said he sociably, almost confidentially, "I believe if it hadn't been for this youngster here, you'd have gotten away with it. It's too bad about your watch being slow--German reservists and ex-army officers ought to remember when they're traveling that this is a wide country and that East is East and West is West, as old brother Kipling says. When you're coming across Uncle Sam's backyard to blow up ships, it's customary to put your watch an hour ahead in Cleveland, Doc. Didn't they tell you that? Where's all your German efficiency? Here's a wideawake young American youngster got you beaten to a stand-still----"

"This is abominable!" roared the man.

"Say that again, Doc," laughed Mr. Conne. "I like the way you say it when you're mad. So that's why you didn't get off the ship in time last night, eh?" he added, with a touch of severity. "Watch slow! Bah! You're a bungler, Doc! First you let your watch get you into a tight place, then you let it give you away.

"I don't know who you are, except you came from west of Cleveland; but here's an American boy, never studied the German spy system, and, by jingoes, he's tripped you up--and saved a dozen ships and a half a dozen munition factories, for all I know. German efficiency--bah! The Boy Scouts have got you nailed to the mast! This is the kind of boys we're going to send over, Doc. Think you can lick 'em?"

Tom was blushing scarlet and breathing nervously as the fierce, contemptuous gaze of the tall man was bent for a brief second upon him.

But Mr. Conne winked pleasantly at him, and it quite nullified that scornful look.

Then, suddenly, the detective became serious, interrupting the stranger, who had begun to speak again, and brushing his words aside.

"You'll have to show me your pa.s.sport, sir," he said, "and any other papers you have. I'll go to your stateroom with you. Then I'm going to lock you up. I'll expect you to tell me, too, what became of the young fellow who happened to discover you down below last night. You and he had a little scuffle down there, I take it.--Better run along about your duties now, Tom, and I'll see you later."

CHAPTER XX

A NEW JOB

For a few moments Tom stood gaping at the receding figures, with Mr.

Conne's remark ringing in his ears: _I shall expect you to tell me what became of the young fellow who happened to discover you down below last night._

Was that the possible explanation of the missing wireless boy? The thought of this complication shocked him. What could it mean? The detective had evidently fitted the whole thing together.

Finger-prints were finger-prints, thought Tom, and a finger-print with illegible markings in the center meant a telegraph operator, so far as this particular incident was concerned. He so greatly admired Mr. Conne that as usual he forgot to admire himself....

The man must have been discovered, either in the act of placing the bomb, or perhaps of trying to remove it when he found that he must sail with the ship, and there had been a scuffle and----

And what? Where was the wireless boy?

Alas, though the spy was apprehended, it was to be many long months before the mystery of the missing wireless boy should be cleared up. And who, of all the people in the world, do you suppose cleared it up? Who but Pee-wee Harris (don't laugh) and his trusty belt-axe. But that is part of another story.

The arrest of "Dr. Curry" as a German spy and plotter was a nine hours'

wonder on the ship, and the part which Tom Slade had played in the affair did not pa.s.s without comment. Neither the ship's officers nor Mr.

Conne took him into their confidence as to the character of the papers found on the "doctor," but he understood that that scornful personage was safely lodged somewhere "below," and Mr. Conne did go so far as to tell him that "our friend" had set his watch right. Tom did not dare to ask questions, even of his friend the detective, who chatted pleasantly with him whenever they met.

He was the last boy in the world to expect more consideration than was due him or to make much of his own exploits, and if his superiors did not take him into partnership and make him their confidant and adviser, as undoubtedly they would have done in a story, they at least treated him with rather more consideration than is usually given to ships' boys, and the awkward young fellow in the ill-fitting duck jacket and peaked hat askew was pointed out among the army men and pa.s.sengers, as he occasionally pa.s.sed along the decks, as one who had a head on his shoulders and a pair of eyes in his head.

No one questioned that he had saved the vessel by making known the clew which had sent Dr. Curry to the ship's lock-up, and Tom, satisfied to have done something worth while for Uncle Sam, attended to his menial duties, and did not think of very much else.

But if Uncle Sam's Secret Service man had thought it best not to be too confidential with him, kind Fate decreed that it should be Tom Slade and none other who should clinch the case against this foreign wretch whose plans he had thwarted.

It happened the very next day, beginning with a circ.u.mstance which made Tom feel indeed like a hero in a cheap thriller.

"The captain wants to see you," said a young officer from the bridge, as Tom sat with his flippant but now humble admirer, Archibald Archer, upon one of the after-hatches.

"Me?" stammered Tom.

"He's going to make you first mate," said Archer, "and give you ten thousand dollars--go ahead."

"What?" said Tom.

"That's the way they do in the _d.i.c.k Dauntless Series_; go ahead--beat it!"

Tom followed the officer forward and up those awful steps which led to the holy of holies where the master of the ship held his autocratic sway.

The captain sat in a sumptuously furnished cabin, and Tom stood before him, holding his cap in one hand, clutching his long, starched sleeve with the other, and greatly awed at the surroundings.

"You said something about understanding wireless," said the captain. "Do you think you could be of a.s.sistance to the operator?"

"I ain't--I'm not an operator," stammered Tom, "but I know the American code and the International code and some of the International abbreviations. I can send and receive with my own instrument, but it's a kind of--not exactly a toy, but----"

"Hmm. What I mean is, could you work under the operator's direction, so that he could get a little sleep now and then? He'd sleep right in the wireless room."