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

“And so,” the lieutenant said, looking Nestor in the eyes, “you were waiting for the interests back of this thing to show their hand by trying to get the papers.”

“Yes,” replied Nestor, “I had an idea the interests would try to do a little stealing on their own hook.”

“But if they have secured the papers – ”

The lieutenant hesitated, and Nestor went on:

“If they have secured the papers, they know no more now than they did before. They are not out after information concerning their own plots. They are trying to reduce the outside supply of knowledge about their movements.”

“There was nothing said about papers being stolen, was there?” asked the lieutenant. “Perhaps the necklace really was the point of attack.”

Nestor turned to George Tolford.

“Do you know where Frank kept his necklace?” he asked.

“Sure I do,” was the quick reply. “He kept it in a hinky-dinky little safe up in his room. I told him he was foolish to take such a risk with it.”

“Did he keep the safe locked?”

“Locked! Not half the time. He would rush in there, open it up, and then run all over the house, leaving the door swinging.”

Nestor and the lieutenant now left the room, after asking the boys to wait there for a short time. Once out on the street, the lieutenant remarked:

“If the necklace was kept in Frank’s room, why did the thief take the pains to chloroform Mr. Shaw, who must have been in his own room?”

Nestor shrugged his shoulders for reply. That was a point he had already considered. Again the lieutenant asked a question:

“If the papers had been taken, wouldn’t that have been mentioned the very first thing? Wouldn’t Mr. Shaw think first of recovering them?”

“I don’t know,” replied Nestor. “The thing for us to do now is to find out who it was that entered the Shaw house to-night, and what was taken besides the necklace.”

CHAPTER III.

HOW THE TRICK WAS TURNED

Leaving the boys in the luxurious clubroom of the Black Bear Patrol, and promising to keep them posted as to the situation by ’phone, Lieutenant Gordon and Ned Nestor hastened in the direction of the Shaw residence, only three blocks away. A surprise awaited them at the Shaw door.

When they mounted the marble steps to the front portal they were astonished to see Jimmie McGraw standing in the shadow of a column, waiting for them with a grin on his face. He pushed the electric button for admittance as soon as they reached his side.

“What are you doing here?” demanded the lieutenant, trying hard to appear angry with the boy.

“Why, I just come over to tell Frank – ”

“Never mind that now,” said the lieutenant, interrupting. “If this is the way you obey orders you can’t go to the Canal Zone with me.”

“Well, you see,” Jimmie began, in a contrite tone, “I thought of something, after you left, that I wanted to say to Frank, and I knew he’d have asked for me if he’d ’a’ thought of it, so I just run over.”

“What was it you wanted to say to Frank?” asked the lieutenant, with a smile in Ned’s direction. The persistence of the boy pleased him, to say the least.

Just then the door was opened, saving Jimmie the exertion of manufacturing a smooth tale to tell the lieutenant, and the three entered the great hall of the fine residence, where they found Frank awaiting them.

“I was afraid you’d both left the clubroom and couldn’t be found,” he cried, as he took his friends by the hand. “Come right up to my room, and I’ll show you just how the thieves got the emerald necklace.”

“Perhaps we ought to see your father first,” Lieutenant Gordon suggested, thinking of something much more important, to him at least, than the bauble.

“Father is with Doctor Benson just now,” was the reply.

“Was he seriously injured?” asked Nestor, anxiously.

“Not a bit of it,” was the reply. “They just sneaked up behind him and stuffed a big handkerchief soaked with chloroform into his face. The drug knocked him out for a short time, but he is all right now. He told me to show you my room as soon as you came, and then to take you to him.”

“Who else is in the house?” asked Nestor.

“No one but Doctor Benson and the servants,” was the reply.

“Then the police have not been called?”

“No, indeed. I asked father to wait until you two came. I don’t take much stock in the cheap plain clothes men they send about on robbery cases. But come on up to my room, and I’ll show you what a sucker I am.”

“If I had said that,” Jimmie put in, “you’d ’a’ handed me one.”

