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+Project Gutenberg's Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone, by G. Harvey Ralphson
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone
+       The Plot Against Uncle Sam
+
+Author: G. Harvey Ralphson
+
+Release Date: September 5, 2008 [EBook #26540]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BOY SCOUTS IN THE CANAL ZONE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: FRONTISPIECE. Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone;
+or The Plot Against Uncle Sam.]
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone
+
+Or
+The Plot Against Uncle Sam
+
+By
+Scout Master, G. Harvey Ralphson
+
+Author of
+"Boy Scouts in Mexico; or On Guard with Uncle Sam."
+"Boy Scouts in the Philippines; or The Key to the Treaty Box."
+"Boy Scouts in the Northwest; or Fighting Forest Fires."
+
+Embellished with full page and other illustrations.
+
+M. A. Donohue & Company, Chicago
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+COPYRIGHT 1911.
+M. A. DONOHUE & COMPANY.
+
+ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
+
+Made in U. S. A.
+
+Electrotyped, Printed and Bound by
+M. A. Donohue & Co.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER                                   PAGE
+     I.  The Plot Against the Gatun Dam.     7
+    II.  Theft of the Emerald Necklace.     19
+   III.  How the Trick was Turned.          31
+    IV.  The Man in the Closet.             43
+     V.  At the Great Gatun Dam.            55
+    VI.  A Bomb and a Ruined Temple.        67
+   VII.  Working on Ned's Theory.           79
+  VIII.  Explosives for the Gatun Dam.      93
+    IX.  A Fasting Stunt is Suggested.     105
+     X.  A Delegation of Boy Scouts.       116
+    XI.  Jack and His Friend Gastong.      127
+   XII.  Lost in the Jungle at Night.      139
+  XIII.  Boy Scouts to the Rescue.         150
+   XIV.  The Kill in the Jungle.           161
+    XV.  Signal Fires in the Jungle.       172
+   XVI.  A Mighty Jar in the Jungle.       183
+  XVII.  The Watcher in the Thicket.       194
+ XVIII.  Jimmie Releases a Prisoner.       207
+   XIX.  A Guardian Needing Guarding.      220
+    XX.  The Spoil of the Locks.           233
+   XXI.  The Tangle Straightened Out.      245
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+BOY SCOUTS IN THE CANAL ZONE
+or
+THE PLOT AGAINST UNCLE SAM
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE PLOT AGAINST THE GATUN DAM.
+
+
+"Five Black Bears, two Wolves, and a Panther. That would be a choice
+collection of wild animals to take to the Canal Zone."
+
+The remark was greeted with shouts of laughter, and then the boys in the
+handsome clubroom of the Black Bear Patrol, in the city of New York,
+settled down to a serious discussion of the topic of the evening. There
+were seven present, Ned Nestor and Jimmie McGraw, of the Wolf Patrol;
+George Tolford, Harry Stevens, Glen Howard, and Jack Bosworth, of the
+famous Black Bear Patrol; and Peter Fenton, of the Panther Patrol. They
+ranged in age from thirteen to seventeen, Jimmie being the youngest and
+Ned Nestor the oldest of the group.
+
+They were all enthusiastic Boy Scouts, and their clubrooms were well
+supplied with boxing gloves, foils, and footballs, as well as weapons and
+articles necessary on camping expeditions. The clubroom in which the boys
+were assembled on this gusty night in early April was situated in the
+upper part of the fine residence of Jack's father, on Fifth avenue. The
+Black Bear Patrol was composed almost entirely of the sons of very wealthy
+parents, and the boys were off to the woods and waters whenever
+opportunity offered.
+
+In company with Lieutenant Gordon, of the United States Secret Service,
+and Frank Shaw, a member of the Black Bear Patrol, whose arrival was
+momentarily expected, the boys present had, on the previous day, returned
+from a series of unusual and exciting experiences in Mexico, and now they
+were discussing a proposed plan for an excursion to the Canal Zone. Of
+course they could make the trip if they desired, but what they wanted was
+to go in the company of Lieutenant Gordon, sent there on a secret mission
+by the Secretary of War.
+
+"Aw, come on, Ned, an' be a good feller," Jimmie McGraw urged, as Nestor
+expressed a doubt as to the advisability of taking the boys on the Canal
+Zone trip, to which he had been invited by the lieutenant, both as
+assistant and companion. "Let us go! We'll talk the lieutenant into
+letting us go along if you'll say a good word for us."
+
+During the trip to Mexico to which reference has been made, Ned Nestor had
+succeeded in averting serious complications between the government of that
+rebellious republic and the government of the United States. Through his
+efforts a threatened raid across the Rio Grande from the Mexican side had
+been checked on the very border, and the secret service men associated
+with him did not hesitate to declare that his tact and activity had done
+much to prevent a war between the two countries.
+
+Before leaving the scene of their operations in Mexico, Lieutenant Gordon
+had been ordered to New York on important official business. Only an
+inkling of what that official business was contained in his letter of
+instructions. Only the bare fact that complications in the Canal Zone were
+placing the Panama Canal in danger was conveyed to him. Later, after his
+arrival in New York, he had learned that the government suspected plots to
+destroy the great Gatun dam by the use of explosives.
+
+Only a hint of the threatened danger had been conveyed to the War
+department, but that was enough to set on foot the investigation of which
+Lieutenant Gordon was to be the head. One of the lieutenant's first acts
+after receiving his instructions was to secure the services of Ned Nestor,
+being guided in this by the wonderful success of the boy's efforts in
+Mexico.
+
+Thus it chanced that on this night every boy who had had the good fortune
+to share in the Mexican adventures was importuning Nestor to use his
+influence with the lieutenant in order that they might all be taken into
+the party. They had already gained the consent of their parents, Nestor,
+individually, was willing, and it only remained to convince Lieutenant
+Gordon that they could be of use to him and the government on the Canal
+Zone.
+
+"If you don't loosen up and take us with you," Harry Stevens declared,
+with a grin in the direction of his companions, "we'll give you a chase to
+the equator. You know how you found Jimmie in George's bed? Well, if you
+don't take us along with you, you'll find us all in your bed before you
+get to Panama."
+
+"It seems a pity to unload such a mess of wild animals on the people of
+the Zone," laughed Nestor, "but we'll leave it all to Lieutenant Gordon.
+Lavish your honeyed words and smiles on him!"
+
+"What's it all about, anyway?" demanded Jimmie. "It's something concerning
+the big canal, I know, for I heard you two talking of explosives at the
+Gatun dam."
+
+"We all heard that," cried Jack Bosworth. "You can't keep secrets from us.
+What is it all about? Is some one trying to blow up the big dam?"
+
+Nestor looked into the faces of the boys with serious eyes. He had not
+suspected that they knew anything definite regarding the secret mission,
+and was annoyed to think that he in part might be to blame for the leak
+which had been discovered.
+
+"Is that what you're going for?" asked Harry Stevens. "Are you going to
+mix with governmental affairs again? Because we've got to go if you are.
+Honest, now, we won't say a word if you tell us."
+
+"Do you all promise that?" asked Nestor.
+
+"Sure we do," came in chorus.
+
+"Well, then," Nestor went on, "we don't know much about the matter, except
+that there are hostile influences at work down there, directed against the
+canal. We do not know the proposed point of attack, but presume that the
+big dam is in the greatest danger. We do not even know where to look for
+the plotters, or whether they are Americans or of foreign birth. The
+motive for the contemplated destruction of the great waterway is not even
+surmised. In fact, for all we know, this may be a scare, but the thing is
+serious enough to call for rigid investigation, so down there we go."
+
+"Sure you can't get along without us!" cried Jimmie. "If you want to know
+who is at the bottom of it all, just ask me. It's the railroads. I've
+heard men say the canal would have been finished years ago only for the
+determined opposition of the transcontinental lines."
+
+"Much you know about it!" cried Harry Stevens. "If anybody should ask you
+where to look for the trouble, put your finger on the map of Japan. The
+little brown men are digging under the Gatun dam if any one is."
+
+"It does not seem possible that either the Japanese government or the
+railroad interests would descend to such despicable work," Nestor said. "I
+won't believe it of either of them until I have absolute proof."
+
+"It would be going some to blow up the Gatun dam," Peter Fenton cut in.
+"Why, when finished, that dam will be more than a hundred feet high, and
+will cover one hundred and sixty-four square miles with water. Its purpose
+is to huddle the highland streams into a lake which will become a part of
+the canal. This lake will cover plantations, small farms, villages, and
+even the present right of way of the Panama railroad."
+
+"If they succeed in blowing up the Gatun dam," Jack said, "there will be
+no Canal Completion Exposition in San Francisco in four years. That would
+be a shame, for we were all going."
+
+"Think of all that land being put down in the bed of a lake!" Harry
+Stevens exclaimed. "We ought to have taken a tip when the canal was first
+talked about and bought up that property. Uncle Sam would have bought it
+of us at a fancy price. Just think of a sure-thing speculation like
+that."
+
+Peter Fenton, known as the Encyclopedia, sat back in his chair and laughed
+until his face was as red as the painted snout of the black bear which
+looked down from a shield on the wall. The boys shook him up until he
+regained the power of speech.
+
+"If you boys had been one year old when the Panama Canal was first
+mentioned," he managed to say, choking back his laughter, "you would now
+stand at the venerable age of four hundred and sixteen years."
+
+"I guess you get your history in the dream book," Jimmie cried.
+
+"Nixy dream book," declared Peter, with the dignity which comes of much
+knowledge. "The Spaniards who lived in the Province of New Granada, on the
+Isthmus of Darien, as it was then called, planned a ship canal across the
+neck in the year 1518, and there has been talk of the big ditch ever
+since."
+
+"Then it takes a long time to get at the job," suggested Jimmie. "The
+trench could have been scooped out with a teaspoon in less than four
+hundred years."
+
+"Wait until you get down there! You'll see what impression your teaspoon
+would make. I've been reading up since I've returned to New York, and know
+something about the size of the job. The canal will cost millions more
+than Congress figured on, and the job is going ahead without graft, at
+that."
+
+"Still," Harry Stevens interrupted, "it would have been a wise move to
+have annexed a lot of that land."
+
+"If your speculation had developed when the first talk of the canal was
+heard," Peter went on, "you would have had to do business with King
+Ferdinand, of Spain. He would have put the soil on the bargain counter for
+you one day and shot you up the next. That wouldn't have been so
+cheerful."
+
+"Nice party to do business with," laughed Harry.
+
+"He was next to his king job, all right," Peter continued. "He was there
+with the gunpowder when any subject stood to put anything over on him. He
+caused Columbus to be returned to Spain in chains, and permitted one of
+his officials to shoot up the first white man who ever looked out on the
+Pacific from the divide of the Isthmus. He carried things by a large
+majority, did Ferdinand."
+
+"It was his queen who put her jewels in soak to buy a ship for Columbus,"
+commented Jack Bosworth. "I read about it when I was laid up with my
+broken arm. You remember the time the horse climbed into my motor car?"
+
+"The police say you never stopped running until you bumped against one of
+the White Mountains," laughed Harry. "Who was this white man who first
+climbed the divide?" he asked; "as I'm going down there, I want to know. I
+may set up a monument to his memory."
+
+"Don't be too sure about going," warned Glen Howard. "Lieutenant Gordon
+may kick on the whole bunch of us."
+
+"Then we'll all go down in my motor boat," replied Harry. "You can't keep
+me out of the Canal Zone when there's things doing."
+
+"The man's name was Balboa," said Peter, in answer to the question, as he
+smiled at this tardy recognition of the services of the explorer. "He went
+broke at St. Domingo, one day in the year 1510, and hired a fellow to head
+him up in a wine cask and put the cask on board a ship bound for Darien.
+He made the trip, all right, and landed broke, but in three years he was
+captain of the precinct, as they say in Manhattan, and on his way to the
+Pacific. He looked out on the big ocean for the first time on the 26th of
+September, 1513. Some say it was the 25th. I don't know which is right."
+
+The door of the clubroom now opened and Lieutenant Gordon entered. He was
+a man of not more than thirty, with a stern though not forbidding face and
+an alert military figure. His brown eyes lighted up with sudden humor as
+he dodged the clamorous boys, and dropped into a chair.
+
+"What about it?" asked Jimmie, who seemed to be a favorite with the
+officer. "Do we go with you, or do we trail along in the motor boat?"
+
+"The man higher up," began the lieutenant, "says you may go with me if you
+will try to--"
+
+There was no necessity for the lieutenant going on with the sentence. He
+had warned the boys so many times as to their conduct on the Isthmus, if
+permitted to go with the secret service men, that they now knew in advance
+what he was going to say, and they repeated his former admonitions with
+shouts of laughter.
+
+"All right," said the lieutenant, trying to look dignified, "if you won't
+listen you can't go."
+
+"Go on an' talk your chin off," shouted Jimmie. "We'll listen to every
+word until our arms drop to the floor."
+
+"Never mind that now," laughed the officer. "I'm too busy at present to
+speak the advice you'll all forget before I'm out of the room. Where is
+Frank Shaw? I came here to see him."
+
+"He was coming down to-night," George Tolford replied, "but it is so late
+now that he may not be here. Anything special?"
+
+"Why, yes," was the reply. "I want to know what he has been saying to his
+father about the difficulty in the Canal Zone."
+
+"Why, he doesn't know anything to tell," said Nestor, "not even as much as
+the boys here now know, for I have talked the situation over with them but
+not with him."
+
+"What do they know regarding the situation?" asked the lieutenant,
+apprehensively.
+
+"Nothing except that the Panama canal is threatened by some unknown
+influence."
+
+"Well," said the lieutenant, thoughtfully, "some one has been leaking, and
+it seems as if our first move in the game must be made right here in New
+York."
+
+"It wasn't Frank that leaked," Jimmie asserted, in defense of his friend.
+"He wouldn't do such a thing, and he couldn't tell what he didn't know,
+anyway," with which logical conclusion the boy turned his back to the
+group.
+
+"There is something wrong somewhere," Lieutenant Gordon said. "Wait until
+I tell you what took place this afternoon and you will agree with me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THEFT OF THE EMERALD NECKLACE.
+
+
+"Early this afternoon," the lieutenant went on as the boys gathered about
+him, "I was interviewed by a reporter for the _Daily Planet_."
+
+"Frank's father owns that newspaper," Jimmie suggested.
+
+"Yes," said the officer, "and that is why I thought Frank might know
+something of the origin of the inquiry. The reporter was not slow in
+getting at the point he was in my rooms to discuss. Almost the first
+question he asked me was this: 'Is it true that the government has ordered
+you to the Canal Zone to investigate an alleged plot to blow up the Gatun
+dam?' Coming from a reporter, as it did, the question knocked me all in a
+heap."
+
+Ned Nestor leaned forward with a new interest showing in his face.
+
+"I should think so," he said. "What did you tell him?"
+
+"I tried to bluff him out at first, but soon learned that he knew more
+about the Zone situation than I did. He didn't get much information from
+me, but I learned from him that the _Daily Planet_ is wise to the whole
+situation, as the boys say. Now, the question is this: 'Where did the
+editor secure his information?' I asked him in so many words, but he only
+laughed at me."
+
+"The place to go for that information," Nestor suggested, "is to the
+editor himself. Mr. Shaw would, of course, know all about it."
+
+"That is exactly what I thought," said the lieutenant, "so I lost no time
+in getting to the editorial rooms. Mr. Shaw was there, and treated me very
+courteously, but the only satisfaction I could get from him was the
+information that he knew something of what was going on, and was doing his
+best to secure enough facts regarding the matter for a news story."
+
+"I may be able to get more than that out of him," George ventured.
+
+"I doubt it," the lieutenant said, "for he is afraid some rival newspaper
+will get an inkling of the matter and beat him out on the sensation he is
+preparing. It seems that his men have discovered documentary evidence of
+some sort, papers which might be of great value in the hands of the
+government."
+
+"Wouldn't he give you a hint as to the contents of the papers?" asked
+Ned.
+
+"No; he wouldn't even give me an idea as to the parties he suspects. I
+think he might have done that, in the interest of good government. Well,
+of course his information is his own, but he might have trusted me not to
+betray his confidence to his rivals. I must confess that I don't like his
+attitude in the matter."
+
+"The papers may contain nothing the government could use," Ned observed,
+"although their value to the newspaper may be great."
+
+"I would like to get a look at them, all the same," said Gordon.
+
+"I wish he would call off his reporters," Ned went on. "If they go about
+the city asking the questions they asked of you, the plotters will soon
+know that they are being watched, and that will make their capture more
+difficult."
+
+"That is the idea," exclaimed the lieutenant. "Perhaps we can get him to
+let the case alone for a few days."
+
+"That is doubtful," Ned said, "but there is one ray of light in the
+situation. If the plotters find out that the editor of the _Daily Planet_
+has documentary evidence against them, they may try to steal the papers,
+and so disclose their identity."
+
+"I would steal them myself if I got a chance," laughed Gordon. "The
+government needs every pointer it can get."
+
+"Better let the others try first," advised Nestor, with a smile. "It
+really does begin to look as if the first move in this Panama game might
+be made right here in New York."
+
+"I'd like to know where Shaw got the pointer," Gordon said, in a moment.
+"I thought at first that Frank might have let out something in asking
+permission to go to the Zone."
+
+"He doesn't know a thing about it," Jimmie put in, warm in the defense of
+his friend. "How could he drop a hint, then?"
+
+"There was something said about the situation in Panama before we left the
+Sierra del Fierro mountains in Mexico," said Nestor, "but I can't for the
+life of me tell just what it was."
+
+"It was nothing definite," said Harry Stevens, "for I had forgotten all
+about it. There was some talk about our going to the Canal Zone, but
+nothing was decided on, and the plot against the government wasn't
+mentioned. At least that is my best recollection of the talk there."
+
+"There was something more than that said," the lieutenant observed, "but
+that is unimportant now. The thing to do, if we can, is to stop this
+investigation by the _Daily Planet_. The reporters will let the cat out of
+the bag and the interests back of the plot will either act immediately,
+before we can check them, or delay the matter until everything in
+connection with it is forgotten."
+
+"If the papers collected by the _Daily Planet_ people give any inkling of
+the motive which is leading the plotters on," Nestor said, "we really
+ought to get hold of them."
+
+"I believe you are as bad as the lieutenant, and would steal them yourself
+if you got a chance," grinned Jimmie.
+
+"I would at least try to get a look at them," was the reply.
+
+"Look here, fellows!" George Tolford cried, excitedly, "I think I know
+where Mr. Shaw got his pointer. It is this way: Mr. Shaw is interested in
+Zone property, and owns a large block of stock in an emerald mine. He
+spent most of the past winter on the Isthmus, and there is where he
+unearthed the story. You take it from me that this is right."
+
+"That view of the case makes it all the more imperative that we learn the
+contents of the papers Mr. Shaw has," said the lieutenant, rising and
+pacing the room excitedly. "If he got his information on the Isthmus, it
+is more than likely that it points out not only the motive but also the
+interest which is planning the outrage. I must send some high official to
+talk with Mr. Shaw. He is interested in an emerald mine, you say?" he
+asked.
+
+"Sure he is," replied George Tolford. "Frank told me all about it not long
+ago, at the time he showed me an emerald necklace his father gave him."
+
+"An emerald necklace," repeated Jimmie. "What you gettin' at? Boys don't
+wear necklaces."
+
+"This emerald necklace," George went on, "is as old as the hills. Frank
+says the stones were taken out of a mine in a valley in the interior of
+Colombia four hundred years ago. There are twenty-five stones, each
+weighing over six carats. Taken separately, the stones are worth a
+thousand each, and together their price is fabulous. Frank says the
+necklace formerly belonged to some secret order of natives, and that
+$100,000 has been offered for it because of the perfectly matched stones,
+and because of its wonderful history. It is a peach, I can tell you that,
+and Frank will never go broke as long as he sticks to it."
+
+"I didn't know that there were any emeralds down that way," Glen Howard
+said. "We will bring a couple of carloads back with us."
+
+"Emeralds down that way!" repeated Peter Fenton. "Why, the best emeralds
+in the world are found in South America. The very best are found in veins
+traversing clay-slate, hornblende slate, and granite, in a little valley
+not far from Bogota, the capital of the United States of Colombia.
+Inferior stones are found imbedded in mica slate in Europe. You see I've
+been reading up on South America."
+
+"It looks that way," laughed Lieutenant Gordon. "I must get a look at
+Frank's emerald necklace before I leave New York."
+
+"We may find one like it in the ruins of Spanish Panama," said Peter.
+
+"Guess there ain't many ruins around Panama," declared Jimmie. "Not many
+ruins anywhere Uncle Sam's soldiers are."
+
+"Just the same," persisted Peter, "the Panama built by the Spaniards in
+the year 1518 is now in ruins, unless it has been restored since the
+Americans took possession of the Canal Zone. It lies six miles to the
+northeast of the present city of that name."
+
+"I wish Frank would drop in to-night," the lieutenant said, after a pause.
+"I have an idea that he might suggest something of value just now, some
+way in which his father may be reached. We are leaving for the Zone on
+Thursday morning, so have only one more day in the city, consequently
+there is no time to lose."
+
+The boys fairly shrieked their appreciation of the information that they
+were to depart for the Isthmus so soon, and gathered about Lieutenant
+Gordon with extended hands.
+
+"But you must understand this," the lieutenant said, returning the
+greetings heartily, "you are not supposed to be in my company at all. I
+may need to talk with some of you, but if I do it will be in a casual
+manner, just as one tourist might address another. I am traveling alone,
+understand. I shall stop at the Tivoli, at Ancon, a short distance from
+Panama, and you will have a cottage in the jungle, near Gatun."
+
+"And we are to ramble about wherever we like?" asked Harry.
+
+"Wherever you like," was the reply, "only you must not look me up unless
+in case of serious trouble. I'll communicate with you when necessary."
+
+The boys all agreed to the conditions readily enough; they would have
+consented to almost any arrangement in order to be taken on the trip.
+After the details were disposed of, Ned called the lieutenant aside and
+asked him a most surprising question:
+
+"Are you really thinking of trying to steal those papers?"
+
+"I've a great mind to make the attempt," was the smiling reply. "We need
+them in our business, and, besides, the government has plenty of men here
+who may as well be working on this case as any other."
+
+"This is on the theory that the papers may reveal to you the nature of the
+plot and the names of the plotters?"
+
+"That is the idea, exactly. I have no doubt now that Mr. Shaw secured his
+pointers while on the Isthmus, and the papers doubtless contain
+information which it might take us months to procure. Yes, I think I shall
+set men at work on the case to-morrow. Besides getting the papers, we will
+rob Shaw of his sensation. A publication of the situation just now would
+be a calamity."
+
+"I think," Nestor said, modestly, "that I see a way to accomplish the ends
+you seek without resorting to larceny. Will you promise me that you will
+do nothing further in the matter of the documents until I have talked with
+you again on the subject?"
+
+"But it is imperative that we act quickly," protested the lieutenant.
+
+"I understand that," Nestor replied, "but, all the same, I think I see a
+way to gain our ends by keeping out of the way at present. Will you
+promise?"
+
+"Oh, yes! Have your own way about it. I can set the men at work just
+before we leave New York, and the information contained in the papers can
+be sent to me by code. Have your own way, my boy."
+
+"Thank you," Nestor said, and the two returned to the main room. The
+'phone in a closet near the door was ringing sharply, and Harry Stevens
+entered the closet and shut the door. In a moment exclamations of dismay
+and surprise were heard issuing from the other side of the closed door,
+and then Harry bounced back into the room, his face white, his eyes
+shining with excitement.
+
+"What is it?" asked half a dozen voices.
+
+"Lieutenant Gordon and Ned are wanted at Shaw's house at once," the boy
+said. "Go on the run, boys, for there is something stirring there. Mr.
+Shaw has been chloroformed, the servants knocked about like tenpins, and
+Frank's emerald necklace has been stolen. We'll wait here for news."
+
+"And so," the lieutenant said, looking Nestor in the eyes, "you were
+waiting for the interests back of this thing to show their hand by trying
+to get the papers."
+
+"Yes," replied Nestor, "I had an idea the interests would try to do a
+little stealing on their own hook."
+
+"But if they have secured the papers--"
+
+The lieutenant hesitated, and Nestor went on:
+
+"If they have secured the papers, they know no more now than they did
+before. They are not out after information concerning their own plots.
+They are trying to reduce the outside supply of knowledge about their
+movements."
+
+"There was nothing said about papers being stolen, was there?" asked the
+lieutenant. "Perhaps the necklace really was the point of attack."
+
+Nestor turned to George Tolford.
+
+"Do you know where Frank kept his necklace?" he asked.
+
+"Sure I do," was the quick reply. "He kept it in a hinky-dinky little safe
+up in his room. I told him he was foolish to take such a risk with it."
+
+"Did he keep the safe locked?"
+
+"Locked! Not half the time. He would rush in there, open it up, and then
+run all over the house, leaving the door swinging."
+
+Nestor and the lieutenant now left the room, after asking the boys to wait
+there for a short time. Once out on the street, the lieutenant remarked:
+
+"If the necklace was kept in Frank's room, why did the thief take the
+pains to chloroform Mr. Shaw, who must have been in his own room?"
+
+Nestor shrugged his shoulders for reply. That was a point he had already
+considered. Again the lieutenant asked a question:
+
+"If the papers had been taken, wouldn't that have been mentioned the very
+first thing? Wouldn't Mr. Shaw think first of recovering them?"
+
+"I don't know," replied Nestor. "The thing for us to do now is to find out
+who it was that entered the Shaw house to-night, and what was taken
+besides the necklace."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+HOW THE TRICK WAS TURNED.
+
+
+Leaving the boys in the luxurious clubroom of the Black Bear Patrol, and
+promising to keep them posted as to the situation by 'phone, Lieutenant
+Gordon and Ned Nestor hastened in the direction of the Shaw residence,
+only three blocks away. A surprise awaited them at the Shaw door.
+
+When they mounted the marble steps to the front portal they were
+astonished to see Jimmie McGraw standing in the shadow of a column,
+waiting for them with a grin on his face. He pushed the electric button
+for admittance as soon as they reached his side.
+
+"What are you doing here?" demanded the lieutenant, trying hard to appear
+angry with the boy.
+
+"Why, I just come over to tell Frank--"
+
+"Never mind that now," said the lieutenant, interrupting. "If this is the
+way you obey orders you can't go to the Canal Zone with me."
+
+"Well, you see," Jimmie began, in a contrite tone, "I thought of
+something, after you left, that I wanted to say to Frank, and I knew he'd
+have asked for me if he'd 'a' thought of it, so I just run over."
+
+"What was it you wanted to say to Frank?" asked the lieutenant, with a
+smile in Ned's direction. The persistence of the boy pleased him, to say
+the least.
+
+Just then the door was opened, saving Jimmie the exertion of manufacturing
+a smooth tale to tell the lieutenant, and the three entered the great hall
+of the fine residence, where they found Frank awaiting them.
+
+"I was afraid you'd both left the clubroom and couldn't be found," he
+cried, as he took his friends by the hand. "Come right up to my room, and
+I'll show you just how the thieves got the emerald necklace."
+
+"Perhaps we ought to see your father first," Lieutenant Gordon suggested,
+thinking of something much more important, to him at least, than the
+bauble.
+
+"Father is with Doctor Benson just now," was the reply.
+
+"Was he seriously injured?" asked Nestor, anxiously.
+
+"Not a bit of it," was the reply. "They just sneaked up behind him and
+stuffed a big handkerchief soaked with chloroform into his face. The drug
+knocked him out for a short time, but he is all right now. He told me to
+show you my room as soon as you came, and then to take you to him."
+
+"Who else is in the house?" asked Nestor.
+
+"No one but Doctor Benson and the servants," was the reply.
+
+"Then the police have not been called?"
+
+"No, indeed. I asked father to wait until you two came. I don't take much
+stock in the cheap plain clothes men they send about on robbery cases. But
+come on up to my room, and I'll show you what a sucker I am."
+
+"If I had said that," Jimmie put in, "you'd 'a' handed me one."
+
+"So Jimmie is on the case too," laughed Frank. "Well, son, there's money
+in it for the man who restores my emerald necklace, which I'm sure to get
+back, in the end. Why, that necklace has been stolen about a thousand
+times, and has always been restored to the rightful owner. Once it was
+found in the heart of Africa, in the kinky hair of a native. There's blood
+on it, too, for men have been killed trying to steal it, and trying to
+prevent its being stolen. It's the most valuable necklace in the world."
+
+The boy mounted the staircase as he spoke, leading the others to his room,
+which was at the front of the house on the second floor, directly over the
+apartment used by his father as a library, or study. The suite occupied by
+the boy was elegantly furnished, the only thing which marred the tasty
+arrangement of the place being a steel safe which stood between the two
+front windows of the sitting room.
+
+"There," said Frank, closing the door of the room behind the little party,
+"they got the necklace out of that safe."
+
+"How did they open it?" asked the lieutenant, and Jimmie laughed.
+
+"Frank never closed a door in his life," the boy said.
+
+"Was the safe open?" asked Lieutenant Gordon.
+
+"Yes," was the reply, "it was open. I had just been there to get some
+money when I heard a scrap going on in the corridor and rushed out,
+leaving the door open, like a sucker. The necklace was taken while I was
+gone."
+
+"Anything else taken?" asked Ned.
+
+"Not a thing. Oh, I guess the thief got a couple of dollars there was in
+the cash drawer, but nothing else was disturbed."
+
+"How long was he in the room?" asked the lieutenant.
+
+"Oh, perhaps fifteen minutes. What I mean is that it must have been about
+that length of time before I came back here. You see, when I got out into
+the hall, Pedro, that's one of Dad's pet servants, was scrapping with two
+pirate-looking fellows at the head of the stairs. One of them had him by
+the throat when I came up."
+
+"And they both got away?" asked the lieutenant.
+
+"Yes, they both got away. They turned and ran down stairs when I came up
+and bolted out of the front door, just as if some one stood there holding
+it open for them."
+
+"Was the night-lock on?"
+
+"Certainly; it always is at night."
+
+"Couldn't anybody open it from the inside, whether familiar with the house
+or not?" asked Ned.
