Chapter XII: "up Against It for Fair"

When the telegraph and the telephone and the speeding autos and the bullying of the hapless village constable failed to reveal any clue to the burglar at Five Oaks, John Temple proceeded to pooh-pooh the whole business and say that there had never been any burglar, but that in all probability the maid had been exploring Mary's trinkets just as Mrs. Temple returned and that the "frightful-looking man" whom she had met on the stairs was a myth.

It was then that the maid, groping for any straw in her extremity, said that a boy in khaki had darted out from the pantry and across the private rear lawn into the woods beyond while she stood at the window.

If she had stuck to the plain truth and not permitted Mr. Temple to beat her down as to the man she actually did see on the stairs, a great deal of suffering might have been saved. But the loss of only one trinket, and that one of small intrinsic value, seemed to lend color to the theory that it was the work of a boy rather than of a professional adult burglar, and the master of Five Oaks, thinking this matter worth inquiring into, called up the constable and laid the thing before him in this new light.

Mr. John Temple had no particular grudge against the Boy Scouts. He was a rational, hard-headed business man, decisive and practical and without much imagination. His lack of imagination was, indeed, his main trouble. He was not silly enough and he was extremely too busy to bear any active malice toward an organization having to do with boys, and except when the scouts were mentioned to him he never gave them a thought one way or the other. He was not the archenemy of the movement (as some of the boys themselves thought): he simply had no use for it.

So far as the scout idea had been explained to him by the Bridgeboro Local Council (to whom he had granted five minutes of his time) he thought it consisted of a sort of poetical theory and that money put into it was simply thrown away. He believed, and he told the Council so, that ample provision had been made for boys in the form of circuses and movie plays and baseball games for good ones and reformatories and prisons for bad ones, and he referred, as the successful man is so apt to do, to his own poor boyhood and how he had attended to business and done what was right and so on, and so on, and so on.

Nor had this king of finance cherished any particular resentment toward the poor creature who had thrown a stone at him. John Temple was a big man and he was not petty, but he was intensely practical, and he had no patience with Mr. Ellsworth's notions for the making of good citizens. He had known two generations of Slades; he had never known any of them to amount to anything, and he believed that the proper place for a hoodlum and a truant and an orphan was in an institution. He paid his taxes for the support of these institutions regularly and he believed they ought to be used for what they were intended for. He thought it was little less than criminal that the son of Bill Slade should be wandering over the face of the earth when he might be legally placed in a dormitory, eating his three meals a day in a white-washed corridor.

For Mr. Ellsworth, John Temple had only contempt. He looked down upon him as the man without imagination always looks down upon the man with imagination. Meanwhile the new subtle spirit was working in Tom Slade and the capitalist had neither the time nor the interest to stoop and watch the wonderful transformation which was going on.

He was not prompted by any feeling of spite or resentment toward Tom and the scouts when he told the constable about "young Slade." He believed that he was acting wisely and even in Tom's best interests, and it was in vain that his young daughter tried to pull him away from the telephone. Mrs. Temple weepingly implored him to remember the hospitality and the courtesy which she and Mary had just enjoyed at the hands of the scouts, but it was of no use. If no one had mentioned Tom he would never have thought of him, but since Mary had mentioned him he believed it was a good time to have Mr. Ellsworth's experiment with Tom looked into before "all the houses in the neighborhood were robbed." He did not mean that, of course; it was simply his way of talking.

It was the second morning after the Silver Foxes' proud recovery of Esther Blakeley's card that a loose-jointed personage from Salmon River Village sauntered into camp, his face screwed up as if he were studying the sun, and surveyed the camp with that frank and leisurely scrutiny which bespeaks the "Rube." Concealed beneath his coat he wore a badge which he had fished out of an unused cooky-jar just before starting, and it swelled his rural pride to feel the weight of it on his suspender.

"Wha'ose boss here?" he asked Pee-wee, who was about his customary duty of spearing loose papers with a pointed stick.

"No boss," said Pee-wee.

"Wha'ose runnin' the shebang?"

Pee-wee pointed to Mr. Ellsworth's little tent just inside which the scoutmaster sat on an onion-crate stool, writing.

The official personage sauntered over, watched by several boys, paused to inspect the wireless apparatus in its little leanto. His inquisitive manner was rather jarring. By the time he reached Mr. Ellsworth's tent a little group had formed about him.

"Ya'ou the boss here?"

"Good-morning," said Mr. Ellsworth.

"Ya'ou the boss?"

"No; the boys are boss; anything we can do for you?"

The stranger looked about curiously. "Got permission t' camp here, I s'pose."

"There's the owner of the property," said Mr. Ellsworth, laughingly, indicating Roy.

"Hmmm; ye got a young feller here by th' name o' Slade?"

"That's what we have," said the scoutmaster with his usual breezy pleasantry.

"Well, I reckon I'll hev ter see him."

"Certainly; what for?" Mr. Ellsworth asked rather more interested.

"He's got hisself into a leetle mite o' trouble," the stranger drawled; "leastways, mebbe he has." He seemed to enjoy being mysterious.

So Tom was called. Roy came with him, and all who were in camp at the moment clustered about the scoutmaster's tent. Mr. Ellsworth's manner was one of perfect confidence in Tom and half-amusement at the stranger's relish of his own authority.

"You don't wish to see him privately, I suppose?"

"Na-o--leastways not 'less he does. Seems you was trespassing araound Five Oaks t'other day," he said to Tom in his exasperating drawl, and with deliberate hesitation.

"Good heavens, man!" said Mr. Ellsworth, nettled. "You don't mean to tell me this boy is charged with trespassing! Why, half a dozen of these boys accompanied Mrs. Temple and her daughter home--they were invited into the house." He looked at the stranger, half angry and half amused. "Mrs. Temple and her daughter were our guests here. We might as well say _they_ were trespassing!"

