CHAPTER XXXIV

BAD NEWS FOR THE COLONEL

The gardens of the hotel were brilliantly lighted, and the colored lamps, strung among the trees, glowed down on a gay throng, when into the midst of the merry-makers there burst an odd figure.

It was hatless, its white duck clothes were bedaubed with mud. Few would have recognized in this panting, wild-eyed apparition the usually natty Jack Ready.

But Jack it was. A waiter stretched out an arm to stop him as he dashed into the garden, but he shoved the man aside with a force that sent him spinning. Men and women stared at the boy as if he were a madman as he rushed about, searching frantically for Colonel Minturn.

He found him at last, chatting with a group of ladies and gentlemen.

Despite Jack’s condition, the colonel recognized him at once.

“What, my boy, what has happened?” he exclaimed. “You look——”

“Never mind that now, Colonel, please,” besought Jack. “I must speak to you alone at once.”

“Certainly,” said the military man, realizing that Jack must have some serious news. He excused himself to his friends and stepped aside, while Jack, in a swift, eager, low tone, told him what he feared had occurred.

“Colonel Minturn must have bad news,” said one of the ladies of the gay party with which the colonel had been chatting. “Look, he’s as white as a ghost!”

“That scare-crow messenger has brought him some news that has given him a shock evidently,” commented one of the men.

But although Jack’s message of the probable theft of the Panama papers had shaken the colonel to the fibers of his being, the long training of a military officer stood him in good stead at that crucial moment. By a supreme effort he steadied his nerves, and in the most casual voice in the world excused himself to his friends, saying that he would be back before long.

“I’ve a friend here who has a fast auto,” he said to Jack, as the two thrust their way through the throng, who gaped at the spectacle of the distinguished-looking man in evening clothes and his disreputable appearing companion.

“We must get it and work quick,” he went on, “there’s a chance even yet that we can stop that yacht.”

“If only I hadn’t lost my way,” said Jack, “we’d have saved a lot of precious time.”

Colonel Minturn found his friend, and the auto with its chauffeur was willingly loaned. They jumped into the fast machine and were off, after Colonel Minturn had given directions to drive first to the ship. They found old Schultz guarding the safe. The reek of the explosive was still heavy in the air.

Utterly regardless of his apparel, Colonel Minturn dived in among the blackened contents. There were packages of money, costly jewels and other valuables, but the most important contents of the safe—the papers which the colonel had hoped against hope might have been overlooked by the thief—were gone.

Despite his stoicism, the colonel could not restrain a groan.

“This means my ruin,” he exclaimed. “We must get a boat of some kind at once and give chase.”

“There’s nothing in this harbor or south of New York that could touch the _Endymion_ for speed,” declared Jack bitterly. “There’s only one chance in a thousand of stopping her! Oh, why didn’t I think of that before?”

Before the colonel could stop him or ask explanations, the boy rushed off. He headed straight for the wireless room. Sam was there with De Garros.

“What in the world——!” began Sam, as the disheveled, wild-eyed boy burst in. But Jack shoved his chum aside without a word and fairly threw himself at the wireless key.

He was calling the government quarantine station at the tip of Port Royal and the mouth of Kingston Harbor. There was just one way he could stop the _Endymion_ and he meant to try it, forlorn hope that it was.

The spark flashed and roared and whined.

Other stations, those on ships far out at sea and along the coast of the island, broke wonderingly in as the volley of impatient calls went thundering out into the night.

The sweat poured from Jack’s blackened face as he bent over the apparatus in the boiling heat of the tropic night, and worked the wireless as he had never worked it before.

At last he raised the operator at the quarantine station.

“We’ve shut up shop for the night. What is it?” inquired that individual, not best pleased at having his rest disturbed.

“You must stop the _Endymion_,” thundered the Hertzian waves; “stop her at all hazards, even if you have to notify the fort to fire upon her.”

“The _Endymion_?”

“Yes; she has infectious disease on board. She must not leave the harbor.”

There was a brief and portentous silence. In the hot, heavy stillness the boys could hear each other’s deep breathing.

Then radio waves began to beat against Jack’s stunned ears. “The _Endymion_ with a clean bill of health passed out to sea half an hour ago.”