title="13"/>“If I hadn’t joined the Red Cross already, I’d join now,” said Tom, apologetically, displaying his button. “A girl in our office got me to join.”

“Wasn’t she mean,” said Mary. “I’m going to make you work anyhow, just out of spite.”

Other women now arrived, armed with no end of what Tom called “first aid stuff,” and with bundles of long knitting needles, silent weapons for the great drive.

Tom was glad enough to retreat before this advancing host and carry several large boxes into the cellar. Then he hauled the old grocery counter around so that the women working at it could be seen from the street. The table, too, he pulled this way and that, to suit the changing fancy of the ladies in authority.

“There, I guess that’s about right,” said Mrs. Temple, eying it critically; “now, there’s just one thing more—if you’ve time. There’s a thing down in the cellar with little compartments, sort of——”

“I know,” said Tom; “the old spice cabinet.”

“I wonder if we could bring it up together,” said Mrs. Temple.

“I’ll get it,” Tom said.

“You couldn’t do it alone,” said Mary. “I’ll help.”

“I can do it better without anybody getting in the way,” said Tom with characteristic bluntness, and Mary and her mother were completely squelched.

“Gracious, now he has grown,” said Mrs. Temple, as Tom disappeared downstairs.

“His eyes used to be gray; they’ve changed,” said Mary.

As if that had anything to do with moving tables and spice cabinets!

The spice cabinet stood against the brick chimney and was covered with thick dust. Behind it was a disused stove-pipe hole stuffed with rags, which Tom pulled out to brush the dust off the cabinet before lifting it.

He had pushed it hardly two feet in the direction of the stairs when his coat caught on a nail and he struck a match to see if it had torn. The damage was slight, and, with his customary attention to details, he saw that the nail was one of several which had fastened a narrow strip of molding around the cabinet. About two feet of this molding had been torn away, leaving the nails protruding from the cabinet and Tom noticed not only that the unvarnished strip which the molding had covered was clean and white, but that the exposed parts of the nails were still shiny.

“Huh,” he thought, “whoever pulled that off must have been in a great hurry not to hammer the nails in or even pull them out.”

As he twisted the nails out, one by one, it occurred to him to wonder why the heavy, clinging coat of damp dust which covered the rest of the cabinet was absent from this white unsoiled strip and shiny nails. The cabinet, he thought, must have been in the cellar for some time, whereas the molding must have been wrenched from it very recently, for it does not take long for a nail to become rusty in a damp cellar.

He struck another match and looked about near the chimney, intending, if the strip of molding were there, to take it upstairs and nail it on where it belonged, for one of the good things which the scout life had taught Tom was that broken furniture and crooked nails sticking out spell carelessness and slovenliness.

But the strip was not to be found. A less observant boy would not have given two thoughts to the matter, but in his hasty thinking Tom reached this conclusion, that some one had very lately pulled this strip of molding off of the cabinet and had used it for a purpose, since it was nowhere to be seen.

With Pete’s tale fresh in his mind, he struck match after match and peered about the cellar. Against the opposite wall he noticed a stick with curved tongs on one end of it, manipulated by a thin metal bar running to the other end. It was one of those handy implements used to lift cans down from high shelves. It stood among other articles, a rake, an old broom, but the deft little mechanical hand on the end of it was bright and shiny, so this, too, had not been long in the damp cellar.

For a moment Tom paused and thought. It never occurred to him that momentous consequences might hang upon his thinking. He was simply curious and rather puzzled.

He picked up the can lifter and stood looking at it. Then with a sudden thought he went back to the chimney, struck a match and, thrusting his head into the sooty hole, looked up. Four or five feet above, well out of arm’s reach, something thin ran across from one side to the other of the spacious chimney. The can lifter was too long to be gotten wholly into the chimney, but Tom poked the end of it through the hole and upward until its angle brought it against the chimney wall.

It was right there that the crosspiece was wedged. In other words, it had been pushed as high, a little on this side, a little on that, as this handy implement would reach, and perhaps kept from falling in the process by the gripping tongs.

Not another inch could Tom reach with this stick. By hammering upward against the end of it, however, he was able to jam it up a trifle, thanks to its capacity for bending. Thus he dislodged the crosspiece and as it tumbled down he saw that it was the strip of molding from the cabinet.

But along with it there fell something else which interested him far more. This was a packet which had evidently been held against the side of the chimney by the stick. There were six bulging envelopes held together by a rubber band. The dampness of the chimney had not affected the live rubber and it still bore its powdery white freshness.

“I wonder if they looked there,” Tom thought. “Maybe they just reached around—kind of. I should think they’d have noticed those shiny nails, though.”

He put the packet safely in his pocket and, hauling the cabinet up on his back staggered up the stairs with it.

“What in the world took you so long?” said Mary Temple. “Oh, look at your face!”

“I can’t look at it,” said matter-of-fact Tom.

“It’s too funny! You’ve got soot all over it. Come over here and I’ll wash it off.”

It was a curious thing about Tom Slade and a matter of much amusement to his friends, that however brave or noble or heroic his acts might be, he was pretty sure to get his necktie halfway around his neck and a dirty face into the bargain.

Tom was greatly excited by his discovery. As he hurried to the office he opened the envelopes and what he found was not of a nature to modify his excitement. Here was German propaganda work with a vengeance. He felt that he had plunged into the very heart of the Teuton spy system. Evidently the recipient of these documents had considered them too precious to destroy and too dangerous to carry.

“He might still think of a way to get them, maybe,” thought Tom.

There was a paper containing a list of all the American cantonments and opposite each camp several names of individuals. Tom thought these might be spies in Uncle Sam’s uniform. There was some correspondence about smuggling dental rubber out of the United States to make gas masks in Germany. There were requests for money. There was one letter giving information, in considerable detail, about aeroplane manufacture.

Another letter in the same handwriting interested Tom particularly, because of his interest in gas engines—the result of his many tussles with the obstreperous motor of the troop’s cabin launch, Good Turn.