SHERLOCK ON THE TRAIL
Sherlock Jones muttered vengefully to himself as he slowly stripped and
removed his sopping clothes after the battle. Moodily he donned a dry
outfit, pulled a sweater over his head, and stalked from the littered
tent.
Between two pine trees a few yards away, a rustic bench had been built.
Sherlock sat down, drew a thin book from his pocket, and began to read.
He had barely cast his eye down one page when a shadow fell on his arm,
and he looked up to see Wild Willie Sanders surveying him curiously.
“What’s bitin’ you?” asked Wild Willie. “You look mad as a wet hen.”
Sherlock scowled. “Something terrible’s going to happen around this
camp!” he said with a profound air of secrecy.
The other boy laughed scornfully. “Huh! That’s what you’re always
saying! Always acting mysterious, as if you thought somebody was going
to commit a murder any minute! Reading that book again, too, I see!
What’s the name of it?”
With a swift movement, he jerked the thin volume from Sherlock’s hand,
and read the title. “‘How to Be a Detective in 10 Lessons, by the
Fireside Correspondence School.’ Say, what makes you think you’re a
natural-born sleuth, anyway?”
Sherlock peered up pleadingly, blinking his pale blue eyes behind the
large, window-like lenses of a pair of horn-rimmed glasses that rested
on his long, inquisitive nose. “Here, give me that, Wild Willie! Give me
back that book!”
“All right, Mr. Detective.” The boy tossed the book down, and grunted.
“Say, you better quit shadowing Chink Towner all over the place. He’s
getting mad about it, and told me he’d swat you one if you didn’t stop
following him.”
Again Sherlock gave him a solemn glance. “Shh! I got information that
he’s a smuggler!”
“A smuggler? What do you mean?”
“Well, anyway, he’s probably a Chinese spy in disguise.”
Wild Willie laughed derisively. “Say, I’ve known Chink Towner all my
life, and he’s no more a smuggler than the Chief is! Why he’s not even a
Chinaman—we just call him Chink because he kind of looks that way. You
better get these nutty ideas out of your head before you get hurt. It’s
just like that time you told me that Leggy and all the other colored
fellows in the kitchen were counterfeiters.”
Sherlock winced. This affair was another of his failures to discover a
secret threat of Crime hanging over the heads of his fellow campers. One
evening soon after the camp season had started, he had been listening
outside the shack where these dusky young men lived, back of the
ice-house, and had heard the whirr of machinery and the proud voice of
Leggy, assistant cook, remarking: “Yas suh, dis here ma-sheen is sure
goin’ to make lots o’ money for us all!” His hope of fame as a great
detective was blasted next day in mess-hall, however, when that same
Leggy announced that he had “brought a sewing-machine to camp with him
and was prepared, for a nominal sum of money, to mend rips and tears in
the campers’ clothing.”
“Never mind about that,” he said desperately. “People around this camp
are going to be pretty glad they’ve got a live-wire detective on the
job. Pretty soon you’ll wish you’d listened to me.”
“Why? What’s going to happen?”
“Some people around here will bear watching, that’s all!” Sherlock cast
a meaning glance in the direction of Tent Ten, where the twins had set
about clearing up the devastated tent and making up the bunks into a
semblance of orderliness.
Wild Willie stared in unbelief, and again broke into a laugh. “You mean
the Utway brothers? Say, if you take my advice, you’ll keep away from
those two! Everybody knows they scrap with each other now and then, but
if you try to tackle one of them, you’ll have both of them coming down
on your neck! What have you got against them?”
“Well,” said Sherlock slowly, “Jake threw around my good camera-case,
and Jerry dumped a whole bucket of water on me——”
“That’s no crime, is it? What’s mysterious about that?”
“You’ll see. Look at what they did to Mr. Colby—Jake knocked down a
lantern on him, on purpose, and I bet they’d like to do worse, if they
could. And he’s a councilor!”
“You’re a born chump,” remarked his tent-mate hopelessly. “No use trying
to argue with you, Mr. Sherlock Holmes Junior. Some day, something
terrible is going to happen around camp, and then you’ll be a hero and
discover the mystery. _Oh_, yes!” Again came that scornful laugh.
“Listen, there goes the bugle sounding Recall. Sax McNulty promised to
tell some stories before swim, up at the big cherry tree. Are you
coming, or are you going to read your old book all day?”
“You go ahead. I’m all right.” Sherlock again picked up his precious
book, but he did not read far. As soon as Wild Willie was out of sight,
he slipped the book into his pocket. He was convinced that the Utway
twins were a pair of villains. If he could catch them in some dark act,
and unmask them as dire disturbers of the peace of Camp Lenape——
Already a plan had formed in his mind. He would hide near them, watch
their movements, and if possible discover them in some suspicious act.
The campus between the rows of tents was deserted now. Again silence
hovered over Camp Lenape, scene of many a summer adventure, some of
which have been written down elsewhere. The spreading lodge-building,
perched on the hillside midway between the mountain range and the waters
of Lake Lenape, was deserted. In the shadow by the kitchen door,
Sherlock could see Ellick, the jovial, chocolate-colored chef, sprawled
on the ground beside his three coffee-colored assistants, resting after
their labors of preparing the midday meal of camp fare. The waiting lad
could picture in his mind the scene under the wild-cherry tree in the
baseball field beyond the lodge, where a dozen grown men, the
councilors, sat, surrounded by the hundred lively boy campers who each
season came to live under canvas in the woods and to enjoy the delights
of this outdoor paradise. “Sax” McNulty, the comical leader who was in
charge of camp stunts, would be relating some stirring tale. All the
other councilors would be there—Wally Rawn, the swimmer; Lieutenant
Eames of West Point fame; Mr. Colby; Happy Face Frayne, the associate
director; and the rest. And somewhere among the group of listening boys
would be the Chief himself, the kindly director who knew all things.
