Produced by the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. [Illustration: "Say" Cried Frank, "That's a child's face up there!"] The Boy Scout Camera Club or The Confession of a Photograph By Scout Master G. Harvey Ralphson CHAPTER I LOST: A FOREIGN PRINCE! II THE HOLE IN THE ATTIC FLOOR III WHAT THE BOX CONTAINED IV A CAMP IN THE MOUNTAIN V JIMMIE AND TEDDY MISS A MEAL VI SIGNALS IN THE CANYON VII A MINT IN THE MOUNTAINS VIII UNCLE IKE PRESENTS HIMSELF IX A LANK MULE AS A DECOY X "PACKED AWAY LIKE SARDINES" XI JACK'S ELEGANT CHICKEN PIE XII THE BLACK HAND GAME XIII THREE DAYS TO MOVE IN XIV POINTING OUT THE TRAIL XV A NIGHT ON THE SUMMIT XVI THE CALL OF THE PACK XVII JUST A LITTLE DARK WASH XVIII BRADLEY BECOMES INDIGNANT XIX NED PLAYS THE MIND-READER XX SHOOTING ON THE MOUNTAINSIDE XXI TOLD BY THE PICTURES XXII A RECRUIT FROM THE ENEMY XXIII RACING MOTORS ON THE WAY XXIV THE MAN-TRAP IS SET XXV THE CONFESSION OF A PHOTOGRAPH The Boy Scout Camera Club or The Confession of a Photograph CHAPTER I LOST: A FOREIGN PRINCE! "Two Black Bears!" "Two Wolves!" "Three Eagles!" "Five Moose!" "Quite a mixture of wild creatures to be found in a splendid clubroom in the city of New York!" exclaimed Ned Nestor, a handsome, muscular boy of seventeen. "How many of these denizens of the forests are ready to join the Boy Scout Camera Club?" "You may put my name down twice--in red ink!" shouted Jimmie McGraw, of the Wolf Patrol. "I wouldn't miss it to be president of the United States!" "One Wolf," Ned said, writing the name down. "Two Wolves!" cried Jimmie, red-headed, freckled of face and as active as a red squirrel, "two wolves! You're a Wolf yourself, Ned Nestor!" "Two Wolves, then!" laughed Ned. "Of course Jimmie and I can form a club all by ourselves, and he can be the officers and I can be the members, but we'd rather have a menagerie of large size, as we are going into the mountains of Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky and Tennessee." The boys who had not yet spoken were on their feet in an instant, all clamoring for membership in the Boy Scout Camera Club. Ned lifted a hand for silence. "Why this present rush?" he asked. "I've been thinking that Jimmie and I would have to go to the mountains alone! Why this impetuosity?" "The mountains!" shouted Frank Shaw, of the Black Bear Patrol. "It is the mountains that get us! We've been thinking that the club you were organizing wouldn't get outside of little old New York, but would loaf around taking snap-shots of the slums and the trees in the parks. But when you mention mountains, why--" "I'm going right down stairs and pack my camera!" Jack Bosworth, of the Black Bear Patrol, declared. "When it comes to mountains!" The clubroom of the Black Bear Patrol was on the top floor of the handsome residence of Jack's father, who was a famous corporation lawyer, and the boys persuaded Jack to wait until they had completed the organization of the Camera Club before he started in packing for the journey to the mountains! "You'll want an Eagle, if you're going to the mountains!" shouted Teddy Green, of the Eagle Patrol. "I'll fly home and get my wardrobe right now!" Teddy Green was the son of a Harvard professor, and was inclined to follow in the footsteps of his father in the matter of learning--after he had first climbed to all the high spots of the world and descended into all the low ones! He insisted on exploring the earth before he learned by rote what others had written about it! "All right!" Ned grinned. "We'll need an Eagle!" "And a Bull Moose!" yelled Oliver Yentsch, of the Moose Patrol. "You've got to have a Moose along with you!" Oliver was the son of a ship builder, and had a launch and a yacht of his own. He was liked by all his associates in spite of his tendency to grumble at trifles. However, if he complained at small things, he met large troubles with a smile on his bright face. He now seized Teddy about the waist and waltzed around the room with him. "And that's all!" Ned decided, closing the book. "We can't take more than six." A wail went up from the others, but they were promised a chance at the next "hike" into the hills, and soon departed, leaving the six members of the Camera Club to perfect arrangements for their departure. It was a warm May night, still Ned closed the door leading out into the wide corridor which ran through the house on that floor. "We can't afford to take others into our plans," he said, "for this is to be another Secret Service expedition." "For the Government?" demanded Frank Shaw. "Then," he added, without waiting for a reply, "I'll call up dad's editorial rooms and have a reporter sent up here. Top of column, first page, illustrated! That's our Camera Club in the morning newspaper!" Frank's father was owner and editor of one of the big New York dailies, and the boy always took along, on his trips, plenty of blank paper for "copy," but never sent in a line! His letters to his father's newspaper were usually addressed to the financial department, upon which he