CHAPTER XVII.
THE WATCHER IN THE THICKET.
Between Tabernilla and Gamboa, a distance of about fifteen miles, therestless Chagres river, in its old days of freedom, crossed the canal lineno less than fifteen times. At Gamboa the river finds a break in the roughhills and winds off to the northeast, past Las Cruces and off into morehills and jungles.
Where the river turns the canal enters the nine-mile cut through theCordilleras, which form the backbone of the continent. Here at the Culebracut, the greatest amount of excavation for the waterway is being done.This cut ends at Pedro Miguel locks, which will ease the ships down intothe Pacific ocean.
Where the river turns to the northeast, at Gamboa, a wild and hillycountry forms both banks. The hillsides as well as the plateaux areovergrown with dense vegetation. As in all tropical lands, the fight forsurvival is fierce and merciless. Trees are destroyed by great creepers,great creepers are destroyed by smaller growths, and every form of life,vegetable as well as animal, has its enemy. Every living thing springs upfrom the dead body of another.
Sheltered and half concealed from view in this wild country between Gamboaand Las Cruces, on the day the Boy Scouts set out in their search forJimmie and Peter, there stood a house of stone which seemed as old as thevolcanic formation upon which it stood. It was said that the structure hadbeen there, even then looking old and dismantled, when the French begantheir operations on the Isthmus.
This house faced the valley of the Chagres river, having its back againsta hill, which was one of the steps leading up to the top of theCordilleras. There was a great front entrance way, and many windows, butthe latter seemed closed. Few signs of life were seen about the place atfive o'clock that afternoon.
From a front room in the second story the sounds of voices came, and nowand then a door opened and closed and a footstep was heard on thestairway. However, those who walked about the place seemed either going orcoming, for the house gained no added population because of the men whoclimbed the slope at the front and, ignoring the main entrance, passed onto the second floor by a secret staircase in the wall, entrance to whichseemed easy for them to find.
At the hour named three acquaintances of the reader occupied the frontroom on the second floor of the stone house. They were Col. Van Ellis, themilitary man Frank Shaw had talked with in the old house near the Culebracut, Harvey Chester, the father of the boy Jimmie and Peter hadencountered in the jungle, and Gostel, the man who had approached the twoboys the night before on the lip of the great excavation.
In a rear apartment, a sort of lumber-room, devoted now to wornout andbroken furniture and odds and ends of house furnishing goods, was stillanother acquaintance--Ned Nestor. The patrol leader had met the two lostboys at Culebra, in the company of Harvey Chester and his son, Tony, andhad spent enough time with the party to learn that Pedro, the ex-servantof the Shaw home, had been seen at the Chester camp, and that he had fledat the approach of Jimmie and his chum.
The story of Gostel's watching the cut at night, probably assisted byPedro, and Harvey Chester standing guard, or seeming to do so, by day, hadinterested Ned greatly. The presence on the Isthmus of Pedro gave an extrakink to the problem. The attempt to capture the two boys, as previouslytold by Gastong, on the previous night, and the unmistakable anxiety ofChester to remain in their company, had led Ned to believe that at last hewas getting to some of the people "high up" in the conspiracy against thecanal. Surely a man of the education and evident wealth of Harvey Chesterwas not loitering along the Culebra cut just for the excitement there wasin it. It was plain that he was there for a purpose, and the arrival of aman Jimmie declared to be Gostel had convinced Ned that the heads of theplot were not far away.
Gostel had greeted the boys heartily, expressing relief at the knowledgethat they had escaped in safety from the jungle, and Chester had urgedthem all to accept of his continued hospitality. Nothing had been said ofGostel's pursuit of the two boys, and Ned had reached the conclusion thatGostel did not know that his movements had been observed.
Anxious to see what Gostel really was up to, Ned had instructed the boysto remain at a hotel at Culebra or visit the Chester camp, just as theysaw fit, and had followed Gostel back to Gamboa and out to the stonehouse, where he had managed to hide himself in the room above describedwithout his presence on the premises being suspected. One thing, however,Ned did not know, and that was that Jimmie McGraw, full of life andcurious to know what was going on, had trained on after him and was nowwatching the house from a thicket on the hillside.