“So Jimmie is on the case too,” laughed Frank. “Well, son, there’s money in it for the man who restores my emerald necklace, which I’m sure to get back, in the end. Why, that necklace has been stolen about a thousand times, and has always been restored to the rightful owner. Once it was found in the heart of Africa, in the kinky hair of a native. There’s blood on it, too, for men have been killed trying to steal it, and trying to prevent its being stolen. It’s the most valuable necklace in the world.”

The boy mounted the staircase as he spoke, leading the others to his room, which was at the front of the house on the second floor, directly over the apartment used by his father as a library, or study. The suite occupied by the boy was elegantly furnished, the only thing which marred the tasty arrangement of the place being a steel safe which stood between the two front windows of the sitting room.

“There,” said Frank, closing the door of the room behind the little party, “they got the necklace out of that safe.”

“How did they open it?” asked the lieutenant, and Jimmie laughed.

“Frank never closed a door in his life,” the boy said.

“Was the safe open?” asked Lieutenant Gordon.

“Yes,” was the reply, “it was open. I had just been there to get some money when I heard a scrap going on in the corridor and rushed out, leaving the door open, like a sucker. The necklace was taken while I was gone.”

“Anything else taken?” asked Ned.

“Not a thing. Oh, I guess the thief got a couple of dollars there was in the cash drawer, but nothing else was disturbed.”

“How long was he in the room?” asked the lieutenant.

“Oh, perhaps fifteen minutes. What I mean is that it must have been about that length of time before I came back here. You see, when I got out into the hall, Pedro, that’s one of Dad’s pet servants, was scrapping with two pirate-looking fellows at the head of the stairs. One of them had him by the throat when I came up.”

“And they both got away?” asked the lieutenant.

“Yes, they both got away. They turned and ran down stairs when I came up and bolted out of the front door, just as if some one stood there holding it open for them.”

“Was the night-lock on?”

“Certainly; it always is at night.”

“Couldn’t anybody open it from the inside, whether familiar with the house or not?” asked Ned.

“No; for the night-bolt is controlled by an electric button, which you have to push before it can be moved from the inside, so no one not familiar with the house could have opened it.”

Nestor glanced at the lieutenant with a question in his eyes, and the officer nodded. There was little doubt in the mind of either that the crime had been planned by some one thoroughly conversant with the premises. It was at least certain that exit had been made easy for the thieves.

“You spent this fifteen minutes, after the flight of the thieves by way of the front door, in your father’s room, I take it?” asked Ned.

“Yes; when the thieves ducked out of the front door I found a maid fainting in the corridor running along back of the parlor to Dad’s room, the place where he does his work while in the house. She flopped over when I spoke to her and pointed to Dad’s room. There I found him lying on the couch, drugged with chloroform.”

“They placed him on the couch, did they?”

“Oh, no, sir, the thieves didn’t take that trouble. Pedro was there before I entered the room, and it was he that did that. He had ’phoned for the doctor, too, before I got into the room.”

“He was chasing the thieves?” asked Ned.

“Why, yes. He was just ahead of me at the front door.”

“Then how did he get back and do so much before you reached the study?”

“I opened the front door and looked out for a couple of minutes,” was the reply. “I was rattled, of course, and don’t know how long I stood there, but I remember seeing two men running down the street. If I had known then that they had my emerald necklace, I’d have chased them and roared until the police came up and stopped them.”

“Then you came right in?”

“Yes; right to the corridor where I found the maid lying on the floor.”

“And you remained with your father until the doctor came, and then went back to your room? It was then that you discovered the loss of the emerald necklace?”

“Yes, I missed it when I came back.”

“You saw only two intruders?” asked Ned.

“There were only two.”

“And these two ran down the staircase just ahead of you?”

“Yes; they went down in about one leap.”

“Now, was the necklace in the safe when you went to it?”

“I am certain that it was.”

“You saw it there?”

“I saw the case in which it was enclosed.”

“And the case was gone when you returned?”

