TOM TURNS DETECTIVE
As Tom rose he saw that the fresh paint on the pantry window ledge had
been smeared. Then he looked at the ground. Below the window was a long
smooth mark on the soil. "The fellow had jumped from that window," said
he, "slid when he touched the groun'." He stopped, but not to pick up a
rock. Then he went down on his hands and knees, with never a thought of
those treasured khaki trousers, and while the telephone bell rang and
rang again in the house he read the writing which is written all over
the vast, open page of nature for those who have eyes and know how to
see.
He was very much engrossed now; he forgot everything. He was a scout of
the scouts, and he screwed up his face and studied the ground as a
scholar pores over his books.
"Huh," said he, "his shoes need soling, that's one sure thing."
He examined with care a little thin crooked indentation in the soil, as
if a petrified angleworm had been pushed into the hard earth.
"Huh," said he, "I hope he kicked into it hard enough so it stays
there."
He was satisfied that the fugitive's shoe was worn in the sole so that
the outer layer, worn thin and flopping loose, had slid onto one of the
little malleable leaden bars used in the cathedral-glass windows. This
had evidently pushed its way into the tattered sole, bent a little from
the impact, and lodged securely. Either the fugitive did not feel it,
or did not care to pause and remove it. It made a mark as plain as
Tom's patrol sign.
He cast one apprehensive look at the open windows of the upper floor
and, taking a chance, made a bold dash across the rear lawn, where he
thought he could discern footprints in the newly-sprouting grass.
Several hundred feet away was the boundary fence and here the
correctness of his direction was confirmed by a painty smooch on the
top rail where the fugitive had climbed over.
Tom leaped across the fence and, as usual, after any vigorous move, he
felt instinctively to see if his precious five-dollar bill was safe. He
lived in continual dread of losing it. He paused a minute scrutinizing
the small crooked marks left by the leaden bar. Then he thought of
something which added fresh zest to his thus far successful search. It
was provision four of the Second Class Scout tests:
Track half a mile in twenty-five minutes, or,...
"If I do that," said he, looking at his dollar watch, "it'll land me in
the Second Class with a rush, and if I should get the pin for her that
would knock the Commissioner off his feet, all right. Here's my
tracking stunt mapped out for me. I never claimed I could cook. Oh,
cracky, here's my chance!"
He got the word "Cracky" from Roy.
As he turned and cast a last look toward the house someone (a woman, he
thought) seemed to be waving her arm from one of the upper casements.
He could not make up his mind whether she was beckoning to him or only
scrubbing the window. Then he entered the woods where the ground was
sparsely covered with pine-needles.
He had to stoop and search for the guiding mark and there were places
where for thirty or forty feet at a stretch it was not visible, but the
tumbled appearance of the pine-needle carpet showed where someone had
recently passed. Then the marks took him into a beaten way and he
jogged along with hope mounting high.
He had tracked for more than twenty-five minutes and a very skillful
tracking it had been, entirely independent of its possible result. So
far as the tracking requirement was concerned he had fulfilled that in
good measure, and the possible danger in connection with it would
commend it strongly to the Scout Commissioner. Moreover, the deductive
work which preceded the tracking and the chivalrous motive would surely
make up for any lack in first aid and cooking. "One thing has to make
up for another," he thought, recalling Mr. Ellsworth's words.
He was breathing hard, partly from a nervous fear as to what he should
do if he succeeded in overtaking the robber, and his little celluloid
membership booklet with the precious bill in it, flapped against his
chest as he hurried on. "I'll be in the Second Class before Pee-wee,"
he thought.
Suddenly he came to a dead stop as he saw a figure sitting against the
trunk of a tree a couple of hundred feet away. The tree trunk was
between himself and the man and about all he could see was two knees
drawn up.
Now was the time for discretion. Tom was a husky enough boy; he seemed
much larger since he had acquired the scout habit of standing straight,
but he was not armed and he felt certain that the stranger was.
"I wish I had Roy's moccasins," he thought.
He retreated behind a tree himself and quietly removed his shoes. The
position of the stranger was favorable for a stealthy approach and Tom
advanced cautiously. A flask lay beside the man and he was just taking
a measure of encouragement in the prospect of the man's being asleep
when the drawn-up knees went down with a sudden start and the figure
rose spasmodically, reeled slightly and clutched the tree.
Tom stepped back a pace, staring, for it was the face of Bill Slade
which was leering, half stupidly, at him.
"Stay--stay where you are," said Tom, his voice tense with fear and
astonishment, as his father made a step toward him. "I--I tracked you-stay
where you are--I--didn' know who I wuz trackin'--I didn'. Don't
you come no nearer. I--I wouldn' do yer no hurt--I wouldn'."
It was curious how in his dismay and agitation he fell into the old
hoodlum phraseology and spoke to his father just as he used to do when
the greasy, rickety dining-table was between them.
