The Boy Scout Camera Club | Page 5

I got up the man was still on the stairs leading to this floor, and I picked up the great shears which had tumbled out of me hand and heaved thim at him. I had brought the shears up to cut a bandage, sir."
"Did you hit him?" asked Jack with a smile. "Where are the shears?"
"I never went back after them!" answered the girl. "I'll go this minute."
"Wait," Ned said, "and I'll get them. Now, you say you saw a blue streak coming at you, head-on! Who wears blue clothes around the house?"
"Chang Chu, the Chink, sir."
"You saw him dressed in blue to-day?" asked Ned.
"All in blue he was!" the male servant interrupted, "with his shirt on the outside of his trousers, like the bloody heathen he is."
"And so you looked for him and failed to find him on the premises?" asked Jack.
"He's gone, bag and baggage," answered Terance, the coachman. "Bad luck to him!"
"Still, you don't really know that it was the Chinaman?" asked Ned.
"He was dressed like the Chink," was the reply. "He smelled like a saloon!"
"Does the Chinaman drink?" asked Ned, facing Terance. "Does he get drunk?"
"He does not," was the reply. "He doesn't know the taste of good liquor!"
"That's all," Ned concluded. "Now you two keep on looking for the Chinaman. He may be hiding in the house, or he may be at some of the dens such people frequent. You, Mary, look for him in the house, and you, Terance, see if you can learn where he usually went when he left the house."
"Pell street!" cried Jimmie. "Look in Pell street!"
"Or Doyers!" Jack exclaimed. "Look in the dumps in Doyers street."
The two went away, forgetting all about the shears which Mary had hurled at the mysterious man she had caught in the attic. Asking the boys to remain where they were, Ned went out to the staircase and secured the article. Taking it carefully by the handle, he returned to the room and held up one blade.
Jack looked at the blade casually at first, then cried out that there was blood on it, and that Mary had speared the sneak.
"Yes," Ned explained, "there is blood on it. Mary hit the fellow on the head with this blade. What else do you see on the steel?" he asked with a smile.
Jimmie looked and backed away in disgust. His freckled face was thrust out of the door for an instant, and they heard him calling to Mary, who, being in the kitchen, beyond sound of his voice, did not respond.
"What do you want of Mary?" demanded Jack. "Shall I call her?"
"She said it was the Chink, didn't she?" the boy asked. "Or, she said it was a man dressed like the Chink? Well, it wasn't the Chink."
Ned laughed and looked at the boy admiringly.
"How do you know that?" he asked. "Why are you so sure it was not the Chink?"
Jimmie looked up into Ned's face with a provoking grin.
"You know just as well as I do that it wasn't the Chink," he said. "Just you look on that blade again! Ever see a Chink with light brown hair?"
"Now, what do you think of that?" roared Jack. "Sometimes this boy, Jimmie, seems to me to be possessed of almost human intelligence!" The lads gathered closer around the shears, one blade of which Ned was still holding out for inspection. There was the blood, and there was the long, blonde hair!
"Hit him on the belfry!" Jimmie grinned. "Knocked off a shingle and brought away a piece of it! Now, why did the Chink run away? That's what I'd like to know!"
"Where did the man get the Chink's dress?" asked Oliver. "That's what you'd better be asking? Why did the Chink let him in and then loan him the dress?"
"I rather think that's why the Chinaman ran away!" laughed Ned. "You boys seem to have reasoned it all out. He might have let the sneak in and then let him have some of his own clothes to wear! And that will make trouble for us!"
"Do you think the fellow heard about the Camera Club trip, and the object of it?" asked Oliver. "If he was scared away half an hour ago he didn't learn much, for we hadn't begun to talk much about it at that time!"
"He may not have heard anything important," Ned replied, "but the fact that he was sent here to listen is significant! Some one in Washington knows that we have been chosen to search the mountains for the prince! Some one knows that we are going out as an innocent- looking Boy Scout Camera Club, but really to find the boy. Now, what will that person do to the Camera Club, after we get out into the mountains?"
"The question in my mind," Jimmie broke in,