“Yes; oh, the necklace was taken from the safe during my absence, all right.”

“Yet the two men were ahead of you, and went out of the street door before you reached the lower landing?”

Frank’s face showed that the idea presented by Nestor was new to him. He had never considered that feature of the case. In fact, he had been so excited that he had not thought logically of the circumstances surrounding the theft.

“Well,” he said, “I reckon I need a hired man to do my thinking for me. Why didn’t that idea get into my thick head before?”

“Are you still certain that the necklace was in the safe when you left the room?” asked Ned, with a smile.

“Yes; I am dead sure of that. Why,” he added, “there must have been a man that I did not see. Wonder why he didn’t give me a clip on the head.”

“Someone will come here an’ steal you, some day,” grinned Jimmie.

“I don’t doubt it,” replied Frank. “Now, where do you think the other man was?” he asked, turning to Ned.

Ned arose and went into the sleeping room, from which opened a bathroom and a large closet. There was a door opening into the sleeping room from the corridor, the apartment being of the same length, east and west, as the sitting room. The closet opened from the sleeping room, and also from the bathroom.

“What do you find here?” asked Frank, following him into the closet and through into the bathroom.

“The third man might have been hiding in here,” Ned replied. “When were you in this bathroom last?” he added, looking carefully about the place.

“Not since early in the afternoon.”

“The suite was unoccupied all the afternoon?”

“Yes; I am rarely here in the afternoon.”

“What time did you come up here after dinner?”

“It was probably eight o’clock, for Dad was telling a rather interesting story at table, and we sat a long time. Mother is away on a visit to the Pacific coast.”

“And your father went to his room then?”

“Yes; he said he had some work to do.”

“His room, also, was unoccupied all the afternoon?”

“Yes; it must have been.”

“Who is usually about the lower part of the house during the afternoon?”

“No one when mother is away.”

“Do you know whether anything was taken from your father’s room?”

“Why, I haven’t heard that feature of the case discussed. We can soon find out by asking him.”

“Gee!” cried Jimmie. “What would they want to go an’ dope him for if there wasn’t something in his room they wanted?”

“That is a very pertinent question,” Lieutenant Gordon remarked. “It certainly seems that the thieves came here for something besides the emerald necklace.”

“Meaning the papers?” asked Ned, with a laugh.

“Meaning the papers, of course,” was the reply. “I am still of the opinion that the theft of the necklace was only incidental.”

“It begins to look that way to me,” observed Frank. “As Jimmie says, what would they attack father for unless they wanted to search his room?”

“You know about the papers?” asked the lieutenant.

“Yes, indeed. They constituted the subject of the interesting story Dad was telling me at table to-night.”

“Did he tell you what they contained?” asked Ned.

“He did not. He told me only what they dealt with.”

“He believes there is a plot against the completion of the Panama canal?”

“Oh, yes; he is quite certain of it.”

“Did he mention the parties he suspected?”

“He refused to do so. I can’t understand why he should refuse. Can you?”

“I think I can appreciate his position,” replied Ned.

“Great Scott!” cried Frank. “Do you think the agents of the men we are to grapple with in the Canal Zone have been in this house to-night? If so, it looks like they were looking us up, instead of our being after them.”

“Where is this man Pedro?” asked Ned, not answering the question.

“He was in the study when I left, a few moments ago.”

“Then we will go down there. I want to ask him a few questions.”

At the foot of the staircase, they heard the telephone ringing, and Frank went into the closet. When he came out again he seemed excited and unnerved.

“I guess there’s something more than the necklace at stake to-night,” he said, “for Dad’s rooms in the newspaper building have been ransacked. I guess we won’t have to go down to Gatun to lock horns with the men who are in this plot against Uncle Sam. If the Gatun dam was in New York, they might have blown it up to-night, for all that has been done to thwart them.”

“Well, we’ve just got to work on the case,” grinned Jimmie.

CHAPTER IV.

