HE SEES A STRANGE LIGHT AND GOES ON TIPTOE
Of course, it would have been expecting too much to suppose that the
boys in khaki would overlook Tom Slade any more than Frenchy would
escape them, and "Whitey" was the bull's-eye for a good deal of target
practice in the way of jollying. It got circulated about that Whitey had
a bug--a patriotic bug, particularly in regard to his family, and it was
whispered in his hearing as he came and went that his grandfather was
none other than the original Yankee Doodle.
Of course, Tom's soberness increased this good-natured propensity of the
soldiers.
"Hey, Whitey," they would call as he passed with the captain's tray, "I
hear you were born on the Fourth of July. How about that?"
Or
"Hey, Whitey, I hear your great grandfather was the fellow that put the
bunk in Bunker Hill!"
But Tom did not mind; joking or no joking, they knew where he stood with
Uncle Sam and that was enough for him.
Sometimes they would vary their tune and pleasantly chide him with
being a secret agent of the Kaiser, "Baron von Slade," and so on and so
on. He only smiled in that stolid way of his and went about his duties.
In his heart he was proud. Sometimes they would assume to be serious and
ply him with questions, and he would fall into their trap and proudly
tell about poor old Uncle Job and of how his father had licked him, by
way of proving the stanch Americanism of the Slades.
In their hearts they all liked him; he seemed so "easy" and bluntly
honest, and his patriotism was so obvious and so sincere.
"You're all right, Whitey," they would say.
Then, suddenly, that thing happened which shocked and startled them with
all the force of a torpedo from a U-boat, and left them gasping.
It happened that same night, and little did Tom Slade dream, as he went
along the deck in the darkening twilight, carrying the captain's empty
supper dishes down to the galley, of the dreadful thing which he would
face before that last night in the danger zone was over.
He washed his hands, combed his hair, put on his dark coat, and went up
on deck for an hour or two which he could call his own. In the
companionway he passed his friend, the deck steward, talking with a
couple of soldiers, and as he squeezed past them he paused a moment to
listen.
It was evidently another slice of the same gossip with which he had
regaled Tom earlier in the day and he was imparting it with a great air
of confidence to the interested soldiers.
"Don't say I told you, but they had two of them in the quartermaster's
room, buzzing them. It's more'n rule breaking, _I_ think."
"German agents, you mean?"
The deck steward shrugged his shoulders in that mysterious way, as if he
could not take the responsibility of answering that question.
"But they haven't got anything on 'em," he added. "The glass ports were
locked--they couldn't have thrown anything out. So there you are. The
captain thinks it was phosphorus and maybe he's right. It's a kind of a
light you sometimes see in the ocean."
"Huh," said one of the soldiers.
"It's fooled others before. So I guess there won't be any more about it.
Keep your mouths shut."
Tom passed them and went out upon the deck. He did not venture near the
forbidden spot astern, but leaned against the rail amidships. He knew he
had the right to spend his time off on deck and he liked to be alone.
Now and then he glimpsed a little streak of gray as some apprehensive
person in a life belt disappeared in a companionway, driven in by the
cold and the rough sea.
Presently, he was quite alone and he fell to thinking about home, as he
usually did when he was alone at night. He thought of his friend Roy
Blakeley and of the happy summers spent at Temple Camp; of the stalking
and tracking, and campfire yarns, and how they used to jolly him, just
as these soldiers jollied him, and call him "Sherlock Nobody Holmes"
just because he was interested in deduction and had "doped out" one or
two little things.
One thing will suggest another, and from Temple Camp, with its long
messboard and its clamoring, hungry scouts, and the tin dishes heaped
with savory hunters' stew, his thoughts wandered back across the ocean
to a certain particular mess plate, right here on this very ship--a mess
plate with a little black stain on it, where someone might have laid a
burning match-end.
He caught himself up and thought of Mr. Conne. But this was his time
off and he had the right to _think_ about anything he pleased. He could
not be reprimanded for just thinking. Nothing would tempt him to run the
risk of another encounter with one of those stern, brisk-speaking
officers, but he could _think_.
And he wondered whether that black spot _had_ been made by a match-end.
The spot would show plainly, of course, for he knew how shiny and clean
mess plates were kept. Had he not done his part in scouring and rubbing
them down there in the galley?
He wondered how the mess plate had happened to be in the stateroom,
anyway. Sherlock Nobody 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 ship had seen that letter. Mr. Conne had
seemed to think that one the least important of the lot. Perhaps he had
just told the ship'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 Nobody 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 grass 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 passed 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,
shiny 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 passageway 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 glass 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 passageway 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 ship, 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 glass
of milk.
"Huh, if there's anyone on this ship 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 class cabin
dining-room where the soldiers hailed him pleasantly, and, passing the
stokers' washroom, tiptoed along the dim, narrow passageway.