Boy Scouts in Mexico | Page 6

proposed trip that it was after eleven
when their minds came back to the common things of life.
"Well," Harry Stevens said, then, "I've got to go home, but I'll be here
to-morrow night to talk it over. As Glen says, the Rio Grande del Norte
is a funny kind of a stream, like all the waterways in that section of the
country, bottom full of sand, and all that, but I presume we can float a
houseboat on it."
"Of course we can," Glen put in. "It doesn't take much water to run a
houseboat. If we get stuck, you can wire your father to send a motor car
down after us."
"He would do it, all right," replied Harry. "We'll take an auto trip across
the continent, some day. Good night, fellows."
"I must go right now," George Fremont said. "Mr. Cameron is at the
office, working over the Tolford estate papers, and he asked me to call
at the rooms and go home with him. He's always nervous when
working over that case. The heirs are troublesome, and threatening, I
guess."
Frank Shaw walked with George to the nearest corner, where the latter
decided to wait for a taxicab. The night had cleared, but the wind off
the Bay was still strong and cold.
"I've a notion to ride down to the office with you," Frank said, as they

waited. "You could leave me at home on the way up."
"I wish you would," Fremont said. "Skyscrapers are uncanny after dark,
and the elevator will not be running. Mr. Cameron will be glad to see
you. Come on!"
Frank hesitated a minute, and then decided to go on home, so the boys
shook hands and parted for the night. Many and many a time after that
night they both had good cause to remember how different the
immediate future of one of their number would have been had Frank
obeyed his first impulse and gone to the Cameron building with his
friend.
When, at last, Fremont was whirled up to the front of the Cameron
building he saw that there were lights in the Cameron suite. Believing
that his benefactor would be there at his work, Fremont let himself in at
the big door with a key and started up the long climb to the sixth floor.
The vacant corridors, as he passed them one by one, seemed to him to
be strangely still. Even the people employed at night to clean the halls
and offices were not in sight. The boy started suddenly half a dozen
times on the way up, started involuntarily, as if some uncanny thing
were spying out upon him from the shadows.
Then he came to the Cameron suite and thrust his key into the lock of
the door. He had been told that he would find the door locked from the
inside. Then, his premonition of approaching evil by no means cast
aside, he pushed the door open and looked in upon a sight he was by no
means prepared to see.
CHAPTER II.
A MEMBER OF THE WOLF PATROL.
When Fremont opened the door of the Cameron suite, facing the Great
White Way, he saw that the room before him was dark and in disorder.
The place was dimly illuminated from the high-lights on Broadway,
and the noises of the street came stridently up, still, there seemed to the

boy to be a shadowy and brooding hush over the place.
Remembering his subconscious impressions of some indefinable evil at
hand, the boy shivered with a strange dread as he switched on the
electrics, half afraid of what they might reveal. Why was the room so
dark and silent? The lights had been burning when he looked up from
below, and he had not met Mr. Cameron on his way up. Where was the
man he had come to meet? What evil had befallen him?
At the left of the apartment, from which two others opened, to right and
left, was a small safe, used privately by Mr. Cameron. Its usual place
was against the wall, but it had been wheeled about so that it fronted
the windows. The door was open, and, although no violence seemed to
have been used, Fremont saw that the interior was in a mess, papers and
books being scattered about in confusion.
At the right of the room, and near the doorway opening into the north
room, stood a large flat-topped desk, most of the drawers of which
were now open. One of the drawers lay on its side on the floor, and was
empty. The articles on the desk's top gave evidence of rough handling.
Papers appeared to be dripping from filecases, and a black pool of ink
lay on the shining surface of the desk.