Ned had heard a good deal of talk since hiding himself in the rear room,much of which was of no account. Men who had delivered notes and messageshad come and gone. Col. Van Ellis seemed to be doing a general businessthere. Some of the men who came appeared to be canal workmen, and theseleft what seemed to be reports of some kind.
From a break in the wall Ned could hear all that was said and see a greatdeal of what went on in the front room. At five o'clock a tall, dark,slender man whose black hair was turning gray in places entered the frontroom by way of the secret stairway in the side wall. He handed some papersto Col. Van Ellis and seated himself without being asked to do so.
"What, as a whole, are the indications?" Van Ellis asked.
"Excellent," was the short reply.
"And the latest prospect?" asked Chester.
"In the valley, near Bohio."
"What have you found there?"
"Clay-slate, hornblende, emeralds."
"In large quantities?" asked Chester, anxiously.
"There is a fortune underground there," was the reply. "Green argillaceousrock means something."
There was silence for some moments, during which Van Ellis pored over somedrawings on his desk, Chester walked the floor excitedly, Gostel regardedthe others with a sinister smile on his face, and Itto, the recentarrival, sat watching all the others as a cat watches a mouse.
"And this territory will be under the Lake of Gatun?" Chester asked,presently.
"Yes, very deep under the Lake of Gatun," was Itto's reply.
Again Van Ellis bent over the drawings, tracing on one with the point of apencil.
"There are millions here," he said. "We have only to stretch forth ourhands and take them."
"The wealth of a world," Itto observed.
The men talked together in Spanish for a long time, and Ned tried hard tomake something of the discussion, but failed. He was convinced, however,that Chester was being urged and argued with by the others and was notconsenting to what they were proposing to him.
In half an hour a man who looked fully as Oriental in size, manner anddress as Itto stepped inside the door and beckoned to that gentleman.Asking permission to retire for a few moments, Itto passed out of the doorwith the newcomer. Instead of going on down the secret staircase, however,the two opened a door at the end of the little hall upon which the frontroom gave, and appeared in the apartment where Ned was hiding.
The boy, however, was not in view from the place where they stood, andthey had no reason to suspect his presence there, so he remained quiet andlistened with all his ears to the low-voiced conversation carried onbetween the two.
"And these are the latest?" Itto asked, referring to papers in his hand.
"Yes, they are the last."
"And the showing--"
The newcomer shrugged his shoulders.
"You see for yourself," he said.
"Well," Itto said, directly, "it does not matter, does it?"
"Not in the least."
"If the information does not leak out," Itto went on, "there will be nochange in our plans. We cannot afford to wait."
"For our country's sake there must be no delay."
Ned was slowly piecing this talk with the one which he had heard from thefront room, and the significance of it all was sending little shivers downhis back. He thought he understood at last.
As the two men left the room Ned heard a paper rustle on the floor, and atonce made search f
or it. It was a drawing, similar to the one discoveredin the bomb-room at the old temple, and was a complete sketch of the Gatundam, the spillway, the locks--everything was shown, with character offills and suggestions regarding the foundations. Here and there on thedrawing were little red spots.
The significance of the red marks brought a date to Ned's mind. Thedrawings found in the bomb-room had borne a date, Saturday, April 15. Ifwhat he surmised was correct, he had only a little more than twenty-fourhours in which to work. In the period of time thus given him he might,without doubt, succeed in averting the destruction of the big dam. Butthat was not the point.
His business there was not only to protect the Gatun dam but also to getto the core of the conspiracy and bring the plotters to punishment. Themen who were plotting on the Isthmus were also plotting in New York. Aninkling of the true state of affairs came to him, and he saw that in orderto accomplish what he had set out to do his reach must be long enough tostretch across the Atlantic and there grapple with the subordinates in thetreacherous plot.
Itto returned to the front room when the newcomer left and again the talkand the arguments went on, sometimes in Spanish, sometimes in English. Mr.Chester seemed to be asking for more time. Presently the date Ned hadfound on the two drawings was mentioned.
"The time set was Saturday--to-morrow," Itto said, grimly.