+
+"No; for the night-bolt is controlled by an electric button, which you
+have to push before it can be moved from the inside, so no one not
+familiar with the house could have opened it."
+
+Nestor glanced at the lieutenant with a question in his eyes, and the
+officer nodded. There was little doubt in the mind of either that the
+crime had been planned by some one thoroughly conversant with the
+premises. It was at least certain that exit had been made easy for the
+thieves.
+
+"You spent this fifteen minutes, after the flight of the thieves by way of
+the front door, in your father's room, I take it?" asked Ned.
+
+"Yes; when the thieves ducked out of the front door I found a maid
+fainting in the corridor running along back of the parlor to Dad's room,
+the place where he does his work while in the house. She flopped over when
+I spoke to her and pointed to Dad's room. There I found him lying on the
+couch, drugged with chloroform."
+
+"They placed him on the couch, did they?"
+
+"Oh, no, sir, the thieves didn't take that trouble. Pedro was there before
+I entered the room, and it was he that did that. He had 'phoned for the
+doctor, too, before I got into the room."
+
+"He was chasing the thieves?" asked Ned.
+
+"Why, yes. He was just ahead of me at the front door."
+
+"Then how did he get back and do so much before you reached the study?"
+
+"I opened the front door and looked out for a couple of minutes," was the
+reply. "I was rattled, of course, and don't know how long I stood there,
+but I remember seeing two men running down the street. If I had known then
+that they had my emerald necklace, I'd have chased them and roared until
+the police came up and stopped them."
+
+"Then you came right in?"
+
+"Yes; right to the corridor where I found the maid lying on the floor."
+
+"And you remained with your father until the doctor came, and then went
+back to your room? It was then that you discovered the loss of the emerald
+necklace?"
+
+"Yes, I missed it when I came back."
+
+"You saw only two intruders?" asked Ned.
+
+"There were only two."
+
+"And these two ran down the staircase just ahead of you?"
+
+"Yes; they went down in about one leap."
+
+"Now, was the necklace in the safe when you went to it?"
+
+"I am certain that it was."
+
+"You saw it there?"
+
+"I saw the case in which it was enclosed."
+
+"And the case was gone when you returned?"
+
+"Yes; oh, the necklace was taken from the safe during my absence, all
+right."
+
+"Yet the two men were ahead of you, and went out of the street door before
+you reached the lower landing?"
+
+Frank's face showed that the idea presented by Nestor was new to him. He
+had never considered that feature of the case. In fact, he had been so
+excited that he had not thought logically of the circumstances surrounding
+the theft.
+
+"Well," he said, "I reckon I need a hired man to do my thinking for me.
+Why didn't that idea get into my thick head before?"
+
+"Are you still certain that the necklace was in the safe when you left the
+room?" asked Ned, with a smile.
+
+"Yes; I am dead sure of that. Why," he added, "there must have been a man
+that I did not see. Wonder why he didn't give me a clip on the head."
+
+"Someone will come here an' steal you, some day," grinned Jimmie.
+
+"I don't doubt it," replied Frank. "Now, where do you think the other man
+was?" he asked, turning to Ned.
+
+Ned arose and went into the sleeping room, from which opened a bathroom
+and a large closet. There was a door opening into the sleeping room from
+the corridor, the apartment being of the same length, east and west, as
+the sitting room. The closet opened from the sleeping room, and also from
+the bathroom.
+
+"What do you find here?" asked Frank, following him into the closet and
+through into the bathroom.
+
+"The third man might have been hiding in here," Ned replied. "When were
+you in this bathroom last?" he added, looking carefully about the place.
+
+"Not since early in the afternoon."
+
+"The suite was unoccupied all the afternoon?"
+
+"Yes; I am rarely here in the afternoon."
+
+"What time did you come up here after dinner?"
+
+"It was probably eight o'clock, for Dad was telling a rather interesting
+story at table, and we sat a long time. Mother is away on a visit to the
+Pacific coast."
+
+"And your father went to his room then?"
+
+"Yes; he said he had some work to do."
+
+"His room, also, was unoccupied all the afternoon?"
+
+"Yes; it must have been."
+
+"Who is usually about the lower part of the house during the afternoon?"
+
+"No one when mother is away."
+
+"Do you know whether anything was taken from your father's room?"
+
+"Why, I haven't heard that feature of the case discussed. We can soon find
+out by asking him."
+
+"Gee!" cried Jimmie. "What would they want to go an' dope him for if there
+wasn't something in his room they wanted?"
+
+"That is a very pertinent question," Lieutenant Gordon remarked. "It
+certainly seems that the thieves came here for something besides the
+emerald necklace."
+
+"Meaning the papers?" asked Ned, with a laugh.
+
+"Meaning the papers, of course," was the reply. "I am still of the opinion
+that the theft of the necklace was only incidental."
+
+"It begins to look that way to me," observed Frank. "As Jimmie says, what
+would they attack father for unless they wanted to search his room?"
+
+"You know about the papers?" asked the lieutenant.
+
+"Yes, indeed. They constituted the subject of the interesting story Dad
+was telling me at table to-night."
+
+"Did he tell you what they contained?" asked Ned.
+
+"He did not. He told me only what they dealt with."
+
+"He believes there is a plot against the completion of the Panama canal?"
+
+"Oh, yes; he is quite certain of it."
+
+"Did he mention the parties he suspected?"
+
+"He refused to do so. I can't understand why he should refuse. Can you?"
+
+"I think I can appreciate his position," replied Ned.
+
+"Great Scott!" cried Frank. "Do you think the agents of the men we are to
+grapple with in the Canal Zone have been in this house to-night? If so, it
+looks like they were looking us up, instead of our being after them."
+
+"Where is this man Pedro?" asked Ned, not answering the question.
+
+"He was in the study when I left, a few moments ago."
+
+"Then we will go down there. I want to ask him a few questions."
+
+At the foot of the staircase, they heard the telephone ringing, and Frank
+went into the closet. When he came out again he seemed excited and
+unnerved.
+
+"I guess there's something more than the necklace at stake to-night," he
+said, "for Dad's rooms in the newspaper building have been ransacked. I
+guess we won't have to go down to Gatun to lock horns with the men who are
+in this plot against Uncle Sam. If the Gatun dam was in New York, they
+might have blown it up to-night, for all that has been done to thwart
+them."
+
+"Well, we've just got to work on the case," grinned Jimmie.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE MAN IN THE CLOSET.
+
+
+"If you take my advice," Ned said to Frank, as they reached the study
+door, "you won't say anything to your father about the trouble at the
+office until we have talked with him concerning the raid on the house. He
+might rush off to the newspaper building immediately, without answering
+our questions about the visit to his room."
+
+"That is just what he would do," Frank replied.
+
+When the boys entered the study, closely followed by Lieutenant Gordon and
+Jimmie, they found three men in the room. One was Mr. Shaw, lying on a
+couch at the front of the apartment. One was Dr. Benson, who sat in an
+easy chair at his side. The third was Pedro, the servant mentioned by
+Frank as one of his father's favored attendants. He stood by the couch as
+the boys stepped into the room, his bold black eyes studying their faces
+impertinently as they entered.
+
+The man was not far from forty, tall, slender, dusky of face--plainly in
+intellectual capacity and breeding far above the menial position he
+occupied in the house. Standing in repose, his figure was erect and well
+balanced, like that of a man trained to military service.
+
+But even as he stood subserviently by the couch of his employer, his
+slender hands at his sides, there seemed to be something of the alertness
+of a wild beast in his physical attitude of suppression. Somehow, he gave
+Ned the impression of one about to spring forth upon an enemy.
+
+After the presentations were made, it was with the greatest difficulty
+that Lieutenant Gordon restrained himself from at once taking up the topic
+he had discussed with Mr. Shaw so unsatisfactorily that afternoon--the
+subject of the plot against the Gatun dam. What did the editor know? What
+did he suspect concerning the raid on his home? Did he believe that the
+plotters had opened their defense right there in the city of New York?
+
+However, he curbed his hasty impulse, knowing that the information he
+sought was not to be obtained in that way. Mr. Shaw was looking upon the
+matter entirely from the standpoint of an enterprising journalist, and
+would be cautious about giving out his own discoveries and impressions.
+
+"Are you still suffering from the effects of the chloroform?" asked the
+lieutenant, anxiously.
+
+"I'm still a little weak," was the reply, "and still a little tippy at the
+stomach, but Benson tells me that I shall be well again in an hour."
+
+"You were of course attacked without warning," the lieutenant continued,
+half hoping that the editor would enter into a full and frank discussion
+of the event.
+
+"Entirely so," was the reply. "I was sitting at my desk when the door was
+opened and some one entered. I thought it was Pedro, for I had just rung
+for him, and did not look around. Then I was seized from behind and a
+handkerchief soaked with chloroform thrust into my face."
+
+"You did not see your assailant?" asked Ned.
+
+"Now for the cross-examination," laughed the editor. "I have heard
+something of Mr. Nestor's work in the secret service," he added, "and
+shall be glad to answer any of his questions. Go ahead, my boy. No, to
+answer your first question, I did not see my assailant, and do not know
+whether there were two or only one."
+
+"Did you notice the time?" asked Ned, modestly.
+
+"Yes, it was nine o'clock. The next I knew, Pedro was lifting me onto the
+couch, and a maid was lifting her voice to high heaven out in the
+corridor. That, I have since learned, was at ten o'clock, so, you see, the
+ruffians had an hour to work in."
+
+"They must have mussed the room up quite a lot in that time," said the
+lieutenant, hoping to bring the editor to the point in which he was
+interested.
+
+Mr. Shaw made no reply, but turned to Ned with a smile.
+
+"Go ahead, Ned," Frank cried. "We all want to know what ideas are brooding
+in that clever brain of yours."
+
+"I would like to ask," Ned began, modestly, "if you can assign a reason
+for the attack upon you."
+
+"Why, they came into the house after the emerald necklace," was the reply.
+"They looked here for it first. That is all."
+
+"But it appears that they knew the necklace to be in Frank's safe," urged
+Ned. "At least it did not take them long to find it there after the safe
+was unlocked and he was brought from his room."
+
+"Oh, well, they probably looked here first," insisted the editor. "The
+manner in which they rummaged the place while I was unconscious shows that
+they searched for it here. The necklace was the thing sought, of course."
+
+"Did they take anything from the room?" asked Ned, and Lieutenant Gordon
+leaned forward, anxiously awaiting the answer.
+
+"Not a thing," was the quiet reply. "At least, I have missed nothing."
+
+"Perhaps the thing they sought was not found," suggested Gordon, no longer
+able to keep the plot subject out of the conversation.
+
+"I know what you mean, Lieutenant," the other replied, "and I may as well
+tell you now that the papers to which you refer are not in the house--were
+not here and never have been here. They are perfectly safe, and we will
+drop them from the case, if you please."
+
+"I am naturally anxious about them," said Gordon, "in the interest of the
+government, of course, for I believe they hold the key to a mystery I am
+asked to solve."
+
+"You may be mistaken as to the contents of the papers," laughed Mr. Shaw.
+"Well," he added, "we will eliminate them from the matter in hand. What
+next, Mr. Nestor? I have great hope of your success in unraveling this
+mystery of the necklace."
+
+"With your permission," Ned replied, "and in your presence, I would like
+to ask your man a few questions."
+
+Pedro turned a pair of venomous eyes toward the speaker for just an
+instant. Then he stood respectfully looking at his master again. Ned saw
+the movement, the quick hostility of the glance, and felt surer of his
+ground than before.
+
+"He will, I am sure, be happy to answer any questions you may ask," said
+Mr. Shaw.
+
+Pedro nodded, half defiantly, as though he felt humiliated by being placed
+at the service, even a verbal one, of a boy, and Ned asked:
+
+"When you saw the men at the head of the staircase, what did you say to
+them?"
+
+The answer came in perfect English, yet there was a something in the voice
+which told as plainly as words could have done that English was not the
+native tongue of the speaker.
+
+"I ordered them from the house," he said.
+
+"And then they attacked you?"
+
+"The mark of a hand is on my throat, sir."
+
+"How many men were there?"
+
+"Two, sir, and they both piled on top of me."
+
+"There was no one else in the corridor?"
+
+"No one."
+
+"They were armed, I presume?"
+
+"I saw no weapons in their hands."
+
+"They might have killed you?"
+
+"Only for the arrival of Master Shaw they might have done so."
+
+"Can you describe these men?" asked Ned.
+
+"I don't think I can, sir. I was too busy to notice their faces or their
+clothes during the short time I was with them."
+
+"Can you say whether one of them was tall and slender, with very black
+hair, turning gray in places?" asked Ned, fixing his eyes on those of the
+servant.
+
+Pedro looked back at his questioner for an instant, and then his gaze fell
+to the floor.
+
+"I can't say," he replied, slowly, while the others, amazed at the
+character of the question, turned to Ned for explanation.
+
+"If the description I have given is recognized by you as that of one of
+the men you met in the corridor," Ned went on, "can you tell me whether
+his clothing was wet or dry?"
+
+There was dead silence in the room. There had been nothing thus far in the
+case leading up to this description, and those present looked at Ned with
+wonder in their faces. To say the least, the questions seemed irrelevant.
+
+Pedro stood for a moment touching his dry lips with the tip of his tongue,
+his fingers clasping and unclasping, then his shoulders straightened into
+firmer lines and he faced his questioner with a smile of complacency.
+
+"I don't know what you mean," he said.
+
+"Perhaps I should have said damp clothing," Ned replied. "The man I have
+in mind--the man who might have been one of your assailants--entered the
+house just after the rainstorm, which came on close after six o'clock. His
+clothing was soaking wet when he came in, but would not remain so for four
+hours."
+
+Pedro grasped the back of a chair which stood near him and looked out of
+the window to the lighted street in front of the house. While he stood
+silent Mr. Shaw arose to a sitting position on the couch and asked:
+
+"Why the description, Mr. Nestor? Why the positive statement about the
+time at least one of the men entered the house?"
+
+Every eye in the room was now fixed on Nestor's face. Even Lieutenant
+Gordon seemed inclined to think that some huge joke was being pulled off.
+
+"The man who came in at six," Ned replied, "came in out of the rain, and
+left marks showing the height and breadth of his shoulders on a wall
+against which he leaned. These marks show a man tall and slender. He
+entered the house dripping with water, moving about like a street
+sprinkler and leaving signs of his presence in the places he visited. He
+seems to be a person of rather refined tastes, inclined to be neat in
+personal appearance, for he went to Frank's bathroom to clean up. There he
+used the washbowl and the toilet articles, leaving black hair turning gray
+in the comb."
+
+"This is uncanny," shouted Frank. "You couldn't have observed all this
+during the minute you were in the bathroom," he added.
+
+Mr. Shaw considered the question gravely, his eyes fixed on those of the
+boy.
+
+"He sprinkled the closet floor, did he?" he asked, presently.
+
+"Yes, sir; and stood back against the closet wall, and used Frank's comb
+and brush."
+
+"Did he come to this room, also?"
+
+"Yes, sir; the little round spots on the delicate covering of this little
+table were made by dripping water. You see, sir, he was in here before the
+water dripped off his clothes in the closet, probably soon after he
+entered the house."
+
+"But how did he get into the house? How did he get into this locked
+room?"
+
+"I should say that he was assisted by some one belonging in the house,"
+was the quiet reply. "After he left this room he mounted the staircase and
+hid in Frank's closet, evidently waiting for you to return home, or for
+Frank to come. Perhaps he hoped that one of you might bring home the
+thing, or the things, he had been unable to find in your rooms."
+
+"The papers concerning the Gatun plot, for instance," said the
+lieutenant.
+
+The editor glanced at the officer with a slight frown on his brow, but
+made no reply to the remark. It was plain that he was unwilling to take up
+that phase of the case.
+
+"It is a wonder the fellow didn't jimmy Frank's safe and get the emerald
+necklace, without waiting so long for the safe to be opened," he said, in
+a moment.
+
+Thus insisting on his previously expressed opinion that the sole purpose
+of the thieves had been to secure the emerald necklace, further
+disclaiming any belief that the alleged plot against the government had
+figured in the matter at all, the editor smiled provokingly at the
+officer.
+
+Nestor looked from the lieutenant to the newspaper owner and smiled
+quietly.
+
+"I wish I knew," he said, "whether the papers we hear so much about really
+reveal the details of an alleged plot against the government."
+
+Mr. Shaw did not reply.
+
+"If they do not," continued the boy, "do they connect some man, or some
+group of men, with a plot which may be forming?"
+
+The editor glanced approvingly at Ned, as if rather pleased with his
+cleverness, but did not speak.
+
+"I have known newspaper men," Ned went on, "to make mistakes in such
+matters. However, I have no doubt that you have good reasons for the
+course you are taking," he continued, "and therefore I have no fault to
+find with you."
+
+"You're a fine fellow, Mr. Nestor," the editor exclaimed. "Some day, when
+you see the matter in the right light, I'll tell you all about it. I can't
+do so now, for no end of trouble might come from it."
+
+"Very well," replied Ned. "There is one more question I want to ask you.
+Will you answer it?"
+
+"If I can consistently do so, yes."
+
+"If the men who searched this house to-night were after the necklace, and
+that alone, why should they extend their operations to your offices in the
+newspaper building?"
+
+"Did they do that?" asked the editor calmly. "Then I shall have to go down
+there and look things over. Will you kindly accompany me?"
+
+But the search at the offices was barren of clues.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+AT THE GREAT GATUN DAM.
+
+
+"Over there is the oldest country on this side of the world," said Peter
+Fenton, pointing over the rail of the vessel and across the smooth waters
+of the Caribbean sea. "We are now on the famous Spanish Main," he
+continued, "where adventurers from the Windward Islands laid in wait for
+the galleons of Spain. Just ahead, rising out of the sea, is the Isthmus
+of Panama. Down there to the left is the continent of South America, where
+there were cathedrals and palaces when Manhattan Island was still
+populated by native Indians."
+
+The minds of the Boy Scouts were filled with splendid dreams as they
+followed with their eyes the directions indicated by the pointing hand. It
+was all a fairyland to them. Peter talked for some time on the causes
+which had brought the scum of the seven seas to the Isthmus, and then Ned
+Nestor interrupted the talk by inviting them all to the stateroom he
+occupied in common with Frank Shaw.
+
+When all were seated on chairs and bunks Ned opened the door and looked
+out on the passage which ran along in front of the apartment. When he
+turned back into the room there was a humorous twinkle in his eyes.
+
+"His Nobbs is in sight," he said.
+
+"The same party?" asked Frank.
+
+"The same dusky gentleman who has followed us since the night of the theft
+of the emerald necklace," Ned replied.
+
+"He ought to receive a Carnegie medal for always being on the spot," Frank
+said.
+
+"We ought to turn the hose on him," Jimmie corrected.
+
+"We should feel lost without him," laughed George Tolford. "When I first
+saw him in the newspaper building, while you were investigating the chaos
+of papers in Mr. Shaw's rooms," he went on, "I had a hunch that we
+shouldn't be able to lose him."
+
+"Well, we haven't been able to lose him," Peter Fenton said. "He reminds
+me, the way he floats about, of the ghost of some pirate who sailed about
+the Spanish Main four hundred years ago in a long, low, rakish craft
+adorned with a black flag."
+
+"I saw him in the newspaper building that night," Jimmie said, "an' he
+looked glad because we got no clues there."
+
+"Why didn't Ned have him arrested in New York?" asked Jack Bosworth.
+
+"What for?" demanded Jimmie.
+
+"For making a nuisance of himself. Then he couldn't have followed us on
+board the ship. Also, he might have been able to get a little sleep
+nights."
+
+"I reckon we have kept him going," Frank observed, with a laugh.
+
+Ever since the night of the robbery the man called "His Nobbs" for want of
+a better name had kept Ned Nestor in sight most of the time. He had
+followed him home after the profitless visit to the newspaper office on
+the night of the theft, had chased about after him while the details of
+the trip to Panama were arranged the next day, and had turned up on the
+ship after she was under way.
+
+The fellow did not seem to be overly anxious to keep his watchfulness a
+secret. He acted like any first cabin passenger on the ship. But, somehow,
+he managed to keep Ned in view most of the time. Now and then he was
+caught watching the door of Ned's stateroom. He never spoke to the boy,
+and never even looked at him when the two passed one another.
+
+Taking advantage of this preference for Ned's company, the boys had put up
+all sorts of jobs on the fellow, and some of their pranks had kept him
+watching Ned's odd moves all night. It was a new and strange experience to
+Ned, this being spied upon so openly, and he was at a loss to account for
+the mental processes which inspired the strange surveillance.
+
+"Well," said Ned presently, "let him watch outside if he wants to. We came
+in here to talk about something else. I have just been talking with
+Lieutenant Gordon, and he says we are to go into camp in the jungle not
+far from the Gatun dam. He will stop at the Tivoli, at Ancon, adjoining
+Panama. When we have anything to communicate to him, one of us can go down
+to Panama after supplies and leave word at an office where one of the
+lieutenant's associates in the case will always be in waiting. We are not
+to know the lieutenant if we meet him in our soup."
+
+"We'll be eaten alive out there in the jungle," protested Jimmie.
+
+"Besides, it would be more natural for us to go to Gatun for our
+supplies," Peter Fenton said.
+
+"There are reasons why he wants us to remain in the jungle near Gatun for
+a time," Ned replied, and the boys separated, Jimmie strolling off in the
+wake of "His Nobbs," "just to see if he couldn't make him cough up
+something," as he expressed it.
+
+The mystery of the theft of the emerald necklace was still unsolved, the
+man whose picture Ned carried in his brain had not been found, Pedro had
+been among the missing ever since he had walked out of the Shaw residence
+on the morning after the robbery. When the boys landed at Colon the next
+morning the case upon which they were engaged was still new ground before
+them.
+
+Frank Shaw continued to take the loss of his emeralds very seriously, and
+at no time during the trip to Colon had he failed to keep an eye out for
+Pedro, whom he suspected of having admitted the thief to the house.
+
+"His name isn't Pedro at all," he said, as the train sped out of the
+network of tracks behind Colon, "but Pedrarias. That was the name of the
+robber who succeeded Balboa as governor of New Granada, the pirate who
+stood Balboa up against a wall and shot him. Pedro, as I call him for
+short, declares that he is a direct descendant of that old stiff. He says
+the Spanish blood in his veins is pure. Great Scott! if I had such a
+pirate for an ancestor, I'd keep mighty still about it."
+
+Peter Fenton was in his element now. As the train moved away from Colon he
+pointed out various points of interest, and supplied such information
+about them as he had gleaned from the maps and books he had consulted. The
+ruins of the old French workings were soon in sight, the locality where
+millions had been squandered in graft. And there was Mount Hope Cemetery,
+where thousands who had perished from fever had been buried.
+
+"The doctors have cleaned out the fever now," he said, "by cleaning out
+the mosquitoes--the poison kind with the long name," he added. "The Canal
+Zone is about as healthy now as the city of New York."
+
+Then came thickets where the trees were tied together with vines and
+creepers, all in gorgeous bloom. The great trees lifting their heads out
+of the jungle reminded the boys of the electric towers of New York, the
+twists of vines resembling the mighty cables which convey light, heat and
+power to the inhabitants of Manhattan.
+
+As if in rivalry of the wealth of blossoms, bright-plumaged birds darted
+about like butterflies of unnatural growth. Now and then they saw evil
+looking lizards, some of them a yard in length, scuttling off through the
+marshes or looking down from high limbs. There was a swampy atmosphere
+over all the landscape.
+
+Then, as the Boy Scouts looked, thinking of the glory of a camp in the
+thicket--of a retired nook on some dry knoll--the jungle disappeared as if
+by magic, and the train was winding up grassy hills. Beyond, higher up,
+the scattered houses of a city of fair size came into view.
+
+"That's Gatun," cried Fenton. "I've read half a dozen descriptions of it
+lately. Great town, that."
+
+"The houses look like boxes from here," Jimmie observed.
+
+"Of course," Peter replied, "they are all two-story houses, square, with
+double balconies all screened in. Might be Philadelphia, eh?"
+
+There were smooth roads in front of the houses, and there were yards where
+flowers were growing, and where neatly dressed children were playing.
+Jimmie turned from the homelike scene to Frank.
+
+"I thought there would be something new down here," he complained. "This
+is just like a town up the Hudson."
+
+"Jimmie expected to find people living in tents made out of animal skins,"
+laughed George. "He thinks the natives eat folks alive."
+
+"You wait until you get out of the country," Frank said, "before you talk
+of cottages up the Hudson. There will be something stirring before we get
+off the Isthmus."
+
+"I hope so," Jimmie replied. "There surely will be if we camp back there
+in the jungle, among the snakes and lizards."
+
+"Why not camp on the hills back there?" asked Jack.
+
+"We may soon camp anywhere we like," said Ned. "The Zone government
+understands that we are a lot of kids out after specimens."
+
+"Specimens of what?" asked Jimmie.
+
+"Tall, slender men with black hair turning gray," replied Frank.
+
+"Quit your kiddin'," grinned Jimmie.
+
+The boys left the train at a modern depot, passed through the train-shed,
+crossed a level sward, and looked down into a mighty chasm.
+
+"Great Scott!" cried Frank. "Is that the bottom of the world?"
+
+He pointed below as he spoke.
+
+"There seems to be a thin crust of rock between the bottom and the other
+side of the world," laughed George. "See! There are tunnels and pits down
+there. The men are still digging. Look like ants, don't they?"
+
+It was a wonderful sight, and the Boy Scouts gazed long at the scene of
+activity before turning away toward the Gatun dam itself. This, Peter
+Fenton explained, was one of the big cuts of the canal, and ran from the
+marshy valley above down through the rocky ridge which held the rains in
+check and made a swamp of the upland.
+
+Along the margins of the excavation ran shining steel rails upon which
+were mounted tapering structures of steel, from which cables crossed the
+gorge, carrying great buckets of concrete for the work below. Heavy walls
+were growing out of the depths.
+
+"The ships will come up out of the sea through this cut," Peter
+explained.
+
+"Then they'll climb the hill," scorned Jimmie.
+
+"They will stop down there," said Peter, "and the lock gates will be
+closed, and the water will lift them to the level of the lake."
+
+"I don't see no lake," observed the skeptical Jimmie.
+
+"The lake will lie where the low land is, over there," replied Peter,
+pointing. "The Gatun dam will block the water and make a lake 85 feet
+above sea level, covering one hundred and sixty-four square miles of
+earth."
+
+"So the most of the canal will be lake?" asked the boy.
+
+"Quite a lot of it," was the reply.
+
+"And if any one should blow up the dam, after it gets on its job, the
+ships would have to climb a ladder if they got over to Panama," he
+exclaimed.
+
+"Something like that," Peter said.
+
+"Where is the Gatun dam?" asked Jack.
+
+"It is going up over there," Peter replied, pointing out a low, broad
+ridge which appeared to link two hills together. "That is what will make
+the inland sea, and that is the lump of earth we came here to look
+after."
+
+"It is a busy place night and day," Ned said. "See the electric towers and
+wires? Work never stops."
+
+"Something like His Nobbs," grinned Jimmie. "I wonder if he has had any
+sleep since he struck our trail?"
+
+"I haven't seen him since we left the train," Jack said. "Perhaps he has
+delivered us over to the Panama division of the Anti-Canal Benevolent
+Society. In that case, we shall see no more of him."
+
+After a time the boys strolled over to a neat little hotel on the
+principal street of the town, and there saw Lieutenant Gordon, who
+strolled up to Ned, just as any two Americans meeting there might have
+affiliated.
+
+"Your camp in the jungle is ready for you," the officer said, as the two
+walked about the lobby of the hotel. "You will find a movable cottage
+there, all furnished, and a good cook. Until further orders you are all to
+remain there."
+
+"Pretty quick work," said Ned.
+
+"The orders for the cottage camp were sent over by wire before we left New
+York," the lieutenant replied. "You are at liberty to roam about the works
+at will, only you ought to leave some one at the cottage always."
+
+"As I understand it, we are boys looking for adventure?" asked Ned.
+
+"Exactly."
+
+"And an emerald necklace," added the boy with a laugh.
+
+"I have a notion that if you find Pedro you will find the necklace, unless
+you find him too late--after he has disposed of it."
+
+"That may be," Ned replied, doubtingly, "but we are not likely to run
+across Pedro over here. Neither shall we see His Nobbs. They have played
+their roles, and we shall have new ones to contend with now."
+
+That night the boys took possession of the cottage in the jungle, dancing
+and prancing about it like wild Indians. It all seemed to them to be too
+good to be true. Here they were, at last, on the Canal Zone, and, in a
+way, in the secret service of the government. It was late when they
+retired, and no guard was set.
+
+This Ned regretted, after the others were asleep, and so lay awake a long
+time, watching. Then, about midnight, he saw some one looking in at the
+porch door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+A BOMB AND A RUINED TEMPLE.
+
+
+Ned lay perfectly still and the door was closed again, with the figure
+still on the outside. There were no lights inside the cottage, and it was
+a fairly clear night, so the boy could see the man standing on the porch,
+the wire screen in the door robbing his figure of sharp outline.
+
+The intruder appeared to be listening for some sound within. Now and then
+he bent his head forward toward the door, and once, when Jimmie snorted
+out in his sleep, he darted a hand toward his hip, as if reaching for a
+weapon.
+
+"His Nobbs, or his substitute, has arrived," thought Ned.
+
+After a moment the man left the porch, closing the outer door carefully
+behind him. Ned was out of bed in an instant, following on after him. When
+he gained the porch, the intruder was turning the corner of the house.
+
+Fearful of being seen, Ned crouched in a dark corner of the porch and
+waited. He could hear the fellow moving about, but could not see him, as
+he kept away from the front of the cottage.
+
+The situation did not change for five minutes. The unwelcome visitor was
+still moving about outside and Ned was waiting for some decisive move to
+be made. The cottage did not rest on the knoll itself, but was set up on
+blocks a foot or more in height, and before long the boy heard sounds
+which indicated that the man he was watching was creeping in under the
+floor.
+
+Waiting only long enough to make sure of this, Ned left the porch and hid
+himself in the jungle, which, on the south, came to within a few feet of
+the wall. The fellow was indeed under the house, as the boy knew by the
+sounds he made. It was perfectly dark under there, so his movements could
+not be observed.
