Chapter 4 REVELATIONS AT THE FLOWER-HOUSE

You would not have thought they were thinking at all as they sat on the broad brick steps, holding their chins in their right hands, left hands twisting their puttee lacers. They talked occasionally but not of the yellow-eyed man who was even then laughing and talking to the Colonel.

They came out a few minutes later, and "Captain DuChassis," as the Colonel called him, ran lightly down and drove off toward the clubhouse. The Colonel stood looking after him, and the two boys stood at attention beside him. He looked down and saw them presently.

"Boys, did you ever have a hunch?" he said.

"Yes, Sir!" they said together.

"Silly things-hunches; very silly! Never let a hunch spoil what seems to be a very good friendship, or change your opinion of a man."

Porky looked quickly up.

"I got the same hunch, Colonel," he said.

"Same man," added Beany.

"Eh, what's this?" demanded the Colonel.

The boys were silent; and while the officer continued his puzzled study of the two faces, the long racer swept again to the steps, and Captain DuChassis stepped out and handed down a lovely girl. She was in a riding habit, and she ran lightly up to the Colonel and kissed his tanned cheek. "Well, daddy," she cried, "we are going to take a ride together, Captain and I!"

She looked at the young man beside her and smiled. He was resplendent in riding clothes and returned her smile tenderly. They stood talking with the Colonel while they waited for their horses.

"How does everything go, daddy? Have you heard anything from Elinor Pomeroy?" She turned, "Elinor is a school friend of mine," she explained. "She is in dreadful trouble. Her brother invented a gas that will absolutely whip Germany, and he was attacked the very night that the gas was tried out, and frightfully hurt, and the formula taken away from him. Of course, it wouldn't matter if he could tell some one, but he never will. I heard to-day that he is conscious now, but the past is a perfect blank. Isn't that too dreadful? I wish I knew where that paper is, I'd like to be the one to get it."

"Would you, Miss Carol?" asked Captain DuChassis. He smiled and tapped his swagger stick lightly on his boot top. "Perhaps you are near it now.

"No such luck! she sighed.

"There will be luck for some one in it perhaps," said the Colonel. "Mr. Leffingwell has just offered a splendid prize to any Boy Scout who finds the formula. He offers an education to the lucky lad. Two years of prep school, and four years of college."

"He is a what you call it safety-first man, is he not?" laughed the Captain. "Is he pro-German? It looks it, setting such a task for children." He turned to the young lady. "Shall we mount? Here are the horses."

After the Colonel had watched them canter away, he turned once more to speak to the boys. They were gone. Sadly they had faded away around the corner, and drifted over to the cow stables, where they sat miserably down on a bale of hay.

"What we goin' to do?" asked Beany miserably. "That's the limit!" agreed Porky. "Here we got it all planned. We got to find that formula, nobody else has the chance we have, and now we've spotted one of our men. We will find that formula when we pull in the bunch that tried to shoot Colonel Handler. They are all mixed up somehow, you'll find. All right, we find that formula, because we got to do it for our country; and what do they do to us? What does Mr. Leffingwell do to us?" Porky's voice rose to a wail. "What does he do?" he asked again. "He goes and sticks an education on us! A college education!"

"Is Mr. Leffingwell going to pick our college?" asked Beany.

"You bet he won't pick mine!" said Porky, loftily. "Cause there ain't goin' to be no such animal!"

"Well, I dunno," mused the other twin. "We got to find that formula. See, the more people we tell, the more it gums the works. It sounds cheeky, but we work better alone: me and you. Le's go look around while we think. I can think better when I'm lookin I at things.

"Me too," said Porky.

They drifted over to the bandstand where the crowd was thickest and the noise loudest and, wriggling through the press, approached an ice cream stand. To reach the counter, Porky stooped and jammed his thin figure between two men.

They paid no attention to him.

"Where is the Wolf?" asked one.

"Riding with the Colonel's daughter," the other laughed. "Trust the Wolf!"

"As far as you can see him," said the other. "I have news," said the shorter man. "Meet me in the flower-house to-night at eight o'clock sharp."

