The Boy Scounts on a Submarine | Page 7

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 cheek, and pointed to his heavy, bristling mustache.
"That must come off," he said. "There is a job for you in the Administration Building where Colonel Bright has his office. You will clean," as the man scowled, "I know you hate it. Never mind! Care not! We are in trust. You must do all as I say. I am your superior officer."
"What do you do, Excellency?" asked the dark man with something of a sneer.
"I come to buy horses, Ledermaim, and my father and Colonel Bright's father, they were friends. I bring a letter from my father in Switzerland. Unfortunately the Colonel's father, he is dead; so I make acquaintance with his son. Do you see, Ledermann and Adolph, and you too, Weasel, that I take for myself the hardest job? Now attend. Under no circumstances are you to