CHAPTER II 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.
17

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.”
18

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?”
19

“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!”
20

“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.
21

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.
22

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?”
23

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!”
24

“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.
25

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.
26

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.”