had permission to draw at will! "Huh!" Jimmie commented, wrinkling his freckled nose, "if you should ever furnish an item for your daddy's newspaper he'd never live it down! You've been on all our trips with Ned, and never wired in a word!" The Boy Scouts of the Black Bear and Wolf Patrols had been through many exciting experiences with Ned Nestor, who, young as he was, was often in the employ of the Secret Service department of the United States government. Frank, as Jimmie said, had been with Ned from the start, and had never sent in a line of "copy" for the paper. "I'm going to furnish a column a day this trip!" Frank declared, making a motion to seize Jimmie. "We're going to take pictures, aren't we? We'll take 'em by the acre, and dad's newspaper is going to catch every one of them." "Huh!" Jimmie declared, with a freckled nose in the air. "I'm a newspaper man, too. You needn't think you're the only cherry in the pie! I used to sell newspapers before I got into the Secret Service with Ned!" From his earliest years Jimmie had indeed been a newsboy on the Bowery. He had never had a home except that provided by himself, and this, in the early days of his life, had as often been a box or barrel in an alley as anything else. "Why the mountains?" asked Frank Shaw, presently. "Do you have to go to the hills on this trip? I'm glad if you do, of course, but I'd like to know something about it before we start. Dad will have to be shown this time, I reckon! He thinks we rather _overdid_ the stunt when we went to Lady Franklin bay!" "Never had so much fun in my life!" laughed Jimmie. "When you get where it is forty below, there's some delight in living!" "What are we going to take pictures of?" demanded Teddy Green. "Moonshiners!" laughed Frank. "Isn't that right, Ned?" "Not exactly," was the answer. "This is not a whisky case at all." "Counterfeiters, then?" queried Oliver. "They live in the hills!" "No, not counterfeiters, either," Ned replied. "The government has plenty of men to look after counterfeiters and moonshiners. All we've got to do is to go into the mountains and take pictures, and keep our eyes open." "Open for what?" insisted Jimmie. "My peepers will be open for a venison steak about the first thing! You remember how fine the venison steaks were up in British Columbia? That Columbia river trip was some exciting! What?" "Well," Ned began, "you all know that I'm in the Secret Service, for you've been with me, some of you, at Panama, in China, and under the ocean, so we'll let the details go without explanation. I'm going to the mountains to look after a precious package stolen from Washington--from almost under the eyes of the president--three days ago!" "Papers?" asked Jimmie. "You know we went to Lady Franklin bay after papers." "And they think the mountaineers stole this package?" asked Oliver. "Tell us what it was that was taken first!" insisted Frank. "I'm beginning to see a front-page story in this, right now!" "The package stolen," Ned went on, with a smile, "was more precious than any bundle of papers could be! It wasn't of gold, silver, diamonds, or anything possessing that kind of value. It was of flesh and blood!" "A child stolen!" cried Frank. "This goes to dad's sheet right now!" "Boy or girl?" asked Oliver. "Age, please!" "Boy," answered Ned. "A boy belonging to one of the ambassadors! Age seven!" "But why should the mountaineers steal such a child?" asked Jimmie. "I said the boy belonged to one of the ambassadors," Ned corrected himself. "I should have said he belonged at one of the foreign embassies." "The son of one of the attaches?" asked Teddy. "That's strange! Why?" "Teddy," reproved Jimmie, "you can ask more questions in a minute than a motion picture machine can take in a hundred years." "The stolen boy is in no ways related to any one in this country," Ned answered, "yet his safety is of the utmost importance. It is up to us to find him." "But why should the mountain men make a grab at a kid?" insisted Jimmie. "I've asked that question numerous times now," he added, with a wrinkled nose. "It is not believed that the mountain men know anything about the matter," Ned replied. "No one suspects them of taking the child. Mountain men are not up to that sort of thing, as a rule. They will make moonshine--some of them will--and may hide a counterfeiter, but they don't steal children!" "Then who did steal him?" asked Frank. "Don't be so mysterious." "I want the matter to sink deep into your alleged minds!" was Ned's smiling rejoinder, "and that is the reason I'm drawing the explanation out. It is thought the boy was stolen by some one who came over the sea to do the job--some one never before in this country." "I twig!" Jimmie declared, skipping about the room. "The stolen boy is next of succession to some measly old throne! What? And he was sent out here to get him out of the zone of danger, and now he's been nipped?" The boys looked at Ned with redoubled interest. It had been interesting, the very idea of going into the mountains in