Tom Slade on Mystery Trail Part 19

For fifty-seven minutes by his watch, Tom waited. Then the tip end of Llewellyn's nose emerged slowly, cautiously, and remained stationary.

Eleven minutes of tense silence elapsed.

Then the tip end of Llewellyn's nose emerged a trifle more, stopped, started again and lo, his whole head and neck were out, craned stiffly upward toward the camp.

Tom did not move a muscle, he hardly breathed. Soon the turtle's tail was sticking straight out and one forward claw was emerging slowly, doubtfully.

Silence.

Another claw emerged and the neck relaxed its posture of listening reconnoissance. Then, presto, Llewellyn was waddling around like a lumbering old ferry boat and heading straight for the lake. As he waddled along in a bee line something which Tom had once read came flas.h.i.+ng into his mind, which was that no matter where a turtle is placed, be it in the middle of the Desert of Sahara, he will travel a bee line for the nearest water.

But his recollection of this was as nothing to Tom now, when he saw with mingled feelings of shame and excitement something which seemed to open a way to the most dramatic possibilities.

As the turtle entered the muddy area near the lake Tom realized, what he should have known before, that the tracks which Hervey Willetts had followed from the mountain and which Skinny had followed from the lake were the tracks of a turtle! _The tracks of a turtle coming from a locality where it did not belong, straight for the still water which was its natural element._

With a quick inspiration Tom darted forward into the mud catching the turtle just as it was waddling into the water. He did not know why he did this, it was just upon an impulse, and in making the sudden reach he all but lost his balance. As it was he had to swing both arms to keep his feet, and as he did so the turtle fell upside down in the drier mud a few feet back from sh.o.r.e. As Tom lifted it, there, imprinted in the mud were the letters H. T.

The initials T. H. on the creature's back had been reversed when he fell upside down. And Tom realized with a thrill that what had just happened before his eyes had happened at that log up in the woods.

Llewellyn, the Humpty-dumpty of the animal world, had slid off the log, alighting upside down.

For a moment Tom Slade paused in dismay.

So Teddy Howell and Harry Thorne had nothing to do with this. This lumbering, waddling creature had come flopping along down out of the silent lower reaches of that frowning mountain, straight to his destination. He was not the first printer to print something the wrong way around.

Who, then, was T. H.? Not Master Anthony, Jr., at all events. But some one afar off, surely. Abstractedly, Tom Slade gazed off toward that towering mountain whence this clumsy but unerring messenger had come. It looked very dark up there. Tom recalled how from those lofty crags the great eagle had swooped down and met his match before the hallowed little home of Orestes.

In a kind of reverie Tom's thoughts wandered to Orestes. Orestes would be in bed by now. Orestes had lived away up near where that turtle had come from. And the thought of Llewellyn and Orestes turned Tom's thought to Hervey Willetts. He had not seen much of Hervey the last day or two....

Tom fixed his gaze upon that old monarch where again the first crimson rays of dying sunlight glinted the pinnacles of the somber pines near its summit. How solemn, how still, it seemed up there. The nearer sounds about the camp seemed only to emphasize that brooding silence. It was like the silence of some vast cathedral--awful in its majestic solitude.

And this impa.s.sive, stolid, hard-sh.e.l.l pilgrim, knowing his business like the bully scout he was, had come stumbling, sliding, rolling and waddling down out of those fastnesses, because there was something right here which he wanted. And he had brought a clew. Should the human scout be found wanting where this humble little hero had triumphed?

"I never paid much attention to those stories," Tom mused; "but if there's a draft dodger living up there, I'm going to find him. If there's a hermit I'm going to see him. If there's...."

He paused suddenly in his musing, listening. It was the distant voice of a scout returning to camp. He was singing one of those crazy songs that he was famous for. Tom looked up beyond the supply cabin and saw him coming down, twirling his hat on a stick, hitching up one stocking as often as it went down--care-free, happy-go-lucky, delightfully heedless.

He looked for all the world like a ragged vagabond. The evening breeze bore the strain he was singing down to where stolid Tom stood and he smiled, then suddenly became tensely interested as he listened. Tom often wondered where Hervey got his songs and ballads. On the present occasion this is what the blithe minstrel was caroling:

Saint Anthony he was a saint, And he was thin and bony; His mother called him Anthonee, But the kids they called him Tony.

CHAPTER x.x.x

HERVEY MAKES A PROMISE

"_Tony!_"

The word reached Tom's ears like a pistol shot. _Tony._

His mother called him Anthonee, And the kids they called him Tony.

Anthony--Tony. Why, of course, Tony was the universal nickname for Anthony. And if any kids were allowed within the ma.s.sive iron gates at the Harrington Estate, undoubtedly they called him Tony.

Tom, holding the turtle like a big rubber stamp, printed the letters several times on the ground--H. T. He scrutinized them, in their proper order on the turtle's back--T. H. Tony Harrington.

Could it be? Could it really mean anything in connection with that lost child? Was it possible that while Detective Something-or-other, and Lieutenant Thing-um-bob, and Sheriff Bullhead and Captain Fuss-and-feathers were all giving interviews to newspaper men, this st.u.r.dy little messenger was coming down to camp with a clew, straight from the hiding place of a pair of ruffians and a little boy with a----

_With a new jack-knife!_

Tom was thrilled by this fresh thought. For half a minute he stood just where he was, hardly knowing what to do, what to think.

"You're a good scout, Llewellyn," he finally mused aloud; "old Rough and Ready--slow but sure. Do you know what you did, you clumsy old ice wagon? You brought a second-cla.s.s scout badge and an Eagle award with you. And I'd like to know if you brought anything else of value. That's what I would."

But Llewellyn did not hear, at least he did not seem at all impressed.

His head, claws and tail were drawn in again. He had changed himself into a rock. He was a good detective, because he knew how to keep still.

Tom strolled up to supper, as excited as it was in his nature to be, and greatly preoccupied.

On his way up he dropped Llewellyn into Tenderfoot Pond, a diminutive sheet of water, so named in honor of the diminutive scout contingent at camp. He would have room enough to spend the balance of his life resting after his arduous and memorable journey. And there he still abides, by last accounts, monarch of the mud and water, and suns himself for hours at a time on a favorite rock. He is ranked as a scout of the first-cla.s.s, as indeed he should be, but he is frightfully lazy. He is a one stunt scout, as they say, but immensely popular. One hundred dollars in cash was offered for him and refused, so you can tell by that.

After supper Tom sought out Hervey. "Herve," he said, "I don't suppose you ever tried your hand at keeping a secret, did you? Where's your Eagle badge?"

"My patrol has got it."

"Well, if you can't keep a badge do you think you can keep a secret? You were telling me you wouldn't let a girl wear an honor badge of yours----"

"That was three days ago I told you that. Girls are different from what they were then. Can you balance a scout staff on your nose?"

"I never tried that. Listen, Hervey, and promise you won't tell anybody.

I'm telling you because I know I can trust you and because I like you and I think you can help me. I want you to do something for me, will you?"

"Suppose while I'm doing it I should decide I'd rather do something else? You know how I am."

"Well, in that case," said Tom soberly, "you get a large rock tied to your neck by a double sailor's knot, and are gently lowered into Black Lake."

"I can undo a double sailor's knot under water," said Hervey.

Tom laughed in spite of himself. "Hervey," said he, "do you know what kind of tracks those were you followed?"

"A killyloo bird's?"

"They were the tracks of a turtle and I was a fool not to know it. That turtle had the letters T. H. carved on his sh.e.l.l. Do you know what those letters might possibly stand for?"

"Terrible Hustler? How many guesses do I have?"