THE MAN IN THE CLOSET

“If you take my advice,” Ned said to Frank, as they reached the study door, “you won’t say anything to your father about the trouble at the office until we have talked with him concerning the raid on the house. He might rush off to the newspaper building immediately, without answering our questions about the visit to his room.”

“That is just what he would do,” Frank replied.

When the boys entered the study, closely followed by Lieutenant Gordon and Jimmie, they found three men in the room. One was Mr. Shaw, lying on a couch at the front of the apartment. One was Dr. Benson, who sat in an easy chair at his side. The third was Pedro, the servant mentioned by Frank as one of his father’s favored attendants. He stood by the couch as the boys stepped into the room, his bold black eyes studying their faces impertinently as they entered.

The man was not far from forty, tall, slender, dusky of face – plainly in intellectual capacity and breeding far above the menial position he occupied in the house. Standing in repose, his figure was erect and well balanced, like that of a man trained to military service.

But even as he stood subserviently by the couch of his employer, his slender hands at his sides, there seemed to be something of the alertness of a wild beast in his physical attitude of suppression. Somehow, he gave Ned the impression of one about to spring forth upon an enemy.

After the presentations were made, it was with the greatest difficulty that Lieutenant Gordon restrained himself from at once taking up the topic he had discussed with Mr. Shaw so unsatisfactorily that afternoon – the subject of the plot against the Gatun dam. What did the editor know? What did he suspect concerning the raid on his home? Did he believe that the plotters had opened their defense right there in the city of New York?

However, he curbed his hasty impulse, knowing that the information he sought was not to be obtained in that way. Mr. Shaw was looking upon the matter entirely from the standpoint of an enterprising journalist, and would be cautious about giving out his own discoveries and impressions.

“Are you still suffering from the effects of the chloroform?” asked the lieutenant, anxiously.

“I’m still a little weak,” was the reply, “and still a little tippy at the stomach, but Benson tells me that I shall be well again in an hour.”

“You were of course attacked without warning,” the lieutenant continued, half hoping that the editor would enter into a full and frank discussion of the event.

“Entirely so,” was the reply. “I was sitting at my desk when the door was opened and some one entered. I thought it was Pedro, for I had just rung for him, and did not look around. Then I was seized from behind and a handkerchief soaked with chloroform thrust into my face.”

“You did not see your assailant?” asked Ned.

“Now for the cross-examination,” laughed the editor. “I have heard something of Mr. Nestor’s work in the secret service,” he added, “and shall be glad to answer any of his questions. Go ahead, my boy. No, to answer your first question, I did not see my assailant, and do not know whether there were two or only one.”

“Did you notice the time?” asked Ned, modestly.

“Yes, it was nine o’clock. The next I knew, Pedro was lifting me onto the couch, and a maid was lifting her voice to high heaven out in the corridor. That, I have since learned, was at ten o’clock, so, you see, the ruffians had an hour to work in.”

“They must have mussed the room up quite a lot in that time,” said the lieutenant, hoping to bring the editor to the point in which he was interested.

Mr. Shaw made no reply, but turned to Ned with a smile.

“Go ahead, Ned,” Frank cried. “We all want to know what ideas are brooding in that clever brain of yours.”

“I would like to ask,” Ned began, modestly, “if you can assign a reason for the attack upon you.”

“Why, they came into the house after the emerald necklace,” was the reply. “They looked here for it first. That is all.”

“But it appears that they knew the necklace to be in Frank’s safe,” urged Ned. “At least it did not take them long to find it there after the safe was unlocked and he was brought from his room.”

“Oh, well, they probably looked here first,” insisted the editor. “The manner in which they rummaged the place while I was unconscious shows that they searched for it here. The necklace was the thing sought, of course.”

“Did they take anything from the room?” asked Ned, and Lieutenant Gordon leaned forward, anxiously awaiting the answer.

“Not a thing,” was the quiet reply. “At least, I have missed nothing.”

“Perhaps the thing they sought was not found,” suggested Gordon, no longer able to keep the plot subject out of the conversation.