"Leastways they din't take nuthin'."

"What do you mean by that?" said the scoutmaster, sharply.

"Ye know a pin was missin' thar?"

"Yes," said Mr. Ellsworth, impatiently.

"An' one o' these youngsters was seen sneakin'--"

"Oh, no," the scoutmaster jerked out; "we don't do any sneaking here. Be careful how you talk. You are trespassing yourself, sir, if it comes to that."

There was never a moment in the troop's history, not even in that unpleasant scene in John Temple's vacant lot, when the boys so admired their scoutmaster. His absolute confidence in every member of the troop thrilled them with an incentive which no amount of discipline could have inspired. It was plain to see that they felt this--all save Tom, whose face was a puzzle.

He stood there among them, his belt pulled unnecessarily tight, after the fashion of the boy who has always worn a suspender, the trim intent of the scout regalia hardly showing to advantage on his rather clumsy form. His puttees were never well adjusted; the khaki jacket (when he wore it) had a perverse way of working up in back. He presented a marked contrast to Roy's natty appearance and to Westy whose uniform fitted him so perfectly that he seemed to have been poured into it as a liquid into a mould. Both boys looked every inch a scout. Yet there was something strangely distinctive about Tom as he stood there. A discerning person might have fancied his uncouthness as part and parcel of a certain rugged quality which could not be expressed in precise attire. There was something ominous in the dogged, sullen look which his countenance wore. He seemed a sort of law unto himself, having a certain resource in himself and seeking now neither advice nor assistance. He was no figure for the cover of the Scout Handbook, yet he had drawn out of it its full measure of strength; he would accept no one's interpretation of it but his own and thus he stood among them and yet apart--as good a scout as ever raised his hand to take the oath.

"One o' these youngsters went daown stairs and raound the haouse t' th' pantry 'n' he was seen to go without warrant of law crost Temple's lawn and inter his private woods." The man had his little spats of legal phraseology, of course, and Mr. Ellsworth could almost have murdered him for his "without warrant of law."

"Any one of you boys go 'without warrant of law'?" asked the scoutmaster, with an air of humorous disgust.

"I did," said Tom simply.

The scoutmaster looked at him in surprise.

"What for, Tom?"

There was a moment's silence.

"I've got nothing to say," said Tom.

Doc. Carson, who was of all things observant, noticed a set appearance about Tom's jaw and a far-away look in his eyes as if he neither knew nor cared about any of those present.

"I s'pose if we was to search ye we wouldn't find nothin' on ye t' shouldn't be thar?"

"I am a scout of the sec--I am a scout," said Tom, impassively. "No one will search me."

It would be hard to describe the look in Mr. Ellsworth's eyes as he watched Tom. There was confidence, there was admiration, but withal an almost pathetic look of apprehension and suspense. He studied Tom as a pilot fixes his gaze intently upon a rocky shore. Tom did not look at him.

"Ye wouldn't relish bein' searched, I reckon?" the constable said with an exasperating grin of triumph.

Then the thunderbolt fell. Calmly Tom reached down into his pocket and brought forth the little class pin.

"I know what you want," he said. "I didn't know first off, but now I know. You couldn't search me--I wouldn' leave--let you. I could handle a marshal, and I'm stronger now than I was then. But you can't search me; you can't disgrace my patrol by searchin' them--or by searchin' me--'cause I wouldn't lea--let you. _Get away_ from me!" with such frantic suddenness that they started. "Don't you try to take it from me! I'm a scout of--I'm a scout--mind! Where's Roy?"

"Tom," said Mr. Ellsworth, his voice tense with emotion.

"Where's Roy?" the boy asked, ignoring him.

Roy stepped forward as he had done once before when Tom was in trouble, and they made an odd contrast. "Here, Tom."

"You take it an' give it to Mary Temple and tell her it's tossin' it back--kind of. She'll know what I mean. You know how to go to places like that--but they get me scared. Tell her it's instead of the rubber ball, and that I sent it to her."

"Oh, Tom," said Mr. Ellsworth, his voice almost breaking, "is that all you have to say--Tom?"

"I'm a scout--I'm obeyin' the law--that's all," said Tom, doggedly. He seemed to be the only one of them all who was not affected, so sure did he feel of himself.

"Do I have to get arrested?" said he.

"Ye-es, I reckon I'll hev to take ye 'long," said the constable, advancing.

Tom never flinched.

Roy tried to speak but could only say, "Tom--"

Mr. Ellsworth put his palm to his forehead and held it there a moment as if his head throbbed.

"Can I have my book?" Tom asked as the constable, taking his arm, took a step away.

It was Pee-wee who glided, scout pace, over to the Silver Foxes' tent. In the unusual situation it never occurred to him that he, a Raven, was entering it uninvited. Esther Blakeley's triumphant post card hung there but he never noticed it. He brought the well-thumbed Handbook with T. S. on it, and it was curious to see that he gave it to Roy instead of to Tom.

But Tom noticed his bringing it. "I'm glad you did your tracking stunt, Pee-wee," he said, with just a little quiver in his voice.

Roy handed him the book. Then, just as they started off, Mr. Ellsworth, gathering himself together as one coming out of a trance, accosted the departing constable.

"This boy was placed in my charge by the court in Bridgeboro," said he, holding the man off.

"That don't make no difference," drawled the man. "I got a right to go anywheres for a fugitive or a suspect. A guardian writ wouldn't be no use to ye in a criminal charge." And he smiled as if he were perfectly willing to explain the law for the benefit of the uninitiated.

Tom, clutching his Handbook, walked along at the man's side. He seemed utterly indifferent to what was happening.

There were no camp-fire yarns that night.