quest of an abducted child, but the thought of going after a boy who would one day be a king! That was exciting indeed! "I can't tell you who the boy is." Ned went on, "but I can tell you that he must be found! The Secret Service men at Washington have a pretty good idea as to who got him, and they believe the criminals are not above committing the crime of murder. In a certain sense, this boy is in the way in the old country!" "Oh, they wouldn't kill a kid like that!" Jimmie asserted. "Wouldn't they?" demanded Teddy Green. "If you read up on history, you'll soon find out whether ambitious men will murder children who stand in their way! I half believe the boy was murdered at the very moment he was taken!" "He has been seen alive since that time," Ned responded. "This is Thursday. He was taken on Monday, and was seen yesterday. Or a boy believed to be the prince was seen yesterday, on a launch on the Potomac river." "Prince, eh?" cried Frank. "It is a prince, is it? Say, but won't dad be glad to hear about this? I'd like to write the headlines!" "We may as well call him the prince," Ned laughed. Before more could be said, a servant knocked at the door and Jack opened it so as to look out. In a moment he turned back inside with a flushed face. "Say, boys," he said, "there's something strange going on here to-night!" CHAPTER II THE HOLE IN THE ATTIC FLOOR Ned sprang to his feet in an instant and beckoned Jack to one side. The others gathered around, but Ned motioned them back. "Let us find out exactly what Jack means before any remarks are made," he said. "Well," Jack began, almost in a whisper, "the servant who came to the door said--" "Wait a moment!" Ned requested. "Let us get this at first hand. Is the servant you refer to still out in the corridor? Look and see." Jack opened the door an inch and looked out. "Yes," he reported, facing Ned, with the door still ajar, "he is still there." "Then ask him to come in here," Ned suggested, "and you, boys," he added, turning to the wondering faces at the other side of the apartment, "you get as close as you wish while this man is talking, but don't interrupt. It may be that we shall have to do something right soon. I reckon our hunt for the prince starts right here, in the Black Bear Patrol clubroom, in the heart of little old New York." The servant Jack had beckoned to now entered the room and stood with his back to the door, looking from one boyish face to another. He was a heavily built, muscular fellow, evidently an Irishman, judging from his face and manner. "Will you kindly come over here and sit down?" Ned asked. The servant complied and the others gathered around him. "Now," Jack began, "tell Ned what you just told me--about the man in the attic, and about the hole in the ceiling." Every eye in the room was instantly turned toward the lofty ceiling, but nothing out of the ordinary was to be seen there. "The hole he refers to," Jack, smiling, explained, "is not in sight. It is under the ornamental brass piece that circles the rod from which the chandelier hangs. It was made to listen at, and not to see through, I take it!" "That makes a good starter," Ned smiled, "so go on." "Half an hour ago," the servant began, "I was called to this floor by one of the maids, Mary Murphy it was, and she was that scared she looked like a bag of flour! She pointed to the staircase leading to the attic and asked me to go up there. "So I says to her: 'Why do you want me to go up there? If there's a haunt there, or a burglar, or a man after one of the girls, why should I risk the precious neck of me, when it's the only one I've got, with no prospect of ever getting another in case this one was damaged beyond repair?' So she says to me, she says--" "Never mind what she said," Ned interrupted, fearful of a long, involved dialogue between the two servants. "Tell me what you did." "I went up the staircase, three steps at a jump, an' bumped the head of me on the edge of the door at the top of it. You can see the dent in my coco now!" "And what did you find there?" asked Ned. "There was a rug on the floor and a hole in the floor, and a twinkle of light shining into the attic from this room. Some one had been listening there!" "You saw no one?" "Never a soul! I'm that sorry I can't express it!" "When were you in that attic before--the last time before to-night?" "Late yesterday afternoon it was." "Was there a rug in the middle of the floor at that time?" Ned went on. "No more than there is a bold lion in the middle of this floor, sir." "Well, what did you do after you got up there to-night?" "I hunted around for the man who had been lying there listening to the talk in this room, but I didn't find him, sir." "Did you ascertain where all the servants were at the time the listening must have been going on?" asked Jack, after a short pause. "All but one," was the reply. "And that one? Where is he now? That is, tell, if you know where he is?" "I don't know, sir. He has left the house, I reckon--bag and baggage." "Who was it?" demanded