“I know what you mean, Lieutenant,” the other replied, “and I may as well tell you now that the papers to which you refer are not in the house – were not here and never have been here. They are perfectly safe, and we will drop them from the case, if you please.”

“I am naturally anxious about them,” said Gordon, “in the interest of the government, of course, for I believe they hold the key to a mystery I am asked to solve.”

“You may be mistaken as to the contents of the papers,” laughed Mr. Shaw. “Well,” he added, “we will eliminate them from the matter in hand. What next, Mr. Nestor? I have great hope of your success in unraveling this mystery of the necklace.”

“With your permission,” Ned replied, “and in your presence, I would like to ask your man a few questions.”

Pedro turned a pair of venomous eyes toward the speaker for just an instant. Then he stood respectfully looking at his master again. Ned saw the movement, the quick hostility of the glance, and felt surer of his ground than before.

“He will, I am sure, be happy to answer any questions you may ask,” said Mr. Shaw.

Pedro nodded, half defiantly, as though he felt humiliated by being placed at the service, even a verbal one, of a boy, and Ned asked:

“When you saw the men at the head of the staircase, what did you say to them?”

The answer came in perfect English, yet there was a something in the voice which told as plainly as words could have done that English was not the native tongue of the speaker.

“I ordered them from the house,” he said.

“And then they attacked you?”

“The mark of a hand is on my throat, sir.”

“How many men were there?”

“Two, sir, and they both piled on top of me.”

“There was no one else in the corridor?”

“No one.”

“They were armed, I presume?”

“I saw no weapons in their hands.”

“They might have killed you?”

“Only for the arrival of Master Shaw they might have done so.”

“Can you describe these men?” asked Ned.

“I don’t think I can, sir. I was too busy to notice their faces or their clothes during the short time I was with them.”

“Can you say whether one of them was tall and slender, with very black hair, turning gray in places?” asked Ned, fixing his eyes on those of the servant.

Pedro looked back at his questioner for an instant, and then his gaze fell to the floor.

“I can’t say,” he replied, slowly, while the others, amazed at the character of the question, turned to Ned for explanation.

“If the description I have given is recognized by you as that of one of the men you met in the corridor,” Ned went on, “can you tell me whether his clothing was wet or dry?”

There was dead silence in the room. There had been nothing thus far in the case leading up to this description, and those present looked at Ned with wonder in their faces. To say the least, the questions seemed irrelevant.

Pedro stood for a moment touching his dry lips with the tip of his tongue, his fingers clasping and unclasping, then his shoulders straightened into firmer lines and he faced his questioner with a smile of complacency.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said.

“Perhaps I should have said damp clothing,” Ned replied. “The man I have in mind – the man who might have been one of your assailants – entered the house just after the rainstorm, which came on close after six o’clock. His clothing was soaking wet when he came in, but would not remain so for four hours.”

Pedro grasped the back of a chair which stood near him and looked out of the window to the lighted street in front of the house. While he stood silent Mr. Shaw arose to a sitting position on the couch and asked:

“Why the description, Mr. Nestor? Why the positive statement about the time at least one of the men entered the house?”

Every eye in the room was now fixed on Nestor’s face. Even Lieutenant Gordon seemed inclined to think that some huge joke was being pulled off.

“The man who came in at six,” Ned replied, “came in out of the rain, and left marks showing the height and breadth of his shoulders on a wall against which he leaned. These marks show a man tall and slender. He entered the house dripping with water, moving about like a street sprinkler and leaving signs of his presence in the places he visited. He seems to be a person of rather refined tastes, inclined to be neat in personal appearance, for he went to Frank’s bathroom to clean up. There he used the washbowl and the toilet articles, leaving black hair turning gray in the comb.”

“This is uncanny,” shouted Frank. “You couldn’t have observed all this during the minute you were in the bathroom,” he added.

Mr. Shaw considered the question gravely, his eyes fixed on those of the boy.

“He sprinkled the closet floor, did he?” he asked, presently.

“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.