Porky was afraid to look up for fear they would take notice of him. He drummed on the counter, and called loudly for a cone. The men moved away. Porky looked cautiously after them. For a second, he thought of telling his brother to follow them, but remembered in time that they looked exactly alike. He moved over beside Beany, who was biting scallops off the edges of his cone: he had not heard.

"Come here!" Porky said briefly. He handed his cone to a small child and walked rapidly past the Hospital, around the drive leading to the beautiful new horse stables and, cutting across the race-track, threw himself down in the center of the grassy ring where the saddle horses were shown. For acres around stretched open space.

Beany, used to his brother, lay flat in the grass and tipped his hat over his tanned face.

"Go on now. Get it off your chest!" he demanded.

"Want to know what they call the guy that's riding with Miss

Bright?"

"DuChassis-Captain," said Beany.

"He's called the 'Wolf,'" said Porky. Even alone as they were, he lowered his tone.

Beany sat suddenly erect. "What?" he said.

"You heard me," said his brother. He rapidly repeated the conversation he had overheard.

"Where is the flower-house?" asked Beany.

"It must be the greenhouse," he said. "I think I have seen the shorter one of those men helping the head gardener."

"I tell you what! It's your turn now, because I heard them plan this. So you go camp at the flower-house by-en-by, and I will keep watch around the gates to see if they change their minds and go out."

"What good will that be?" said his brother. "You didn't see either of their faces."

"No, but I saw their pants," said Porky. "I can look at all the legs, can't I? But they won't be there. I will watch to make sure; but they will be right where they said, over by the flower-house. See, they don't use any science. All they do is get in a crowd, or back up against a good high wall, and tell each other their real names. If we bring this across, I've a mind for us to be detectives."

"There's the college education," Beany reminded him.

"Well," said Porky, "I suppose detectives ought to know a little something. Come on back, I want a sandwich. I have lived on hot dogs now for two days. Notice how small they are getting? The dog part, I mean."

As they rounded the grandstand, a heavy automobile truck backed up to something covered with a tarpaulin. The boys darted into the crowd. They demanded explanations of anybody who would answer. A boy spoke, up.

"Ridin' horse ran away," he said. "Saw it 'myself. Girl ridin' it."

Porky and Beany gasped. "Was she killed?" they cried.

"Didn't hurt her at all," said the strange boy rather regretfully, it seemed. "But the feller with her, he chased her an' his horse caught up, and the feller grabbed her bridle, and her horse 'swerved, and he was pulled offen his horse, and his horse come right bing into the bandstand, and broke his neck."

"My gosh!" said the twins. "Where did they take the man? Was he hurt much?"

The boy looked curiously at the pair. "Say, do you always say the same thing like that? You ain't the same boy, are you? Feller went over to the Hospital."

"Hurt much?" said the boys.

"There you go again! Why, he limped, and I'll bet he's lame to-morrow but I guess he ain't in a dyin' condition."

The boys watched while the unfortunate young horse was loaded on the truck, then turned toward the hospital.

"What you got?" said Beany, "A sore throat?"

"I say not," cried his brother. "That's a symptom of scarlet fever. They would jug us in the detention ward. I'm goin' to have a splittin' headache."

"That's scarlet fever too," said his brother.

"Pick somethin' a boy's apt to have."

"Hot dogs then," said Beany. "I got an awful pain."

A delightful, dimply nurse met them at the Hospital. She heard their tale of woo sympathetically, and the boys, with a wisdom beyond their years, beamed back at her.

"I will fix you something that won't spoil all the rest of your day," she said; and quickly stirred something in a glass that looked suspiciously like ginger and tasted like red pepper.

They were still talking, "stallin' along" as Porky said afterwards, when a group of people came out of the inner office. Colonel Bright led the way, his daughter on his arm.

"Yes, indeed," he was saying to the doctor, "she will be all right now. It was a wonderfully narrow escape for both of them. Do all you can for Captain DuChassis. I'm sorry you won't let me take him home with me to-night. We are really very comfortably fixed in Syracuse."

"Well, that's lucky," sighed Porky. "We know where he is for a few hours anyhow. Now there wont be any murderin' done while we find out just what's what."

"People are beginnin' to thin out. What time is it? Just five?

Great Scott! We better be on our way. Where will we meet?"

