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 protégé 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 fashion 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.
"You see, we want to meet the doctor before he has a chance to change
his watch," said Mr. Conne more soberly. "If he set that thing a little
after nine last night (and he couldn't have set it before), he was
probably too busy thinking of getting off the ship to think of much
else. And he ought to be just coming out of his stateroom by now. We
must see him before he sees a clock. You get me?"
"Yes, sir," said Tom, a little anxious; "but I might be wrong, after
all."
"Maybe," said Mr. Conne. "There are three things we'll have to judge by:
There's his trying to get off the ship last night, and there's the
question of how his watch stands, and there's the question of how he
acts when we talk with him--see?"
"Yes, sir."
"Since you're a detective, remember this," Mr. Conne added
good-humoredly: "it's part of the A B C of the business. Three
middle-sized clues are better than one big one--if they hang together.
Six little ones aren't as good as three middle-sized ones, because
sometimes they seem to hang together when they don't really--see?"
"Yes, sir."
"Where'd you ever get your eyes and ears, anyway?" said Mr. Conne
abruptly.
"You learn to be observant when--you're a scout," said Tom.
Mr. Conne moved briskly along the deck, and Tom kept beside him with his
rather clumsy gait. Here and there little groups of passengers stood
chatting as they waited for breakfast. Among them were a few men in
khaki whom Tom understood to be army surgeons and engineers--the
forerunners of the legions who would "come across" later.
"Which would you rather be," queried Mr. Conne, "a detective or a
wireless operator?"
"I'd rather be a regular soldier," said Tom; "I made up my mind to it.
I'm only waiting till I'm eighteen."
Mr. Conne gave him a shrewd sideways glance, his cigar pointing upward
like a piece of field artillery.
"But I hope I can work on this ship when she's a regular transport, and
keep working on her till I'm eighteen."
"You haven't answered my question yet."
"I don't know which I'd rather be," said Tom.
"Hmmm," said Mr. Conne.
At the after-companionway he picked up a deck steward and asked him to
point out Dr. Curry, if he was about.
"What do you suppose became of the other operator?" Tom asked, a little
anxiously.
"I don't know," said Mr. Conne. "We'll have to find some one who does
know," he added significantly, and Tom wondered what he meant.
"Do you think he's guilty of anything?" he asked.
"Don't know. You've knocked my theories all endways, young fellow," Mr.
Conne said pleasantly; and then he added, smiling, "You say he was a
scout; I'm getting to have a pretty good opinion of scouts."
"But those finger-prints----"
"Were his," concluded Mr. Conne.
Tom was greatly puzzled, but he said nothing. Soon Dr. Curry was pointed
out to them. He was pacing up and down the deck, and paused at the rail
as they neared so that they were able to get a good look at him. He was
tall and thin, with a black mustache and a very aristocratic hooked
nose. Perhaps there was the merest suggestion of the foreigner about
him, but nothing in particular to suggest the German unless it were a
touch of that scornfully superior air which is so familiar in pictures
of the Kaiser.
"So that's the Doctor, is it?" Mr. Conne commented, eyeing him with his
cigar cocked up sideways. "Looks kind of savage, huh?"
But the doctor's savage mien did not phase Mr. Conne in the least, for
he sauntered up to him with a friendly and familiar air, though Tom was
trembling all over.
"Excuse me, would you oblige me with the time?" Mr. Conne said
pleasantly.
The stranger wheeled about suddenly with a very pronounced military air
and looked at his questioner.
"The time? Yes, sir," he said, with brisk formality and taking out his
watch. "It is just half-past six."
Mr. Conne drew out his own watch and looked at it for a moment as if
perplexed. "Then one of us is about an hour out of the way," he said
sociably, while Tom stood by in anxious suspense. "According to the
alarm clock down in the store-room, I guess _you're_ right," he added.
"What?" said the passenger, disconcerted.
"According to the time-bomb down below," repeated Mr. Conne, still
sociably but with a keen, searching look. "What's the matter? You
suffering from nerves, Doctor?"
The sudden thrust, enveloped in Mr. Conne's easy manner, had indeed
taken the doctor almost off his feet.
"I do not understand you, sir," he said, with forbidding dignity and
trying to regain his poise.
"Well, then, I'll explain," said Mr. Conne; "you forgot to set your
watch when you left Cleveland, Doc, so there won't be any explosion down
below at nine o'clock, and there won't be any at all--so don't worry."
He worked his cigar over into the corner of his mouth and looked up at
his victim in a tantalizing manner, waiting. And he was not
disappointed, for in the angry tirade which the passenger uttered it
became very apparent that he was a foreigner. Mr. Conne seemed quietly
amused.
[Illustration: "ACCORDING TO THE ALARM CLOCK DOWN IN THE STORE-ROOM, I
GUESS YOU'RE RIGHT." Page 144]
"Doc," said he sociably, almost confidentially, "I believe if it hadn't
been for this youngster here, you'd have gotten away with it. It's too
bad about your watch being slow--German reservists and ex-army officers
ought to remember when they're traveling that this is a wide country and
that East is East and West is West, as old brother Kipling says. When
you're coming across Uncle Sam's backyard to blow up ships, it's
customary to put your watch an hour ahead in Cleveland, Doc. Didn't they
tell you that? Where's all your German efficiency? Here's a wideawake
young American youngster got you beaten to a stand-still----"
"This is abominable!" roared the man.
"Say that again, Doc," laughed Mr. Conne. "I like the way you say it
when you're mad. So that's why you didn't get off the ship in time last
night, eh?" he added, with a touch of severity. "Watch slow! Bah! You're
a bungler, Doc! First you let your watch get you into a tight place,
then you let it give you away.
"I don't know who you are, except you came from west of Cleveland; but
here's an American boy, never studied the German spy system, and, by
jingoes, he's tripped you up--and saved a dozen ships and a half a dozen
munition factories, for all I know. German efficiency--bah! The Boy
Scouts have got you nailed to the mast! This is the kind of boys we're
going to send over, Doc. Think you can lick 'em?"
Tom was blushing scarlet and breathing nervously as the fierce,
contemptuous gaze of the tall man was bent for a brief second upon him.
But Mr. Conne winked pleasantly at him, and it quite nullified that
scornful look.
Then, suddenly, the detective became serious, interrupting the stranger,
who had begun to speak again, and brushing his words aside.
"You'll have to show me your passport, sir," he said, "and any other
papers you have. I'll go to your stateroom with you. Then I'm going to
lock you up. I'll expect you to tell me, too, what became of the young
fellow who happened to discover you down below last night. You and he
had a little scuffle down there, I take it.--Better run along about your
duties now, Tom, and I'll see you later."