+
+In five minutes more the fellow backed out and arose to his feet. Then Ned
+saw that he held something in his right hand which looked like a fuse. It
+seemed that it was the man's benevolent idea to deprive the jungle of the
+society of the boys by blowing up their cottage.
+
+Ned's first impulse was to shoot the fellow where he stood. He had no
+doubt that the fellow had put enough explosive under the floor to kill
+every person in it. That would be murder, and the boy's impulse was to
+deal out to the ruffian the fate of a murderer.
+
+But he did not fire, for the intruder had not yet lighted the fuse. He
+stood for a moment with the end in his hand and then moved toward that
+part of the jungle where Ned was concealed. The boy moved cautiously
+aside, but even then, as the man crouched down in the vines, he could have
+touched him with a hand by crawling a yard to the front.
+
+Deliberately the fellow lighted a match and applied it to the fuse. The
+end of the cord brightened for an instant and then became black again.
+
+"It is wet."
+
+The words were whispered in English.
+
+He struck another match, listened an instant to make sure that the noise
+of the lighting had not attracted attention inside the cottage, and
+applied it to the fuse. The fuse burned swiftly, and the boy heard the
+incendiary go crashing through the tangle of vines and creepers, heading
+toward the south.
+
+Ned cut the fuse above the crawling coal and stood for a moment listening
+to the man struggling with the undergrowth. Then he hastened into the
+cottage and laid a hand on Frank Shaw's shoulder.
+
+"Get up," he whispered. "The fireworks have begun."
+
+Frank sat up in his bunk and rubbed his eyes sleepily.
+
+"What is it?" he asked. "Have you found the necklace?"
+
+"Dress, quick."
+
+"Wonder you wouldn't let a fellow sleep," grumbled Frank.
+
+While the boys were dressing there came a snicker from Jimmie's bed.
+
+"Don't start anythin' you can't stop," they heard the boy whisper.
+
+"Want a midnight ramble among the snakes?" asked Ned, drawing on a pair of
+rubber boots which came up to his thighs.
+
+"You bet I do," was the reply.
+
+"Then get up and dress, and put on your high boots, for there are crawling
+things in the jungle."
+
+Leaving the boys dressing, Ned hastened outside and listened. The man who
+had attempted the destruction of the cottage was still moving through the
+thicket. It seemed to Ned that an army could have made no more noise than
+he made. In a moment he was joined by Frank and Jimmie.
+
+In as few words as possible Ned explained the situation to his amazed
+chums.
+
+"What you goin' to do?" Jimmie asked.
+
+"I want to follow that fellow to his principal," was the reply. "I want to
+know who set him at such cowardly work."
+
+"It won't be difficult to follow him," Frank said. "He makes a noise like
+a circus parade."
+
+"One of you must stay here and watch the cottage," Ned said, then. "When
+the explosion does not come, he may circle back here to see what has
+happened. The other may go with me."
+
+Both boys insisted on accompanying Ned, but it was finally decided that it
+would be better policy to leave Frank at the cottage.
+
+"You'll have to make haste," Frank said, regretfully, "for the sounds he
+is making are becoming fainter. What are you going to do with that fuse?"
+he added, as Ned drew on the line and hauled about half a foot of gas pipe
+from under the house.
+
+"It will do no harm to take it with me," Ned replied. "It is not very
+heavy to carry, and it may be of use."
+
+"I hope you'll blow that chap up with it," exclaimed Jimmie.
+
+"Be careful that you don't blow yourself up with it," warned Frank.
+
+"There are no cigarette smokers in the party, and so there is no danger,"
+was the reply.
+
+"I'll be here listening when the explosion comes," grinned Frank.
+
+The sounds out in the jungle were now growing fainter. The man was either
+finding the way easier or he was getting some distance away.
+
+"Come on," Jimmie urged. "He'll get away from us."
+
+"If you make as much noise as he does," Frank said, "he'll stop and shoot
+you before you get anywhere near him."
+
+It was no part of Ned's intention, however, to follow the intruder through
+the jungle. He was now waiting to make sure of the general direction the
+fellow was taking. He listened some moments longer, until the sounds grew
+very faint indeed, and then took the path which led from the cottage to a
+fairly well-made road ending five miles away at one of the streets of
+Gatun.
+
+"You're gettin' the wrong steer," Jimmie said, as they moved along.
+"You'll have to go around the world if you catch him by going this way."
+
+"The fellow is making for the hills," explained Ned, "and we may be able
+to catch him as he comes out of the jungle."
+
+The boys made good speed along the cleared lane until they came to a
+rolling, grassy hill, one of many leading up to the summit. Then they
+turned off to the east, still keeping their pace but taking precautions
+against being seen, as the night was clearer now than before, and a moon
+looked down from the sky.
+
+Finally Ned paused in a little valley on a gentle slope.
+
+It was one of the wonderful nights rarely experienced save under the
+equator, or very close to the middle girdle of the globe. The luxuriant
+growths of the jungle seemed to be breathing in long, steady pulsations,
+so uniform was the lifting and falling of the night breeze.
+
+Now and then the call of a night bird or the cry of a wild animal in the
+thickets came through the heavy air. From the distance came the clamor of
+the greatest work the world has ever undertaken. The thud and creaking of
+machinery mingled with the primitive noises of the forest. And far away
+over the cut flared the white light of the great electric globes which
+lighted the workers on their tasks.
+
+As the boys looked forth from their depression in the side of the slope,
+two men came around the rise of the hill and stood at the edge of the
+jungle, not more than half a dozen yards away. Almost at the same instant
+it became apparent that some one was floundering about in the thicket
+immediately in front of them.
+
+A low whistle cut the air, and then the creepers parted and a man's head
+and shoulders appeared. Ned and Jimmie crouched lower in their dent in the
+grassy hill.
+
+The man emerged from the thicket and stood with the others, tearing
+clinging vines and leaves from his clothing as he did so.
+
+"What is wrong?" a voice asked. "There has been no explosion."
+
+"The fuse was wet," was the reply.
+
+"Then why didn't you go back and fix it?" demanded the first speaker. "The
+sooner the job is done the better."
+
+"I heard some one stirring in the jungle," was the reply.
+
+"A nice man to be given such a task," roared another voice. "You must go
+back."
+
+"You've landed the plotters, all right," whispered Jimmie. "I'll bet
+there's plenty more bombs like the one you have, waiting to be tucked
+under the Gatun dam. Gee! I'd like to take a shot at them gazabos."
+
+Still standing in the moonlight, only a short distance from the listening
+boys, the three men argued in low tones for a moment. It was clear that
+the man who had placed the bomb was refusing to obey the orders given by
+the others.
+
+"I'm not in love with the job, anyway," the fellow snarled, "and you may
+do it yourselves if you want it done to-night."
+
+The others did not appear to relish the murderous job they were urging the
+speaker to undertake, and in a few moments the party moved around the base
+of the hill and then struck for the higher ground by way of a gully which
+cut between two elevations.
+
+When the boys, mounting the breast of the hill and crouching at the
+summit, saw the men again, two were making for the cloud of light which
+lay over the workings while the other was following the crest of the hill
+toward the east.
+
+Presently the two swung down into a valley, and then twin lights like
+those of a great touring car showed over a rise.
+
+"What do you think of that?" asked Jimmie. "There must be a good road
+there."
+
+The car came on a few yards after the lamp showed, and the two men
+clambered aboard. In five minutes the motor car was speeding toward
+Gatun.
+
+"Two for the city and one for the tall timber," Jimmie snickered, as the
+car moved out of view. "There's the solitary individual watching them from
+the summit."
+
+As the boy spoke the man who had laid the bomb so unsuccessfully faced
+away to the east and disappeared down the slope. It was not difficult to
+keep track of him, although the necessity for concealment was imperative,
+and the fellow proceeded at a swift pace for an hour.
+
+At the end of that time he was in a lonely section of country, where
+rounded knolls were surrounded by the dense growth of the jungle. In spite
+of the wildness of the spot, however, Ned saw that civilization had at
+some distant time made its mark there. Here and there low, broken walls of
+brick lifted from the grass, and the vegetation was not quite so
+luxuriant. In numerous places, as they advanced, the boys saw that the
+ground had once been leveled off as if to make way for a building, the
+ruins of which were still to be seen.
+
+"One of the ruined cities of the Isthmus," Jimmie whispered. "If Peter
+could see this he would know all about it."
+
+"It wasn't a very large city," laughed Ned.
+
+"There's the ruins of a temple over there," insisted the boy. "There's a
+wall standing yet. And there's the man we want going into it."
+
+As the boy spoke the man they were following disappeared behind the wall.
+Before he could be restrained Jimmie wiggled forward to the foot of the
+ruin. Nestor saw him peering around the end of the line of brick and
+hastened forward.
+
+The man they had followed was nowhere in sight when Ned turned the angle,
+and Jimmie lay on the ground in the shadows, kicking up his heels.
+
+"He went down through the earth," the boy giggled, regardless of the
+danger of the situation. "He went right down through the ground. Say, but
+he's a corker, to get out of sight like that."
+
+Ned caught the lad by the arm, to silence him, and listened. A steady
+click-click came from the ground beneath their feet. The sounds came
+continuously, almost with the regularity of the ticking of a clock.
+
+"Where was he when he disappeared?" asked Ned.
+
+"Over there in the corner," was the reply. "He walked up to the wall and
+stepped out of sight. What's that queer smell?" he added, sniffing the
+air.
+
+"There must be a fire down there in the vaults of the old temple," replied
+Ned. "They must have a fire, for the smoke is coming out of a crevice at
+the top of that wall, and they are working on metal."
+
+"Yes," said Jimmie, "an' I'll bet they're makin' more bombs--bombs for the
+dam."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+WORKING ON NED'S THEORY.
+
+
+At daybreak Frank Shaw stood in the screened porch facing west, watching
+and waiting for the return of Nestor and Jimmie. It had been a long night
+for him, but he had kept his vigil alone, knowing that his chums needed
+all the rest they could get.
+
+Many times between midnight and morning the noises of the tropical forest
+had taken on the semblance of human voices, and then he had crept out from
+the screens to listen intently for some indication of the approach of his
+friends. But they had not come, and now he was anxious to set out in
+search of them.
+
+While he stood there with his brain filled with forebodings of evil, he
+heard a step in the cottage, and then Jack Bosworth stood by his side,
+bright and exuberant of spirit after his long sleep. He stood silent for a
+moment, looking out into the wonderful jungle and then turned to Frank.
+
+"Great country," he exclaimed, sweeping a hand toward the gorgeous
+thickets.
+
+"A dangerous country," Frank said.
+
+"And a country for an appetite," cried Jack. "I'll get the boys up and
+we'll have breakfast. Why," he added, turning back to the porch after
+glancing over the row of bunks, "where's Ned?"
+
+"He went away at midnight," was the reply, "and hasn't returned. I'm
+afraid something serious has happened to him."
+
+"And you have been watching for him all night?" asked Jack. "Why didn't
+you waken me? I reckon I'm entitled to a fair share of what's going on
+here, be it good or bad."
+
+Frank told the story of the night briefly and Jack listened with a frown
+on his brow. His fingers clenched at mention of the bomb which had been
+placed under the floor of the cottage.
+
+"We're spotted, of course," he said, when Frank concluded the story. "If
+we had only tipped His Nobbs off the ship on the way over."
+
+"I suggested that to Ned," Frank answered, "but he only laughed at me. He
+declared the fellow to be the missing link between himself and the
+principals in the Gatun dam plot."
+
+"What's the answer?" demanded Jack, with a puzzled air.
+
+"Why, it is his theory that half of the criminals of the world would
+escape punishment if they could only learn to lie quiet until they were
+looked up."
+
+"I see. His notion was that the plotters, guided by His Nobbs, would visit
+us with hostile intentions, and that they might leave a trail back to
+their own camp."
+
+"That is about it."
+
+"Well, they seem to have looked us up all right."
+
+The other boys now came tumbling out of the cottage, shouting their
+greetings to Frank and Jack and the golden morning, and clamoring for
+breakfast. Five minutes later, when the events of the night had been
+explained, their healthy appetites had vanished. Even when the cook began
+preparations for the morning meal, filling the air with tantalizing odors
+of cooking food, they sat in serious consultation with no thought of
+breakfast in their minds.
+
+"What ought we to do?" asked Jack.
+
+"Go and look him up," suggested George Tolford.
+
+"He may have become lost in the jungle," Peter Fenton remarked. "Suppose
+we go out into the jungle and fire our guns?"
+
+"I'm afraid it is worse than that," Glen Howard remarked. "We ought to let
+Lieutenant Gordon know about it."
+
+"I am afraid Ned wouldn't like that," Frank said.
+
+While the boys discussed ways and means a dusky youth of perhaps twenty
+was seen approaching the cottage on a run. His dress was half American and
+half native, but his face was wholly Spanish. He paused when he discovered
+the boys on the porch and held out his hands, as if to show that his
+mission was a peaceful one. Frank motioned to him to approach and opened
+the screened porch door for him to enter.
+
+"Good-morning, gentlemen," he said, in excellent English. "I am from
+Lieutenant Gordon."
+
+"Then I think you're the fellow we are looking for," Jack said.
+
+"He wants you to join him up at the Culebra cut," the youngster continued.
+"The two who left the cottage last night are there waiting for you."
+
+"Glory be!" shouted Jack. "We were just wondering what had become of
+them."
+
+"They wandered out to Gatun and came upon the lieutenant," said the
+messenger.
+
+"In the night?" asked Peter, suspiciously.
+
+"A little while before daybreak," was the ready reply.
+
+"We'll go and get ready for the journey," Frank said, but at the door he
+beckoned to Jack and they walked away together.
+
+"What do you think of him?" asked Frank.
+
+"Why, he seems to be all right," was the reply. "At any rate he knows
+about the boys going away in the night and not coming back."
+
+"The man they followed away would know that, too," Frank said.
+
+Jack looked his friend in the face for a moment and scratched his head.
+
+"Say," he asked, "do you think this is a stall?"
+
+"I don't like the looks of the fellow," was the reply. "Besides, what
+would the boys be doing up at the Culebra cut?"
+
+"If you think it is crooked we won't go," Jack observed.
+
+"Another thing," Frank went on, "we were to have nothing to do with
+Lieutenant Gordon while on the Isthmus. We were to roam about at our own
+sweet will and pick up what information we could. So it doesn't seem
+likely that he would send for us all to meet him at the Culebra cut. Does
+it, now?"
+
+"No, it doesn't look reasonable," Jack admitted.
+
+"You know what we were saying about Ned's theory?" Frank asked, in a
+moment.
+
+"You mean our talk about criminals pointing the way to their own
+destruction by unwise activity in defensive methods? Of course I remember
+it. If what we suspect is true, though, Ned rather overplayed it in this
+case, and got caught."
+
+"We don't know yet whether he got caught or not. We only know that he is
+unaccountably missing. Well, what if we accept Ned's theory here and go
+with this messenger? If he is on the square he'll take us to Ned. If he is
+crooked he'll take us to people who know why Ned did not return to the
+cottage."
+
+"It may be easier to get taken to the people you speak of than to get away
+from them," Jack said, dubiously.
+
+"I'm game to try it, anyway," Frank continued, "but I think we ought to
+leave one behind at the cottage, for Ned may return, possibly, though I
+doubt it. Anyway, it will do no harm to leave some one here."
+
+"Suppose," suggested Jack, "we don't leave any one at the cottage, but
+instruct one of the boys to remain here when we go with this fellow and
+then follow on immediately, sort of keep track of where we are taken?"
+
+"That's a fine idea," Frank replied. "I'll go with the messenger and take
+the boys with me. You remain here and see where we go--that is, you remain
+here when we leave and then trail on after us, like a Sherlock Holmes."
+
+"I would rather go with you," Jack replied, "but I'll do the sleuth act if
+you prefer to have me. You'll need a rescuer, all right," he added, "for
+Lieutenant Gordon never sent that chap after us. Never in the world."
+
+The cook soon called the boys to breakfast, but there was not much eaten,
+greatly to the disgust of the cook. When they left the table the messenger
+asked if they were ready to go.
+
+"All ready," cried Frank, but Jack threw himself into a chair and took up
+a magazine, watching the face of the messenger over the pages as he did
+so.
+
+"You are to give up the cottage," the messenger said, with a frown of
+disapproval. "No one is to be left here."
+
+"It will be all right for me to remain here until the others come," Jack
+said, with a smile. "I don't feel like a walk this morning."
+
+"There is a motor car just over the hill."
+
+"No inducement," laughed Jack. "I'm going to remain here."
+
+The messenger said no more, though it was plain that the arrangement did
+not please him. In a few moments the boys were off, the messenger leading
+the way and keeping up a running fire of conversation.
+
+"What do you think of that?" asked Jack of the cook, as the party
+disappeared in the thicket.
+
+"I don't like it," was the reply. "I overheard what Frank told you about
+the disappearance of Ned and Jimmie, and was anticipating something of the
+kind."
+
+"Why didn't you say something?"
+
+"It was not for me to interfere," was the reply.
+
+The cook, known as Tommy, was looked over critically by Jack.
+
+"I believe you're all to the good," he said. "You wouldn't be here if you
+wasn't. Now, what do you say to exchanging clothes with me?"
+
+"I have no objections, only I don't exactly see--"
+
+"We're just about the same size," Jack went on. "Same black hair and black
+eyes, same ugly smooth face--glad you have no whiskers. You're tanned up a
+little, but I can put some stain on my face. There you are. The cook goes
+to Gatun and Culebra and Jack Bosworth remains at the cottage. They won't
+think of molesting the cook."
+
+"I would rather go with you."
+
+"But some one ought to remain here," urged Jack.
+
+Tommy thought over the proposition for a moment and smiled.
+
+"All right," he said. "I'll remain here, as long as necessary," he added.
+
+The exchange of clothing was quickly made and Jack managed to darken his
+face with a stain made of crushed leaves which Tommy gathered for him.
+
+"Now, you'll stay right here, won't you?" Jack asked, as he passed out of
+the doorway. "Ned and Jimmie may return, you know."
+
+"Yes, I'll stay right here," the cook said with a grin.
+
+But as Jack entered the thicket he added:
+
+"Until you get out of sight. Then it is me for the Tivoli and Lieutenant
+Gordon. It looks to me as if these babes in the woods had bitten off more
+than they can chew."
+
+Whether his supposition was right or wrong, the cottage was closed in five
+minutes, and Tommy, wearing Jack's clothing, was racing through the path
+Ned had taken the night before, on his way to Lieutenant Gordon.
+
+His journey on foot, however, was destined to be a short one, for at the
+turn of the path he came upon a man loitering in the open space just
+ahead.
+
+"Wait a second," the man exclaimed.
+
+Tommy was not inclined to check his pace, but a revolver in the hands of
+the fellow induced him to do so.
+
+"You are Jack Bosworth?"
+
+Tommy hesitated. For an instant he thought of declaring his identity and
+so getting away to the Tivoli and Lieutenant Gordon. The man in his path
+settled the problem for him.
+
+"No use to deny it," he said. "You are to come with me."
+
+"Where?" asked Tommy.
+
+"If you have any weapons give them to me," the other said, gruffly, paying
+no attention to the question.
+
+"All right," Tommy said, handing out a revolver. "It is a heavy thing to
+carry, anyway. Where are you going to take me?"
+
+"Straight ahead," cried the captor, with a frown. "Straight ahead. I'll
+tell you when to turn and when to stop."
+
+"You seem to have an accommodating disposition," laughed Tommy. "Why
+didn't you stop the cook, who went out a little while ago? Perhaps he
+would have been glad of your company."
+
+"We are not interested in the cook," came the answer, and Tommy smiled as
+he thought that at least one point of the ruse had met with success.
+
+"That cook will be fired for leaving the cottage," grinned Tommy, making
+the deception as complete as possible.
+
+In the meantime the motor car containing the five boys and the messenger
+was speeding on its way toward Gatun and the Culebra cut. When Jack came
+out on the road the machine was disappearing from sight, but he managed to
+keep track of it from the hilltops for a considerable distance.
+
+The messenger was full of talk, his evident intention being to keep the
+boys interested. In spite of the attention paid them, however, Frank and
+Harry Stevens managed to hold a conversation on the back seat.
+
+"This is carrying out Ned's theory with a vengeance," Harry remarked. "If
+we get dumped into the big cut we'll charge it up to him."
+
+"The play opens with plenty of action in the first scene," grinned Frank.
+
+"The adventure would look better to me if I knew what had become of Ned
+and Jimmie," Harry said, despondently.
+
+"If we keep up the appearance of being pleased with the ride," Frank said,
+"we may be able to learn something of their whereabouts. It is mystery to
+me how the plotters got hold of Ned, if they did get hold of him."
+
+"You recall the talk in New York as to whether the men who entered Mr.
+Shaw's study were in quest of the plot papers or the emerald necklace?"
+asked Harry.
+
+"Yes; and I've been studying over that problem ever since."
+
+"Well, I've been wondering, ever since we started out on this rather risky
+trip with the messenger, whether the people Ned encountered last night,
+and the people we are likely to meet to-day, are the people of the plot
+papers or the people of the emerald necklace. What do you think about
+it?"
+
+"I fail to see why the necklace thieves should bother. They've got the
+trinket they wanted, haven't they? It is the canal blowers we are facing
+now."
+
+"You know Ned's theory," whispered Harry. "Well, if the necklace thieves
+have brought the bauble back to the Isthmus, they think we're hot after
+them, and so may strike at us before we can get our guard up. See?"
+
+"No, I don't see," replied Frank. "I'd like to believe they brought the
+necklace over here, though. Then I might stand a chance to get it back.
+You'll find that it is the men who are plotting against the big dam that
+we are mixing with."
+
+The motor car ran through Gatun without stopping, and finally drew up at a
+rambling old structure which seemed to have been deserted ever since the
+days of Balboa. The messenger explained that they were to wait there for
+the lieutenant, and all entered the ancient ruin, the boys looking
+carefully about as they stepped through the doorway.
+
+The room which first received them was long and narrow, with walls showing
+both age and neglect. They were met at the door by a tall gentleman of
+military bearing and a dwarf whose mischievous black eyes stared fixedly
+into their faces.
+
+"The lieutenant is late," the military man explained. "If one of you is
+Frank Shaw, however, a portion of the business of the day may be taken up
+before his arrival."
+
+Frank admitted his identity, and was invited into a smaller room opening
+from the apartment in which the others waited.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+EXPLOSIVES FOR THE GATUN DAM.
+
+
+Ned and Jimmie listened for some moments to the steady click-click of
+metal which came, or appeared to come, from the ground directly underneath
+their feet, and then Ned arose and crept forward.
+
+"Where you goin'?" whispered Jimmie.
+
+"Down there."
+
+Ned pointed to the dark corner.
+
+"You'd better come away," warned the boy.
+
+"We are here to investigate," Ned replied, almost impatiently.
+
+"Then investigate with a bomb, or with a cannon," advised Jimmie.
+
+"No time for that," came the reply. "The conditions which exist now may
+not exist in an hour's time. It is now or never."
+
+Moving forward, Ned saw a faint finger of light cutting the shadows in the
+corner Jimmie had pointed out. Jimmie saw it at the same instant.
+
+"I'll bet they've got a blacksmith shop down there," he said.
+
+There was no opening in the great stone slabs of the floor through which a
+man might make his way--only the crevice through which the ray of light
+came. Ned turned his attention to the wall to the south.
+
+Behind a luxuriant growth of vines he saw another glimmer of light, and in
+a moment stood looking down a narrow stairway, at the distant end of which
+were numerous lines of red flame. Jimmie, looking over Ned's shoulder,
+uttered a muffled exclamation.
+
+"Looks like a door made out of red-hot bars," he said.
+
+"It is a board door," Ned whispered back, "with wide cracks between the
+planks. There is an intense red fire in the room beyond."
+
+Ned placed a foot on the top step of the stairway and slowly and
+cautiously rested the weight of his body upon it, to make certain that no
+trap for the protection of the place had been set there. The stone step
+was solid and bore his weight firmly.
+
+At the bottom of the stairway the boys stopped and looked about. Straight
+ahead was the cracked door, to the south was a solid wall, to the north,
+under the stone pavement they had crossed to gain the corner, was a dark
+room, the door to which stood open. The room was close and hot.
+
+"How are your matches, Jimmie?" whispered Ned.
+
+"Got a pocketful," was the reply. "Want a light?"
+
+"Not yet. We would better feel our way into the room. Keep close to me and
+keep your gun handy."
+
+The room was small, something like a vestibule to a larger one which ran
+along parallel with the one from which the light came. It was very dark
+there, and more than once the boys stumbled over obstructions on the
+floor, which seemed to be of brick or stone. Once Ned heard Jimmie
+laughing softly as he rolled on the floor.
+
+"I'm thinkin' what the movin' picture men are missin'," the boy said, as
+he moved forward on his hands and knees.
+
+"This would look rather amusing--on a white canvas on the Bowery," Ned
+said.
+
+After reaching a wall, the stones of which felt damp and oozy to the
+touch, Ned ventured to light a match. The underground room was long and
+narrow, with rock walls in which there was no opening except the one by
+way of which the boys had entered.
+
+Ned, by the flaring light of the match, brushed away the mould which
+flourished in that unwholesome place and seated himself on the stone
+floor, his back against the wall. Jimmie, seeking physical companionship,
+nestled close to him.
+
+"Gee," the little fellow remarked, with a snicker, "you thinkin' of takin'
+up a homestead here?"
+
+"I'm going to remain in this room until the workers in the other chamber
+go away," was the reply. "I've taken a notion to look into that
+apartment."
+
+"And if they don't go away?"
+
+"I'll wait until they do. It is probable that they do all their work at
+night."
+
+"Then you won't have to wait long," the boy replied. "It was growing light
+in the east when we came down here."
+
+Jimmie dropped off into a restless sleep after a time, and Ned sat there
+waiting and listening, just as Frank, a short time later, waited and
+listened on the porch of the cottage in the jungle. When the boy awoke it
+was with a start of anxiety.
+
+"The boys will think we're dead," he exclaimed.
+
+"I hope they won't try to follow us," Ned whispered.
+
+"If they do," the other said, "they'll find signs in twigs and stones all
+the way along. The stone heaps point the way to this place, and give the
+warning at the place where the stairs begin."
+
+Reference was here made to Boy Scout methods used in the forest. For
+instance, a stone with a smaller one on top says:
+
+"This is the trail."
+
+Place a stone to the right of this and the meaning is:
+
+"Turn to the right."
+
+One to the left means:
+
+"Turn to the left."
+
+A smaller stone on top of the other two, with none at the side, means: "Be
+careful."
+
+"I hope they will keep away," Ned went on. "It is a miracle, almost, that
+we got in here without being discovered."
+
+"What you think you'll find in there?" asked Jimmie.
+
+"Something concerning the plot," was the reply.
+
+It seemed a long time before the work in the chamber ceased, and Ned had
+plenty of time in which to review the strange case he was interested in.
+The transition from gay New York to that weird apartment seemed almost
+like a whiff of fancy. Then he recalled the painstaking surveillance of
+the fellow called "His Nobbs" on the way down, and smiled at the thought
+that the plans he had made at first sight of the spy had worked out
+remarkably well.
+
+He had submitted gracefully to the surveillance, knowing that in time the
+man who was following him would track him to his camp on the Isthmus. That
+was the very point. He would not know where to look for the plotters, but
+they would know where to look for him. He depended on them to send a man
+to work him mischief, and reckoned on being able to follow that man back
+to his principals.
+
+This they had done. The men who had employed the spy on the ship had acted
+quickly and had sent a bomb-thrower. Ned shuddered as he thought of the
+risk he had taken that night in going to bed without leaving a guard. He
+had overlooked a point in the game there, for he had not apprehended such
+prompt action on the part of the men he had pitted himself against.
+
+However, the plan had miscarried because of his waking at the critical
+moment, and here he was, at the door of the men who had sent the man about
+their murderous work. But were these the principals? When he thought of
+the two who had hastened off toward Gatun in a motor car he did not
+believe that they were.
+
+"I shall have to look in other places besides subterranean chambers for
+the men in charge," he thought. "These fellows are merely tools."
+
+Presently the sharp click-click of metal came no more through the heavy
+air of the room, and Ned, awaking Jimmie, who had fallen asleep again,
+moved into the small room from which the doorway gave a view of the
+stairs. He could see from this room that the sun was shining brightly
+outside.
+
+Ned had scarcely stationed himself in the heavy shadows back of the
+doorway when four men came down the passage and passed him. He had no
+doubt that they were the workmen going out for the day. Such work as they
+did must needs be done in the night.
+
+Two of the men were tall and slim, with Spanish-looking faces, and two
+were short and stout, with a heavy droop to their shoulders and broad
+faces almost entirely covered with whiskers.
+
+"The original anarchists," whispered Jimmie, as the two short men passed.
+
+After the disappearance of the workmen all was still in the underground
+rooms. The door to the work-chamber had been left open, and Ned knew that
+one of two things was the solution to this.
+
+Either there were other men in the room, or there were watchers on the
+outside. He ventured out in the passage at the foot of the stairs and
+looked up. A roughly-dressed man stood half in view, his back to the
+watcher. When Ned turned back he saw Jimmie disappearing into the
+work-room. He called softly to him, but the boy passed on through the
+doorway and was lost to sight.
+
+Annoyed at the unnecessary risk taken by the boy, Ned stepped back into
+the room he had just left and waited half expecting to hear a call for
+assistance. He knew that he could be of more assistance there than in the
+open doorway to the room which the boy had entered. There he would at
+least have the first shot if Jimmie was pursued and made for the stairs.
+
+While he waited almost holding his breath, he grasped the bomb he had
+brought with him from the cottage. If Jimmie should be killed in there,
+the bomb should avenge his death. The ruins of the temple and the
+work-shop of the plotters should all ascend heavenward in one grand
+explosion. After a time, however, his fears were set at rest by the
+appearance of the boy, who came up to the doorway with a grin on his
+face.
+
+"Nothin' stirrin' in there now," he said. "Come on."
