Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone: or, The Plot Against Uncle Sam

“Yes, sir; and stood back against the closet wall, and used Frank’s comb and brush.”

“Did he come to this room, also?”

“Yes, sir; the little round spots on the delicate covering of this little table were made by dripping water. You see, sir, he was in here before the water dripped off his clothes in the closet, probably soon after he entered the house.”

“But how did he get into the house? How did he get into this locked room?”

“I should say that he was assisted by some one belonging in the house,” was the quiet reply. “After he left this room he mounted the staircase and hid in Frank’s closet, evidently waiting for you to return home, or for Frank to come. Perhaps he hoped that one of you might bring home the thing, or the things, he had been unable to find in your rooms.”

“The papers concerning the Gatun plot, for instance,” said the lieutenant.

The editor glanced at the officer with a slight frown on his brow, but made no reply to the remark. It was plain that he was unwilling to take up that phase of the case.

“It is a wonder the fellow didn’t jimmy Frank’s safe and get the emerald necklace, without waiting so long for the safe to be opened,” he said, in a moment.

Thus insisting on his previously expressed opinion that the sole purpose of the thieves had been to secure the emerald necklace, further disclaiming any belief that the alleged plot against the government had figured in the matter at all, the editor smiled provokingly at the officer.

Nestor looked from the lieutenant to the newspaper owner and smiled quietly.

“I wish I knew,” he said, “whether the papers we hear so much about really reveal the details of an alleged plot against the government.”

Mr. Shaw did not reply.

“If they do not,” continued the boy, “do they connect some man, or some group of men, with a plot which may be forming?”

The editor glanced approvingly at Ned, as if rather pleased with his cleverness, but did not speak.

“I have known newspaper men,” Ned went on, “to make mistakes in such matters. However, I have no doubt that you have good reasons for the course you are taking,” he continued, “and therefore I have no fault to find with you.”

“You’re a fine fellow, Mr. Nestor,” the editor exclaimed. “Some day, when you see the matter in the right light, I’ll tell you all about it. I can’t do so now, for no end of trouble might come from it.”

“Very well,” replied Ned. “There is one more question I want to ask you. Will you answer it?”

“If I can consistently do so, yes.”

“If the men who searched this house to-night were after the necklace, and that alone, why should they extend their operations to your offices in the newspaper building?”

“Did they do that?” asked the editor calmly. “Then I shall have to go down there and look things over. Will you kindly accompany me?”

But the search at the offices was barren of clues.

CHAPTER V.

AT THE GREAT GATUN DAM

“Over there is the oldest country on this side of the world,” said Peter Fenton, pointing over the rail of the vessel and across the smooth waters of the Caribbean sea. “We are now on the famous Spanish Main,” he continued, “where adventurers from the Windward Islands laid in wait for the galleons of Spain. Just ahead, rising out of the sea, is the Isthmus of Panama. Down there to the left is the continent of South America, where there were cathedrals and palaces when Manhattan Island was still populated by native Indians.”

The minds of the Boy Scouts were filled with splendid dreams as they followed with their eyes the directions indicated by the pointing hand. It was all a fairyland to them. Peter talked for some time on the causes which had brought the scum of the seven seas to the Isthmus, and then Ned Nestor interrupted the talk by inviting them all to the stateroom he occupied in common with Frank Shaw.

When all were seated on chairs and bunks Ned opened the door and looked out on the passage which ran along in front of the apartment. When he turned back into the room there was a humorous twinkle in his eyes.

“His Nobbs is in sight,” he said.

“The same party?” asked Frank.

“The same dusky gentleman who has followed us since the night of the theft of the emerald necklace,” Ned replied.

“He ought to receive a Carnegie medal for always being on the spot,” Frank said.

“We ought to turn the hose on him,” Jimmie corrected.

“We should feel lost without him,” laughed George Tolford. “When I first saw him in the newspaper building, while you were investigating the chaos of papers in Mr. Shaw’s rooms,” he went on, “I had a hunch that we shouldn’t be able to lose him.”