"That was decided upon a long time ago," Van Ellis said.
"Before the New York complications arose," Chester argued. "We did notknow at that time what complications might result from the defection ofone of our number. It is injudicious to go on now."
"The date referred to was also set for action in New York," Itto said.
"Yes, but the thing is inadvisable now, for Shaw has been warned."
It was plain to Ned that he would have to get away from the old stonehouse and decide upon some effective means of meeting this emergency. Hehad work to do in New York as well as in Gatun. The drawing found in thebomb-chamber had told him that. Now this new information emphasized thedemand for instant action.
There was no doubt in his mind that it was the purpose of the plotters toblow up the great dam on the next day, probably after nightfall. As hasbeen said, he could thwart the plans of the traitors by communicating withthe secret service men under Lieutenant Gordon, but that course would notbe apt to bring about all the desired results. He wanted to arrest everyman connected with the plot. Not only that; he wanted proof to convictevery one of them.
There seemed to the boy only one way in which he could attain the resultssought for. He must catch the plotters "with the goods on," as the policesay. He must catch them with explosives in their hands under the shadow ofthe dam! Ned knew that Harvey, Van Ellis, Gostel, and Itto were deep inthe treacherous game, but he did not know how many others were taking partin it. He suspected that men high up in finance were back of the plot, andwanted to get the whole group.
He thought he knew why Harvey, Van Ellis and some of the others were inthe plot. He was quite certain that he did. But he was not so certain ofthe motives of Itto, the Japanese. They might never be revealed unless thegame was checked at the right moment.
There was an air of insincerity about the Japanese which Ned did not like.It seemed to the boy that he was leading the others on--or trying to leadthem on--in a sinister way. The impression was in the lad's mind from themoment of his meeting Gostel that the two men, Itto and Gostel, were inthe plot for some purpose of their own, a purpose which was not theaccumulation of money, and which did not match the motives of the others.
About six o'clock Chester arose to his feet.
"I must go back to camp," he said.
"But there is a meeting to-night," Van Ellis urged.
"An important one," Gostel put in.
"And a midnight visit to the dam," Itto said.
"I have a previous engagement at the camp," Harvey insisted. "We haveguests from New York, my son and myself."
"The secret service lads," exclaimed Gostel, scornfully. "Leave them to meto-night, and you can then keep your engagement with us."
"I have my doubts about their being connected with the secret service,"Chester replied.
"We are positive," Gostel said. "They were followed from New York. We knowthe plotting that has been going on between Gordon and Nestor."
Much more concerning the boys was said, but Ned was too anxious to getaway to pay full attention to it. Another burden was now on his mind. Hemust see that the boys were warned and came to no harm.
He had left them with the understanding that they might remain at theCulebra hotel or return with Tony Chester to the cottage where they hadbeen taken when brought out of the jungle. If they had returned to thecamp, they might already be in great danger.
Chester insisted on taking his departure, and the others accompanied himto the foot of the stairs in the wall, arguing with him every foot of theway. Ned stood at the door of the rear room when they returned, and whilethey were getting settled in the front apartment he slipped out and movedcautiously down the steps.
When he gained the grounds outside he dodged into a thicket not ten feetaway from the exit and waited to make sure that no one was moving about onthe outside. He was anxious to get away from the place without hispresence there being known. A struggle, even if he succeeded in gettingaway, would put the plotters on their guard.
In a few moments he realized that the grounds were not so devoid of humanlife as he had believed. He heard voices on the side toward the hill, anda rustling in the thicket told him that some one was stealthily movingthere.
Knowing that it would be dark in a short tune, Ned remained crouched lowin the bushes, hoping to escape detection in that way, but footsteps camecloser and closer to his hiding place, and he sprang up just in time tosee a lithe figure hurtling toward him, the figure of a tall, slender manwith an Oriental cast of countenance.
Glad that there was only one, Ned braced himself for the attack, which,however, did not come. When within a yard of its object, the lithe figureturned, staggered forward, uttered a low cry of anger and surprise, andlay swathed in a cluster of vines which had tripped and now held him tothe ground.
Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone; Or, The Plot Against Uncle Sam Page 17