The Boy Scout Camera Club | Page 7

word! What did they do to you, Chang?" he continued, addressing the Chinaman.
Chang pressed his hands to his nose significantly and dropped his head back.
"Chloroform!" Ned declared, sniffing at the contents of the box.
The Chinaman could not describe the man who had attacked him. He had been alone in the attic, putting away old clothes, when he had been struck and seized from behind by a man he described as a giant for strength, stripped of his blouse, and lifted bodily into the box. There he had been bound, gagged and rendered unconscious by the use of the drug.
"The man who did it," mused Ned, "is an adept at crime, resourceful, daring. The chloroform would have attracted the attention of the servants at once if it had been administered in the open air. Then his taking the Chink's blouse as a disguise shows that he is quick to take advantage of his opportunities. A clever man."
"And he left no clue!" Jack complained. "Just our luck, Ned!"
"All we know is that he is tall, has light brown hair, and is very strong," Ned replied. "But there are ten thousand people in New York this minute who answer to that description."
"How do you know he is tall?" demanded Jack.
"When he lay on the rug," Ned explained, "he stretched out on his stomach to look through the hole, if he could. He couldn't; he could only listen, for the cut was made so as to be hidden by the ornamental brass piece that circles the rod from which the chandelier swings. The marks of his elbows and toes were on the soft fiber of the rug, showing him to be a man at least six feet tall."
Ned walked over to the large box again and bent over it.
"Crumbs!" he exclaimed, in a second. "Crumbs!"
"Then he must have brought a lunch up with him," Jack exclaimed excitedly. "There is no knowing how long he was here!"
"Some one in Washington has leaked!" Ned declared, angrily.
"Why Washington?" demanded Jack. "Why not New York?"
"Because no one in this city knows about our being engaged to hunt down the abductor. My instructions have all come in cypher, and some of them have, as you know, been addressed to this house. And there you are!"
Chang Chu arose limply, rubbing a small wound in his head from which blood had come, and tottered off toward the staircase. As he did so, Ned noticed that his pigtail was very black, very long, and very greasy.
"Did he take you by the cue?" asked the boy. "Did he pull your hair?"
"Velly much lough-neck pull--dam!" answered the Chinaman.
Ned went back to the box where the Chink had been hidden and began taking out the articles it held, slowly and one by one.
"The cloth he poured the chloroform on must be here," he said. "He would naturally throw it into the box before shutting down the cover, as there might still be enough of the drug in it to put the Chink to sleep."
"Here it is," Jack said, reaching into the box and lifting out a rag and smelling of it. "Here is the dope cloth, all right and pretty strong yet."
"That's it, all right," Ned answered. "A worn white handkerchief, eh?"
"Name or mark on it?" asked Jack, passing the cloth to Ned.
"Nothing of the sort," was the answer, "but there's something better. When the fellow pulled at the Chink's greasy pigtail he got his hand smeared with oil. Then he grasped this white cloth fiercely, and there you are! See! The mark of the thumb couldn't be plainer if it had been printed on. Observe the long cicatrice on the ball of the thumb? I'll take this down and photograph it."
"Tall, strong, blonde, scar on the thumb!" laughed Jack. "We are getting on."
"It would be interesting to know how he got into the house," Ned mused.
"If we could only catch him and shut his mouth," Jack muttered, "we wouldn't have such a rotten bad time in the mountains."
"It is not what he knows," Ned suggested. "It is what his master as Washington knows. We might put this chap under ten feet of earth, but the opposition from Washington would go right on."
"When was the child abducted?" asked Jack. "When and how?"
"He was taken from in front of the embassy early in the morning. The ambassador brought him out for a spin in his automobile and left him out in front a moment. When he went back to continue his morning ride the automobile and the boy were nowhere to be seen! This was before nine o'clock Monday morning. Yesterday, along about noon, the boy--or a lad very much resembling him--was seen by a lieutenant of infantry in a motor boat, speeding up the Potomac."
"Why didn't he catch him, then?" asked Jack.
"Because he did not