The Boy Scounts on a Submarine | Page 7

the cliff. He

brushed the dirt from his clothes and laughed.
"Can't see the point of it, can you? I suppose not, you old saphead! It
takes the Wolf to plan things too deep for the likes of you." He laughed
again, and with a glance in the direction of the village struck off over
the hill into the fields beyond. He walked listlessly for half a mile, as
though there was little need for haste, and any one watching him would
have seen him finally lie down in a shady lane and, taking a small
package from his pocket, open it and eat a sandwich. Then he drew his
ragged hat over his piercing little eyes, and at once went to sleep. He
slept for hours, scarcely shifting his position. When he finally stretched
and sat up, the sun was going down. He looked at it, and came to his
feet.
"A couple of hours more," he said to himself, and slowly sauntered
back to the road and struck off toward Manlius Center.
Night was falling when three men, sitting silently in a bare, dusty,
unfurnished room, looked up as a queer scratching sounded on the
outer door. They glanced at each other. "It is the Weasel, think you
not?" said one, a tall man with a sear across his cheek. It was a mark
that was scarcely noticeable unless he was angry; then it suddenly went
white and stood out clearly across his brown skin.
A thick-set man at the table gathered up a greasy pack of cards. "Yes,
it's the Weasel, all right," he said. "I'm glad he obeys orders. I told him
not to show his face here before dark."
The third man did not speak. He sat in the best of the poor chairs, and
was snowed under with newspapers. He had the look of an educated
man, the jaw of a brute, the cold eye of a panther, almost golden in
color, and the slender hands that held the printed sheet had the delicate,
thin fingers of a thief.
"Door, Adolph!" he said abruptly. The thickset man rose, spilling his
cards. The third man pierced him with a look. "Butter fingers!" he
gritted, cursing softly in a foreign tongue. Adolph left the room and
noiselessly went down a rickety flight of stairs. He returned in a

moment, the Weasel following at his heels. The third man did not give
him a glance. He sat looking at his beautiful, slender hands. No one
spoke.
"Well, proceed!" cried the third man irritably. "Proceed! Proceed!
Proceed! Himmel, you must be led step by step! Speak, idiot! How
goes it?"
A look of hate flashed into the Weasel's lowered eyes and was gone. He
raised them timidly.
"So far, so good, Excellency. I hung on behind the tonneau. No one
noticed in that lazy village. I could hear the Colonel talking to the two
small boys with him. He can't understand the attack, but he thinks the
force he is building is being attacked through him on account of a gang
of thieves who do not want to risk detection by his men. He thinks it
has something to do with the fair. The Colonel has gone to police
headquarters. The boys went home." The Weasel commenced to laugh
silently.
The Wolf watched him. Then "Well?" he said again in his low, cutting
voice.
The Weasel stopped. "Your pardon, Excellency. It is so amusing! That
Colonel, he must be a man forty-five years old. He treated those small
boys, those Boy Scouts, like equals. He talked it over with them as
though they were men. He told them--"
"That will do," said the Wolf. "I don't want to hear any more."
And with those words, the Wolf, murderer and German spy, sealed his
doom.
"Now come here," he said. "You, Adolph, you have done good work.
That formula will mean victory for the Fatherland. Did I but dare, I
would at once take it myself out of the country. But I have my orders.
We must know all things about that concentration camp at the
fairgrounds. Yes, you have done well, Adolph." The thick-set man

smiled a queer, twisted smile with a crooked lip that always seemed to
grin.
The Wolf continued. "From now on our task grows more difficult. You,
Weasel, will go to the aviation school at Ithaca. You already understand
planes. Get their models; find out the methods of their management.
Cripple all the machines you can. Report to me here when I call you.
Send me a name and address that will reach you. And, remember, no
drinking or flirtations, Weasel. Don't forget my long arm and heavy
hand."
The Weasel shuddered. "No, Excellency," he said shortly.
The Wolf turned to the dark man with the scarred