The Boy Scounts on a Submarine | Page 9

couple of Boy Scouts came out of Colonel Bright's office as
he stopped his car at the steps. Porky and Beany stopped and stared.
"Out of the way!" said the Wolf, as he approached the door.
Porky and Beany stepped obediently aside. For a long time they stared
at the door through which he had disappeared.
'It's him!" said Beany at last. "He drove the car when the other man
shot at the Colonel."

"Yes, it's him," repeated Porky. "His ears ain't mates."
"I know," said Beany. "What we goin' to do?"
"Keep still and say nuthin'. If you ain't eleven foot tall, nobody believes
you. I found that out. And I got a hunch that guy has the formula."
"What makes you think that?" asked Beany. "I got it too; but I don't
believe it."
"Dunno," said Beany. "Don't you know how you feel it back of your
neck when anybody looks in the window? I know it just like that. An'
we got to do this job all alone. I don't like his looks neither. Awful
smooth' but' murderin'. Are you game, Porky, to land him ourselves?"
"Sure!" said Porky. "Ain't I alwus? What comes first?"
"Le's think," said Beany.

CHAPTER IV
REVELATIONS AT THE FLOWER-HOUSE
You would not have thought they were thinking at all as they sat on the
broad brick steps, holding their chins in their right hands, left hands
twisting their puttee lacers. They talked occasionally but not of the
yellow-eyed man who was even then laughing and talking to the
Colonel.
They came out a few minutes later, and "Captain DuChassis," as the
Colonel called him, ran lightly down and drove off toward the
clubhouse. The Colonel stood looking after him, and the two boys
stood at attention beside him. He looked down and saw them presently.
"Boys, did you ever have a hunch?" he said.
"Yes, Sir!" they said together.

"Silly things--hunches; very silly! Never let a hunch spoil what seems
to be a very good friendship, or change your opinion of a man."
Porky looked quickly up.
"I got the same hunch, Colonel," he said.
"Same man," added Beany.
"Eh, what's this?" demanded the Colonel.
The boys were silent; and while the officer continued his puzzled study
of the two faces, the long racer swept again to the steps, and Captain
DuChassis stepped out and handed down a lovely girl. She was in a
riding habit, and she ran lightly up to the Colonel and kissed his tanned
cheek. "Well, daddy," she cried, "we are going to take a ride together,
Captain and I!"
She looked at the young man beside her and smiled. He was
resplendent in riding clothes and returned her smile tenderly. They
stood talking with the Colonel while they waited for their horses.
"How does everything go, daddy? Have you heard anything from
Elinor Pomeroy?" She turned, "Elinor is a school friend of mine," she
explained. "She is in dreadful trouble. Her brother invented a gas that
will absolutely whip Germany, and he was attacked the very night that
the gas was tried out, and frightfully hurt, and the formula taken away
from him. Of course, it wouldn't matter if he could tell some one, but
he never will. I heard to-day that he is conscious now, but the past is a
perfect blank. Isn't that too dreadful? I wish I knew where that paper is,
I'd like to be the one to get it."
"Would you, Miss Carol?" asked Captain DuChassis. He smiled and
tapped his swagger stick lightly on his boot top. "Perhaps you are near
it now.
"No such luck! she sighed.

"There will be luck for some one in it perhaps," said the Colonel. "Mr.
Leffingwell has just offered a splendid prize to any Boy Scout who
finds the formula. He offers an education to the lucky lad. Two years of
prep school, and four years of college."
"He is a what you call it safety-first man, is he not?" laughed the
Captain. "Is he pro-German? It looks it, setting such a task for
children." He turned to the young lady. "Shall we mount? Here are the
horses."
After the Colonel had watched them canter away, he turned once more
to speak to the boys. They were gone. Sadly they had faded away
around the corner, and drifted over to the cow stables, where they sat
miserably down on a bale of hay.
"What we goin' to do?" asked Beany miserably. "That's the limit!"
agreed Porky. "Here we got it all planned. We got to find that formula,
nobody else has the chance we have, and now we've spotted one of our
men. We will find that formula when we pull in the bunch that tried to
shoot Colonel Handler. They are all mixed up