"Le's stay in the Mounted Police Camp tonight. Colonel Handler, told us we could, and this is official business all right."

Beany reached the greenhouses and amused himself by talking with Mr. O'Neill, the head gardener. Porky lounged against the gate, and watched the tired sightseers drag out. By six they were all gone, and Porky felt that he could go back and sit down awhile. It occurred to him to get a close look at a wonderful piece of Mr. O'Neill's work that stood in the center of the beautiful lawn facing the central gateway.

The floral piece was a little house, about the size of a large dog house, all made of growing plants. The sides were green, and the roof was lovely shades of red foliage plants. They were all clipped short and smooth, and it was the prettiest thing imaginable. There was even a door with broad hinges, looking as though it would really open, and the little windows were glass. Porky had always thought that the inside must be of solid earth; but when he walked close, and stooped to look in he was surprised to find it a real little wooden house with wooden wall and floor, and over that a steel lattice work where the plants were rooted in moss and earth. He pushed against the door, and it fell in. He had trouble in getting it up, and was afraid some of the guards would happen along, so he crawled inside. It was softly warm from the hot sun that had beat on the plants and earth all day, and after he had propped the door it, he leaned against the wall. And immediately what did Porky Potter do but fall asleep.

The sun went down and the dusty panes of glass in the little house reflected the glancing lights of official automobiles that swept along the smooth drives. Far away on the hill the bugles sounded taps. Some one leaned against the little house, and Porky woke with a start. A man's shoulders bulked against one of the little windows as he lowered himself to the soft grass and leaned against the house.

Some one chuckled.

"Sit down," said a deep, coarse voice. "This is safe as a desert."

"What's inside this ornament?" asked another.

"Nothing and no one. It is not made for anything to get into. It is all show, my Adolph, all show-like the Countess that our friend the Wolf loves so back there in Berlin. I wonder what she would think could she see him here?"

"She will never see him here or there if I can help it," growled the other man. "I do not forget this bandaged neck, or this sore head of mine." He laughed a laugh that chilled Porky. "Watch, Ledermann, watch! I'll not destroy him while he is busy on the Emperor's business. But some day, some day, Ledermann-"

"Never mind", said Ledermann. "Let that all go for now. What have you to, tell me? First?"

"First, where is the Wolf to-night?" asked Adolph. "That's what always worries me most. He will rise at my side in a minute, I know."

"Not to-night," said Ledermann. "For once he will not be here. He was thrown from his horse to-day, and is in the Hospital. I think he is honestly hurt, because he cannot use his foot, and when I made an excuse and worked my way in, he whispered, 'Not before Thursday.'"

"That will be day after to-morrow," said Adolph. "And we meet him then, I take it, in the usual place?"

"Yes," said Ledermann shortly.

Porky listened breathlessly to know where the place was. But there was silence. Adolph's great shoulder pressed against the little windowpane, and a corner broke out and tinkled down.

"Be careful!" scolded Ledermann. "You don't want to break this pretty toy. Come now, and tell me all you have done."

"Not so much," said Adolph, "except I have talked to all the young recruits. I tell you I have made war something so horrible that they will sleep restless from now on. I have planted dread and sorrow on many a heart. I have some plans I found on the Colonel's table when I was fixing his electric light. I memorized them and later wrote them down. Here they are."

"It is too bad you did not memorized the letter of instructions you lost," said Ledermann. "At home you would be shot for that, you know."

"Of course," agreed Adolph. "However, I think the paper is safely lost, at all events. It has come to me where I lost it. It was the day I got the formula from that silly young inventor. It was very hot; and I found a wonderful secluded place, and went swimming. Ah, Ledermann, how I love the water! I must have lost that paper out of my pocket. I know I did. I went back but there was no paper there, but I found my pocket knife close to the water's edge, so the paper and ticket must have fallen in the water. What was it anyhow to the finder but a plain, clean piece of paper? No harm, no harm, Ledermann!"

"Here is something the Wolf told me to give you," said Ledermann.

"You are to use it whenever you can. Watch the bakery."

Adolph took something in his hand.

"The usual thing!" he asked.

"Yes," said Ledermann. "Poison."

Porky, scarcely breathing, listened with all his ears. And then a terrible thing happened. Porky sneezed!