+
+It seemed plain now that those interested in the work which was going on
+underground were depending on outside watchers to protect them. The fire
+in a rude forge which stood at the distant end of the chamber was dying
+out when the boys reached it, and the place was only dimly lighted.
+
+On one side of the room was a pile of gas-pipe, cut in six-inch lengths.
+In a corner, far away from the fire, and half buried in the earth--a great
+paving stone having been removed to make way for the excavation--were tin
+vessels tightly covered. After his experiences of the night, Ned did not
+have to inspect the contents of these tins. He knew very well that they
+contained high explosives.
+
+"There's stuff enough here to blow up the continent of South America,"
+Jimmie said, pointing at the gas-pipe lengths and the tin vessels.
+
+"And they are getting the material in shape to do the work," Ned added.
+
+"Yep," Jimmie answered. "We've caught 'em with their workin' clothes on.
+We've got to the bottom of the plot."
+
+"You go too fast, son," Ned replied. "We haven't got a single clue to the
+men higher up. It is probable that we have discovered the plant of the men
+who are planning to destroy Uncle Sam's big job, but the work we have
+undertaken has only begun."
+
+"Why, catch these men," said Jimmie, "an' you've got 'em."
+
+"Got these men, yes, but the chances are that even they do not know the
+men who are at the head of the conspiracy."
+
+"Some one is puttin' money into it, anyway," the boy suggested.
+
+"Yes, and we don't even know the interests which are doing it," said Ned.
+
+Ned now busied himself about the chamber, having closed the door so that
+the light of his matches would not show. There was, of course, danger that
+the watcher might descend the stairs and discover the closed door, but
+there was also the chance that he might attribute the changed situation to
+accident.
+
+Presently Ned came upon a battered old writing desk standing on the head
+of a large barrel. The slanting top was locked down, but the boy soon had
+it open. Its contents consisted of two rolls of drawing paper.
+
+Ned took them out, stirred the fire to a sudden glow, and bent over the
+figures and lines on the sheets. His face grew thoughtful as he looked.
+
+"What is it?" Jimmie asked.
+
+Ned held out the rolls.
+
+"This one," he said, "is a drawing of the Gatun dam, and this other is a
+crude sketch of the basement of the _Daily Planet_ building in New York."
+
+"Gee!" cried the boy. "Are they goin' to blow that up, too?"
+
+"They appear to be thinking of it," was the reply. "And there on the
+margin of the sheets, of each of the sheets, is a date line--Saturday,
+April 15th. This is the 13th."
+
+"Is that the date set for the explosion?" asked the boy, with wide-open
+eyes.
+
+"I don't know," was the reply, "but it seems to me that we ought to get
+out of here and communicate with Lieutenant Gordon, and also with Mr.
+Shaw, in New York. The date marked here may be the one set for action."
+
+They started at once for the door, Ned taking the sheets with him and
+hoping to pass the guard without being seen. As they moved forward,
+however, they heard voices, and then a square of light told them that the
+door which they had left closed had been opened, and that three men were
+entering.
+
+"If they turn on the light now," Jimmie whispered in Ned's ear, "there'll
+be somethin' doin' here."
+
+The newcomers did not light the flaring torches with which the room was
+usually illuminated, but, closing the door, sat down near the forge.
+
+"I think," Ned whispered, drawing Jimmie toward the door, "that the fate
+of the Gatun dam and the _Daily Planet_ building depends on our getting
+out of here. Move carefully."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+A FASTING STUNT IS SUGGESTED.
+
+
+While Ned and Jimmie were wondering how they were to escape from the
+subterranean chamber, Frank Shaw sat in the private room in the old house
+on the road to the Culebra cut, facing the gentleman of military carriage
+and wondering what would be the next move in the complicated game.
+
+"How long have you known Lieutenant Gordon?" the man asked. "I beg your
+pardon," he said, without giving the boy opportunity to answer the
+question, "but I have not yet told you who I am, and you can hardly be
+expected to answer questions asked by an unknown person, especially when
+so much is at stake. I am Colonel Sharrow, of the United States army,
+detailed on Canal Zone duty."
+
+The man's manners were frank and engaging, his personal appearance that of
+an officer in the service, yet Frank did not trust him. He did not believe
+that Lieutenant Gordon had sent for the boys. He did not make answer to
+the question asked concerning the lieutenant, and it was asked again, in
+this way:
+
+"Have you known Lieutenant Gordon long?"
+
+"A very short time," was the reply.
+
+"You were with him in Mexico?"
+
+"I met him in Mexico. I did not go there with him, nor did I travel in his
+company, except on the way out."
+
+"Do you think he is entirely loyal to the government?" was the next
+question.
+
+"I think he is," was the short reply.
+
+"I am glad to hear you say that," Colonel Sharrow continued. "I should be
+sorry to change the good opinion I have formed of Lieutenant Gordon."
+
+"It seems to me," Frank said, indignantly, "that you are inviting an
+adverse opinion concerning him."
+
+"Not at all," was the pleasant reply. "It was my purpose, in making the
+remark I did, to test your loyalty to my very good friend."
+
+There was a short silence in the room, during which Frank could hear his
+friends moving about excitedly in the adjoining apartment. If they were
+conversing, they were doing so in whispers, as no words could be heard.
+
+"Lieutenant Gordon," the Colonel said, "is very much devoted to the
+service, and is especially interested in the investigation upon which he
+is now engaged. By the way, he seems to have a very able assistant in the
+person of Ned Nestor."
+
+"Ned can help some," Frank replied, delighted at this appreciation of his
+chum.
+
+Colonel Sharrow did not seem to be a bad fellow, after all.
+
+"I suppose Ned will be here with the lieutenant?" Frank asked, then.
+
+The Colonel hesitated, smiling more pleasantly than ever.
+
+"To tell you the truth," he said, "the messenger did not tell you the
+exact truth. Ned is not with the lieutenant."
+
+"Then this is a trap," exclaimed Frank, rising to his feet.
+
+The Colonel laughed heartily.
+
+"You are an impetuous young fellow," he said.
+
+"You will be telling me next," the boy said, "that we are not to meet the
+lieutenant here."
+
+"You are not to meet him here," was the calm reply.
+
+Frank moved toward the door.
+
+"Then I'll be going," he said.
+
+"In a moment," said the Colonel, stepping forward. "Wait until you hear
+what I say, and then you may pursue whatever course seems good to you. You
+were in deadly danger, out there in the cottage, and we thought best to
+get you away. We knew, too, that you were too loyal to leave the place in
+defiance of orders, and so we used this ruse to bring you here, to the
+protection of your friends. If Nestor had been at the cottage we might
+have explained the situation to him. What time did he leave?"
+
+"Don't you know what time he left, and why he went?" demanded Frank, all
+his former suspicions returning.
+
+"We only know that he was not there at daybreak," was the reply, "and so
+we brought you away. Why did he leave so suddenly?"
+
+Frank looked the Colonel in the eyes unflinchingly, determined to have the
+truth out of him, and asked:
+
+"And so you don't know where he is now?"
+
+The Colonel did not reply, and Frank knew that there was no necessity for
+continuing the conversation. He was satisfied that the Colonel was one of
+the plotters, perhaps the leader, that Ned's departure from the cottage
+had not been detected by the man he had followed into the jungle, and that
+his friend, at least up to daybreak, had not fallen into the hands of the
+enemy.
+
+He saw in an instant how the case stood. The plotters, spying about the
+cottage at daybreak, had noted the absence of Ned. Fearful that he had
+departed on some errand which might seriously affect their own interests,
+they had resolved to bring the others away and learn from them, if
+possible, where Ned had gone.
+
+As the reader has doubtless suspected, this was the exact truth. The
+plotters, at the time the boys were taken from the cottage, did not know
+where Ned was. He had not been seen following the would-be murderer, nor
+had any information from the bomb-boom disclosed his presence there.
+
+Colonel Sharrow had regarded the "pumping" of the boy as certain of
+success, and was not a little surprised when he failed to go into the
+details of the incident which had taken Ned and Jimmie away from the
+cottage. It had seemed certain to him that the boy would hasten into an
+excited account of the peril of the situation. He did not know how the
+bomb had been discovered, or how it had been taken from under the floor of
+the cottage, but he knew that it had been done.
+
+He had depended upon Frank to tell him all about it, and to explain where
+Ned had gone and why he had left the cottage in the night. He was greatly
+worried over the disappearance of the boy, for he did not know what had
+been discovered regarding the attempted destruction of the cottage and the
+consequent murder of the boys. He did not know what steps Ned might be
+taking to discover the author of the attempted outrage of the previous
+night. Besides, he was curious to know just how the destruction of the
+cottage had been averted.
+
+"We do not know where Ned is," the Colonel said, in reply to Frank's
+question. "We thought you might assist us in finding him."
+
+"How?" was the sharp demand.
+
+"By telling us what took place at the cottage last night, and where Ned
+went when he left--also what time he left the cottage."
+
+"I thought so," Frank said, when the case had thus plainly been stated. "I
+had an idea you wanted to know what steps are being taken to bring you and
+your bomb-thrower to justice. Well, I refuse to tell you anything about
+it."
+
+The Colonel was not yet ready to appear under his true colors. He had one
+more issue to discuss with the boy, and hoped to meet with better success
+than he had in the other matter.
+
+"You don't seem to understand the situation, or to trust me," he said.
+"You do not appreciate the peril your friend may be in. If you did, you
+would tell us all you know about the incident. Now, there is another thing
+I wish to discuss with you. You are the son of the owner of the _Daily
+Planet_?"
+
+Frank nodded.
+
+"Have you communicated with your father recently?"
+
+"Not since our arrival on the Isthmus."
+
+"Then you have not heard from him since your arrival here?"
+
+"I have not."
+
+"And consequently do not know of the peril he is in?"
+
+Frank started and turned pale. He knew that this information, like that
+concerning Ned and the lieutenant, might be false, but he was anxious just
+the same.
+
+"What peril is he in?" he asked, and the other smiled to think he had
+struck fire at last.
+
+"Well, it seems that he is accumulating proof against the men who are said
+to be planning to destroy the big canal, over yonder, and is getting on
+the wrong track. The men he is about to accuse of complicity in the plot
+are justly indignant, and are preparing to dynamite his building in case
+any copy concerning them is sent to the composing room."
+
+"You seem to be conversant with the affairs of these men," Frank
+suggested, with a frown. "Are you one of the men who sneaked into our home
+and chloroformed father and stole my necklace?"
+
+"I heard something about that," the Colonel said, "and wondered at it.
+However, we are not discussing past incidents. What I desire you to do is
+to communicate with your father, in the cipher you sometimes use in your
+correspondence, and inform him of what I have just told you. Say to him
+that he is mistaken in the men, and that his building will be destroyed if
+he attempts to publish the alleged facts he has on hand."
+
+"I think," Frank said, "that I can trust his good judgment. He can take
+care of himself."
+
+"Then you refuse to send the message?"
+
+"I certainly do."
+
+"You seem to be a fat, healthy sort of a boy," laughed the other, changing
+the subject, apparently, with a suddenness which astonished the boy.
+
+"I have no cause to complain," Frank said.
+
+"How long do you think you can live without food?" was the next question.
+
+Frank saw the meaning of the fellow in his angry eyes and dropped back
+into his chair. The boys in the next room were now talking excitedly, and
+some of the exclamations could be heard.
+
+"If you don't open the door we'll break it down."
+
+That was Harry Stevens. The reply was too faint to be heard.
+
+"What are you doing to Frank, anyway?"
+
+That was Harry Stevens' voice again. The question was immediately followed
+by a bang on the door.
+
+"Keep back," a voice said. "This gun is loaded."
+
+The situation was a serious one, and Frank blamed himself for getting into
+such a trap. If he had remained at the cottage, he thought, there would
+have been no immediate danger to his friends.
+
+"Perhaps, after a week's fast, you might have strength enough left to
+write such a communication to your father as I suggest?"
+
+The manner was unbearable, the tone insulting, and Frank could hardly
+restrain himself from attacking the fellow.
+
+"In a week," he said, his eyes flashing, "you and your associates will be
+in some federal prison."
+
+"You talk bravely," said the other, "and I observe that you are glancing
+about in search of some way out of this, to you, disagreeable situation.
+Spare your pains! Even if you could vanquish me and my associate in the
+next room, you could not leave the house. It is guarded by a dozen picked
+men."
+
+"Is that as true as the other things you have said?" asked the boy.
+
+The Colonel laughed until his face turned red and his sides shook.
+
+"You are a bright boy," he said. "It is quite a pleasure to do business
+with you. A very capable boy."
+
+He went to the door of the room and looked out.
+
+"Where are the men?" he asked.
+
+The dwarf, who had been sitting on a rude table near the door, swinging
+his short legs in the air, looked up with a slight frown.
+
+"I haven't got 'em," he said.
+
+"Well, see if you can find them."
+
+The dwarf, called Jumbo by those who knew him, got off the table and
+pointed to a window.
+
+"Use your eyes," he said.
+
+Three men stood there looking in. In the road in front stood the
+automobile in which the party had reached the house. On a hilltop perhaps
+sixty rods away a little spurt of dust indicated the approach of another
+motor car.
+
+The Colonel beckoned to the men to enter. As they stepped inside three
+more men entered from a rear door. They were all dusky, hungry-looking
+fellows, with snaky black hair and shrinking black eyes. They were dressed
+in tattered clothes, and carried revolvers in plain view.
+
+"Quite an army," Frank said.
+
+"This old house," the Colonel began, a sneer on his thin lips, "is larger
+than you may think. At the top of a wing which stretches back toward the
+jungle there is a room where Spanish prisoners were once confined. With
+your permission I'll escort you boys there, advising you, in the meantime,
+to think the situation over carefully."
+
+The puff of dust on the distant hilltop grew more pronounced, and the
+chug-chug of a swiftly moving motor reached the ears of those in the
+ancient structure.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+A DELEGATION OF BOY SCOUTS.
+
+
+The three men who entered the subterranean chamber where Ned and Jimmie
+were hidden did not go to work at the forge, neither did they illuminate
+the place with such poor means as were at hand. Instead, they settled down
+in sullen silence by the dying fire in the forge. What little talk there
+was could not be understood by the lads for the reason that it was
+conducted in Spanish.
+
+Ned was waiting in the hope that they would soon take their departure, but
+they seemed to be in no hurry to do so. Finally it was disclosed, in a few
+words of broken English, that they were waiting for some persons of
+importance to appear.
+
+"If they don't get a move on pretty soon," Jimmie whispered, "we'll have
+to make a break of some kind. If we don't get out directly there won't be
+any newspaper building in the Shaw family, and Uncle Sam won't have any
+more Gatun dam than a robin."
+
+"We must wait until the last moment," Ned replied. "The guards out there
+would shoot us down before we could reach the head of the stairs. We can't
+rush them from below."
+
+It was a long and anxious wait there in the underground room, especially
+as so much depended on the boys getting out. They had no idea what had
+happened to the boys left at the cottage, or what was taking place in New
+York. The only thing in their favor was that the workmen did not light the
+torches which lay about. Such an act would have led to their discovery and
+precipitated a struggle at once.
+
+"See if you can't reach one of them bombs," Jimmie giggled, nudging Ned in
+the ribs. "I want to eat it."
+
+"I have about reached that stage myself," Ned replied. "I never was so
+empty in my life. We'll have to do something before long."
+
+"Suppose I start an' run?" suggested Jimmie.
+
+"You'll get a breakfast of lead if you do," Ned replied. "Sit still."
+
+Again the boys sat back in their corner to wait, huddled together for the
+sake of companionship, and wondering what had become of their chums at the
+cottage.
+
+"They ought to be here by this time," Jimmie complained, in a whisper. "I
+left plenty of instructions regarding the route."
+
+The little fellow did not, of course, know that the boys were at that
+moment in the ancient house near the Culebra cut, nor that an automobile
+was speeding over a hill to the north of the old structure--watched by his
+friends with anxious interest.
+
+"Something may have happened to them," Ned said. "It seems to me that this
+case is set on automatic springs. The slightest move on our part brings
+out a bang from the other side. Our opponents are industrious chaps, and
+that's no fabrication. They keep going every minute of the time."
+
+"And they've won every trick so far," grumbled Jimmie.
+
+"Yes, but the game is not out yet," Ned replied, hopefully.
+
+"I should think these gazabos would get tired of waitin' an' go away,"
+Jimmie said, after another long silence.
+
+"They are taking turns sleeping," Ned replied. "I heard one of them
+snoring a few minutes ago."
+
+Jimmie settled back again, rubbing his stomach dolefully, and the place
+seemed to grow darker before his eyes. When he awoke again Ned was pulling
+at his arm, and there was a great shouting and pounding at the door.
+
+"Wake up and get your gun out," Ned said. "There's going to be something
+started here in a minute."
+
+"What is it?" demanded the boy, sleepily.
+
+"The others have come," Ned replied, "and there'll be lights in here
+directly."
+
+"I'm so wasted away with hunger," Jimmie said, "that they'll have to shoot
+pretty straight to hit me."
+
+One of the men by the forge now began stirring the embers preparatory to
+lighting a torch, and the others made for the door.
+
+It looked as if there would be open battle in a moment, but in that moment
+a shot came from the outside, followed by a faint cheer.
+
+The three men who had waited in the chamber drew together, close to the
+sullen light of the forge, the torches unlighted in their hands. They
+seemed to be whispering together, and the boys saw them turn their faces
+toward a corner not far from the forge.
+
+Two more shots came from outside, and then a voice cried, in English:
+
+"Open the door, you chumps."
+
+"That's Jack Bosworth," cried Jimmie, bounding toward the entrance.
+
+Ned followed the boy's movement for an instant, and then faced back toward
+the forge, where the three workmen had stood. The last one was just
+disappearing through an opening in the wall, and, with a bound the boy was
+after him. A heavy plank door snapped shut in his face.
+
+Then the front door was thrust open, and Frank, and Jack, and Harry, and
+Glen, and Peter dashed through, shouting at the top of their voices. Jack
+even lifted up his chin and howled "In the prison cell I sit."
+
+"Prison nothin'," Jimmie exclaimed, indignantly. "We was just goin' out to
+find you fellers."
+
+"That's what the guard at the door said," cried Jack. "He told us that you
+were expected out any minute."
+
+The lads danced about like mad creatures for a moment, and then settled
+down to meet the situation in which they found themselves.
+
+"Where are the guards?" asked Ned.
+
+"If they are still going at the pace they set out in," laughed Frank,
+"they must be pretty near up to San Francisco by this time. I never saw
+such running in my life."
+
+"Why didn't you capture them?" asked Jimmie.
+
+"For the same reason you did not capture the men who were inside," laughed
+Frank.
+
+"But we did capture 'em," insisted Jimmie. "We've got 'em locked up in a
+chamber that opens from that corner."
+
+"Is that true?" asked Frank.
+
+"Yes," replied Ned. "It is true that they went into a chamber over there,
+but the door is locked on the other side."
+
+"We'll soon remedy that," Jack observed, and in a short time the boys were
+pounding away at the plank door with a heavy sledge which had evidently
+been used in cutting up the gas-pipe.
+
+When the door was down a narrow passage was revealed. This, followed by
+the boys, led to an opening at the bottom of the knoll on which the temple
+had been built. The men who had operated the bomb factory had escaped,
+every one of them, and Ned turned away in disgust at the luck which seemed
+to pursue him.
+
+"Every man of them got away," he grumbled.
+
+"What you kicking about?" demanded Jack, pulling away at the pile of pipe
+which was evidently the makings of a supply of bombs. "You captured their
+artillery."
+
+"They can make more," Ned replied.
+
+"And the maps he found," Jimmie cried. "Maps showing how to blow up a
+Gatun dam and a New York newspaper office. All marked out. Just like
+lessons on blowing things up from a correspondence school."
+
+Frank was all attention immediately. He had heard something like that
+before that day, and asked a score of questions in a breath.
+
+When the story of the drawings was told the boys gathered about Ned while
+he pointed out the lines drawn in what purported to be a sketch of the
+basement of the _Daily Planet_ building. Frank declared that the dots made
+in the drawing were located exactly at steel and concrete foundation
+points. The plan of destruction had evidently been prepared by some one
+familiar with the structure.
+
+"It strikes me," Frank said, after a moment's inspection of the drawings,
+"that we'd better get out of here and reach a cable office. One of the
+plotters was kind enough to tell me what they were about to do, and this
+looks like they mean to keep their word, for once in their lives, at
+least."
+
+"We'd better be getting out of this, anyway," Jack put in, "for those
+chaps are sure to come back and bring a gang with them. Suppose we go back
+to the cottage and see what has been doing there?"
+
+"I thought you came from the cottage here," Ned said.
+
+"No," was the reply. "We left the road leading from Gatun at the point
+where you two left it last night."
+
+"I'll bet you saw my signs in twigs," Jimmie said.
+
+"We sure did," was the reply, "and we found your signs in stone out there
+on the stone pavement, and Jack bunted one of the guards in the head with
+the third rock."
+
+"But I don't understand this," Ned said. "Where have you boys been this
+morning?"
+
+"This morning," declared Frank. "It is most night now."
+
+"I'll tell you," grinned Jack, "they went and got taken prisoners by a
+martinet of a fellow and a dwarf, and I had to go and get them out. Say!
+But you wait a second, and I'll produce my modest assistant."
+
+He stepped to the edge of the jungle and whistled shrilly, and the next
+moment a slender boy of perhaps fifteen stood by his side, gazing at the
+group, now on the pavement of what had at one time been the court of the
+temple, with something of fear in his dark eyes. He was dressed in clothes
+which were much too large for him, and his manner indicated that he was
+not at ease in the company of the well-dressed Boy Scouts.
+
+"This is Gastong," Jack explained. "He's capable of doing a running stunt
+that would make an express train look like it was hitched to the scenery.
+Gastong," he added, turning the boy around so that he faced the others,
+"this is the company of bold, bad men you've enlisted in. What patrol did
+you say you belonged to?"
+
+"The Owl, Philadelphia," was the reply.
+
+"Gee," cried Jimmie. "Looks to me like he was a piece of the Isthmus."
+
+"This," explained Jack, with the voice and manner of one standing on a box
+before a tent and touting for a curiosity, "is Gastong, the boy tramp of
+the Isthmus. If he had a place to sleep he would run away from it before
+night. If he went to bed with a dime in his pocket he'd dream it was there
+and get up and spend it. If he was set to digging in a mine he'd chop his
+way through and come out on the other side and run away. If he was--"
+
+Frank clapped a hand over the speaker's mouth and marched him away.
+
+"We've got no time for stump speeches," he said. "The gazabos we drove off
+when we arrived will come back with reinforcements, and--and there you
+are."
+
+"I'm dying to know what has been happening," Ned said, with a laugh. "It
+looks to me as if you boys had been in something of a mess yourselves."
+
+"Time enough for that when we get back to the cottage," Jack said. "Come
+on, Gastong, and we'll lead the bunch to the festive board. I hope the
+cook will be there. Say, but why don't you fellows compliment me on me
+fine appearance in this menial rig?"
+
+"You haven't given us time to say a word," laughed Jimmie. "You look like
+the cook, indeed, you do; and you make me hungry."
+
+"That is another story for the cottage," Jack said, and the boys hastened
+off toward the camp which had proved such a source of danger to them.
+
+When they came in sight of the place they were astonished at seeing
+Lieutenant Gordon and the cook sitting side by side on the screened porch.
+The cook was still dressed in Jack's clothes, and the lieutenant, who had
+evidently just arrived, was speaking rapidly, as if laboring under great
+excitement.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+JACK AND HIS FRIEND GASTONG.
+
+
+Lieutenant Gordon sprang to his feet when he saw the boys emerging from
+the jungle, and stood waiting, his hand on the porch door, while they
+entered.
+
+"You've given me a good scare," he said.
+
+"There's been a scare comin' to everybody to-day," grinned Jimmie, "even
+to the dagoes in the bomb chamber."
+
+"The bomb chamber," repeated the lieutenant. "What have you youngsters
+been up to? Where did you find a bomb room?"
+
+"Back here in the cellar of a ruined temple," Jimmie started to explain,
+but the lieutenant stopped him.
+
+"Suppose we begin at the beginning," he suggested.
+
+"That is the beginning," Ned replied, "the beginning of the story after we
+left the cottage in the night."
+
+Then Ned related the story of the finding of the ruined temple and what
+had taken place there.
+
+"But how did you boys get to the temple?" asked the lieutenant, then. "The
+last I heard of you one of the plotters had you in tow, and Jack was
+running off after you in the cook's clothing. Where did you boys connect
+with each other?"
+
+"Hold on!" Jack broke in. "Where did the cook connect with you? I presume
+he is the boy that brought you here?"
+
+"Sure," said the cook. "I had no intention of remaining here. I knew about
+what would happen to you boys, and so started on a run for a 'phone, the
+idea being to reach the lieutenant. I was mistaken for Jack, and held up
+by a man who must have been left to spy about the cottage, but I got a
+chance to hand him one and got to a 'phone. Since then the lieutenant has
+melted a thousand miles of wire making inquiries for you."
+
+"I'm glad we all got out before the lieutenant got to us," Jimmie cut in.
+"I guess this bunch of Boy Scouts don't need any United States army to pry
+us out of our troubles. We almost got here first," he added, with a
+provoking grin.
+
+"When you get done congratulating yourselves," laughed the lieutenant,
+"perhaps you will tell me how you boys got to the ruined temple."
+
+"I cannot tell a lie," cried Jack, "I did it. While I was chasing myself
+along through the dust kicked up by the choo-choo car the boys rolled away
+in, I came upon a youth who held me up in the middle of the road and asked
+how I'd like to continue my run against time in an airship. He was a
+cheeky looking chap, and I felt like giving him a poke in the breather,
+when he grinned and gave me the Boy Scout high sign."
+
+"You never found a Boy Scout out here in the jungle?" exclaimed Gordon.
+
+"You bet I did," Jack continued. "If you don't believe it, go back there
+to the cookerie. He's filling up on the beans I was expecting to get
+myself. Call him my dear Gastong, and he'll come."
+
+"Cripes!" cried Jimmie, and he was away in a second, attacking the great
+dish of pork and beans which stood on the table in the cookroom.
+
+"Gastong," continued Jack, looking longingly into the cook room, "was born
+on the Isthmus, and knows all about conditions here, but he's too
+aristocratic to mix with the inhabitants for any great length of time.
+He's got the highfaluting blood all right, but he is shy of the skads, so
+he protects his dignity and pride of race by bumming his way over the
+world, like an English milord with a ruined castle and an overdraft at the
+bank. He learned to talk United States in New York, and got to be a Boy
+Scout in Philadelphia."
+
+"Details of pedigree and biography later," said Ned. "Did he have an
+airship?"
+
+"He had the next best thing to it," Jack replied. "He had a motor car
+which he was running for some gazabo over in Gatun. He was out for his
+health when he saw the boys shooting by in a car with a man he knew to be
+a crook, and was about to follow on and see what was doing when he saw me
+speeding up the right of way, looking as if I was obliged to catch the
+machine ahead.
+
+"He left his car around the corner of the hill and met me on foot, with
+about a dozen Boy Scout signs on tap and a score of badges of honor hidden
+away in his ragged clothes. He told me what he thought of the man who was
+running the car ahead, and I told him how he would be patrol leader on the
+Golden Streets just because he was a Boy Scout and was there at that time,
+so we got into his machine and followed the crook in the lead."
+
+"What about the tramps?" laughed Frank.
+
+"When we saw the boys go into that old house, we knew there was something
+crooked going on, and Gastong said to me that if I wouldn't give him away
+he would put me wise to a bunch of hoboes that were camping out in the
+jungle, too lazy to work, and just about ripe for a scrap. So we rounded
+up the hoboes and made a break for the old house."
+
+"That's all," cried Frank.
+
+"And got there just in time to see Frank and his friends going to the
+floor with a lot of has-been wrestlers the man in charge of the house had
+precipitated on them," Jack went on.
+
+"Where are the people who were in the house?" asked Ned.
+
+"Up in the air," cried Frank. "Say, they got out so fast that they melted
+a path all down the hill to the motor car. We ought to have fixed that so
+it wouldn't run."
+
+"Where are the hoboes?" asked the lieutenant.
+
+"Gone back to camp, wearied out with their exertions," laughed Jack. "They
+came to the Isthmus to work on the canal, but found the climate didn't
+agree with them, so they are taking the rest cure. I was a find for them,
+all right. They've got money enough to live on for a month, and I've got
+to wire Dad for more soap."
+
+"It is a pleasure to bump into a nice, bright little boy like you,"
+grinned Jimmie, standing in the doorway with a great slice of bread in his
+hand. "Here you had an army big enough to surround that old ruin, an' yet
+you went an' let the fellers get away. An' we've been blowed up, an'
+locked up, an' chased in motor cars, an' gone without our eatin's, an'
+nothin' doin'. Up to date we're about as useless on the Isthmus as an
+elephant's ear on an apple pie--big enough to be in the way, but not good
+enough to become part of the diversion."
+
+There was now a call from the cook, and there was no further talk of the
+situation for the next half hour. The lieutenant was fully as active at
+the table as the others, and the newcomer, Gastong, as Jack persisted in
+calling him, seemed to forget that he had invaded the kitchen half an hour
+before and paid his respects to a pan of baked beans. After the meal a
+council was called on the porch.
+
+"You all understand," Lieutenant Gordon said, "that you cannot remain here
+without being constantly on guard?"
+
+"Of course," Frank said.
+
+"And you know that the men who have been seen in connection with this plot
+will now disappear from the game and new men take their places?"
+
+"That is the worst feature of the case," Ned said, thoughtfully. "My
+theory worked first rate up to a certain point. I was put in communication
+with some of the underlings in the plot, just as I planned I should be,
+but they all got away. The men who are at the head of this conspiracy will
+not permit the fellows who have appeared in one of the roles to appear
+again. We haven't gained a thing."
+
+"Except a more definite knowledge of the purposes of the plotters,"
+suggested the lieutenant. "We know now that it is the Gatun dam that is
+threatened, and that the newspaper building in New York will soon become a
+mass of ruins unless some action is taken at once."
+
+"Also we know where they made their bombs," said Jack.
+
+"But we don't know where they will make them in future," said Frank.
