're a joker!"

"Hurry up, then, and get it," Frank urged. "We've got to be getting
along toward the telegraph office."

"Ain't you comin' in?" asked Sandy.

"No; we'll want to remain if we go in. Hurry."

"Do you think he's on the level?" asked Jack, as the boy disappeared
through the low doorway.

"I don't know," was the reply. "It doesn't seem as if an American lad,
and a Boy Scout at that, would play a treacherous game against his own
countrymen."

"No, it doesn't; yet what is he stopping here for? He ought to be as
anxious as we are to get over the ground."

Then Sandy came stumbling to the door, on the inside, and asked the
boys, through the rough boards, to come in with their lights.

"There's somethin' mighty strange here," he said.

"This may be a trap!" Jack said. "Shall we go in?"

"We may need this boy as a guide," Frank observed.

"All right, then. In we go."

There was only one room to the shack, which was of mud, with thick walls
and a leaky roof. There was a table, a chair, a heap of clothes in a
comer, and nothing else, save for a puddle of water on the floor.

Sandy stood in the middle of the floor, his feet in the puddle, when
Frank's searchlight illumined the bare room. His eyes were staring in a
strange way and his face was deadly pale.

"Look there!" he exclaimed, his lips forming the words badly. "The old
woman who fed me when I was broke an' sick lies under the clothes,
stupid from some dope. The house has been poked over. I saw a face at
the little hole in the wall as I came in. What does it mean?"

Whisperings were heard at the door. Frank extinguished his light and
the boys stood in darkness as complete as ever fell since the dawn of
creation.

"What do you think?" asked Jack, of Frank.

"Looks like a trap."

Sandy sprang forward and seized Frank by the arm, and his voice shook as
he began.

"No! It ain't no trap! I didn't bring you here to get rolled for your
wads, or anythin' like that. I stopped here to get me telegraph
messenger uniform. I can go anywhere in the city with that on, and not
be molested. I don't know what this means, but there are Chinks all
around this house."

"Perhaps you've been followed ever since you left the office," Frank
suggested. "Where is your uniform?"

"Gone," replied Sandy, "an' everythin' else I had in that old box in the
corner."

Frank walked to the door and opened it a trifle. There was no need to
open it wide