Part 17 (1/2)

”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 fas.h.i.+on 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.