Jack, moving toward the door. "Chang Chu, the Chink, may the Evil One get into his bed!" "And then you came here and notified Jack?" asked Ned. "As soon as you learned that Chang Chu was not in the house?" "Indeed I did--within a minute and a half." "Where is this girl, Mary Murphy?" asked Ned, turning to Jack. "We must get hold of her right away. I want to hear her story of what she saw in the attic." Jack went out of the room, but was back in a minute with the girl, a pretty, modest maid of about eighteen. She looked frightened at finding herself the center of interest, but was soon in the midst of her story. "I went up to the attic to get a piece of cloth for a bandage, Sally having cut her hand with the bread knife. When I got to the door of that room I heard some one inside of it. I listened at the crack there is between the panel and the stile and heard footsteps, slow and soft like. I thought it was one of the maids, and opened the door quick, so as to give her a scare." The girl paused and wiped her face with a white apron bordered with pink. "Go on," Ned requested. "Tell us what you saw in the attic." "It wasn't much, sir," was the agitated answer. "I saw just a flash of dark blue, coming at me like the lightning express, and then I was keeled over--just as if I had been a bag of meal, sir!" "He bunted into you, did he?" asked Jack. "Who was it?" "Indeed I don't know, sir," was the reply. "It was dim in the room, there being only the light from the hall as I opened the door. Then he came at me with such a bunt that it took the breath out of me body!" "And what followed?" asked Ned. "She wint down f'r the count!" chuckled the servant who had been first questioned. "I did not!" was the indignant retort. "When 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, "is what we shall do to him!" "I'm sorry the information about our going leaked out," Ned said, gravely. "As boy snapshot friends we might have been able to do things which the Secret Service men could not do. No one would pay much attention to a group of boys roaming over the mountains. But now I'm afraid our investigations will be all in the limelight!" "Tell you what," Jimmie cut in, "suppose we find the Chink and make him point out the man who was in the house--listening?" CHAPTER III WHAT THE BOX CONTAINED "All right," Oliver encouraged. "Let's go out and make a throw at finding him, anyway! He may be in the garage, or the carriage house right this minute." Jimmie and Oliver rushed away to find Terance, the coachman, and undertake the search suggested, while Ned, Jack, Frank and Teddy sat at the open windows looking out on the street. "Chang Chu was at liberty to go into the attic at any time?" asked Ned, tentatively. "Oh, yes," Jack answered, "the other servants sent him about on errands. He is a handy man about the premises--or was, rather." "Is he a man to do such a thing as we are accusing him of?" Ned then asked. "I never thought so," was the puzzled reply. "I hope you don't think that he was beaten up by the man who secured his blue clothes! That would be tough on the fellow." "I have been thinking of that," Ned responded, "and while the boys are looking for the Chinaman in the outbuildings suppose we look for him in the upper part of the house." "But if the sneak could get into the upper part of the house without the use of the disguise," reasoned Jack, "he wouldn't need it at all, would he?" "He might have been surprised while at work by the Chinaman," Ned suggested. "In that case he might have taken the clothes as an afterthought. Suppose we look and see?" Leaving Frank and Teddy sitting by the window, looking out on a perfect May night, Ned and Jack climbed the staircase to the attic and entered the room directly over the Black Bear Patrol clubroom. It was a large room, more of a storeroom than an attic, with a hardwood floor and papered walls and ceiling. A great sack upon which clothing and odds and ends of all descriptions were hanging stood at the south end of the apartment, while a long row of boxes and packing trunks occupied the floor at the north end. The rug, which had been thrown down on the floor near the hole bored through a plank, was still there where the servants had seen it. The listener had, at least, a good notion of personal comfort! "Where was this rug taken from?" asked Ned. "It was on the rack the last time I saw it," Jack answered. "Was it clean at that time?" Ned continued, examining the rug with a glass. "What do you mean by clean? It was dusty, of course, like everything else here." "Were there any stains on it--stains like blood?" Ned went on, dragging the rug under the electric lights which had been switched on. "Why, of course not. It was originally in the little den off the library, but father became tired of it and told Terance to bring it here." "How long ago was that?" "Oh, a month or two. I can't be exact as to the date, you know." Ned handed his chum the glass and indicated a certain portion of the rug. "What do you call that?" he asked. "What does