CHAPTER XIII—TOM SLADE, SCOUT

“Didn’t I tell you it had stripes?” Pee-wee shouted. “Wasn’t I right? Now you see! A scout is observant.”

“If he sees a suit of clothes he thinks it’s a zebra,” Charlie Seabury said.

Harry said, “Well, you weren’t so far wrong, Kiddo. The stripes weren’t on an animal; they were on a jail bird. I’d like to know where he flew away to. This is getting interesting. I knew that clothing was very high, but I didn’t think we’d find a suit as far up as this.”

“Maybe he was a murderer, hey?” Pee-wee whispered.

“We can only hope,” Brent said in that funny way. Then he said, “I’ve always felt that I’d like to be a murderer. I thought I was a real convict when I was held in jail three hours after speeding in my flivver. But when I look at this striped suit, I realize that after all I didn’t amount to much as a criminal. Let’s take a squint at those clothes, will you? It’s always been the dream of my young life to escape from jail by using a hair-pin or a manicure file or some kind of acid. I wonder how this fellow escaped.”

“I bet he escaped in the dead of night,” Pee-wee said.

“The question is, where is he?” Harry said.

“He went away in an airplane,” Tom Slade said, awful sober like, just as if Brent hadn’t been joking at all.

_Good night_, we all just stood there stark still, looking at him.

“What makes you think that?” Rossie wanted to know.

“No one laid that suit of clothes here,” Tom said; “it was _dropped_ here. There aren’t any footprints. Out there in the flat part there are wheel marks from an airplane. I saw enough of those marks in France to know what they mean.”

“Tomasso Nobody Holmes, the boy detective!” I shouted.

“The airplane grazed the bushes when it went up,” he said; “that’s why some twigs are broken off. And part of one of the wings of the machine was torn, too. That’s because the airman didn’t have space enough to get away in. He took a big chance when he landed up here, that fellow.”

Harry just stood there drumming his fingers on one of the bushes and looking all around him and kind of thinking. Then he said, “What’s your idea, Tommy boy? Do you think a convict escaped and made his way up to the top of this jungle and that the airman alighted here for him by appointment?”

“The dog followed the scent out into the open, to the place where the wheel tracks are,” Tom said. “That’s where the man—that convict—got in. They didn’t have open space enough to start from there and they grazed the bushes. I guess it was pretty risky, the whole business. Anyway, they chucked the convict clothes out. This piece of silk is waxed; it’s part of the wing of a machine, all right.”

“Tomasso, you’re a wonder,” Rossie said; “no dog could follow a trail in the air.”

“There’s often a scent in the breeze,” Brent said.

“Didn’t I tell you it was a mystery?” Pee-wee shouted. “Didn’t I tell you it was a dark plot? As soon as I saw those clothes——”

“You thought they were a zebra,” Ralph Warner said; “a scout knows all the different kinds of animals.”

“You make me sick!” the kid shouted. “A convict is better than a zebra, isn’t he?”

“That’s a fine argument,” I told him.

“It’s logic,” the kid shouted.

“Well, let’s not complain,” Brent said; “a zebra would be a novelty, but a convict is not to be despised. We should be thankful for the convict, even though he isn’t here.”

“That’s the best part of it,” the kid shouted; “that makes the mystery. We’ve got to find him.”

We didn’t bother any more about the mystery then, because we wanted to send the signal and get started again, but you’ll see how that mystery popped up again and confounded us; I guess you know what _confounded_ means, all right. It means the same as _baffled_, only I didn’t know whether _baffled_ has two f’s in it or not. But, gee whiz, I used it anyway—I should worry.

So now while our friends are waiting for us down on the road (I got this sentence from Pee-wee), I’ll tell you about sending that signal. Signals are my middle name—signals and geography. But the thing I like best about school is lunch hour. I’m crazy about boating, too.

XIV—PEE-WEE’S GOAT

That fellow, Harry Domicile, he’s crazy. He said, “If you like signals so much I don’t see why you send them. Why don’t you keep them?”

Will Dawson said, “It isn’t the signal we send, it’s a message; we send a message by a signal. See?”

Harry said, “But if it’s a good message why should you want to send it away? Why don’t you keep it? If it’s worth anything what’s the use of getting rid of it? A scout should not be wasteful.” Then he winked at Brent Gaylong.

Oh, boy, you should have seen Pee-wee. He shouted, “You’re crazy! Suppose I keep some-thing—suppose I keep——”

Rossie said, “Suppose you keep silence.”

“That shows how much you know about logic!” the kid yelled. “How can I keep silence——”

By that time we were all laughing, except Harry. He had the paper with the message written on it and he said, very sober like, “Well, if this message is any good at all I don’t see why we don’t keep it; it might come in useful.”

Pee-wee shouted, “A message is no good at all—even the most important message in the world is no good to the fellow that makes it——”

Brent said, “Then he’s just wasting his time making it. Before we send this message we’d better talk it over. If it’s any good we’ll keep it.”

Gee whiz, you should have seen our young hero; I thought he’d jump off the mountain. He yelled, “Do you know what logic is? You get that in the third grade. My uncle knows a man that’s a lawyer and he says—besides—anyway, do you mean to tell me——”

Harry said, “Go on.”

Brent said, “Proceed; we follow you.”

“Suppose I had a piece of pie,” the kid yelled. “If it was good I’d eat it, wouldn’t I?”

Brent said, “That isn’t logic.”

“Sure it’s logic!” Pee-wee shouted. “The better it is the more I’d get rid of, wouldn’t I?”

“Thou never spakest a truer word,” I told him.

“And it’s the same with messages,” he said.

I said, “_Good night_, you don’t want to eat it, do you?”

Harry said, “Well, if he doesn’t want to eat it, what’s the use of chewing it over? Let’s send it.”

I bet you think we’re all crazy, hey? I should worry.

So then we gathered a lot of twigs and started a fire about in the middle of that open space. While we were doing that, Charlie Seabury and Ralph Warner got some dead grass and brush and took it down to the brook and got it good and wet. Then they squeezed the water all out of it so it was kind of damp and muggy like. It has to be just like that if you want to send a smudge message. Maybe you don’t know exactly what a smudge signal is because maybe you think that a smudge is just a dirt streak on your face—I don’t mean on yours but on Pee-wee’s. That’s Pee-wee’s trade mark—a smudge on his face. Usually it’s the shape of a comet and it makes you think of a comet, because he’s got six freckles on his cheek that are like the big dipper. And his face is round like the moon, too, but, gee williger, I hate astronomy. But I’d like to go to Mars just the same.

Anyway this is the way you send a smudge signal. When you get the fire started good and strong you kind of shovel it into a tin can, but if you haven’t got any tin can, you don’t. Scouts are supposed to be able to do without things. We should worry about tin cans. Brent Gaylong has a tin can on wheels—that’s a Ford. My father says it’s better to own a Ford than a can’t afford. Anyway my sister says I ought to stick to my subject. Gee whiz, she must think I’m a piece of fly paper.