The elder Slade was a pathetic spectacle. He had gone down quite as
fast as his son had gone up. He leered at the boy with red and heavy
eyes out of a face which had not been shaved in many a day. His cheek
bones protruded conspicuously. The coat which at the time of Mrs.
Slade's funeral had been black and which Tom remembered as a sort of
grayish brown, was now the color of newly rusted iron. His shoe, which
had turned traitor to him and whispered the direction of his flight to
the trailing scout, was tied with a piece of cord. He was thin, even
emaciated, and there was a little twitch in his eye which grotesquely
counterfeited a wink, and which jarred Tom strangely. He did not know
whether it was his lately-acquired habit of observation which made him
notice this or whether it was a new warning from Mother Nature to his
father. But Tom was not afraid of a man whose eye twitched like that.
He stood as firm as Roy Blakeley had stood that night of his first
meeting with him. That is what it means to be a scout for two months.
"Yer--a--a one o' them soldier lads, hey, Tommy?" said his father
unsteadily.
"You stay there," said Tom. "Yer seen what I d-did ter de marshal. I'm
stronger now than I wuz then, but I'm--I'm gon'er be loyal."
"Yer one o' them soldier fellers, hey?"
"I'm a scout of the Second Class," said Tom with a tremor in his voice:
"or I would be if 'twasn't for you. I--I can't tell 'em the trackin' I
done _now_. I gotter obey the law."
"Yer wouldn' squeal on yer father, would yer, Tommy?" said Slade,
advancing with a suggestion of menace. "I wouldn' want ter choke yer."
Tom received this half-sneeringly, half-pityingly. He felt that he
could have stuck out his finger and pushed his father over with it, so
strong was he.
"Gimme the pin yer took," he said. "I don't care about nothin' else-but
gimme the pin yer took."
"What pin?" grumbled Slade.
"You know what pin."
"Yer think I'd steal?" his father menaced.
"I _know_ yer did an' I want that pin."
For a minute the elder Slade glared at his son with a look of fury. He
made a start toward him and Tom stood just as Roy had stood, without a
stir.
"Yer'd call me a thief, would yer--yer--"
"I was as bad myself once," said Tom, pitying him. "I swiped her ball.
Gimme the pin."
"'Taint wuth nothin'," he said.
"Gimme it."
Slade made an exploration of his pockets as if he could not imagine
where such a thing could be. Then he looked at Tom as if reconsidering
the wisdom of an assault; then off through the woods as if to determine
the chance for a quick "get away."
"Yer wouldn' tell nobuddy yer met me," he whined.
"No, I'll _never_ tell--gimme the pin."
"I didn' hev nothin' to eat fer two days, Tommy, an' I've got me cramps
bad."
The same old cramps which had furnished the excuse for many an idle
day! Tom knew those cramps too well to be affected by them, but he saw,
too, that his father was a spent man; and he thought of what Mr.
Ellsworth had said, "There wasn't any First Bridgeboro Troop when he
was a boy, Tom."
"I wouldn' never tell I seen yer," he said. "I wouldn' never-_ever_
tell. It's my blame that we wuz put out o' Barrel Alley. It
was you--it was you took me--to the--circus."
He remembered that one happy afternoon which he had once, long ago,
enjoyed at his father's hands.
"An' I know yer wuz hungry or you wouldn' go in there in the daytime-'cause
you'd be a fool to do it. I'm not cryin' 'cause I'm--a-scared--I
don't get scared so easy--now."
Fumbling at his brown scout shirt he brought forth on its string the
folding membership card of the Boy Scouts of America, attached to which
was Tom's precious crisp five-dollar bill in a little bag.
"Gimme the pin," said he. "Yer kin say yer sold it fer five dollars-like,"
he choked.
"Is this it?" asked Slade, bringing it forth as if by accident, and
knowing perfectly well that it was.
"Here," said Tom, handing him the bill. "It ain't only becuz yer give
me the pin, but becuz yer hungry and becuz--yer took me ter the
circus."
It was strange how that one thing his father had done for him kept
recurring to the boy now.
"Yer better get away," he warned. "Old John sent automobiles out and
telephoned a lot. Don't--don't lose it," he added, realizing the large
amount of the money. "If yer tied it 'round yer neck it 'ud be safer."
He stood just where he was as his father reeled away, watching him a
little wistfully and doubtful as to whether he was sufficiently
impressed with the sum he was carrying to be careful of it.
"It 'ud be safer if you tied it 'round yer neck," he repeated as his
father passed among the trees with that sideways gait and half-limp
which bespeaks a prideless and broken character.
"I'll never tell 'em of the tracking I do--did," he said, "so I won't
pass on that; but even if I did I couldn't pass, 'cause I haven't got
the money to put in the bank--now."
He had lost his great fortune and his cherished dream in one fell
swoop.
And this was the triumph of his tracking