“Well, we haven’t been able to lose him,” Peter Fenton said. “He reminds me, the way he floats about, of the ghost of some pirate who sailed about the Spanish Main four hundred years ago in a long, low, rakish craft adorned with a black flag.”

“I saw him in the newspaper building that night,” Jimmie said, “an’ he looked glad because we got no clues there.”

“Why didn’t Ned have him arrested in New York?” asked Jack Bosworth.

“What for?” demanded Jimmie.

“For making a nuisance of himself. Then he couldn’t have followed us on board the ship. Also, he might have been able to get a little sleep nights.”

“I reckon we have kept him going,” Frank observed, with a laugh.

Ever since the night of the robbery the man called “His Nobbs” for want of a better name had kept Ned Nestor in sight most of the time. He had followed him home after the profitless visit to the newspaper office on the night of the theft, had chased about after him while the details of the trip to Panama were arranged the next day, and had turned up on the ship after she was under way.

The fellow did not seem to be overly anxious to keep his watchfulness a secret. He acted like any first cabin passenger on the ship. But, somehow, he managed to keep Ned in view most of the time. Now and then he was caught watching the door of Ned’s stateroom. He never spoke to the boy, and never even looked at him when the two passed one another.

Taking advantage of this preference for Ned’s company, the boys had put up all sorts of jobs on the fellow, and some of their pranks had kept him watching Ned’s odd moves all night. It was a new and strange experience to Ned, this being spied upon so openly, and he was at a loss to account for the mental processes which inspired the strange surveillance.

“Well,” said Ned presently, “let him watch outside if he wants to. We came in here to talk about something else. I have just been talking with Lieutenant Gordon, and he says we are to go into camp in the jungle not far from the Gatun dam. He will stop at the Tivoli, at Ancon, adjoining Panama. When we have anything to communicate to him, one of us can go down to Panama after supplies and leave word at an office where one of the lieutenant’s associates in the case will always be in waiting. We are not to know the lieutenant if we meet him in our soup.”

“We’ll be eaten alive out there in the jungle,” protested Jimmie.

“Besides, it would be more natural for us to go to Gatun for our supplies,” Peter Fenton said.

“There are reasons why he wants us to remain in the jungle near Gatun for a time,” Ned replied, and the boys separated, Jimmie strolling off in the wake of “His Nobbs,” “just to see if he couldn’t make him cough up something,” as he expressed it.

The mystery of the theft of the emerald necklace was still unsolved, the man whose picture Ned carried in his brain had not been found, Pedro had been among the missing ever since he had walked out of the Shaw residence on the morning after the robbery. When the boys landed at Colon the next morning the case upon which they were engaged was still new ground before them.

Frank Shaw continued to take the loss of his emeralds very seriously, and at no time during the trip to Colon had he failed to keep an eye out for Pedro, whom he suspected of having admitted the thief to the house.

“His name isn’t Pedro at all,” he said, as the train sped out of the network of tracks behind Colon, “but Pedrarias. That was the name of the robber who succeeded Balboa as governor of New Granada, the pirate who stood Balboa up against a wall and shot him. Pedro, as I call him for short, declares that he is a direct descendant of that old stiff. He says the Spanish blood in his veins is pure. Great Scott! if I had such a pirate for an ancestor, I’d keep mighty still about it.”

Peter Fenton was in his element now. As the train moved away from Colon he pointed out various points of interest, and supplied such information about them as he had gleaned from the maps and books he had consulted. The ruins of the old French workings were soon in sight, the locality where millions had been squandered in graft. And there was Mount Hope Cemetery, where thousands who had perished from fever had been buried.

“The doctors have cleaned out the fever now,” he said, “by cleaning out the mosquitoes – the poison kind with the long name,” he added. “The Canal Zone is about as healthy now as the city of New York.”