Among the crowd, Sherlock’s absence would not be noticed. He rose
swiftly, and managed to creep unseen into a clump of low bushes about
fifty yards below Tent Ten. From this vantage-point he was able to
overlook the activity of the two brothers, who labored moodily at their
task in the hot sun.
It was no easy thing to discover all the missing objects which the
energetic raiders from other tents had thrown into the surrounding
shrubbery, and to arrange everything inside in apple-pie order for a
later inspection; and the better part of an hour passed before Jake and
Jerry sat on a newly-made bunk and rested from their labors.
Sherlock, who had patiently squatted within the depths of a distant
huckleberry patch all the while, now saw his chance to creep
undiscovered to the space under the flooring of the tent, where he could
listen and perhaps overhear some incriminating words. Expertly he wormed
his way to this hiding-place, behind the unsuspecting backs of the
brothers, in time to catch the end of Jake’s last remark.
“—you’re right, Jerry. We sure ought to do something. Everybody was in
on the scrap, and Colby didn’t have any right to put all this work on
us.”
“He’s too strict, with all his talk about discipline,” responded Jerry
somberly. “From now on he’s going to be after us, especially when you
pushed the tent-pole and brought that lantern down on his dome; so we
might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.”
“That’s the stuff! What’ll we do to him?”
Sherlock, below them, stifled a gasp of horror. Here was mutiny, rank
rebellion against the authority of a councilor of Lenape, a grown man
and a scoutmaster! His jaw gaped as he listened.
“I’ve been thinking,” said Jerry slowly. “I bet old Colby could be
scared out of his skin, even if he was a soldier once. You know that big
bull-frog Spaghetti Megaro caught the other day? I know where he keeps
it down in my tent. Let’s get it, and to-night, about twelve o’clock
when everybody’s asleep, we’ll slide down to Colby’s tent and chuck old
Mr. Frog into his bed! Talk about scared! Say, I’ll bet Old Discipline
will let out a yelp you can hear a mile!”
“Boy, I can just hear it now!” agreed Jake, bursting into a laugh. “But
how are we going to stay awake that long? Twelve o’clock’s pretty late.”
“I’ll fix that. I can wake up whenever I want to, you know. We can run a
long string across from my tent over here. Tie one end to your foot
before you go to sleep. When I wake up I’ll give it a pull and wake you
up, then get the frog, and meet you here. Then we’ll go down to Fifteen
and give Mr. Discipline the scare of his life!”
“All set. I got a ball of cord in my locker we can use. Come on,
Jerry—we got time enough before swim to listen in on one of Sax
McNulty’s stories. Let’s go!”
_Day is done, gone the sun,
From the lake, from the hills, from the sky—_
The full, rich notes of Taps rolled over the pines of Lenape and echoed
across the lake. Fat Crampton doused the Tent Ten lantern and climbed
heavily into his creaking bunk.
“Good night, campers!” drawled the voice of Jim Avery, the lanky
councilor. Sleepy voices answered from the darkness. There was a slight
rustling from the direction of Jake Utway’s bunk. Sherlock Jones cocked
an ear. He knew that Jake, following the plan he had overheard that
afternoon, was attaching to his foot the cord which the twins had laid
down after nightfall to connect Tent Ten with Jerry’s bunk in Tent Eight
down the line. This method of communication was necessary because the
Chief in his wisdom made it a point to separate the two devoted brothers
into different tent-groups when the changes in tent assignments were
made at the end of each two-week period of camp. Therefore Jake was
given a place with Mr. Avery, while Jerry was nominally under the
guardianship of Dr. Cannon in Tent Eight.
Sherlock smiled with satisfaction in the darkness. He, too, had a score
to pay off, and he would see that the brothers who had misused him would
not get off lightly. His preparations were made. Cautiously he felt
under his bunk to make sure that all the equipment he needed was at
hand.
A few stars sparkled down through the softly-swaying pine branches.
Nothing was heard in the tent now save the heavy breathing of the weary
sleepers, led by Fat Crampton’s rumbling bass snore. Far up the mountain
behind camp a dog barked somewhere. The travelling spot of a flashlight
came up the path as the Chief passed by noiselessly on his nightly
round. Sherlock caught himself nodding—tried to jerk himself into
wakefulness—nodded again....
He woke with a start. A dim bulk of shadow moved against the dull
starlight; Jake Utway was dressing hastily in the dark. He waited until
Jake had slipped on his tennis shoes and had noiselessly tiptoed down
the steps. A light footfall from the path told him that Jerry was
joining the party. “Got the frog?” he heard Jake whisper; the forms of
the two brothers melted into the dark in the direction of Tent Fifteen.
Sherlock waited no longer. He sprang from his blankets, and stripped off
his pajamas. He had, unseen by his tent-mates, slipped into bed fully
dressed beneath his nightwear. It was the work of a few instants to
slide his feet into a pair of moccasins and drop over the edge of the
tent floor. Clutched under one arm he carried his camera, his most
prized possession. In the other hand he bore a metal pan with a short
handle, and a package labeled “flashlight powder.”