+
+"Well, what about staying here?" asked the lieutenant.
+
+"We are doubtless as safe here as anywhere," Jack suggested.
+
+"Of course I want to stay here," the irrepressible Jimmie put in. "I
+haven't got on speakin' terms with the scenery yet."
+
+"There may be another bomb under the house this minute," Frank said,
+starting up from his chair. "The place has been alone all day."
+
+The boys swarmed out of the porch like a colony of bees looking for a new
+home, and while some crawled under the floor of the cottage, others
+penetrated the jungle for some distance in every direction. There were no
+suspicious objects under the floor, and the jungle seemed to present a
+peaceful attitude.
+
+"What about having the old temple and the deserted house watched for a
+time?" asked Jack, as all returned to the porch.
+
+"What do you think of that, Ned?" asked the lieutenant.
+
+"If they are watched at all," was the reply, "it is my idea that the work
+should be done very secretly, and no arrests made there."
+
+"Say," Glen Howard remarked, "there was a dwarf in the house named Jumbo.
+He didn't seem to like the gang he was training with, and I thought we
+might be able to get him to keep an eye out for us."
+
+"I'll go and see him," Jimmie said.
+
+"Yes, go walking right up to the front door and knock, and say you would
+like to sell the lady of the house a carpet sweeper, and you'll get a
+piece of lead in your anatomy," Jack said.
+
+"All right," Jimmie grinned, "when I go to call on Jumbo I'll get an
+airship an' drop down out of the blue into the chimney. Say, you fellers
+make me tired. Do you really want to get this Jumbo person into the
+game?"
+
+"It might not be a bad idea," Ned replied.
+
+"All right, then," grinned Jimmie, "I'll have me private secretary look
+him up."
+
+"You might have him look up my emerald necklace, while he is about it,"
+laughed Frank. "I can't afford to lose that."
+
+"As I have before remarked," said the lieutenant, "find Pedro and you'll
+find the necklace."
+
+"Unless he's soaked it," Frank put in.
+
+About dark Lieutenant Gordon arose to go back to Ancon and Jimmie and
+Peter Fenton moved down the little path with him.
+
+"Here," the lieutenant said. "You boys mustn't be seen with me. You are
+not supposed to be connected with the secret service in any way."
+
+"No, I suppose not," chuckled Jimmie. "I suppose they come here an' put
+bombs under our cottage, an' lug us off to deserted houses, an' all that,
+thinkin' we're down here in search of a new kind of butterfly. If anybody
+should ask you, the plotters know just as much about our arrangement as we
+do."
+
+Ned, who had been following along behind the others, broke into a laugh.
+
+"The boy has the situation sized up correctly," he said.
+
+"Then come along," growled the lieutenant. "Where are you going?"
+
+"We're going to have a look at the Culebra cut," was the reply. "You said
+we might ramble about the Isthmus all we wanted to."
+
+"But why go with me, and at night?" asked the officer.
+
+"We want to see the work going on under electricity," Peter replied.
+
+"Let them go," advised Ned. "If they can't take care of themselves it is
+time we found it out."
+
+The fact was that the boys had learned from the cook that the lieutenant
+had come to the vicinity of the cottage in an automobile, and they thought
+this a fine chance to secure a ride to the famous excavation. There was at
+least another member of the party who seemed to think just as they did,
+for when the machine purred out into the rough road leading from the path
+to Gatun the slight figure of Gastong vaulted into the back seat with the
+boys and motioned to them to remain quiet.
+
+"What's up?" whispered Jimmie.
+
+"Perhaps he wouldn't let me go," suggested the other.
+
+"You've ducked an' dodged so long that you're afraid of everybody,"
+returned Jimmie. "I guess any of our friends can go where we can."
+
+Gastong, however, had not given the true reason for wishing to keep his
+presence in the car a secret from the lieutenant. The boy had been so
+considerately treated by the Boy Scouts that he was infatuated with them,
+and wished to serve them in some important way.
+
+Not having any steady occupation or place of residence, the boy had been
+driven about alike by the native authorities and the army officers until
+he was, as Jimmie declared, afraid of any one having authority. He had
+been treated as an equal by the boys, and was determined to serve them. He
+had heard the talk of enlisting the dwarf, Jumbo, in the cause represented
+by the secret service men, and was now resolved to return to the deserted
+house and look the little fellow up.
+
+Therefore, when the machine drew near to the house which the lads had
+visited that day under such unfavorable circumstances he dropped out and
+was soon lost in the shadows of the jungle.
+
+"What do you think of that?" Jimmie demanded.
+
+"I think he can do a better job there than either of us could," was the
+reply.
+
+"Well, when we come back from the cut," Jimmie said, "I'm goin' to drop
+off here an' see how the chump is gettin' along."
+
+Looking back, they saw a light flare up in the house, and then die out!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+LOST IN THE JUNGLE AT NIGHT.
+
+
+"Just look at it!"
+
+The lieutenant, after many warnings against getting in the way, and
+against getting lost in the jungle, had just left Peter and Jimmie, and
+the boys stood at the verge of the great Culebra cut, taking in the wonder
+and the force of the marvelous scene.
+
+Night and day, under the great white lights, the work went forward,
+cutting a way for the commerce of the world. Night and day the human ants
+bored into the earth. Continuously the blasting and scraping, the puffing
+and the roaring, went on. Always the great steam shovels were biting into
+the soil and the rock.
+
+"That doesn't look like the deep blue sea down there, does it?" Peter went
+on, "yet the largest vessels in the world will be sailing over here in
+four years, sailing through this cut, and over a forest beyond the rise
+there. It looks big, doesn't it? And it sounds big, too."
+
+From where the boys stood there seemed to be a hopeless confusion of men
+and machines, but they knew that back of all the hurry, and bustle, and
+noise, was a great machine, a wonderful system, born in a human brain and
+reaching its lines out to the smallest detail.
+
+"When you sit on a fire-escape balcony, or in a park," Jimmie said, his
+mind going back to the New York lounging places he knew best, "and read
+about how many tons of earth have been removed during the week, you don't
+sense it, do you? You've got to come down here and catch Uncle Sam at his
+job."
+
+While the boys talked of the marvelous thing before them a stranger of
+quiet mien stood watching them from an elevation a few yards away. He was
+a man of middle age, with brilliant black eyes, long, like those of an
+Oriental, and a figure almost boyish in its proportions. He was neatly
+dressed in a dark suit of some soft, expensive material, his linen was
+spotless, and a diamond of great value and brilliancy glimmered in his
+pure white tie.
+
+He stood watching the boys for a moment listening to their talk, and then
+approached them, softly, deferentially, yet with an air of frankness.
+
+"It is a wonderful sight," he said, as he came to the edge of the cut
+where the lads stood. "In all the world's life there has never been
+anything like it."
+
+The boys turned and looked the man over modestly, yet with sharp eyes. It
+is not to be wondered at, after their experiences there, that they were
+suspicious of all strangers. They both at first rather liked the looks of
+the man.
+
+"It is worth coming a long way to see," Peter observed.
+
+"Yes," was the reply, "it is wonderful, even to those who are small cogs
+in the great machine, and so it must seem almost supernatural in its
+showing of strength to those who look upon it for the first time."
+
+"You belong on the works?" asked Jimmie, gazing at the man with a sort of
+awe, as one might look at a man of mighty deeds.
+
+"Yes, I have my part in the work," was the reply, "though it is only a
+modest part. I am in the office of the engineer, and frequently come out
+at night to note the progress of the big cut."
+
+"It must make a man feel a mile high, to be part of a thing like this,"
+Jimmie said, sweeping a hand over the scene. "It makes little old New York
+look like thirty cents," he added, with a laugh.
+
+"The work," the stranger said, in a pleasant tone, which gave no
+indication of foreign birth "has progressed beyond the expectations of the
+most enthusiastic advocate of the canal. When we came here we found about
+seven miles of waterway bored into the side of the Isthmus, reaching,
+well, about up to the rising slope of Gatun. Beyond this there were
+scratches in the soil for about forty miles. There was a notch nicked in
+the hills of Culebra--just a nick bearing no resemblance to what you see
+before you at this time."
+
+"That was over there where the hills rise up like men watching the lights
+and listening to the noise?" asked Jimmie, his imagination thoroughly
+stirred by the scene.
+
+"Yes, over there. It would have taken the Frenchmen a century to dig down
+to the level where those shovels are working, where those tracks lie. I'm
+afraid it took the men they brought here most of the time to bury the
+dead. But, after all, they never got in touch with the really big thing."
+
+"I guess that was the Chagres river," Peter said; "I've read something
+about that, about the trouble it makes."
+
+"Yes, that was the river," the stranger went on, by this time pretty deep
+in the confidence and admiration of the boys. "They found the Chagres
+having everything its own way on the uplands, over to the north, there. It
+ambled along like a perfect lady in spots, then it twisted its water into
+whirling ropes which pulled at the banks and toppled cliffs into the
+current."
+
+"Freshets?" asked Jimmie.
+
+"Exactly. When the engineers came they found something worth while. They
+found a dismal, soggy-looking ditch which could do things in a single
+night. They found crumbling and shaling cliffs which showed the bite of
+the waters. Time and again they had to do their work all over again. Then
+they decided to take the Chagres by the neck and choke it into
+subjection."
+
+"I'd like to see some one choke a river," Jimmie laughed. "You try to
+choke a river and you'll find that the harder you clutch it the more
+trouble it will make you."
+
+"But they not only choked the Chagres," the stranger said, with a
+captivating smile which went far toward giving him the complete confidence
+of the boys, "they put it in chains. If you look on a detail map of the
+Isthmus, you will see a white band stretching from Limon Bay to La Boca,
+just below the hill of Ancon. That is the line of the canal. Then, across
+this white band, you will see a crooked line, a turning and twisting line.
+That is the river, which seems to change its mind about general direction
+every few minutes. The engineers found this river in the habit of getting
+up in the night and tearing their work in pieces."
+
+"Why didn't they cut a straight channel for it?" asked Jimmie.
+
+"That was tried, but finally the engineers decided to stop trying to make
+the river behave itself, as a river, and turned their attention to
+squelching it. They are going to turn it into a lake--the Lake of Gatun."
+
+"I've heard something about that," Jimmie said. "Go on and tell us more
+about it."
+
+The stranger smiled pleasantly, but there was a sudden quickening of the
+flame in his brilliant eyes which the boys did not notice.
+
+"The upland portion of the Isthmus, the plateau, as it would be called in
+Mexico, is fairly level from Gatun to the Culebra hills. It might, in
+fact, be called a shallow basin, with hills shutting it in. Now do you see
+what the Gatun dam is for?"
+
+"Sure. To flood that basin and turn the Chagres into a lake," cried
+Jimmie.
+
+"That is just what will be done. The Panama canal will be a lake most of
+the way. The locks will float the vessels up to the lake and down to the
+canal again. The hills, and forests, and farms of the basin will be under
+water."
+
+"And the mines," Jimmie said, thinking of the talk he had had with Peter
+concerning the emerald mines. "The lake will flood them, too."
+
+"There are no mines there any more," the stranger said, lightly, but there
+was a quality in his voice which almost asked a question instead of making
+a statement of fact.
+
+"I've been wondering if there wasn't mines down there," Jimmie added, in a
+moment.
+
+"What kind of mines?" asked the stranger.
+
+Jimmie was about to say "Emerald mines," but Peter's anxious face warned
+him to check the words on his lips.
+
+"Oh, I've heard of all kinds of mines about there," he said, instead.
+
+"The mines are farther south," said the stranger. "Are you boys with a
+party?" he added, in a moment. "If not, I would like to have you spend the
+night as my guests."
+
+"We've got a camp back here," Peter said, "and the others will be
+expecting us."
+
+"I see," said the other. "You are the boys who are here in search of
+specimens. I recall something Lieutenant Gordon said about you. But you
+are a long way from the cottage in the jungle near Gatun."
+
+"When did you see Lieutenant Gordon last?" asked Peter, suspiciously.
+
+"I met him something over half an hour ago," was the reply, "on his way
+back to the Tivoli at Ancon. You came here in his machine?"
+
+"Yes," was the reply.
+
+"Well, I'm going to Gatun to-night, and you may ride with me."
+
+The stranger turned away, as if to get his motor car, and Peter nudged
+Jimmie in the ribs with his elbow.
+
+"Now we've done it," he whispered.
+
+"Done what?"
+
+"Got a man after us."
+
+"Do you think he is one of the men we came here to look up?" asked Jimmie.
+"I've been thinking he looks like a Jap. Perhaps he's one of the men at
+the bottom of that bomb business. Well, we don't have to go with him."
+
+"I'd like to see where he would take us," Peter whispered.
+
+"Not for your uncle," Jimmie replied. "It is me for the jungle. This thing
+is gettin' worse 'n' a Bowery drama. The villain comes on in every scene
+here. Say! Suppose we take a run into the woods before he gets back?"
+
+"I'm not in love with the jungle at night," Peter said. "Besides, I'd like
+to know what this Jap has in mind."
+
+The chug-chug of the stranger's motor was now heard, and, without waiting
+for further discussion, the boys ducked away into the jungle, which
+crowded close on the cut at this point.
+
+They heard the car stop at the point where they had been standing, and
+heard a low exclamation of impatience, indicative of disappointment, from
+the lips of the driver, and then crept farther into the tangle of vines.
+
+Finally Peter stopped and faced toward Gatun.
+
+"We'd better be working toward home," he said. "This thicket is no place
+for a civilized human being at night."
+
+Although there was a moon, and the sky showed great constellations with
+which the boys were unfamiliar, the jungle was dark and creepy. Keeping
+the lights from the workings on their left, the boys pushed their way
+through the undergrowth for some distance without resting, and then paused
+in a little glade and listened.
+
+"Gee," cried Jimmie, after standing at attention for a moment, "there's
+some one following us. We'd better dig in a little deeper."
+
+"It may be a wild animal," said Peter, who, while ready to face whatsoever
+peril might come in the company of the man they were running away from,
+was in mortal terror of the jungle.
+
+"There are no man-eaters here," Jimmie replied, unwinding a snake-like
+creeper from his neck and pushing on.
+
+"I can feel snakes crawling up my legs now," complained Peter, with a
+shiver.
+
+The noise in the rear came on about as fast as they could move, and at
+last Jimmie sat down on a fallen tree.
+
+"He can hear us," he said. "We might as well be hiding with a brass
+band."
+
+"Then we'll keep quiet until he passes," Peter trembled out. "I'm afraid
+to go plunging through here in the dark, anyway."
+
+Making as little noise as possible, the boys crept into a particularly
+dense thicket and crouched down. Almost as soon as they were at rest the
+noise behind ceased. In five minutes it began again, but the sounds grew
+fainter and fainter and finally died out.
+
+"He was followin' us all right," Jimmie said. "Now we'll dig in a little
+deeper, so as not to come out anywhere near him, and then go back to
+camp."
+
+They walked, or crept, rather, until they were tired out and then looked
+about.
+
+There were giant ceiba trees, with trunks as smooth as if they had been
+polished by human hands, tremendous cotton-trees, their branches bowed
+down with air plants, palms, to which clung clusters of wild nuts, thick,
+bulbous trees, taller trees with buttressed roots, as if Nature knew the
+strain that was to be placed upon them and braced them up accordingly,
+trees with bark like mirrors, and trees with six-inch spike growing from
+the bark.
+
+And through this thicket of trees ran creepers resembling pythons, smaller
+vines which tore at the boughs of the trees, and a mass of running things
+on the ground which caught the foot and seemed to crawl up toward the
+throat. By daylight it would have been weird and beautiful. At night it
+was uncanny and fearsome.
+
+"We ought to be in sight of the lights by this time," Peter said, after
+they had crept on and rested again and again.
+
+"Yes," said Jimmie, "but we ain't. We're lost in the jungle, if you want
+to know."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+BOY SCOUTS TO THE RESCUE.
+
+
+Ned Nestor and Frank Shaw sat on the porch, that night, for a long time
+after the other boys were asleep. It had been decided that Frank should
+stand guard until midnight, but Ned was far too anxious to attempt to
+sleep. The absence of Jimmie and Peter worried him, and he sat waiting for
+some sign of their approach until very late.
+
+"Frank," he said, after a long silence, "there has been some talk in this
+case about your father having an interest in an emerald mine down here.
+Have you any idea where that mine is?"
+
+"Not the slightest," was the reply. "All I know about it is that it is a
+paying proposition, and that foreigners are in the game with him."
+
+"You do not even know whether the mine is situated in the Province of
+Panama?"
+
+"I rather think it is."
+
+"I have heard talk," Ned went on, "about mines on the line of the canal.
+It may be that this one is."
+
+"I think it is not far from Colon," was the reply.
+
+"Do you know who these foreigners are?"
+
+"Japanese, I think."
+
+Ned was silent for a time, as if studying some proposition over in his
+mind. The boys in the cottage were stirring in their sleep, and a
+shrill-voiced bird in the jungle was calling to its mate.
+
+"What are you trying to get at?" Frank asked.
+
+"Has it ever occurred to you," Ned replied, "that your father acted rather
+strangely on the night he was attacked in his house--the night your
+emerald necklace was stolen and the office building searched?"
+
+"I have never thought of his attitude as remarkable," replied Frank, "but,
+come to think the matter over from this distance, it does seem that he did
+act queerly when asked to reveal the nature of the information he had
+received. Lieutenant Gordon was angry with him."
+
+"Yes; the lieutenant believed that the papers would help him a lot if he
+could get hold of them. He still thinks so."
+
+"I understand that he still, in his mind, accuses father of disloyalty to
+his country," said Frank.
+
+"It seems to me," Ned continued, "that one of two propositions is true.
+Either the papers would be useless in revealing the plot, or they deal
+with a situation which your father believes himself capable of handling
+alone."
+
+"I wonder what he will think when he gets the cable Lieutenant Gordon took
+up to Panama for me?" asked Frank.
+
+"What did you say in the message?"
+
+"I told him to keep an army of men in the basement of the newspaper
+building--to look out for bombs all over the structure."
+
+"I am glad you were able to warn him," Ned said, "but I can't help
+believing that he knew something of the peril he was in before we left New
+York. He was altogether too quiet that night when his house and his office
+were searched. He appeared to me to be planning a revenge both effective
+and secret."
+
+"And he never made a row about Pedro leaving him," Frank said. "Why, he
+used to think Pedro was the whole works."
+
+"You say the fellow's name is not Pedro at all, but Pedrarias?" asked
+Ned.
+
+"Yes, that is what father says. I gave him the name of Pedro for short. He
+is an offshoot of the Spanish family that ruled the Isthmus after Balboa
+was shot. He claims pure Castilian blood, and all that. How he ever
+consented to become a servant is more than I can make out."
+
+"Has it never occurred to you," asked Ned, "that he might have had an
+object, besides that of salary, in acting the part of a menial?"
+
+"I have thought, since the night of the robbery, that he might have
+scented the necklace from afar off and come there to get it."
+
+"Your father found him on the Isthmus?"
+
+"Yes; on his latest trip."
+
+"He consulted with him, in a way, concerning conditions here?"
+
+"Yes, I think he did. Pedro is a very intelligent man, and proud as the
+Son of the Morning. He gave me his pedigree about the first day of his
+service in the house."
+
+"Perhaps your father sought his advice regarding the emerald business."
+
+"Yes, I think he did, now and then."
+
+"And Pedro was always ready to advise?"
+
+"Oh, of course."
+
+"And your father grew to put some confidence in his talk?"
+
+"I presume so, for they talked together a good deal. But I don't see what
+you are getting at."
+
+"Do you know whether the two discussed the location and opening up of new
+mines?"
+
+"Oh, yes. Father is always after new mines."
+
+"Where is he looking for them?"
+
+"On the Isthmus and all through the republic of Colombia, I think."
+
+"And especially on the Isthmus?"
+
+"I believe so."
+
+"And Pedro was active in looking up possible workings?"
+
+"Yes; he used to show father maps and plans, at night, in the study, and
+they used to pore over them for hours at a time. But what does that amount
+to? Father took him to New York, I have no doubt, because he thought he
+would be useful in that way. The fellow knows every inch of the Isthmus
+and South America. Now, let me ask you a question. Do you think he stole
+my emerald necklace?"
+
+"No, frankly, I do not," replied Ned.
+
+"But you have a notion that he let the others into the house?"
+
+"Well, he might have done so."
+
+"He showed guilt when he ran away."
+
+"Of course. The fact is that if he did let the thieves into the house he
+did not do so especially to give them a chance to steal the necklace. At
+least that is the way I look at it. And, again, if he did admit them, he
+permitted them to do a bungling job."
+
+"You mean that they didn't get what they wanted?"
+
+"Exactly."
+
+"The papers concerning the plot?"
+
+"Probably."
+
+"Well, how could they get them if they weren't in the house?"
+
+"He should have located them before he turned his confederates loose."
+
+"Then you really think Pedro was at the bottom of all that?"
+
+"I have not said so," was the reply. "There is no knowing whether he was
+or not."
+
+"I wish you wouldn't be so secretive," Frank said. "You have a straight
+out and out theory of that night's work, and you won't tell me what it
+is."
+
+"I never form theories," was the reply.
+
+"What would Pedro want of the papers?" Frank demanded. "Was he in the plot
+to blow up the dam, or was he just paid to get them?"
+
+"I can tell you more about that in a few days. It is midnight, and I will
+relieve you. Go to bed."
+
+"I shall sleep sounder after I hear from father," the boy said, passing
+into the cottage. "He may be having troubles of his own in New York," he
+added, pausing at the door for a last word.
+
+Ned sat for a long time on the screened porch with the splendor of the
+tropical night about him. The jungle came nearly to the walls of the house
+on all sides, save in front, where a little clearing had been made, and
+the noises, the creature and vine talk of the thickets, came to his ears
+like low music.
+
+He listened constantly for the footsteps of the absent boys, but for a
+long time there was no break in the lilt of the forest. Then--it must have
+been two o'clock--he heard the quick beat of running feet, and directly
+Gastong, as Jack had fancifully named his new acquaintance, came spurting
+into the cleared space.
+
+He stopped running when he reached the middle of the cutaway spot and,
+seeing Ned on the porch, beckoned to him.
+
+Ned was off the porch in an instant, standing by the exhausted boy, who
+was now on the ground, supporting his swaying figure with one hand
+clutching the long grass.
+
+"What is it," asked Ned.
+
+"Have you heard anything of the boys, the two who went away in the car?"
+asked the other. "Have they come back?"
+
+"No," replied Ned, filled with a sickening sense of helplessness, "they
+have not returned. Come inside the screen and speak low, so as not to wake
+the others."
+
+Gastong rose slowly to his feet and walked stumblingly to the porch. Once
+inside he dropped into a chair.
+
+"I have run a long distance," he said, by way of apology for his weakened
+condition. "I'm all in."
+
+"What is it about the boys?" Ned demanded, clutching the other by the
+arm.
+
+"I stopped at the old house," began Gastong, but Ned cut him short.
+
+"About the boys," he said, shaking him fiercely. "What about the boys?"
+
+"They are either in the hands of your enemies or lost in the jungle."
+
+The words were spoken shrinkingly, as if the news conveyed might be of his
+own making.
+
+"Where did you leave them?"
+
+"I stopped at the old house," began the other again, "and remained there
+only a few minutes. Then I went on toward the Culebra cut and came upon a
+friend who told me what had taken place."
+
+"Well! Well! Well!"
+
+"The boys stopped at the cut, this side of the high point, and were there
+accosted by Gostel. Oh, you don't know Gostel?"
+
+"No, no," was the impatient reply. "Who the dickens is Gostel?"
+
+"He is a spy, a Jap who has been hanging about the Isthmus ever since the
+beginning of the work."
+
+Ned was thinking fast. This might mean something tangible. He had never
+heard of Gostel before.
+
+"Well, what of Gostel?" he asked.
+
+"He talked with the boys for a time and invited them to become his guests
+for the night. He referred them to Lieutenant Gordon. I got it from my
+friend who heard all their talk."
+
+"And they went away with him?"
+
+Ned's voice was harsh and high, and the boys in the cottage were heard
+moving about, as if awakened by his voice.
+
+"No, they didn't go away with him. They became suspicious of him, and when
+he went for his car they ran away into the jungle. A mad thing to do. A
+crazy thing for boys to do, for strangers. There is death in the jungle."
+
+"And why didn't you go in after them?" asked Ned.
+
+"What could I do alone?" asked the other, with a little shiver of
+apprehension.
+
+"If you know the country--"
+
+Gastong interrupted with a gesture of impatience.
+
+"Knowing the country couldn't help me, not with Gostel and his men
+trailing into the jungle after the boys."
+
+There was a new fear creeping into Ned's heart, and he was beginning to
+realize that there are perils more to be dreaded than the perils of the
+jungles.
+
+"How many went in?" asked Ned, in a moment.
+
+"Oh, half a dozen--I don't know. Some one must go for help. Gostel will
+kill the boys. I should think that after the experiences of the
+afternoon--"
+
+"I am ready to go this minute," Ned said.
+
+"Oh, but you must have torches, and guns, and stand ready to fight against
+wild beasts as well as against men. There are jaguars in there, and
+boas--serpents ten yards in length. Natives have been killed by jaguars
+within the month."
+
+"Jaguars rarely come as far north as this," Ned said, "and your serpents
+are not dangerous," but the other insisted that there were both jaguars
+and boas in the jungle.
+
+"This man Gostel may have gone to the rescue of the boys," suggested Ned.
+
+Gastong laughed weakly.
+
+"You don't know him," he said. "I tell you he is a spy, a Japanese spy,
+watching every inch of the canal as it is excavated. He is in the pay of
+hostile interests, and will work you all a mischief. He knew before you
+arrived that you were coming."
+
+"How do you know that?" demanded Ned.
+
+Gastong's replies to the question were not satisfactory, and so Ned gave
+over questioning him. The sleeping boys were aroused and in ten minutes,
+just as a faint tint of day came into the east, they were away to the
+jungle--taking the way to Gatun at first, as the thicket they sought was
+far to the southeast of that city.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+THE KILL IN THE JUNGLE.
+
+
+It was growing darker every minute in the jungle, for there were now
+fleecy clouds in the sky, and the moon was not always in sight. Following
+Jimmie's statement that they were lost, the boys stood stock still in a
+dense thicket and tried once more to get their bearings.
+
+"We've got something figured out wrong," Peter said.
+
+"I don't see how we have," Jimmie insisted. "See here! That is the moon up
+there? What?"
+
+"Looks like it."
+
+"Then it's got lost," Jimmie continued. "Ever stand behind the scenes in a
+theatre and hold a moon up on a stick?"
+
+"Never did."
+
+"Well, I did, on the Bowery, once, and I got so interested in what was
+goin' on in front that the moon set in the east. That's what's the matter
+with this moon. Some--"
+
+"There ain't no supe holding up this moon on a stick."
+
+"Then they've moved the Panama canal," insisted Jimmie. "If they hadn't,
+we would have come to the cut a long time ago. That moon is supposed to be
+in the south. It ought to be."
+
+"Perhaps a little west of south."
+
+"Well, we crossed over the ditch down here, didn't we, and struck into the
+jungle from the west side of the Culebra cut?"
+
+"Of course we did."
+
+"Then if we keep the moon in the south, on our right, we'll come back to
+the cut?"
+
+"Sure. Anyway, we ought to."
+
+"Well, Old Top, we've been walkin' for the last two hours with the moon on
+our right, and we haven't got anywhere, have we? You don't see no lights
+ahead of us, do you?"
+
+There were no signs of the big cut. The great lights which blazed over the
+workings were not to be seen. The noises of the digging, the dynamiting,
+the pounding of the steam shovels, the nervous tooting of the dirt trains,
+might have been a thousand miles away.
+
+"You've got to show me," Peter said, after studying over the matter for a
+moment. "That moon isn't on no stick on a Bowery stage. It is there in the
+south, where it belongs, and if we continue to keep it on our right we'll
+come to the canal in time. We are farther away than we thought for."
+
+They struggled on through the jungle for another half hour, and then
+stopped while Jimmie looked reproachfully at the moon.
+
+"I'd like to know what kind of a country this is, anyway," he grumbled. "I
+never saw the moon get off on a tear before."
+
+"Except when you had it on the end of a stick," said Peter, with a noise
+which was intended for a laugh, but which sounded more like a sigh of
+disgust.
+
+"Well, we've got to stay here until morning," Jimmie said, presently, "and
+I'm so hungry that I could eat a boa constrictor right now."
+
+"Quit!" cried Peter. "Don't talk about snakes, or you'll bring them down
+on us."
+
+"That was coarse, wasn't it?" observed Jimmie. "Well, I'll withdraw the
+remark."
+
+"If we stay here until morning," Peter said, dubiously, "how do we know
+the sun won't rise in the west?"
+
+"All right," Jimmie replied. "Guy me if you want to, but you'll find this
+is no joke before we get through with it."
+
+"I know that now," Peter replied. "I never was so tired in my life, and
+I'd give a ten-dollar note for a drink of cold water."
+
+The boys sat down on dry tree knuckles, buttressed roots rising three feet
+from the soil, and discussed the situation gravely. After a short time
+Peter got up with a start and began prancing about the little free space
+where they were.
+
+"I've got it!" he cried. "We're both chumps."
+
+"They usually act that way when they're dyin' of hunger an' thirst,"
+Jimmie said, dolefully. "Keep quiet, an' you'll feel better in a short
+time."
+
+"But I know which way to go now," Peter insisted.
+
+"Oh, yes, I know. You're goin' to tell which is north by the moss on the
+trees. Or you're goin' to tell which way is northeast by the way the
+breeze lays the bushes. Or you're goin' to make a compass out of the dial
+of your watch. I've read all about it. But we're stuck, just the same, not
+knowin' the constellations."
+
+"Stuck--nothing," cried Peter. "Look here. Which way does the Panama canal
+run?"
+
+"North and south, across the Isthmus, of course."
+
+"There's where you're wrong! From Gatun to Panama the line of the cut is
+more east and west than north and south. Now revise your opinion of the
+moon. At this time of night she would be in the southwest."
+
+"That would make a little difference," admitted Jimmie.
