Tom Slade on Mystery Trail Part 18

"What's that? A hunk of candy?" a scout sitting on the springboard called. For Pee-wee seldom returned from any adventure empty handed.

"A tu-shh-sphh----" Scout Harris answered.

"A which?"

"A turtshplsh--can't you hearshsph?"

"A what?"

"A turtlsh."

"A turtle?"

"Cantshunderstand Englsphish?"

He dragged himself up on the springboard dripping and spluttering, and clutching this latest memento of his submarine explorations.

"It's a turtle--t-u-r-t-e-l--I mean l-e--can't you understand English?"

Pee-wee demanded as soon as the water was out of his mouth and nose.

"Not submarine English," his companion retorted. "You can't keep your mouth shut even under water."

It was indeed a turtle, which had already adopted tactics for a prolonged siege, its head, tail and four little stubby legs being drawn quite within its sh.e.l.l. Nor was it tempted out of this posture of defense when Pee-wee hurled it at Tom Slade who was standing near the mooring float, watching the diving.

"There's a souvenir for you, Toma.s.so," Pee-wee called.

Tom caught the turtle and was about to hurl it at another scout who stood a few yards distant, when he noticed something carved on the upper surface of the turtle's sh.e.l.l. He pulled up a tuft of gra.s.s, rubbing the sh.e.l.l to clean it, and as he did so, the carving came out clearly, showing the letters T. H.

The scout who had been ready to catch the missile now stepped over to look at it, and in ten seconds a dozen scouts were crowding around Tom and craning their necks over his shoulders.

"Somebody's initials," Tom said without any suggestion of excitement.

"Maybe--maybe it was that kid who was kidnapped," Pee-wee vociferated.

"Only his initials are A. H.," Tom answered dully.

"No sooner said than stung," piped up one of the scouts.

"What'll we do with him? Keep him?" asked another.

"What good is he?" Tom said, apparently on the point of scaling the turtle into the lake. "Some scout or other cut his initials here, that's all. I don't see any use in keeping him; he isn't so very sociable."

"Lots of times you crawl in your sh.e.l.l and aren't so sociable, either,"

Pee-wee shot back at him. "I say let's keep him for a souvenir."

"We'll have a regular Bronx Park Zoo here pretty soon," a scout said.

"We'll have to give him a name just like Asbestos."

Tom set the turtle on the ground and everybody waited silently. But the turtle was not to be beguiled out of his stronghold by any such strategy. He remained as motionless as a stone. Pee-wee gave him a little poke with his foot but to no avail. They turned him around, setting him this way and that, they tried to pry his tail out but it went back like a spring.

They moved him a few yards distant in hopes that the change of scene might make him more sociable. But he showed no more sign of life than a fossil would have shown. So again they all waited. And they waited and waited and waited. They spoke in whispers and went on waiting.

But after a while this policy of watchful waiting became tiresome.

Apparently the turtle was ready to withstand this siege for years if necessary. Disgustedly, one scout after another went away, and others came. Tempting morsels of food were placed in front of the turtle, in a bee line with his head.

"Gee whiz, if he doesn't care for food what _does_ he care for?" Pee-wee observed, knowing the influence of food.

That settled it so far as he was concerned, and he went away, saying that the turtle was not human, or else that he was dead. Others, more patient, stood about, waiting. And all the famed ingenuity of scouts was exhausted to beguile or to drive the turtle out of his stronghold.

At one time as many as twenty scouts surrounded him, with sticks, with food, and Scouty, the camp dog, came down and danced around and made a great fuss and went away thoroughly disgusted.

The turtle was master of the situation.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE WANDERING MINSTREL

With one exception the most patient scout at Temple Camp was Westy Martin of the interesting Bridgeboro, New Jersey, Troop. He could sit huddled up in a bush for an hour studying a bird. He could sit and fish for hours without catching anything. But the turtle was too much for him.

"We ought to name that guy Llewellyn," he commented, as he strolled away; "that means _lightning_, according to some book or other. There was an old Marathon racer a couple of million years ago named Llewellyn."

"That's a good name for him," Tom admitted.

"You going to hang around, Slady?"

"I'm going to fight it out on these lines if it takes all summer," Tom said.

Thus the two most patient, stubborn living things in all the world were left alone together--the turtle and Tom Slade.

Tom sat on a rock and the turtle sat on the ground. Tom did not budge.

Neither did the turtle. The turtle was facing up toward the camp and away from the lake. Tom rested his chin in his hands, studying the initials on the turtle's sh.e.l.l. If they had been A. H. instead of T. H.

they would indeed have been the very initials of Master Anthony Harrington, Jr. But a miss is as good as a mile, thought Tom, and T. H.

is no more like A. H. than it is like Z. Q.

This train of thought naturally recalled to his mind the letters he had seen imprinted in the mud up in the woods. But those letters were H. T.

and there was therefore no connection between these three sets of letters.

Tom knew well enough the habit of the Temple Camp scouts of carving their initials everywhere. The rough bench where they waited for the mail wagon to come along was covered with initials. And among them Tom recalled a certain sprightly tenderfoot, Theodore Howell by name, who had been at camp early that same season. Doubtless this artistic triumph on the bulging back of Llewellyn was the handiwork of that same tenderfoot.

And likely enough, too, those letters up in the woods were the initials of Harry Thorne, still at camp. Tom would ask Harry about that. And at the same time he would remind some of these carvers in wood and clay not to leave any artistic memorials on the camp woodwork. It was part of Tom's work to look after matters of that kind. About the only conclusion he reached from these two disconnected sets of initials was that he would have an eye out for specialists in carving....

But Tom's authority was as naught when it came to Llewellyn. The turtle cared not for the young camp a.s.sistant. He sat upon the ground motionless as a rock, apparently dead to the world.

Tom had now no more interest in the turtle than a kind of sporting instinct not to be beaten. He could sit upon the rock as long as his adversary could sit upon the ground. In a moment of exasperation he had been upon the point of hurling the turtle into the lake, but had refrained, and now he was reconciled to a vigil which should last all night.

Llewellyn had met his match.