it look like?" "It looks like a spot of blood," Jack declared. "And it is wet, too! What do you make of this, Ned? Was Chang Chu attacked and killed by that sneak thief?" "That is for us to find out," Ned answered. "At the present moment, it looks as if Chang Chu wouldn't be found on Pell or Doyers street. What is there is those boxes--the large ones sitting against the wall?" "About everything, I take it. I never looked into them. Why?" "We may as well see what they contain," Ned replied, advancing to the largest box and throwing up the cover. "What do you think now?" he asked, as a huddled figure stirred in the box and opened a pair of suffering eyes. "This is the Chink, I suppose?" Before Jack could reply, Ned had the man out of the box, with the cords cut from his hands and feet, the cruel gag removed from his mouth. His blue blouse was gone! Chang Chu tumbled over on the floor when Ned tried to stand him on his feet. There was a small cut on his head. "Chang velly much bum!" he said, with his hands on his stomach. "Chang never forgets a word of slang," Jack laughed. "He will remember the slang word for anything when he forgets the real 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 know at that time that the prince had been kidnapped. The authorities kept everything quiet! I presume they thought the thief didn't know that he had committed a crime, and were afraid the newspapers would tell him about it!" "Tell that to Frank!" laughed Jack. "He'll go up in the air!" The boys found Jimmie and Oliver in the club-room when they went down. The garage and carriage house had been searched--in vain, of course, for the boys had encountered the Chinaman on his way down to the basement as they ascended the stairs, the elevator being closed for the night. "I believe that Chink had something to do with it, all the same," declared Jimmie. "He ought to be watched every minute of the time!" "Now, here's another point I don't understand," Jack said, going back to the conversation he had had with Ned in the attic. "Why do the authorities think the boy has been taken to the mountains?" "Because that would be a natural place for the thieves to hide," Ned answered. "The mountains are easily within reach of Washington, and they are virtually inaccessible to known officers of the law--at least so it is reported. The mountains run from central Pennsylvania to central Alabama, a distance of about a thousand miles, and afford many desirable hiding places." "Yes, and we're likely to get our crusts split down there!" Teddy grinned. "We will if they find out that we belong to the Secret Service!" "The Potomac river rises in West Virginia," continued Ned, "and the prince may have been taken to the foothills in the launch he was seen in." "Are we going in a motor boat?" asked Jimmie. "We are going by rail as far as we can go," Ned answered, "and then take shank's horses for the wild country, with mules to tote the baggage. In the eastern part of West Virginia, we are likely to travel forty miles without seeing a cabin." "Where do we get our eatings?" demanded Jimmie. "It makes me hungry to climb mountains. We'll have to have a relief expedition sent after us if we don't get plenty of eatings," he added, with a wink at Teddy. "Plenty of game up there," Ned grinned. "Plenty of deer, turkeys, coon, rabbits, birds and bears! We can dodge the game laws! Also a few wildcats are reported to have been seen there. And there is said to be plenty of moonshine in the caves, too. Oh, we'll have a sweet old vacation, boys. And we start tomorrow!" CHAPTER IV A CAMP IN THE MOUNTAINS It was early June, and the members of the Boy Scout Camera Club were camped on a mountain top in West Virginia. They had spent about two weeks in making the trip to the point where they had established camp. Three mules, divested of their burdens now, were "staked out" in a little corral fragrant with grass down near the timber line. The tent they had carried was a short distance below the summit, on the eastern slope, with packages and bags and boxes of provisions piled around it. To the south lay Virginia, to the north, east and west stretched the mountainous district of West Virginia. Far below them ran the North Fork of the Potomac river. What they saw was a wild and lonely country, with more deer, wild turkeys, and raccoons than human beings. On their hard and frequently delayed journey in they had passed cabins, surrounded here and there by rail fences, but there were none in sight from where they now stood. The sun, a round ball of fire in the west, would be out of sight in half an hour, and then the desolate darkness of the mountains would surround them. A wild turkey called to its mate in the distance, and small creatures of the air fluttered about, as if determined to know what human beings were doing there, in their ordinarily safe retreat. The boys had visited Washington the day following the incidents at the clubroom of the Black Bear Patrol, but had learned nothing of importance there. The launch in