+
+"Well, there you are. Take a line running southeast and a couple of chumps
+going almost southeast by keeping a southwest object to the right, where
+will they land? That's mixed, but I guess you know what it means. Where
+would a couple of chumps find the southeast line?"
+
+"About next week at two o'clock," cried Jimmie. "Come on. We'll start
+right now, an' get out of the jungle before daylight."
+
+In a few moments after taking a fresh start the boys came to a place where
+a small body of water made a clearing in the forest. The little lake, or
+swamp, for it was little more than a well-filled marsh, was of course
+walled about by trees and climbing vines, but there was a lane to the
+southwest which permitted the light of the moon to fall upon the water.
+
+The surface of the pool was well covered with floating plants, and now and
+then, as the boys looked through the undergrowth, a squirming thing ducked
+under and out of sight. There was something beautiful about the spot, and
+yet it was uncanny, too.
+
+"I wish that was all right for a drink," Jimmie observed.
+
+"It is all right for a drink--if you're tired of living," Peter said.
+"Say," he added, pointing, "what do you think of that for a creeper, over
+there? I'm sure I saw it climbing down off that tree."
+
+Jimmie took one look and started away, drawing Peter with him.
+
+"It's a python!" he exclaimed. "Come on."
+
+"There are no pythons in this country," Peter replied, pulling back and
+looking out over the water again.
+
+"It is a boa, then," Jimmie cried. "Come away. It is getting out of the
+tree!"
+
+The boys did not move for a moment. They seemed to be fascinated by what
+they saw. It was a serpent at least ten yards in length--a serpent showing
+many bright colors, a thick, elongated head, a body at least ten inches in
+diameter, and a blunt tail. As it moved down the column of the tree it
+launched its head out level in the air as if anticipating a feast of Boy
+Scout. The shining head, the small, vicious eyes, drew nearer to the faces
+of the watchers, and it seemed as if the serpent was about to leap across
+the pool.
+
+Directly, however, the reptile threw its head and the upper part of its
+body over a limb on a tree nearer to the boys and drew its whole squirming
+body across.
+
+"It is coming over here, all right," whispered Peter. "Can you hit it? A
+bullet landed in that flat head might help some."
+
+"Of course I can hit it."
+
+Jimmie would not have admitted fright, but his voice was a trifle shaky.
+It is no light thing for a boy reared on the pavements of New York to face
+a serpent in the midst of a tropical forest at night.
+
+"You shoot, then," Peter said. "I'll hold my fire until we see what
+happens."
+
+Jimmie drew his revolver and waited for a moment, as the head of the snake
+was now in the shadow of the tree. When it came out again, still creeping
+nearer to the boys, swaying, reaching out for another tree which would
+have brought it within striking distance, the boy took careful aim and
+fired.
+
+There was a puff of smoke, the smell of burning powder, a great switching
+in the branches of the tree. Peter seized Jimmie by the arm and drew him
+back.
+
+"If you didn't hit him he'll jump," the boy said.
+
+When the smoke which had discolored the heavy air drifted away, they saw
+the serpent still hanging from the limb, pushing his head out this way and
+that and flashing a scarlet tongue at its enemies.
+
+"You hit him, all right," Peter said. "Try again."
+
+After the third shot the body of the serpent hung down from the tree with
+only a stir of life. It was evident that at least one of the bullets had
+found the brain.
+
+"It will hang there until it decays," Peter said. "That tail will never
+let go. Come on away. It makes me sick."
+
+"There's always two where there's one," Jimmie said, "and we must move
+cautiously, for there would be no release from the coils of a snake like
+that."
+
+"I thought I heard something moving in there a moment ago," Peter said,
+pointing away from the pool. "I'll go in and see."
+
+"Don't you stir," advised Jimmie. "There's some one in there. I heard
+voices. We have been followed all this long way, and the shooting must
+have located us."
+
+This was a very natural conclusion, and the boys crept behind the bole of
+a tree and waited for what seemed to them a long time. Then footsteps were
+heard, soft, stealthy steps, like those of a man walking in padded
+stockings. The great leaves of a huge plant with red blossoms moved, and a
+pair of fierce eyes looked out.
+
+"That's a panther," whispered Jimmie.
+
+"A South American jaguar," Peter corrected. "They eat men when they get
+desperately hungry."
+
+The great cat moved out from behind the plant and stood in the shaft of
+moonlight. It was a graceful beast, an alert, handsome creature of the
+woods, but did not look in that way to the boys just then.
+
+In size it was nearly the equal of the full grown tiger. The head was
+large, the body thick yet supple, the limbs robust. In color it was of a
+rich yellow, with black rings, in which stood black dots, marking the
+sides.
+
+The beast is known as the South American tiger, and is by far the most
+powerful and dangerous of tropic beasts of prey. It is swift enough to
+capture horses on the open pampas and strong enough to drag them away
+after the kill. In some of the countries south of the Isthmus the jaguar
+is a menace to the inhabitants, and settlements have been deserted because
+of them. It is rarely that one is found as far north as the Isthmus.
+
+While the boys watched the cat slipped out one soft paw after the other
+and looked about, as if awakened from sleep. Then it moved toward the tree
+behind which the boys were partly concealed.
+
+"Now for it," whispered Peter. "If we miss it is all off with one of us."
+
+"He may not come here," Jimmie said, hopefully. "He was probably brought
+here by the smell of blood. Say! Don't you hear something back of us? This
+cat's mate may be there."
+
+And the cat's mate was there. Not looking in their direction, but sitting
+up like a house cat, watching the swaying body of the serpent. Her nose
+was pushed out a trifle, as if scenting supper in the dangling horror.
+
+"The mate is here, all right," Peter said, in a whisper. "We're between
+the two of them. What is the first one doing?"
+
+"Coming on," whispered Jimmie, "and I've got only three shots in my gun."
+
+"That's all you will have time to use if you miss the first one," Peter
+said.
+
+"That's right," Jimmie returned.
+
+"And we'll have to shoot together," Peter went on.
+
+"Is your hand steady?" asked Jimmie.
+
+"As a rock," was the reply. "Good-bye to little old New York if it wasn't.
+Funny notion that a jaguar should be trying to eat a Wolf and a Black
+Bear."
+
+"And a baby Wolf, too," added Jimmie. "My beast is coming on, bound to
+investigate this tree. When he gets so close that he can spring I'll give
+the word, and we'll shoot together."
+
+The cat approached slowly. At first it did not seem to catch the scent of
+prey in the neighborhood of the tree. It came on with cautious steps,
+crouching low, as if ready to leap.
+
+Then the female caught sight and scent of the boys and uttered a low cry
+of warning which the male appeared to understand, for in a second its ears
+were laid down on its neck and the belly touched the ground.
+
+"When you shoot keep the lead going," advised Jimmy. "Now!"
+
+Again, in that splendid tropical scene, there was a puff of smoke, one,
+two, three, four. Again the odor of burned powder attacked the nostrils
+and clouded the heavy air. Again there was a great floundering in the
+thicket.
+
+The boys stood waiting for the snarling impact, but none came.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+SIGNAL FIRES IN THE JUNGLE.
+
+
+"I guess we got 'em," Jimmie cried, as the smoke drifted away.
+
+"I got mine."
+
+Peter spoke proudly, just as if there had been no fear of the result a
+moment before.
+
+"Mine's lying down to rest," Jimmie went on. "I'm goin' up to feel his
+pulse."
+
+"If he gets a swipe at you, you'll wish you hadn't been so curious about
+his old pulse," Peter observed.
+
+But Jimmie did not at once go toward the wounded beast. The great cat
+lifted its head, gave a cry that echoed and re-echoed through the forest,
+and sprang for the tree. The boy's revolver spoke again, and the long
+hours of practice with the weapon in the shooting galleries of New York
+told. The beast dropped to the ground with a bullet in the brain, sent in
+exactly between the eyes.
+
+The female lifted her head at the cry and tried to regain her feet, but
+was not strong enough to do so. With a turn of her pretty head in the
+direction of her mate, she fell back dead.
+
+"It's almost a shame," Peter said.
+
+"You wouldn't be so sorry for the cats if they had got a claw into you,"
+Jimmie observed. "Just one claw in the flesh and it would have been all
+off."
+
+Peter turned away from the dead animals.
+
+"Come on," he said, "it seems like a slaughter house here."
+
+"Wait," Jimmie cried. "I want to swing the cats up so they won't be
+devoured by their friends of the jungle. I want the skins for rugs. Guess
+they will look pretty poor in our patrol room. What?"
+
+"I'll come back with you in the daylight," Peter said, "if you'll come
+away now."
+
+Leaving the glade where they had encountered such dangers, the boys moved
+toward the canal line, keeping the moon, now well toward the horizon, at
+their back.
+
+"If we had done this before," Jimmie said, as they forced their way
+through clusters of clinging vines, "we would be at home in bed now."
+
+"But we wouldn't have had the jaguar rugs coming to us," answered Peter.
+"Glad I didn't think of it before."
+
+Presently they came to the top of a little hill in the jungle and looked
+out over the country ahead. There were no canal lights in the distance.
+Afar off they could see a faint streak of dawn.
+
+"I don't believe we're going right, after all," Jimmie said.
+
+"We must keep a little more to the left," Peter replied. "The line of the
+canal runs almost southeast here, and we are going east. We'll strike it
+quicker if we turn to the north."
+
+"This ain't much like the Great White Way at daylight," commented Jimmie,
+as a great creeper settled about his neck, having been pulled from a tree
+by his companion.
+
+"I don't see what we're doing in here in the night, anyway," Peter
+observed. "We didn't come down here to get big game, but to prevent
+enemies of the government getting gay and blowing up the Gatun dam. Whew!
+They might have blowed it up while we've been shooting snakes and cats.
+Guess there's one of the explosions now."
+
+A rumbling came toward them from the east. It was such a rumbling as one
+hears when great masses of fireworks are set off at once. Such a rumbling
+as one hears in war, when the rifles are speaking along a line of infantry
+and cannons are roaring out above their patter. The ground shook, and
+birds, frightened, fled from tree boughs with strange cries.
+
+"Something has gone up," Jimmie said. "I wish we could see over the tops
+of that next line of trees."
+
+"Sounds like the crack of doom," Peter observed. "I wish we could get out
+of the tall timber and see what's going on."
+
+"There's a white light," Jimmie cried, excitedly. "That must be the
+workings."
+
+"That's a cloud, just touched with dawn," Peter replied. "There's no sight
+of the canal yet. If we could only get out to the cut we'd soon be home."
+
+"Home?" repeated Jimmie, in disgust, "we're more'n fifty miles from camp,
+the way the roads run. If we can get a train at Culebra, we may be able to
+get home by dark. You must remember that we rode a long way with the
+lieutenant. Culebra is almost to the Pacific. The locks are there, or near
+there."
+
+"We can get a train, I guess," Peter said, sleepily. "I wonder if any of
+the boys are sitting up for us?"
+
+"You bet they're out hunting for the two of us," Jimmie said. "It takes
+one half of our party to keep the other half from getting killed," he
+added.
+
+There were still no signs of the canal line. The jungle was as dense as
+ever, and seemed more desolate and uncanny than ever under the growing
+light of day. As the sun arose and looked down into the green pools vapors
+arose, vapors unpleasant to the nostrils and bewildering to the sight.
+
+Presently the boys came to a little knoll from which they could look a
+long way into the jungle stretching around them. Below were slimy
+thickets, tangles of creepers and vines which seemed to be sentient, but
+no signs of the work of man. It was now eight o'clock in the morning, and
+the boys were worn out and hungry.
+
+"If they're out lookin' for us," Jimmie said, "I'll give 'em somethin' to
+follow. Watch me."
+
+"But they won't be anywhere around here," Peter said, as Jimmie began
+gathering dry twigs and branches from the ground.
+
+"They'll begin where Lieutenant Gordon left us," insisted the boy. "Now
+you see if I don't wake some Boy Scout up. Here, you carry this bunch of
+wood over to that other knoll."
+
+"All right," Peter said. "Perhaps another jaguar will see the signal and
+give us a call."
+
+In a short time the boys had gathered two great piles of dry leaves and
+branches lying some fifty feet apart. Then a quantity of green boughs were
+gathered and placed on top of the dry fuel. When matches were touched to
+the piles a dense smoke ascended far above the tops of the trees. There
+were two straight columns of it lifting into the sky above the jungle.
+
+"There!" cried Jimmie wiping the sweat from his face, for the morning was
+hot and the work had been arduous, "if there is a Boy Scout within ten
+thousand miles he'll know what those two columns of smoke mean."
+
+"Of course," said Peter. "If he's ever been out camping."
+
+In the Indian signs adopted by the Boy Scouts of America one column of
+smoke means:
+
+"The camp is here."
+
+Two mean:
+
+"Help! I am lost."
+
+Three mean:
+
+"We have good news."
+
+Four mean:
+
+"Come to council."
+
+When the dry wood burned away the boys piled on more, keeping green leaves
+on top all the time, to make the smudge. After the fires had burned for
+half an hour a signal came from the thicket--a long, shrill whistle to
+attract attention, and then a few bars of "The Star Spangled Banner."
+
+"That's a Boy Scout, all right," Jimmie exclaimed, "but it ain't none of
+our bunch. They wouldn't wait to whistle. They'd jump right in an' tell us
+where to head in at. You bet they would."
+
+In a moment a human hand, a slender, boyish hand, appeared above a great
+squatty plant at the foot of the knoll. The thumb and first finger were
+extended opened out, the three remaining fingers closed over the palm of
+the hand.
+
+"Whoop!" yelled Jimmie. "The sign of the Silver Wolf."
+
+"Come on up," cried Peter. "The appetite is fine."
+
+Then a boyish figure arose from the shelter of the plant and moved up the
+hill to where the boys stood. He was apparently about fifteen years of
+age, was dressed as a lad of his age might appear on Broadway, and
+presented a fresh, cheerful face, now wrinkled into smiles, to the boys
+waiting with extended hands.
+
+"I saw you signal," he said.
+
+"Where are you from?" asked Jimmie, shaking the extended hand warmly.
+"We're from the Black Bear and Wolf Patrols, New York, and we don't know
+any more about getting along in the woods than a Houston street mucker."
+
+"I'm from the Black Bear Patrol of Chicago," the other replied, "and my
+name is Anthony Chester, Tony for short. What you doing in the Devil's
+Hole?"
+
+"Is this the Devil's Hole?" asked Jimmie.
+
+"That is what they call it."
+
+"The Devil seems to be having a good time of it," Peter said. "He's had us
+on the hip all night."
+
+"We were in camp, father and I, about half way to the cut," Tony said,
+"and heard your shots a spell ago. What did you kill?"
+
+Briefly the boys told the story of the night, and then Peter asked:
+
+"Why didn't you answer the shots?"
+
+"We were stalking jaguars," was the reply, "and did not want to lose our
+game. The woods are full of them, for some reason, this spring."
+
+"Did you get them?"
+
+"No; I guess the ones you got were the ones we were after."
+
+"Then I'm glad we got them, for we'll divide the skins with you."
+
+"Then, a little while ago, I saw your smoke signal and read it to Dad, and
+he told me to come out and bring you to camp for breakfast."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Breakfast?"
+
+"Is it far?"
+
+"Is it cooked?"
+
+The boys fairly danced about their new acquaintance as they asked
+questions and rubbed their stomachs significantly.
+
+"All cooked and all ready, plenty of it," was the reply.
+
+"Where is the camp?" asked Peter, then.
+
+"Oh, just a short distance from the Culebra cut," was the reply. "Dad came
+out here some weeks ago with me and one servant, and we're living in a
+tent all fixed up with screens and things. The jaguars aroused us early
+this morning, so we got up to shoot them."
+
+"Is your father workin' for the Canal people?" asked Jimmie.
+
+"Oh, no," was the reply. "He takes a great interest in the Culebra cut,
+and spends a good deal of time out there, but he is not working for the
+government. He's just loafing, and I'm having the time of my life."
+
+"Does he go out there nights?" asked Jimmie.
+
+"No; Sanee, the servant, is away nights, and Dad stays with me."
+
+"Never mind all that now," Peter put in. "Let us go and see what they've
+got to eat. I could devour one of the cats we killed."
+
+Young Chester led the way toward the camp he had spoken of, the boys
+following, nearly exhausted from the exertions of the night. It had been
+arranged that they should return for the skins of the two jaguars they had
+slain.
+
+As they straggled along through the jungle, Jimmie's thoughts were busy
+over a problem which had come to his mind during the talk with the lad who
+had rescued them. Why was Mr. Chester, of Chicago, encamped in the jungle,
+at the edge, almost, of the Culebra cut, apparently without other motive
+than curiosity?
+
+Why did he spend most of his time during daylight watching the work on the
+cut, and why was his servant invariably away from the camp at night? Were
+the men watching the work there for some sinister purpose of their own? Or
+was it merely a general interest in the big job that brought them there?
+
+The man who had accosted them the previous evening had been watching the
+job, too. Were these men spies, or were they in the service of the
+government and watching for spies? It seemed odd to the boy that every
+adventure into which he stumbled had to do with the main object of the
+trip to the Canal Zone. Or, at least all the others had, and this meeting
+in the jungle might follow in the train of the others.
+
+He was wondering, too, about the explosion they had heard early in the
+morning. At the time of his leaving the cottage with Lieutenant Gordon
+nothing had been decided on concerning the store of explosives which had
+been discovered in the underground chamber at the ruined temple. He did
+not believe that Ned would leave the deadly material there, to be used at
+will by the conspirators, so he was wondering now if the stuff had not
+been set off by his friends.
+
+After a hard walk of a mile or more the three came out to a little
+clearing in the jungle and saw a tent with screened openings. Standing in
+front of the tent, his face turned toward the approaching boys, was a man
+Jimmie had last seen in the Shaw residence in New York City.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+A MIGHTY JAR IN THE JUNGLE.
+
+
+It was half-past two in the morning when Ned Nestor and his companions
+left the cottage in the jungle. A few fleecy clouds were now drifting over
+the sky, but, on the whole, the night was fairly clear. It was some
+distance to Gatun, where Ned hoped to secure a railroad motor for the
+Culebra trip, so the boys moved along at a swift pace.
+
+However, the party was not destined to reach Gatun as speedily as was
+anticipated. When the boys came to the spot from which Ned and Jimmie had
+struck off into the jungle, or into the edge of it, rather, in pursuit of
+the man who had placed the bomb, Jack called Ned's attention to two
+skulking figures moving up the swell of the hill which the two boys had
+climbed the night before.
+
+"There are some of your friends--the bomb-makers," Jack said.
+
+"Yes," Ned replied, "they have been in advance of us for some distance."
+
+"Watching the cottage, I presume," Jack suggested.
+
+"More likely watching to see if we remained at home or went abroad
+planning mischief for them," Ned replied.
+
+"Then they're next to us," Jimmie broke in. "I'd like to follow 'em up to
+the old temple an' blow 'em up."
+
+"I have an idea that something of the sort may happen before morning," Ned
+said. "I had the idea that the fellows would remain away from the
+bomb-room for a few days, believing that we were watching it, but it seems
+that they are back again. We mustn't permit them to take the stuff away."
+
+"Goin' to blow it up to-night?" demanded Jimmie, eagerly. "Gee, but that
+will make a blow-up for your whiskers. Say! I'd like to sell tickets of
+admission for this performance. That would be poor, wouldn't it?"
+
+"It may not be necessary to blow it up," Ned observed. "If Lieutenant
+Gordon sent a couple of secret service men back there, as arranged, the
+fellows have not got into their bomb-chamber. If the secret service men
+did not arrive, it is likely that the plotters are moving the explosives
+away. We'll go and see, anyway."
+
+"I'll run on ahead and see what's doin'," Jimmie exclaimed, darting away.
+
+Ned caught him by the collar and drew him back, whereat the boy appeared
+to be very angry.
+
+"You little dunce," Ned said, "you'll get a bullet into your anatomy if
+you don't be more careful. Now, you boys go on down the road toward
+Gatun," he added, turning to the others, "and make all the noise you want
+to. I'll go up to the old temple and see what is going on there. One of
+you would better go with me--not close up with me, but within seeing
+distance."
+
+"That's me," cried Jimmie. "I'll stay near enough to see what becomes of
+you, and go back and tell the boys if they're needed."
+
+This arrangement was finally decided on, and Ned and Jimmie dropped into
+the jungle while the others proceeded on the way to Gatun, making plenty
+of noise as they walked. As they disappeared the two men who had been seen
+just before made their appearance at a point half way up the hill.
+
+They stood crouching in the moonlight for a moment, pointing and
+chattering words which reached the ears of the watchers only faintly, and
+then turned toward the old temple. They walked with less caution now, and
+it was plain to the watchers that they believed that all the boys had gone
+on to Gatun.
+
+When Ned and Jimmie came within sight of the old temple half a dozen
+shadowy forms were seen moving about on the uneven pavements which had at
+one time formed the floor of a court. When the two Ned was following
+approached they advanced to meet them.
+
+A conversation lasting perhaps five minutes followed the meeting, and
+then, leaving one man on guard, the others passed through the doorway
+under the vines and disappeared from view. The man who had remained
+outside was evidently the leader of the party, for the others had listened
+when he talked and had obeyed his orders, as indicated to Ned by
+gestures.
+
+This man stood at the doorway behind the vines for a moment after the
+others had gone below and then seated himself on a crumbling wall not far
+away.
+
+"Why don't you geezle him?" whispered Jimmie, who was not staying back
+very far, much to Ned's amusement.
+
+"I was thinking of that," Ned replied. "I shall have to circle around so
+as to get in on him from behind."
+
+"You wait a second," whispered the boy, "and I'll make him turn around so
+as to face the other way."
+
+Before Ned could offer any objections or restrain the boy's hand, Jimmie
+launched a stone into the thicket on the other side. The watcher sprang to
+his feet instantly, moved away a few paces, and turned back.
+
+"He's goin' to call the others," Jimmie whispered.
+
+The fellow approached the doorway as Jimmie spoke, which was exactly what
+Ned did not want. If the man would remain outside, alone, it might be
+possible to capture him with little risk. If he called his companions,
+there would be no hope of taking him prisoner.
+
+Ned motioned to Jimmie and the lad threw another stone into the thicket,
+and again the watcher moved in that direction. This time he advanced to
+the edge of the thicket and bent over to peer under the overhanging
+branches of a tree.
+
+Before he could regain an upright position, or give a cry of warning
+because of the quick steps he heard behind him, Ned was grappling with
+him, his fingers closing about the muscular throat. It was a desperate,
+although a silent, struggle for a minute, and Ned might have been
+disappointed in the result if Jimmie had not bounced in on the two and
+terminated the battle by sitting down on the head of the man Ned had
+already thrown to the ground. As an additional precaution against any
+noise calculated to alarm the others, Jimmie held his gun close to the
+captive's nose.
+
+"Nothin' stirrin' here," he panted. "You lie still."
+
+"What does this mean?"
+
+The words were English and the voice was certainly that of a man from one
+of the Eastern states of the North American republic.
+
+Ned drew a noose around the prisoner's wrists and tied his rather delicate
+hands together firmly behind his back. Then he searched him for weapons. A
+revolver was found in a hip pocket, also a package of papers in a breast
+pocket. The fellow cursed and swore like a pirate when the papers were
+taken.
+
+"This is highway robbery," he finally calmed down enough to say. "I am an
+official of the Zone, and you shall suffer for this."
+
+"Gee," said Jimmie, with a chuckle, "you must have a contract to lift the
+canal an' the Gatun dam into the blue sky."
+
+The prisoner snarled at the lad a moment and turned to Ned.
+
+"Why are you doing this?" he asked.
+
+"What are your men doing down there?" Ned asked, ignoring the question.
+
+"They are removing explosives, explosives to be used in the work at
+Gatun."
+
+"Why is it stored here?"
+
+"For safety."
+
+"Were your men storing this bomb," taking the clumsy exhibit from his
+pocket, "under my cottage for safety?" Ned demanded.
+
+"I don't know anything about that," was the reply. "Return my papers."
+
+Instead of returning them, Ned took the packet from his pocket and made a
+quick examination so far as the light would permit, of the half dozen
+letters it held.
+
+The captive writhed about and cursed fluently until Jimmie touched his
+forehead with the muzzle of his gun and warned him against "starting
+anything he couldn't finish," as the boy expressed it.
+
+"Now," Ned said to Jimmie, restoring the letters to his pocket, "you march
+this pirate off toward the cottage while I scare the others out of the
+bomb-room and blow it up."
+
+"Blow it up before they get out," urged the boy.
+
+"I am no executioner," Ned replied. "They doubtless deserve to be put to
+death, but I'm not the one to do it."
+
+"Wait," said the captive, as Jimmie motioned him away. "If you will give
+me a chance to tell my side of the story those letters reveal, I may be
+able to establish my innocence. I can make it worth your while to listen
+to me," he added, significantly.
+
+"Cripes, I smell money," laughed Jimmie.
+
+"Go on with the boy," Ned replied. "If you want to talk with me you may do
+so later."
+
+"What are you going to do with me?"
+
+"Turn you over to the Zone government."
+
+The captive would have argued until his friends came out and sized up the
+situation, and Ned knew it, so he motioned Jimmie to march the fellow away
+and set about the work he had in hand. He took out the bomb he had brought
+with him and estimated the length of time the fuse would burn. It was, as
+has been said, a very long fuse, and the boy was satisfied that he could
+escape from the danger zone after firing it.
+
+Then, seeing that Jimmie was out of view with his prisoner, he brought out
+his gun and fired two shots into the air. The result showed that he had
+planned with judgment, for the men working below came bounding out of the
+doorway behind the vines and vanished in the jungle, going in a direction
+opposite to that taken by Jimmie.
+
+The rapidity with which the workers in the bomb-room disappeared
+astonished Ned until he reflected that he might unconsciously have given a
+signal agreed upon between the men and the guard. At any rate, he finally
+concluded, the men were not there to fight in defense of the place if
+spied upon, but to seek cover at once, as is the habit of those caught in
+the commission of crime.
+
+He had expected to drive them away by firing from the jungle, but had not
+anticipated a victory as easily won as this. When the workers had
+disappeared Ned made his way to the underground room. There he found
+torches burning, and a fire in the forge. The place was littered with
+gas-pipe cut into small lengths, and the covers had been removed from the
+tins of explosives.
+
+It was clear that the bomb-makers had been at work there, and the boy
+wondered at their nerve. He could account for their returning to their
+employment there so soon after the place had been visited by hostile
+interests only on the ground that they believed the secret service men and
+the boys were being held at bay by others of the conspirators.
+
+Wondering whether the boys who had gone on toward Gatun were safe, he
+lighted the fuse of the bomb and hastened up the stairs and out into the
+jungle. A few yards from the broken wall of the temple he met Jimmie, red
+of face and laboring under great excitement. He turned the boy back with a
+significant gesture toward the temple, and the two worked their way
+through the thickets for some moments without finding time or breath for
+explanations.
+
+When at last they stopped for breath they found themselves about at the
+point where they had parted from their chums. As they came into the
+cleared space a flash lighted up the sky, flames went flickering,
+seemingly, from horizon to horizon, and lifted to the zenith. Then came
+the awful thunder of the explosion. The ground shook so that Jimmie went
+tumbling on his face. After the first mighty explosion others came in
+quick succession.
+
+"That's the little ones," Jimmie cried, rolling over in the knee-deep
+grass to clutch at Ned's knee. "Talk about your fourth of July."
+
+As he spoke a slab of stone weighing at least twenty pounds came through
+the air with a vicious whizz and struck a tree close to where the boy
+lay.
+
+"If we don't get out of here we'll get our blocks knocked off," Jimmie
+said.
+
+"The shower is over," Ned replied. "What were you running back for? If you
+had not met me, if I had gone out another way, you might have been right
+there when the explosion took place."
+
+"Then I'd 'a' been sailin' around the moon by now," the boy grinned.
+
+"Where is the captive?" demanded Ned.
+
+"He went up in the air," replied Jimmie. "I had me eagle eyes on him one
+second, and the next second he was gone. He didn't shout, or shoot, or
+run, or do a consarned thing. He just leaked out. Where do you think he
+went?"
+
+"I think," Ned replied, "that you were looking back to see the explosion
+and he dodged into a thicket."
+
+"Well," admitted Jimmie, "I did look back."
+
+Ned, rather disgusted at the carelessness of the boy, walked on in silence
+until the two came to the smooth slopes which led up to Gatun. There they
+found the boys, waiting for them, eager for the story of the explosion,
+and wondering at their long delay.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+THE WATCHER IN THE THICKET.
+
+
+Between Tabernilla and Gamboa, a distance of about fifteen miles, the
+restless Chagres river, in its old days of freedom, crossed the canal line
+no less than fifteen times. At Gamboa the river finds a break in the rough
+hills and winds off to the northeast, past Las Cruces and off into more
+hills and jungles.
+
+Where the river turns the canal enters the nine-mile cut through the
+Cordilleras, which form the backbone of the continent. Here at the Culebra
+cut, the greatest amount of excavation for the waterway is being done.
+This cut ends at Pedro Miguel locks, which will ease the ships down into
+the Pacific ocean.
+
+Where the river turns to the northeast, at Gamboa, a wild and hilly
+country forms both banks. The hillsides as well as the plateaux are
+overgrown with dense vegetation. As in all tropical lands, the fight for
+survival is fierce and merciless. Trees are destroyed by great creepers,
+great creepers are destroyed by smaller growths, and every form of life,
+vegetable as well as animal, has its enemy. Every living thing springs up
+from the dead body of another.
+
+Sheltered and half concealed from view in this wild country between Gamboa
+and Las Cruces, on the day the Boy Scouts set out in their search for
+Jimmie and Peter, there stood a house of stone which seemed as old as the
+volcanic formation upon which it stood. It was said that the structure had
+been there, even then looking old and dismantled, when the French began
+their operations on the Isthmus.
+
+This house faced the valley of the Chagres river, having its back against
+a hill, which was one of the steps leading up to the top of the
+Cordilleras. There was a great front entrance way, and many windows, but
+the latter seemed closed. Few signs of life were seen about the place at
+five o'clock that afternoon.
