Part 9 (1/2)

He wondered how the mess plate had happened to be in the stateroom, anyway. Sherlock n.o.body Holmes again! But the crew, as well as the troops, carried their supper wherever they pleased to eat it. So there was nothing so strange about that. If there had been, why, Uncle Sam's all-seeing eye would not have missed it.

He fell to thinking of Bridgeboro again. And he thought of Adolf Schmitt and----

A phrase from one of those letters ran through his mind--_It's the same idea as a periscope_.

For a moment Tom Slade felt just as so often he had felt when he had found an indistinct footprint along a woodland trail. _What_ was the same idea as a periscope? What was a periscope, anyway?

Why, a thing on a submarine by means of which you could look two ways at once--you could look up through the ocean and across the ocean--all with one look.

He wondered whether Mr. Conne had noticed that rather puzzling phrase and whether the people on this s.h.i.+p had seen that letter. Mr. Conne had seemed to think that one the least important of the lot. Perhaps he had just told the s.h.i.+p's people to look out for spies. And they would do that anyway. The names of uniformed spies in the army cantonments--names in black and white--that was the important thing--the big discovery.

But Tom Slade was only a humble Sherlock n.o.body Holmes and he couldn't get that phrase out of his head.

_It's the same idea as a periscope._

A periscope is a kind of a--a kind of a----

Tom's brow was knit, just as when he used carefully and anxiously to move the gra.s.s away from an all but obliterated footprint, and his eyes were half closed and keen.

”I know what it is,” he said to himself, suddenly. ”It means how light can be pa.s.sed through a room even while the room is dark all the time--kind of reflected--and you wouldn't have to use any match.”

He stood still, almost frightened at his own conclusion. The clean, s.h.i.+ny mess plate and the phrase out of that letter seemed to fit together like the sections of a picture puzzle. The black spot and the match-end (if there was any match-end) meant just nothing at all. The dim light out in the pa.s.sageway down below hardly reached the dark staterooms, but----

He could not remember just how it was down there, but he knew that in the staterooms where the gla.s.s ports were locked (and that was the case with all of the crews' quarters below) air was admitted by a slightly opened panel transom over the door.

What should he do? Go and tell an officer about his discovery? If it _were_ a discovery that would be all very well. But after all, this was only a--a kind of a _deduction_. And they might laugh at him. He had always stood in awe of the officers and since last night he was mortally afraid of them. If he told any of the soldiers or even the steward they would only jolly him. He did not know exactly what he had better do.

He made up his mind that he would go down through the pa.s.sageway where those under engineers and electricians slept and see how it looked down there. He had been through there many times, but he thought that perhaps he would notice some thing now which would help to prove his theory and then perhaps they would listen to the captain's mess boy if he could muster the courage to speak.

He had just left the rail when he saw, some distance to starboard as it seemed, and well forward of the s.h.i.+p, an infinitesimal bluish brown spark. How he happened to notice it he did not know. ”Once a scout, always a scout,” perhaps. In any event, it was only by fixing his eyes intently upon it that he could keep it in sight. And even so, he lost it after a few seconds. He tried to find it again, but quite in vain. It had been about as conspicuous as a snowflake would have been in a gla.s.s of milk.

”Huh, if there's anyone on this s.h.i.+p can see _that_, he must be a peach.

Maybe up in the rigging you can see it better, though. If it's on the destroyer, she's quite a ways ahead of us----”

He squinted his eyes and, seeing a number of imaginary lights, decided that perhaps the other had been imaginary too. He crossed the saloon, went down the companionway and through the second cla.s.s cabin dining-room where the soldiers hailed him pleasantly, and, pa.s.sing the stokers' washroom, tiptoed along the dim, narrow pa.s.sageway.

CHAPTER X

HE GOES BELOW AND GROPES IN THE DARK

There were half a dozen or more staterooms along this pa.s.sage. At the end of it was the steep, greasy flight of iron steps leading down into the engine-rooms. Here, also, was a huge box with a hinged lid, filled with cotton waste. It was customary for one going down here to take a handful of this waste to protect his hands from the oily rail, and also on coming up to wipe his hands with a fresh lot. The very atmosphere of a s.h.i.+p's engine-room is oily. Here, also, were several fire-buckets in a rack.

Along the side of the pa.s.sage opposite the staterooms were electric bulbs at intervals, but only two of them were burning--just enough to light one through the narrow pa.s.sage. Above each closed door was a solid wooden transom, hinged at its lower side and opened at an angle into the room.

Tom moved quickly and very quietly, for he feared to be caught loitering here. He saw at once that only one of these staterooms could possibly be used for any such criminal purpose as he suspected, and that was the one with a light directly opposite it in the pa.s.sage, for the other light was beyond the staterooms.

For a few seconds he stood listening to the slow, monotonous sound of the machinery just below him. The vibration was very p.r.o.nounced here; the floor thumped with the pulsations of the mighty engines. And Tom's heart was thumping too.