which the young prince had been seen had been traced up the river to the vicinity of Cumberland, but there the trail had ended. "It is a case of needle-in-the-haystack," the Secret Service chief had said to Ned, on the morning of his departure for the mountains. "We have men looking over every inch of the large cities. We want you to rake those mountains with a fine-tooth comb! Personally, I believe that the prince is there." "But," Ned had replied, "how are we to communicate with you in case we require more definite instructions?" "You know what Sherman did when he left Atlanta?" laughed the chief. "Why, he cut the wires," returned Ned, "so as not to have his movements hampered by orders from men who, not being on the ground, could not possibly know as much as he did of what ought to be done." "That is what I want you to do!" the chief continued. "Cut the wires." "But that is assuming a great responsibility," urged the boy. "Very true, but I have an idea that you want to work in your own way, so go to it. A mess of lively boys running up and down the mountain sides looking for game and snap-shots ought not to arouse the suspicion of the thieves if they are there. Make friends with the mountain people if you can. They are naturally suspicious, but good as gold at heart." That was his last talk with the chief. After that supplies had been bought and transported by rail to the nearest point, and there the mules had been bought and the difficult journey begun. They had just made their first permanent camp. "I wouldn't mind living here a few years!" Teddy said. "It beats the hot old city! If I had plenty of reading matter and a full larder, I don't think I would ever go back. I wish Dad could step out of that Harvard thing and eat supper with us!" The shrill scream of a mule now came up from the feeding ground below, and a commotion at the tent showed that one of the animals was kicking up a row there. "That's that long-eared Uncle Ike," Jimmie McGraw exclaimed. "I feel in my bones that I'm going to love that mule! He's so worthless! If he had two legs less he'd beat Jesse James to the tall timber in piracy! He won't work if you don't watch him, and he'll steal everything he gets his eyes on! Yes, sir, I feel that there's a common sympathy between that mule and me, yet I know that we'll have a falling out some day! He's so open and above-board in his mischief." "Can you see what he's doing now?" asked Teddy. "Why, I saw him knocking at the door of the tent, and I presume that by this time he is sitting in my chair picking his teeth, after devouring the bread! That sure is some highwayman, that mule, yet I feel that I'm going to love and admonish him!" The boys dashed down the slope to the tent and found Uncle Ike, as Jimmie insisted on calling a tall, ungainly, raw-boned mule, chewing at a slice of ham which he had pilfered from a box by the side of the fire. "There's one thing about Uncle Ike," Jimmie grinned, as Ned drove the animal away with a club. "He always looks like he had been sent for to lead an experience meeting! He'll put on a face as long as a cable to a freight train, and then he'll turn to me and wink one eye, as if explaining that it was all for a joke." "That's your ham he's chewing, Jimmie!" Ned declared. "I suppose so," the boy replied. "That's what you get by being brother to a long-eared mule that for cussedness has Becker's gunmen backed up a creek with the oars lost!" While the mule was being restored to his companions, Jimmie and Teddy began getting supper. They had plenty of tinned goods, plenty of flour, potatoes, meal and ham and bacon. Still, they thought they ought to have something in the way of game. "I saw a wild turkey back there," Teddy volunteered. "And I saw a coon," Jimmie added. "Is there any law on turkeys and coons?" asked Jack, who was trying to make the fire burn bright with lengths of green wood. "There ain't no law of any kind up here," Frank insisted. "Then we'll go and get a coon," Jimmie declared. "You boys get a red-hot fire and I'll have the bird here before Ned gets that mule tied up!" "Guess I'll go along," Teddy suggested. "I never did like to have anyone else go to the trouble of getting my wild meat for me! I'll go along, and Frank and Ned and Oliver can get supper." Without waiting for any affirmative replies from their companions, the two lads darted away, and were soon lost in a canyon which ran at right angles with the ridge much farther down. Frank and Oliver began piling dry wood on the fire. "Those boys will be back here in time for breakfast--just about!" Frank commented, as the coffee water boiled and the bacon began sizzling in the pan. "If they get any supper here they'll have to cook it!" Presently Ned came back from the little valley where the mules were feeding and took a field glass from the tent. "What's up now?" Teddy asked, as Ned walked back to the ridge and looked down into the valley of the North Fork. "Ned must be seeing, things!" Ned remained oh the summit a long time, until the sun