+
+From a front room in the second story the sounds of voices came, and now
+and then a door opened and closed and a footstep was heard on the
+stairway. However, those who walked about the place seemed either going or
+coming, for the house gained no added population because of the men who
+climbed the slope at the front and, ignoring the main entrance, passed on
+to the second floor by a secret staircase in the wall, entrance to which
+seemed easy for them to find.
+
+At the hour named three acquaintances of the reader occupied the front
+room on the second floor of the stone house. They were Col. Van Ellis, the
+military man Frank Shaw had talked with in the old house near the Culebra
+cut, Harvey Chester, the father of the boy Jimmie and Peter had
+encountered in the jungle, and Gostel, the man who had approached the two
+boys the night before on the lip of the great excavation.
+
+In a rear apartment, a sort of lumber-room, devoted now to wornout and
+broken furniture and odds and ends of house furnishing goods, was still
+another acquaintance--Ned Nestor. The patrol leader had met the two lost
+boys at Culebra, in the company of Harvey Chester and his son, Tony, and
+had spent enough time with the party to learn that Pedro, the ex-servant
+of the Shaw home, had been seen at the Chester camp, and that he had fled
+at the approach of Jimmie and his chum.
+
+The story of Gostel's watching the cut at night, probably assisted by
+Pedro, and Harvey Chester standing guard, or seeming to do so, by day, had
+interested Ned greatly. The presence on the Isthmus of Pedro gave an extra
+kink to the problem. The attempt to capture the two boys, as previously
+told by Gastong, on the previous night, and the unmistakable anxiety of
+Chester to remain in their company, had led Ned to believe that at last he
+was getting to some of the people "high up" in the conspiracy against the
+canal. Surely a man of the education and evident wealth of Harvey Chester
+was not loitering along the Culebra cut just for the excitement there was
+in it. It was plain that he was there for a purpose, and the arrival of a
+man Jimmie declared to be Gostel had convinced Ned that the heads of the
+plot were not far away.
+
+Gostel had greeted the boys heartily, expressing relief at the knowledge
+that they had escaped in safety from the jungle, and Chester had urged
+them all to accept of his continued hospitality. Nothing had been said of
+Gostel's pursuit of the two boys, and Ned had reached the conclusion that
+Gostel did not know that his movements had been observed.
+
+Anxious to see what Gostel really was up to, Ned had instructed the boys
+to remain at a hotel at Culebra or visit the Chester camp, just as they
+saw fit, and had followed Gostel back to Gamboa and out to the stone
+house, where he had managed to hide himself in the room above described
+without his presence on the premises being suspected. One thing, however,
+Ned did not know, and that was that Jimmie McGraw, full of life and
+curious to know what was going on, had trained on after him and was now
+watching the house from a thicket on the hillside.
+
+Ned had heard a good deal of talk since hiding himself in the rear room,
+much of which was of no account. Men who had delivered notes and messages
+had come and gone. Col. Van Ellis seemed to be doing a general business
+there. Some of the men who came appeared to be canal workmen, and these
+left what seemed to be reports of some kind.
+
+From a break in the wall Ned could hear all that was said and see a great
+deal of what went on in the front room. At five o'clock a tall, dark,
+slender man whose black hair was turning gray in places entered the front
+room by way of the secret stairway in the side wall. He handed some papers
+to Col. Van Ellis and seated himself without being asked to do so.
+
+"What, as a whole, are the indications?" Van Ellis asked.
+
+"Excellent," was the short reply.
+
+"And the latest prospect?" asked Chester.
+
+"In the valley, near Bohio."
+
+"What have you found there?"
+
+"Clay-slate, hornblende, emeralds."
+
+"In large quantities?" asked Chester, anxiously.
+
+"There is a fortune underground there," was the reply. "Green argillaceous
+rock means something."
+
+There was silence for some moments, during which Van Ellis pored over some
+drawings on his desk, Chester walked the floor excitedly, Gostel regarded
+the others with a sinister smile on his face, and Itto, the recent
+arrival, sat watching all the others as a cat watches a mouse.
+
+"And this territory will be under the Lake of Gatun?" Chester asked,
+presently.
+
+"Yes, very deep under the Lake of Gatun," was Itto's reply.
+
+Again Van Ellis bent over the drawings, tracing on one with the point of a
+pencil.
+
+"There are millions here," he said. "We have only to stretch forth our
+hands and take them."
+
+"The wealth of a world," Itto observed.
+
+The men talked together in Spanish for a long time, and Ned tried hard to
+make something of the discussion, but failed. He was convinced, however,
+that Chester was being urged and argued with by the others and was not
+consenting to what they were proposing to him.
+
+In half an hour a man who looked fully as Oriental in size, manner and
+dress as Itto stepped inside the door and beckoned to that gentleman.
+Asking permission to retire for a few moments, Itto passed out of the door
+with the newcomer. Instead of going on down the secret staircase, however,
+the two opened a door at the end of the little hall upon which the front
+room gave, and appeared in the apartment where Ned was hiding.
+
+The boy, however, was not in view from the place where they stood, and
+they had no reason to suspect his presence there, so he remained quiet and
+listened with all his ears to the low-voiced conversation carried on
+between the two.
+
+"And these are the latest?" Itto asked, referring to papers in his hand.
+
+"Yes, they are the last."
+
+"And the showing--"
+
+The newcomer shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"You see for yourself," he said.
+
+"Well," Itto said, directly, "it does not matter, does it?"
+
+"Not in the least."
+
+"If the information does not leak out," Itto went on, "there will be no
+change in our plans. We cannot afford to wait."
+
+"For our country's sake there must be no delay."
+
+Ned was slowly piecing this talk with the one which he had heard from the
+front room, and the significance of it all was sending little shivers down
+his back. He thought he understood at last.
+
+As the two men left the room Ned heard a paper rustle on the floor, and at
+once made search for it. It was a drawing, similar to the one discovered
+in the bomb-room at the old temple, and was a complete sketch of the Gatun
+dam, the spillway, the locks--everything was shown, with character of
+fills and suggestions regarding the foundations. Here and there on the
+drawing were little red spots.
+
+The significance of the red marks brought a date to Ned's mind. The
+drawings found in the bomb-room had borne a date, Saturday, April 15. If
+what he surmised was correct, he had only a little more than twenty-four
+hours in which to work. In the period of time thus given him he might,
+without doubt, succeed in averting the destruction of the big dam. But
+that was not the point.
+
+His business there was not only to protect the Gatun dam but also to get
+to the core of the conspiracy and bring the plotters to punishment. The
+men who were plotting on the Isthmus were also plotting in New York. An
+inkling of the true state of affairs came to him, and he saw that in order
+to accomplish what he had set out to do his reach must be long enough to
+stretch across the Atlantic and there grapple with the subordinates in the
+treacherous plot.
+
+Itto returned to the front room when the newcomer left and again the talk
+and the arguments went on, sometimes in Spanish, sometimes in English. Mr.
+Chester seemed to be asking for more time. Presently the date Ned had
+found on the two drawings was mentioned.
+
+"The time set was Saturday--to-morrow," Itto said, grimly.
+
+"That was decided upon a long time ago," Van Ellis said.
+
+"Before the New York complications arose," Chester argued. "We did not
+know at that time what complications might result from the defection of
+one of our number. It is injudicious to go on now."
+
+"The date referred to was also set for action in New York," Itto said.
+
+"Yes, but the thing is inadvisable now, for Shaw has been warned."
+
+It was plain to Ned that he would have to get away from the old stone
+house and decide upon some effective means of meeting this emergency. He
+had work to do in New York as well as in Gatun. The drawing found in the
+bomb-chamber had told him that. Now this new information emphasized the
+demand for instant action.
+
+There was no doubt in his mind that it was the purpose of the plotters to
+blow up the great dam on the next day, probably after nightfall. As has
+been said, he could thwart the plans of the traitors by communicating with
+the secret service men under Lieutenant Gordon, but that course would not
+be apt to bring about all the desired results. He wanted to arrest every
+man connected with the plot. Not only that; he wanted proof to convict
+every one of them.
+
+There seemed to the boy only one way in which he could attain the results
+sought for. He must catch the plotters "with the goods on," as the police
+say. He must catch them with explosives in their hands under the shadow of
+the dam! Ned knew that Harvey, Van Ellis, Gostel, and Itto were deep in
+the treacherous game, but he did not know how many others were taking part
+in it. He suspected that men high up in finance were back of the plot, and
+wanted to get the whole group.
+
+He thought he knew why Harvey, Van Ellis and some of the others were in
+the plot. He was quite certain that he did. But he was not so certain of
+the motives of Itto, the Japanese. They might never be revealed unless the
+game was checked at the right moment.
+
+There was an air of insincerity about the Japanese which Ned did not like.
+It seemed to the boy that he was leading the others on--or trying to lead
+them on--in a sinister way. The impression was in the lad's mind from the
+moment of his meeting Gostel that the two men, Itto and Gostel, were in
+the plot for some purpose of their own, a purpose which was not the
+accumulation of money, and which did not match the motives of the others.
+
+About six o'clock Chester arose to his feet.
+
+"I must go back to camp," he said.
+
+"But there is a meeting to-night," Van Ellis urged.
+
+"An important one," Gostel put in.
+
+"And a midnight visit to the dam," Itto said.
+
+"I have a previous engagement at the camp," Harvey insisted. "We have
+guests from New York, my son and myself."
+
+"The secret service lads," exclaimed Gostel, scornfully. "Leave them to me
+to-night, and you can then keep your engagement with us."
+
+"I have my doubts about their being connected with the secret service,"
+Chester replied.
+
+"We are positive," Gostel said. "They were followed from New York. We know
+the plotting that has been going on between Gordon and Nestor."
+
+Much more concerning the boys was said, but Ned was too anxious to get
+away to pay full attention to it. Another burden was now on his mind. He
+must see that the boys were warned and came to no harm.
+
+He had left them with the understanding that they might remain at the
+Culebra hotel or return with Tony Chester to the cottage where they had
+been taken when brought out of the jungle. If they had returned to the
+camp, they might already be in great danger.
+
+Chester insisted on taking his departure, and the others accompanied him
+to the foot of the stairs in the wall, arguing with him every foot of the
+way. Ned stood at the door of the rear room when they returned, and while
+they were getting settled in the front apartment he slipped out and moved
+cautiously down the steps.
+
+When he gained the grounds outside he dodged into a thicket not ten feet
+away from the exit and waited to make sure that no one was moving about on
+the outside. He was anxious to get away from the place without his
+presence there being known. A struggle, even if he succeeded in getting
+away, would put the plotters on their guard.
+
+In a few moments he realized that the grounds were not so devoid of human
+life as he had believed. He heard voices on the side toward the hill, and
+a rustling in the thicket told him that some one was stealthily moving
+there.
+
+Knowing that it would be dark in a short tune, Ned remained crouched low
+in the bushes, hoping to escape detection in that way, but footsteps came
+closer and closer to his hiding place, and he sprang up just in time to
+see a lithe figure hurtling toward him, the figure of a tall, slender man
+with an Oriental cast of countenance.
+
+Glad that there was only one, Ned braced himself for the attack, which,
+however, did not come. When within a yard of its object, the lithe figure
+turned, staggered forward, uttered a low cry of anger and surprise, and
+lay swathed in a cluster of vines which had tripped and now held him to
+the ground.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+JIMMIE RELEASES A PRISONER.
+
+
+Realizing that the man who had attacked him, or attempted to, must not
+escape or be permitted to utter a cry of warning, Ned sprang forward and
+caught him by the throat. The fallen man squirmed about in the thicket for
+a moment and then feebly motioned for Ned to remove the pressure from his
+neck.
+
+Then the patrol leader saw that the fellow had been lassoed, caught about
+the neck by a running noose in a slender rope. This accounted for his
+antics when first observed by the boy. Puzzled beyond measure, Ned
+loosened the noose so the captive would not die from lack of air.
+
+The man sat up in the tangle of bushes, pressing his hands to his neck and
+rocking to and fro with pain. It was plain that the rope which had caught
+him had been drawn by a merciless hand. But whose hand was it? Ned was
+greatly interested in that question.
+
+"I have released the rope so as to give you a little longer lease of
+life," Ned said to the prisoner, "but if you try to call out for help, or
+to escape, you'll be killed. Do you understand?"
+
+Ned shifted the noose to the man's wrists, which were fastened behind his
+back, and relieved him of a revolver and a wicked-looking knife. Then he
+asked:
+
+"Were you watching me?"
+
+"Yes," was the short reply, in good English.
+
+"You knew that I was in the house?"
+
+"Yes. I saw you go in."
+
+"Do the others know that I was in there?" asked Ned, then, anxiously.
+
+If the others knew, then all his plans must be revised.
+
+"No," came the reply. "I had had no opportunity of telling them."
+
+"You were placed on guard here by the man called Gostel?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, who was it that pulled you down? There is something strange about
+that."
+
+"I saw no one," replied the other, feeling of his throat again.
+
+"Were others watching here with you?"
+
+The prisoner shook his head.
+
+"Then who did it?" demanded Ned. "That rope never dropped down from the
+clouds and brought you up so cleverly. Why, man, you would have had a
+knife into me in a second only for the rope."
+
+"I hoped to," was the calm reply.
+
+Then Ned heard a giggle in the thicket, and in a moment the vines parted
+and Jimmie looked out, a shrewd smile on his freckled face.
+
+"Why didn't you follow the line to the end?" he asked, with a chuckle.
+"Then you would have come to the life saver."
+
+"I was so rattled for a moment that I did not think of that," was the
+reply. "How did you come to be here?"
+
+"I followed you," replied the boy.
+
+"And you have been lying out there in the thicket all the time I have been
+in the house?"
+
+"Why, yes, of course."
+
+"Well, you did a good job," Ned said, taking the boy by the hand. "The
+cowboy stunt you have been practicing so long came into good use at
+last."
+
+It was now getting quite dark, and lights showed in the house. From where
+the boys stood they could not see the lighted front windows, but only the
+reflections on the slope in front of the structure.
+
+"I knew it would prove handy in time," grinned Jimmie. "I caught this
+gazabo on the fly, eh?"
+
+"I can't understand how you managed it, in this thicket," Ned said.
+
+"There's a clear space there where he leaped at you," Jimmie said. "I saw
+him rising to spring and dropped it over his head, like a bag over a blind
+pig. What you goin' to do with him, now you've got him?"
+
+Ned turned to the prisoner with a smile on his face.
+
+"What would you suggest?" he asked.
+
+"Gee! You've got your nerve," Jimmie exclaimed. "Leave it to him an'
+you'll fill his pocket with yellow ones an' turn him loose to carve you
+up."
+
+"If you release me," the captive replied, evidently taking the question in
+good faith, "I'll leave the country."
+
+"Is that on the square?" demanded Jimmie, with a grin at Ned.
+
+"There is a condition, however," the man added, "and that is that you make
+it appear that I was killed in defending the house."
+
+"What's the answer?" asked Jimmie, while Ned stood by wondering if he had
+not struck a lead of good luck at last.
+
+"I'm sick of the game," the prisoner replied. "I'm not in it for money,
+anyway, and the other motive is no longer of avail to me."
+
+"If you'll tell me everything you know concerning this plot against the
+Gatun dam," Ned said, "I'll release you after the case is ended."
+
+"Not a word," replied the other, closing his lips tightly, as if to shut
+back words seeking utterance.
+
+"Then we'll have to find a little coop to put you in," Jimmie said. "I
+wish we had you back at Culebra."
+
+While the temporary disposition of the prisoner was being discussed, and
+while Ned was questioning him as to the immediate movements of the
+plotters and receiving no satisfactory replies, the lights in the house
+were extinguished and the men who had occupied the front room were heard
+descending the stairs. In a moment some one called out:
+
+"Gaga."
+
+"Is that your name?" demanded Ned of the prisoner.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then answer him."
+
+Gaga did not respond at once, and the keen point of a knife came in
+contact with his throat.
+
+"Answer him."
+
+The call came again, farther away now.
+
+"What shall I say?" asked the captive.
+
+"Answer him as you would have answered if nothing had happened to you
+here," was the reply.
+
+The prisoner uttered a long, low cry, and the boys waited with suspended
+breath. Even at the peril of his life the fellow might warn the others.
+Ned knew how loyal the people of his nation are.
+
+But the reply was not a warning, or a call for help. The man who had
+called out the prisoner's name answered now with an "All right. Remain
+about here." Then the men moved away in a body, taking the road to
+Gamboa.
+
+"Are they coming back to-night?" asked Ned.
+
+"I can tell you nothing," was the reply.
+
+When the men who had left the house had disappeared from sight Ned bade
+the captive rise that he might be searched closely for weapons.
+
+"Say," Jimmie cried. "There's your tall, slender man with black hair
+turning gray in places. Ever in New York, Mister?" he added.
+
+The prisoner made no reply.
+
+"You are enough like Itto to be his brother," Ned said. "Perhaps you won't
+mind telling me which one of you stole Frank Shaw's necklace?"
+
+The prisoner turned his back indignantly. He was indeed a fair copy of the
+man called Itto, and his shoulders, narrow and high, might have made the
+damp stains Ned had found on the wall of the closet in the Shaw house in
+New York.
+
+The stone house was now, seemingly, without an occupant and the thickets
+about were silent save for the noises of the night. A faint clamor came
+from the canal, where workmen were hewing away at the ribs of the
+Cordilleras, now the slight jar of an explosion, now the grinding of a
+steam shovel, now the nervous shrieking of the trains pushing back and
+forth.
+
+The electrics over the cut drew lines of silver light on the tall trees
+and the foliage of the hills farther away, but here there was only a faint
+suggestion of illumination.
+
+"Now you've got him," Jimmie said, presently, "what you goin' to do with
+him? We can't get him to Culebra or Gatun without bumpin' into some fresh
+guy who would want to take him away from us."
+
+"I'm afraid you're right about that," Ned said. "We can't afford to have
+him get away and inform his companions that something of their plot is
+known."
+
+"What would they do?"
+
+"Make new plans, and we should have to begin all over again. As the case
+rests now we stand a good chance of catching every one of the
+conspirators."
+
+"And the chap that stole the emerald necklace?"
+
+"Even the necklace may drift to the surface in the eruption which is sure
+to take place in the near future," smiled Ned. "Now about Gaga," he
+continued. "Suppose you look around and see if you can't find a room in
+the old house which would not be used to-night, even if the plotters
+should come."
+
+Jimmie hustled away and soon returned with the information that there was
+a room in the rear of the house, on the first floor, which would answer
+for a prison very well.
+
+"But there ain't no door to it," he added, "an' the glass is all out of
+the window. Looks like it had been deserted for a hundred years."
+
+"Perhaps we can rig up a door," suggested Ned.
+
+"What's the use?" asked Jimmie. "I'm goin' to stay right here with the
+captive until the secret service men come an' take him away."
+
+"But they will not come until the case is ended," urged Ned. "The
+knowledge that Gaga is a prisoner--arrested by a spy who overheard what
+was said in the house--"
+
+"I wouldn't call myself a spy," Jimmie said, indignantly.
+
+"There is no dishonor in serving as a spy in a good cause," Ned replied.
+"As I was saying, the mere knowledge of his arrest would disarrange our
+plans as much as his escape would. We would better make him secure here
+and leave him to his own thoughts, it seems to me."
+
+"I would like to have him remain," said Gaga, much to the amazement of the
+boys.
+
+"He can't resist my winnin' ways," cried Jimmie. "All right. I'll stay if
+you will send out about a ton of grub."
+
+"Perhaps the boys will object to bringing it."
+
+"Jack, or Frank, or any one of them," Jimmie exclaimed. "No trouble about
+that. Perhaps it will take two to bring enough."
+
+The prisoner's bonds were loosened so that he would not feel them drawing
+into the flesh, but still he was left securely tied up. The room was not
+unpleasant, with the starlight shining in through the dismantled doorway
+and the broken window, and Jimmie planned to have a good rest there during
+his watch.
+
+The boy had been on his feet all the previous night, wandering about the
+jungle, and had taken only a short rest at the Chester camp. The prisoner
+was so secured that it did not seem possible for him to get away, even if
+left there alone, so the lad rolled a dilapidated old easy chair up to the
+window and lay back at his ease.
+
+For a long time neither spoke, and then the prisoner asked:
+
+"When will I be taken to prison?"
+
+"Search me!" Jimmie replied.
+
+"I take it," the captive continued, "that the whole plot is discovered?"
+
+"Bet your life!" Jimmie answered, drowsily.
+
+"Then the United States government will have to put up a couple of extra
+prisons," was the comment of the prisoner.
+
+"What you doin' it for?" demanded the boy.
+
+The prisoner did not see fit to reply to this leading question, and Jimmie
+put another, equally pertinent:
+
+"Who let you into the Shaw house that night?"
+
+"Why do you think I was in the Shaw house?" asked the other. "Where is the
+Shaw house?"
+
+"You know where it is, all right," Jimmie said. "Who was it that let you
+in? That is what I want to know. An' who opened the door for you to go
+out?"
+
+There was no reply, and Jimmie piled on another question:
+
+"Why did Pedro run away from Shaw's and why did he run away from Chester's
+camp when he saw me coming from the jungle?"
+
+The prisoner gave a quick start, and something like a groan came from his
+lips.
+
+"Is Pedrarias, the man you call Pedro, here on the Isthmus?" he asked.
+
+"Sure he is. Didn't he report to you after he got here?"
+
+"Living at the Chester camp, you say?"
+
+"He was there this morning, but ran away when he recognized me. I was at
+the Shaw house in New York on the night of the robbery."
+
+The prisoner checked a Spanish oath and struggled to rise to his feet, but
+fell back into his chair because of his bonds.
+
+"There is bad blood between this man and myself," he said, then. "If he
+saw me with Chester to-day he will present himself here to-night. If he
+comes and finds me a prisoner, bound and at his mercy--if he comes here
+to-night, and finds us in this room, and you are unable to deal with him,
+will you cut my bonds?"
+
+"And permit you to run away together and give me the laugh?" said Jimmie.
+"You're a modest kind of a fellow after all, and with nerve to spare."
+
+"If you do this," Gaga replied, "I promise to return to you and submit to
+be bound again, if I come out of the conflict alive."
+
+"Do you think Pedro would murder an unarmed man, and a bound one, at
+that?"
+
+"Yes, the hatred he has for me is so great that he would take any
+advantage of me."
+
+Jimmie was getting the notion that there was something tragic in the air,
+and was even considering the proposition seriously when there was a
+movement at the open doorway.
+
+"If he comes here," Gaga went on, "you must either kill him yourself or
+let me. He will spare neither of us."
+
+The boy was listening for a repetition of the sound at the doorway, when a
+form lifted from the crumbling threshold and stood peering in. Gaga gave a
+cry of terror and the intruder drew back for an instant.
+
+The boy knew that the man whose figure he had seen outlined against the
+star-sprinkled sky was the man he had seen standing by the couch of the
+owner of the _Daily Planet_ on the night of the robbery, the man he had
+seen later in the Chester camp in the jungle.
+
+"For the love of Heaven!" the prisoner whispered.
+
+The entreaty struck home to the heart of the boy. He had always prided
+himself on his love of fair play. He knew that he could not successfully
+defend the doorless, windowless room until the arrival of his friends, or
+the return of the plotters. Pedro could hide in the thicket and rain
+bullets upon himself and the prisoner until both were killed.
+
+He could not make his own escape and leave the prisoner bound and at the
+mercy of his enemy, nor could he shoot the intruder in cold blood when he
+appeared in the doorway again. He was only a boy, and his inherent love of
+a square deal conquered.
+
+While the movements at the door continued, he slipped over to Gaga, ran
+his knife through the cords which bound him, pointed to the weapons which
+had been taken from him, and crouched down in a corner of the room, his
+heart beating like a trip-hammer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+A GUARDIAN NEEDING GUARDING.
+
+
+Little realizing the danger in which Jimmie had been left, Ned made what
+speed he could to Gamboa and there looked about for some means of reaching
+Culebra without delay. It seemed important that he should reach the other
+members of his party as soon as possible and send one of the boys back to
+keep watch with Jimmie.
+
+Besides, it was his intention to communicate with Lieutenant Gordon
+immediately. He did not expect the lieutenant to call out a squad of
+secret service men and place the big dam under guard. That, he reasoned,
+would defeat his plans for rounding up the plotters. However, it was his
+duty to report progress to the officer and consult with him concerning
+future movements.
+
+At Gamboa he found a telephone and called the Tivoli at Ancon, but, to his
+disgust, Lieutenant Gordon could not be found. He tried the offices of
+several engineers and canal officials with no better result. At last,
+exhibiting a secret service badge which had been given him by the
+lieutenant, he mounted an engine about to leave for Culebra and was soon
+in that beautiful city.
+
+The boys were at the hotel where he had left them, having declined the
+repeated offers of hospitality by Mr. Chester, and Tony was with them. A
+session was at once held in a private room, and Jack Bosworth and Harry
+Stevens jumped at the chance to load themselves with provisions and travel
+back to the stone house east of Gamboa. They were given the needed
+directions and sent away with a note to an officer of the railroad, who,
+it may be as well to state here, landed them at Gamboa in quick time and
+without asking any questions.
+
+After the boys had taken their departure Frank Shaw called Ned aside.
+
+"There's something doing here to-night," he said. "Mr. Chester came out of
+the parlor as red as a lobster, about six o'clock, and I guess he had a
+fight with a couple of Japs, Gostel and another chap I've never seen
+before. They parted courteously, but I could see that Tony's father was
+angry clear through. After he had gone back to his camp, or started for
+it, the Japs got a little crowd of gabbers about them and set off down the
+road toward Colon. They seemed mighty pleased over something, and I guess
+they're going to start something to-night."
+
+"And the other man, this Col. Van Ellis. Did he come here with Chester?"
+
+"Oh, yes; he was here, but I took good care that he did not see me. I
+think he went away with Chester. They were both very angry."
+
+"Angry at the Japanese?"
+
+"Yes; anyway, they disagreed over something. But while the two white men
+were angry, the Japs seemed pleased. I'll tell you what I think, Ned. The
+Japs are up to something the others do not like."
+
+Ned was beginning to see a great light. Once before, since seeing Gostel,
+he had studied out the problem of the sincerity of the man, and had
+reached the conclusion that he was using Chester--perhaps others--for some
+sinister purpose of his own. Now he thought he saw the plot in its true
+light. However, he did not communicate his thoughts to the others. Had
+Gordon been at hand he would have confided the story to him. But Gordon
+was not at the Tivoli at Ancon and no one seemed to know where he was, so
+he was obliged to go ahead and exercise his own best judgment.
+
+"What's doing to-night?" Glen Howard asked, when Ned and Frank returned to
+the room where the other boys were seated.
+
+"We're going to Gatun," was the reply. "We're going on a special engine,
+and we're to leave the tracks in the outskirts and get down to the dam."
+
+"Why, this is not the night," Frank said, surprised.
+
+"The date on the drawings was that of to-morrow, Saturday," said Glen.
+"This is Friday. Of course you know what you are doing, but I wouldn't
+take any chances on flushing the game."
+
+"What is it all about?" demanded Tony Chester. "There seems to be
+something in the air to-night. Father went away in a grouch and told me to
+remain with you boys, and Gastong is wandering about the city in a
+half-distracted manner. If you go to Gatun may I go with you?"
+
+Ned pondered a moment before replying. There was in his mind the thought
+that this boy might work a miracle for his father. He saw one chance for
+saving Chester from the results of his connection with the plotters, and
+resolved to take it, risky to his plans though it was.
+
+"No," he said, in a moment, "you are to go to your camp with a note for
+your father. After you deliver the note, you are to come back here and
+remain until you hear from me. If your father comes with you, so much the
+better."
+
+"Will he tell me what is in the note--why he comes back to the city?"
+
+"I don't think so," was the reply. "If he does come, tell him to remain
+close to a 'phone, here, for I may want to talk with him."
+
+"I can't understand what all this mystery is about," Tony exclaimed.
+
+"When did you see Gastong last?" asked Ned.
+
+"Oh, about half an hour ago. He was in the hotel then, flying around like
+a hen minus her head. He asked for you, and said he'd be in the buffet
+when you came."
+
+Ned lost no time in getting to the buffet, where he found Gastong, sitting
+in conversation with a trampish-looking fellow who seemed to be somewhat
+under the influence of liquor. He beckoned to Ned when he entered the room
+and made room for him on the leather rest at his side.
+
+"This is Tommy, the cook," he said, when Ned was seated. "Your cook."
+
+"You ought to join the force," laughed Ned. "I never would have known
+you."
+
+"Lieutenant Gordon told me to keep watch of you boys," laughed Tommy, "but
+I reckon you're doing pretty well for yourselves."
+
+"You are a secret service man?" asked Ned, satisfied now that Gordon had
+indeed thought it necessary to keep them all under surveillance.
+
+"Of course," replied Tommy. "I'm not much of a cook. I guess you found
+that out up at the camp."
+
+"It was thoughtful of the lieutenant," Ned said, "but, as you say, we seem
+to be getting on very well. Do you happen to know where Gordon is at the
+present moment?"
+
+"He was to meet me here," was the reply, "but has not shown up."
+
+"It is dollars to apples," said Gastong, "that the Japs have cornered him.
+He told me, on the night you went after the bomb-man, that some one was
+sleuthing him."
+
+"I didn't know that you knew him," Ned said, wondering if every person he
+had come upon since arriving on the Isthmus was in the secret service.
+
+"Well," said Gastong, "Lieutenant Gordon was on the squad here, you know,
+before he went to Mexico, and I used to meet him now and then."
+
+"And he told you, on the first night of our arrival at camp, that we might
+need looking after?"
+
+"Well, he told me that it would do no harm to let him know if I saw a mob
+of New York boys wandering about the works," laughed Gastong.
+
+"So that is how you happened to be patrolling the Culebra cut in a motor
+car on the day the boys ran into Col. Van Ellis at the old house?"
+
+"Well," said Gastong, "Tommy, here, kept me posted in a way, and I thought
+I might be useful out that direction."
+
+"It was clever of the lieutenant," laughed Ned. "Suppose you now turn your
+attention to him? He may need the help of the Boy Scouts to get out of a
+hole himself."
+
+"I reckon you could help him, all right," Gastong replied, confidently,
+but still with a look of anxiety on his face. "He has a heap of confidence
+in you, Mr. Nestor, but he thought best to take every precaution for your
+welfare. That is the reason why he surrounded you, as far as possible,
+with secret service people."
+
+Ned was more than amused at the statement, for all the discoveries that
+had been made had resulted from the activities of the boys and himself. In
+fact, the only help Gordon's chain of secret service men had given his
+party was the thwarting of the plans of Van Ellis at the old house.
+
+This had been important, in a sense, as the boys would otherwise have been
+held prisoners there and so would not have been able to come to the rescue
+of Ned and Jimmie at the old temple. Still, Jack Bosworth had been in that
+incident, and it was a question in the mind of the patrol leader if the
+result would have been the same without him. However, he gave the
+lieutenant full credit for his cautious way of going at the matter.
+
+"The Japs, as you call them," he said to Gastong and Tommy, "have gone on
+toward Colon. I'm going on after them, but it may be well for you to
+remain here on the chance of meeting the lieutenant. He may have plans of
+his own for to-night."
+
+"I am sure he has," said Tommy. "He has been active all day, with half a
+dozen men going and coming under his orders. He missed you this
+afternoon."
+
+"I had a date to view the scenery up the Chagres river," laughed Ned.
+
+The patrol leader went back to the room where he had left Frank, George,
+Glen, and Peter. Tony had left for his father's camp and George Tolford
+had gone with him.
+
+"I would give considerable to know what Chester and the Japs, as they are
+called, quarreled about to-night," he said, but of course the boys could
+give him no information on the subject.
+
+As a matter of fact, Ned thought he knew, but the thing was so
+incomprehensible to him that he doubted, for a time, his own reasoning. It
+was now nine o'clock, and it seemed to him that the time for action had
+come. Whether he was right in his deductions or not, he could not afford
+to ignore the plans he had made for the night. He did not like the idea of
+accepting responsibility for the important move he was determined to make,
+but Lieutenant Gordon was not to be found, and there was nothing for him
+to do but to go ahead.
+
+"Now, boys," he said to his chums, "we are going into a game to-night that
+may lead to bloodshed. Again, it may prove a farce. I have only my own
+judgment to go on, but the matter is so serious that I'm going to take a
+risk. I should prefer to have Lieutenant Gordon with us, but that seems to
+be impossible. Get your guns ready, and I'll arrange for a railroad motor
+car to take us to Gatun."
+
+"I just believe Lieutenant Gordon is in trouble," Peter said. "He was in
+the hotel this afternoon, just before they carried the sick man out, but
+has not been seen since."
+
+Ned sprang to his feet, all excitement.
+
+"When did they carry a sick man out?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, it must have been about five o'clock," was the reply. "He was plumb
+sick, too, for they carried him out in a wheel-chair, with a sheet over
+his face."
+
+"Who carried him out?"
+
+"Why, the men from the hospital who were sent for."
+
+"What floor?" demanded Ned, a thought he did not care to put into words
+coming to his mind.
+
+"Third floor," replied Peter. "I stood out there, looking around, when the
+chair was brought down on the freight elevator."
+
+Greatly to the amazement of the boys Ned darted away. In a minute he stood
+before the clerk's desk.
+
+"Will you have a boy show me to Lieutenant Gordon's room?" he asked.
+
+"Certainly," was the reply, "but you won't find him in. There have been
+repeated inquiries, for him this afternoon."
+
+"Has any one been to his room?" asked Ned.
+
+"Yes, but it is locked and the key is not here. I was up on that floor
+about five o'clock, when the hospital people took a man out of the room
+next to his, and his door was locked then."
+
+Ned stood for a moment in deep thought, hesitating, wondering if the clerk
+was a man to be trusted in a great emergency.
+
+"You look to me like a dependable man," he finally said to the clerk,
+"anyway, I've got to take you into my confidence. Will you take duplicate
+keys to the lieutenant's room and the room next to it and come with me?"
+
+"Of course, if it is anything important," replied the clerk, "but you'll
+have to give some good reason before I can admit you to either room."
+
+"Step in here," Ned said, motioning toward a little check room at the end
+of the counter. "You saw the sick man carried out?" he asked, as the clerk
+wonderingly stepped into the designated room.
+
+"Yes, I saw him taken out. He was a stranger--took the room about noon
+through a friend. I did not see him at all, that is, until he was carried
+out, and then I did not see his face."
+
+"You are sure it was not Lieutenant Gordon who was carried out?" asked
+Ned.
+
+"Why, why, he wasn't sick. He said nothing to me of being ill."
+
+"But he has enemies on the Isthmus," Ned went on, "and is now at work on a
+very delicate and dangerous job for the government. Suppose--"
+
+The clerk waited to hear no more. He seized the keys asked for and bounded
+toward the elevator, taking Ned with him. When they entered the
+lieutenant's room they found it in great disorder. There were many signs
+of a desperate struggle. On the floor was a three-cornered slip of paper
+which had evidently, judging from the quality and thickness, been torn
+from a drawing roll. The scrap showed only two irregular lines, but Ned
+recognized them.
+
+Lieutenant Gordon had taken into his possession the crude map of the Gatun
+dam which Ned had discovered in the old temple bomb-room. The next room,
+the one from which the alleged sick man had been taken, was also in
+disorder, and the door which connected the two apartments had been forced
+open. There was a strong odor of chloroform in both rooms.
+
+The clerk did not need to be told what had taken place. His face turned
+white as chalk and his voice trembled as he asked:
+
+"What is to be done? Think of the lieutenant being carried off from this
+hotel in the daytime. It will ruin us."
+
+"First," Ned replied, "you must make up your mind to keep what has been
+done a profound secret. You may tell the proprietor if you see fit to do
+so, but no one else must know."
+
+"But the secret service men must be told."
+
+"Not now," Ned replied. "I have an idea that I can restore the lieutenant
+to his friends without any row being made over the matter."
+
+"But how? I don't understand."
+
+"At least," Ned urged, "wait until two o'clock to-morrow morning. I am
+going out now on an expedition which may reveal many things, if I succeed.
+If I fail, why, then you must notify the secret service men and look for
+me in some of the pools about Gatun."
+
+The clerk finally consented to this arrangement, and in ten minutes Ned
+and his chums were speeding toward Gatun on a railroad motor car.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+THE SPOIL OF THE LOCKS.
+
+
+At eleven o'clock that night the workmen employed at the locks, the
+spillway, and the barrier of the Gatun dam found that their lights were
+not working satisfactorily and sent word back to the electric department
+that something was amiss.
+
+The electric department sent word back to the men in the excavations that
+the lights were all right so far as they were concerned, that they were
+doing their full duty efficiently, and that the men with the shovels, the
+dynamite and the dump cars might go chase themselves.
+
+This expression of fact and permission did not make it any lighter at the
+workings, but the men kept on, in the intermittent showers of
+illumination, and grumbled while they excavated and piled in the concrete.
+At last, just before midnight, the incandescence did not come back to the
+globes, and the men gathered in groups to discuss the matter and express
+heated opinions of the efficiency of the men in charge of the lighting
+plant.
+
+The workmen moved about here and there in the shadows and clambered like
+ants over the great bulk of the dam. No one looked to see that the men
+assembled in the workings all belonged there. At midnight four men who did
+not belong there entered the excavation which leads from the bottom of the
+lower lock to the sea-level channel into Limon Bay, which is a child of
+the Caribbean Sea.
+
+These four men moved about as if accustomed to the situation, only now and
+then they halted and whispered together. Other men, workmen, were doing
+that, however, and so these four passed on up to the foot of the spillway
+without attracting attention.
+
+Here they separated, one to the west, one to the east, where the locks
+are, and one to a position half way between the spillway and the west side
+of the locks. The fourth man remained near the foot of the spillway.
+
+Due primarily to its size, Gatun dam has received, perhaps, more attention
+in the United States than is its due. There is nothing especially
+difficult or complicated about this dam, and many dams have been
+successfully built in this country to withstand much larger pressures and
+greater heads of water than the Gatun dam without being given one-quarter
+of the attention.
+
+Gatun dam fills the opening between the hills at Gatun through which the
+Chagres river flows to the Caribbean Sea. It consists, if it may be
+regarded in the light of a finished production, of a water-tight center or
+core composed of sand and clay mixed in proper proportion and deposited
+hydraulically; that is by being pumped in.
+
+On each side a wall of rock confines this core. The bulk of the dam rests
+on impermeable material of sufficient supporting power. The locks and
+spillway are considered a part of the dam.
+
+The locks are built in an excavation at the east end of the dam, in rock,
+and will lift vessels from the Atlantic level to the level of the Lake of
+Gatun. The spillway is a concrete-lined opening cut through a hill of rock
+near the center of the dam. When supplied with suitable gates, it will
+regulate the level of the lake.
+
+The dam proper is about 9,000 feet long over all, measured on its crest,
+including locks and spill way, but for only five hundred feet of this
+great distance will it be subjected to great pressure. During this space
+there is, or will be, a weight of about eighty-five feet depth against the
+barrier. For only about half its length will the head of water on the dam
+be over fifty feet.
+
+It will be seen from the above description that the point of attack on the
+dam would naturally be where the pressure is greatest, also at the locks,
+which would make a mighty channel for the flood of water, and which would
+be difficult to repair. The spillway, too, if enlarged by explosives,
+would make a nasty hole to build up.
+
+Now another point which Ned had considered when he looked over the crude
+drawings he had discovered. Hard rock underlies the dam near the surface
+of the ground except for about one-fifth of its entire length. Here the
+rock dips down to a minimum depth below sea-level of from 195 feet in the
+depression east of the spillway to 255 feet in that west of the spillway.
+Here, of course, would be another point of attack by one designing
+permanent mischief.
+
+These depressions or valleys have been slowly filled during past ages.
+Measured from sea-level down, the first 80 feet consists of sand and clay;
+the next 100 feet or so is stiff blue clay, while the last 20 to 60 feet
+is a conglomerate, composed of sand, shells and stone. It will be readily
+seen that great damage might be done by a raging torrent boring into the
+sand and clay of the first strata.
+
+Now, the outer walls of rock are 1,200 feet apart, the interval being
+filled with spoil from the canal and lock excavations. The south "toe," as
+it is called, has a height of 60 feet, while the north or down-stream
+"toe" is 30 feet high. Spoil from the excavations will be dumped outside
+the "toes" until the dam is 2,000 feet in width at the bottom. The top of
+the dam is, or will be, 30 feet above water level and have a width of 100
+feet. The channel of the spillway is 300 feet wide.
+
+Ned had figured it out that one attacking the dam would naturally seek to
+enlarge the locks and the spillway and also to burrow in under the bulk of
+the dam where the sand and clay had been washed in below sea-level by
+countless years of flood and storm. The locks and spillway, enlarged,
+would require years of active work for repair; the sand and clay, if
+subjected to high explosives, would cause the crest of the dam to drop in
+on the north side and so enfeeble the entire structure, requiring the
+gigantic work of constructing new foundations.
+
+Therefore, when Ned saw the four men moving toward the spillway, saw them
+part and seek the vulnerable points which have been described above, he
+knew that the time he had been waiting for had come. The treacherous
+rascals were there to do their wicked work that night--to carry out plans
+long formed and well considered--and they were opposed only by the
+inexperienced patrol leader from New York and his three chums, Frank Shaw,
+Glen Howard, and Peter Fenton. It will be remembered that Jimmie McGraw,
+Jack Bosworth, and Harry Stevens were at the old stone house on the road
+to Las Cruces from Gamboa, and that George Tolford had accompanied Tony to
+the Chester camp.
+
+On reaching Gatun the boys had slipped out of the lights of the station
+and descended immediately to the bottom of the cut. They were at once
+accosted by a foreman, but the explanation Ned gave seemed more than
+sufficient, for Dan Welch, the man in charge of a group of workers on the
+locks, at once summoned his assistant to the job and remained with the
+boys.
+
+"I have heard about you, Ned Nestor," Welch said; "in fact, about half the
+men in the workings at Gatun have heard of you."
+
+"I don't understand how," replied the puzzled boy.
+
+"Well, through that bomb business at the cottage. You see, it leaked out.
+When the attempt to blow up the place was reported, the men naturally
+asked what the dickens the scamps wanted to blow up a crowd of sightseers
+for, and then it came out that you came here with Lieutenant Gordon, and
+that's about all."
+
+It was at this time that the lights suspended operation. Welch glanced
+about the busy scene for an instant and sat down on a box which contained
+tools.
+
+"No use," he said. "The electric men work as they please. We'll wait here
+and lose our record. Did you say where Lieutenant Gordon is to-night?"
+
+"I did not, because I wasn't asked," was the reply, "and because I don't
+know where he is."
+
+"He's a good fellow, Gordon," Welch exclaimed. "I'd go far and fast to do
+him a favor. I hope he's coming out of this game all right."
+
+Then Ned sat down on the tool-box and told Welch the story of the
+abduction of the lieutenant, and also the story of what was going on there
+that night, as he understood it. To say that Welch was profoundly excited
+does not half express the foreman's state of mind as he listened.
+
+"My God!" he cried, when Ned paused. "To think of the wickedness of the
+thing. To destroy the work of years. To delay the completion of the canal
+for a decade. What can we do? In this darkness, the spoilers can work
+their will."
+
+"I think I know who they are," Ned said. "We must find them."
+
+"It is too bad that the lights should fail us just at this time," the
+foreman said.
+
+"I have an idea that the plotters arranged for that," Ned said, then.
+
+"But how?" demanded Welch. "The plants are well guarded. You know, of
+course, that we are all on the lookout for something of the kind? We
+thought we had provided against any sudden surprise. Where are we to look
+for them?"
+
+Then Ned pointed out the probable points of attack, and Welch sprang to
+his feet in a fuming passion.
+
+"The spillway and the locks," he cried. "And the point where the soft
+earth extends under the dam! Come!"
+
+"Bring four of your men who can be trusted," Ned advised, not leaving the
+box.
+
+"Yes, and what then?"
+
+"Send a man to the light station and have tracers sent out, but instruct
+him not to have the lights turned on until you give the signal."
+
+"I understand," the foreman said. "We'll catch them with the goods!"
+
+Four men, workmen, were strolling along the danger points within five
+minutes, and another moved toward the electric switches which governed
+that part of the illumination. Ned and Welch remained near the spillway.
+The three boys, after whispered instructions from Ned, moved along the
+line passing word from man to man.
+
+It was a long and heart-breaking half hour, seemingly double that time,
+that followed. The man from the switches came back and whispered to Welch,
+and at that moment a shrill bird-call sounded in the darkness. This, in
+turn, was followed by the report of a revolver, and then the light leaped
+into the globes, making the place, the entire length of the canal dam, the
+spillway and the locks, as bright as day.
+
+There came a half-hearted explosion from the direction of the locks,
+followed by more shots. Then everything was in confusion, and groups of
+men gathered in four spots along the line. There were more shots and then
+the three boys rushed, panting, to the position Ned and the foreman had
+taken.
+
+"They've got them!" Frank cried. "They've got every man of them--four Japs
+with lighted fuses in their hands!"
+
+"There must be more than four!" Welch cried.
+
+"I think not," Ned replied. "This is hardly a job for many men to work on!
+The four dare not take others into their confidence. Come! Suppose we
+gather them in?"
+
+"How do you boys know they've got them all?" demanded Welch. "The four men
+must be some distance apart."
+
+"Not too far for a revolver to carry a signal!" smiled Ned. "You probably
+noticed four groups of shots? Well, the boys who have been acting as
+messengers from man to man gave directions as to the number of shots for
+each group!"
+
+"I see!" said Welch. "You don't need any whiskers, boy, to do the brain
+work of a man. Here comes the first batch!"
+
+Itto and Gostel were the first ones brought in. Itto was wounded fatally
+and Gostel was bleeding from a wound in the side. The other men were not
+injured. They stood in a little group for a moment, and then Itto dropped
+to the ground.
+
+The reports of the men who had been sent out to the danger points showed
+that each one of the four had been caught lighting a fuse, the bombs
+having been set.
+
+"We were forced to work before we were ready," Gostel said, defiantly.
+"Our government discovered what was going on, and we would have been
+arrested to-morrow. So we were obliged to take the risk to-night. We were
+working for the glory of the Emperor, but he forbade it!"
+
+"I did not believe the government of Japan would descend to any such
+despicable work," Ned said. "You fellows are cranks! You would have worked
+great harm to your Emperor if you had succeeded. By the way," he added,
+"what did you do with Lieutenant Gordon?"
+
+Gostel glared at his questioner, but Itto beckoned Ned to his side.
+
+"The old stone house on the road to Las Cruces!" he whispered.
+
+"Where is that?" asked Welch, who had bent over the wounded man and heard
+the words.
+
+"I know," replied Ned. "One act of this tragedy has already been pulled
+off there. Have your men take these cranks to Gatun and get a railroad
+motor. We must get to Gamboa without loss of time. It is only a short
+distance from there to the place he speaks of. If they took Lieutenant
+Gordon there a prisoner, they are likely to have had a warm reception, for
+three of my chums are there!"
+
+But it was not necessary for them to go to the old stone house. At Gamboa
+they found Lieutenant Gordon and the three boys. Jimmie excitedly related
+the sensational occurrences at the house.
+
+"Jack and Harry came up," he concluded, "just as the two men, Pedro and
+Gaga, were going together with knives. I was scared into a trance! The
+boys covered them with guns an' we trussed 'em both. You never saw people
+more surprised in your life. Then two men brought in Lieutenant Gordon,
+all nicely tied up, and went away, or started to go away. Well, they
+wasn't prepared for an attack from the bushes, and we have four prisoners
+in a cell of a jail at Gamboa, right over there!"
+
+In an hour the boys were all back at Culebra, with Lieutenant Gordon
+looking angry enough to eat sinkers, as Jimmie said. The officer though
+pleased at the general results, did not like to admit that he had been
+captured by the enemy and rescued by the Boy Scouts, the little fellows he
+was guarding!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+THE TANGLE STRAIGHTENED OUT.
+
+
+It was nearly daylight when the tired party entered the lobby of the hotel
+at Culebra. The eight men who had been captured were all under strong
+guard, the bombs had been taken from the dam, and the danger was over.
+
+"Now," Lieutenant Gordon said, "we'll go after the men higher up."
+
+He started back as he uttered the words, for Mr. Shaw, Harvey Chester,
+Col. Van Ellis, George Tolford, and Tony Chester came hastening toward
+him.
+
+"There are three of the men higher up!" the lieutenant shouted. "I arrest
+you, gentlemen, for treason!"
+
+The three men drew back in surprise and Mr. Shaw stepped forward.
+
+"What does it mean?" he asked. "I sailed from New York the day after the
+boys left, but reached Culebra only to-night. When I came here I found Mr.
+Chester and Mr. Van Ellis waiting for news from Ned Nestor. What does it
+mean?"
+
+"It means!" shouted Gordon, "that your dupes are all under arrest, through
+the efforts of Nestor, and that the Gatun dam is no longer in danger. It
+also means that you three men are under arrest! I suspected, that night in
+your house in New York, Shaw, that you were trying to lead me to a false
+trail."
+
+Mr. Shaw glanced indifferently at the officer and motioned to a
+distinguished looking gentleman who had been observing the scene from a
+distance.
+
+"This," he said, "is Colonel Hill, your chief, Gordon. He came on from New
+York with me. Let him speak."
+
+"But the others are prisoners," insisted Gordon.
+
+"I have an idea," Mr. Shaw said, "that Nestor knows more about the
+complications of this case than any one else. Suppose we let him sum it
+up?"
+
+"I am sure he can do it!" growled Gordon.
+
+Although it was now broad daylight, and all were tired and in need of
+sleep, the party went to a private parlor and Ned began the story of the
+case, first having a short talk with Jimmie, who had listened to a
+confession from Gaga.
+
+"The plot against the Gatun dam," he said, "did not originate with the
+business men who were looking for emeralds along the line of the cut. When
+I first sized up the case it seemed to me that the men interested in
+emeralds, including Mr. Shaw, were willing to delay the completion of the
+canal in order that they might have time to develop mines believed to be
+fabulously rich in emeralds."
+
+"That is the way it looked to me," the lieutenant said.
+
+"I began work along that line," continued Ned, "for the news that Mr. Shaw
+was interested in emerald mines, and his refusal to reveal the contents of
+the papers he had secured, led me to the opinion that he had been
+approached by his partners with a proposition to destroy the Gatun dam,
+that he had their proposals in writing, and that he had refused to become
+a party to such an outrage."
+
+"Then why didn't he tell us who the men were?" demanded Gordon.
+
+"Because," was the reply, "he did not think his partners, Mr. Harvey
+Chester and Col. Van Ellis, would go to the extremity proposed. He thought
+they would change their minds when the enormity of the crime was set
+before them. In fact, he suspected from the first that they were being
+urged on by others having private ends to gain by the destruction of the
+dam. Besides, he thought himself capable of handling the situation alone.
+Is that true, Mr. Shaw?"
+
+"All true," was the reply, "but I don't see how you found out what was in
+my mind," he added, with a laugh.
+
+"It was all very clear to me, in time," was the reply. "Unless I am very
+much mistaken, you, Mr. Shaw, fearful that the enemies of the canal scheme
+might act too quickly, gave the information to the government which led to
+Lieutenant Gordon being put on the case. Is that right?"
+
+"Yes," was the reply, "that is right, but how--"
+
+"All in good time," Ned went on. "Now, the fact that you had warned the
+officers of the government became known to your associates in the emerald
+business. That is, it became known to the men who were drawing the
+associates into this crime. It was then necessary for them to get the
+papers they had given to you, the maps and plans of the best points of
+attack. The papers mentioned names, and would have convicted every one of
+them of treason."
+
+"Where did you get a glimpse of the papers?" asked Mr. Shaw.
+
+"I have never seen them," was the reply, "but what took place shows what
+they contained. When you left the Isthmus, Pedro, real name Pedrarias, was
+induced by some of the conspirators to go with you as your servant. His
+real duty in your house was to steal the papers before you turned them
+over to the government."
+
+"I had no intention of doing that," the editor said.
+
+"But the conspirators did not know that," Ned went on. "Now, while Pedro
+went into your employ for the purpose of stealing the papers he also went
+for a purpose of his own. It was his longing to possess the emerald
+necklace--which had long been in his family--that induced him to become a
+servant, though the large sum of money the conspirators paid him was a
+consideration, he being very poor.
+
+"You all know what happened. Pedro did not succeed in getting either the
+papers or the necklace. He remained in the house until the others became
+anxious and sent three men on to New York to accomplish what Pedro did not
+seem capable of doing. One of these men was Gaga and one was Itto.
+
+"Working under instructions from his confederates, Pedro let Gaga into the
+house about six o'clock one rainy night. He remained inside so long
+without reporting to those outside that they demanded admittance, and
+Pedro was obliged to let them in. This must have been about nine o'clock.
+When Itto and the other man entered, they went at their work roughly. They
+assaulted Mr. Shaw and searched his rooms which had already been searched
+by Gaga. Then they went upstairs to search Frank's room, and Pedro tried
+to turn them back.
+
+"He did not trust them, being afraid they would secure the necklace. By
+the way, the chances are that he did not know that Gaga was still in the
+house. Well, when Pedro opposed their passage and Frank ran out, the two
+fled, finding the night-bolt off at the street door. Then Gaga got the
+necklace and got out of the house during the excitement.
+
+"It may be well to say here that Pedro did not leave the house to further
+conspire with the canal plotters. When he found that Gaga had indeed
+stolen the necklace he went after him. He did not care where the others
+went, or whether they secured the papers or not. It was the second man,
+the one with Itto, who followed us on board the boat and was named His
+Nobbs by the boys.
+
+"Pedro went back to Mr. Chester, who had been prominent in locating him in
+the Shaw house, and waited for a chance at Gaga. By this time both Mr.
+Chester and Col. Van Ellis had decided to turn the plotters over to the
+government and take their chances on arrest, for of course the arrested
+men would accuse them of being at the head of the conspiracy."
+
+"Col. Van Ellis was going to lock us up and see how long we could go
+without food!" Frank exclaimed. "That doesn't look much like the work of a
+contrite heart!"
+
+"You would not have been starved," Van Ellis replied, with a smile. "At
+that time our friends, the Japs, were watching our every movement, and Mr.
+Chester and myself agreed to let them play their game a little longer in
+order that they might be caught and punished."
+
+"What about the mysterious Jap men you are talking about?" demanded Jack
+Bosworth. "I am anxious to know how they tangled these three business men
+up in the game."
+
+"Is it true," Ned asked of Mr. Shaw, "that Gostel and Itto first proposed
+delaying the work on the canal?"
+
+"Yes; they first suggested it."
+
+"They told you of emerald mines under there?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"But they never took you to see the mines?"
+
+"No; we took their word for it."
+
+"Well, they lied to you. There are no emerald deposits under the line of
+the canal. Their purpose was to get you involved in a scheme to blow up
+the dam, believing that you, by your influence, would be able to ward off
+suspicion after the job had been accomplished."
+
+"But why?"
+
+"Because they are cranks. They believed they would be doing their Emperor
+a great favor by destroying the canal. They were insane on the subject.
+They believed that Japan could never become mistress of the Pacific with
+the canal in operation and the fleets of the world passing through it.
+
+"Well, they carried on the plotting, made their bombs, and fought us boys,
+as you all know. Their plans were progressing satisfactorily, for they did
+not know that Mr. Shaw, Mr. Chester, and Col. Van Ellis would have stopped
+them at the risk of their own lives, had they been able to do so, until
+the Japanese government got wind of what was on.
+
+"Then these cranks were warned by the Japanese officials to stop. Instead
+of doing so they abducted Lieutenant Gordon and advanced the date of the
+crime one night. The abduction was cleverly planned and executed, but Mr.
+Chester learned of it, and there was a row about it. But there was no
+suspicion on the part of Mr. Chester that the job was set for last night,
+I take it. Is that true?" he asked, turning to Mr. Chester.
+
+"Yes, I was completely deceived, and only that you boys were on guard the
+dam would have been blown up!"
+
+"I overheard their plans in the stone house," Ned continued. "Mr. Chester
+and Col. Van Ellis went there to call the whole thing off, but Gostel and
+Itto lied to them. I heard Gaga admit to Itto that there were no emeralds
+under the canal line. I found there another map of the dam, with marks
+where the bombs were to be placed. Then, when I got back to Culebra and
+found that Lieutenant Gordon had been abducted, I knew that the job was
+set for that night."
+
+"I was sorry you went without me," Mr. Chester said.
+
+"I wanted you here when the end came," Ned replied, "and so sent for you.
+I wanted you where you could not be accused of complicity in the crime,
+for I knew that you were innocent. Your only fault was in listening to the
+men at all."
+
+"Yes, we should have listened to Mr. Shaw instead of the Japs," Mr.
+Chester admitted, "but it has come out all right. The peril is over. Now,
+what about the necklace?"
+
+"Gaga carried it with him, lugged it about on his person," Ned said, "and
+Jimmie secured it after his arrest at the stone house. Pedro would not
+have been captured if he had not followed Gaga there with the intention of
+murdering him and securing the necklace. Yes, the bauble is in Frank's
+possession again!"
+
+"And that closes the case," laughed Mr. Shaw, "and you boys may as well go
+back to New York with me. The reward for your work, Mr. Nestor, will be
+large, and you may as well take a rest. We will leave the prisoners in the
+hands of the law."
+
+"Wait a moment!" said Col. Hill. "We are in need of a herd of Boy Scouts,
+just like this one, up in the Philippines. Will you go, boys?"
+
+THE END
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+The lads were anxious to go, of course, and the story of their adventures
+there will be told in the next book of the series, entitled:
+
+"Boy Scouts in the Philippines; or, the Key to the Treaty Box."
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Motor Boat Boys Series
+By Louis Arundel
+
+1. The Motor Club's Cruise Down the Mississippi;
+   or The Dash for Dixie.
+2. The Motor Club on the St. Lawrence River;
+   or Adventures Among the Thousand Islands.
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+   or The Struggle for the Leadership.
+5. Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast;
+   or Through Storm and Stress.
+6. Motor Boat Boy's River Chase;
+   or Six Chums Afloat or Ashore.
+7. Motor Boat Boys Down the Danube;
+   or Four Chums Abroad.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Motor Maid Series
+By Katherine Stokes
+
+1. Motor Maids' School Days
+2. Motor Maids by Palm and Pine
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+4. Motor Maids by Rose, Shamrock and Thistle
+5. Motor Maids in Fair Japan
+6. Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp
+
+For sale by all booksellers or sent postpaid on receipt of 75c.
+
+M. A. DONOHUE & COMPANY
+701-733 S. DEARBORN STREET :: CHICAGO
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Radio Boys Series
+
+1. Radio Boys in the Secret Service;
+   or, Cast Away on an Iceberg              FRANK HONEYWELL
+2. Radio Boys on the Thousand Islands;
+   or, The Yankee Canadian Wireless Trail   FRANK HONEYWELL
+3. Radio Boys in the Flying Service;
+   or, Held for Ransom by Mexican Bandits   J. W. DUFFIELD
+4. Radio Boys Under the Sea;
+   or, The Hunt for the Sunken Treasure     J. W. DUFFIELD
+5. Radio Boys Cronies;
+   or, Bill Brown's Radio                   WAYNE WHIPPLE
+6. Radio Boys Loyalty;
+   or, Bill Brown Listens In                WAYNE WHIPPLE
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Peggy Parson's Series
+By Annabel Sharp
+
+A popular and charming series of Girl's books dealing in an interesting
+and fascinating manner with the life and adventures of Girlhood so dear to
+all Girls from eight to fourteen years of age. Printed from large clear
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+
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+------------------------------------------------------------------------
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+
+1. The Aeroplane Boys;
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+3. The Aeroplane Boys Among the Clouds;
+   or, Young Aviators in a Wreck
+4. The Aeroplane Boys' Flights;
+   or, A Hydroplane Round-up
+5. The Aeroplane Boys on a Cattle Ranch
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+The Girl Aviator Series
+By Margaret Burnham
+
+Just the type of books that delight and fascinate the wide awake Girls of
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+
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+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone, by G. Harvey Ralphson
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