sank behind the range to the west and the valleys became ribbons of black between the lighter crests of the mountains. Presently Frank scrambled up the yards of rugged, rock-strewn slope which led to the summit where Ned was standing, still with his field glass in his hand. "Anything in sight over that way?" the boy asked, as he came to Ned's side. "There is a column of smoke in the valley," Ned answered. "I thought at first that there were two, but I may have been mistaken. Do you remember what two columns of smoke would have indicated?" "Of course!" laughed Frank. "If I should become lost in woods or mountains, or anywhere, I'd build two fires and get wet wood to make smudge, good and plenty. That would mean that I was lost and needed assistance. That's the Boy Scout Indian signal for help. I remember when we saw it north of the Arctic Circle, don't you?" "I won't be apt to forget it right away," was the reply. The boys remained standing on the summit for some moments, although it was now too dark for them to distinguish objects in the valley below. All around the June night called to them with its silences and its sharp and sudden rasp of sounds. There were the mountains, brooding, heavy, mysterious, and there were the fleets of flying clouds reaching down to wrap their summits! "It is simply great up here!" Ned exclaimed presently. "That is the only word that seems to express it--great!" "Yes, it is fine for a change," Frank admitted, "though I don't believe in the wilds as a permanent thing! Everything in the mountains and forests seems to me to be crude and half done. This, I presume, is because the world isn't finished yet. Those who come to places like this catch the Creator with his sleeves rolled up, if that isn't a coarse way of saying it." "I like it, just the same!" Ned declared. "It is glorious! It is life!" "It is healthful so far as animal life goes," laughed Frank, "but what about mental life? There would never have been anything wonderful in the way of inventions--like the wireless, and the telephone, and the uses of electricity--if mankind had been content to live and die in the wilds! It is crude, as I said before, unfinished, out of line with all the decrees of art. I'll take the city for mine, with its marble buildings, its wonderful art galleries, its beautiful parks!" "Say, you mooners!" came a voice from the camp below, "if you've got done surveying the beautiful black landscape, suppose you come down to supper?" The boys went down to the tent to find Jimmie and Teddy still absent. "There are two things we'll have to set aside time for," Ned declared, as he took a seat on the ground before the blaze, with a great plate of food in his lap. "We'll have to arrange for keeping Uncle Ike, the mule, out of mischief, and for keeping track of Jimmie and Teddy. Those boys will get lost in the mountains yet, and go hungry for a few days. That would be punishment enough for Jimmie--hunger!" The boys sat by the campfire a long time, heaping dry wood on the blaze until they were obliged to widen the circle about it. There was only the light of the stars, looking down from a cloud-flecked sky, but there would be a moon shortly after ten o'clock. "If the boys don't return before long," Frank broke out, after a moment of silence, "I'm going to take a searchlight and go out looking for them." The boy expressed the thought which was brooding in the minds of them all. They were more than anxious for the safety of the two truants. Oliver arose and walked away from the fire up the slope, until his figure was out of sight, but shortly came back and sat down again, his face expressing impatience as well as anxiety. "There's no reason why they shouldn't see this fire," he said. "I walked over the summit a bit to see if the light was reflected over there. It is. If anywhere within two miles, they ought to see this blaze or the glow from it. They're just doing this to make us worry. I'd like to get them by the neck, this minute," he added. Uncle Ike, the mule, gave vent to a vicious scream at that moment, and Ned arose and started in the direction of the feeding ground. When he reached the spot he saw that the mules were agitated, weaving about on the tying lines in either fear or anger. "Uncle Ike," Ned said, patting the ugly beast on the neck, "what is it about your sleeping chamber that you don't like? Or it is your supper you object to?" Uncle Ike thrust his long ears forward and elevated his heels, as if kicking at some imaginary object back of him. Then Ned saw a figure moving in the darkness. "Come out of that!" he called. "Why are you sneaking around here?" The figure advanced toward the boy then--the figure of an old woman! CHAPTER V JIMMIE AND TEDDY MISS A MEAL "I was scared to come up until I heard your voice," the old lady said, as she came close to Ned. "I didn't know you were only a boy." The woman appeared
{'title': 'The Boy Scout Camera Club; Or, the Confession of a Photograph by G. Harvey Ralphson', 'source': 'Project Gutenberg', 'lang': 'en'}