id Tom, "that the other operator--the one that
isn't here--that he used to be a scout. I'm a scout, and so I know what
kind of fellers scouts are. They ain't traitors or anything like that.
Something happened to me lately, so I know how easy it is to get
misjudged. If he was a scout, then he wasn't a German, even if he might
have had a German name, 'cause Germans stay by themselves and don't join
in, kind of...."

The captain made a move as if to go.

"But that ain't what I wanted to say," said Tom.

The captain paused.

There was something about Tom's blunt, plain-speech and slow manner
which amused the first officer, and he listened with rather more
patience, than the others.

"There was a man tried to get off the ship last night," said Tom.
"He----"

"Oh, yes, that was Doctor Curry from Ohio," laughed the first officer
indulgently. "I hunted him up on the purser's list--_he's_ all right. He
flew off the handle because his baggage didn't come. He's all right,
boy."

"The man that started the English scouts," said Tom, undaunted, "says if
you want to find out if a person is foreign, you got to get him mad.
Even if he talks good English, when he gets excited he'll say some words
funny like."

The captain turned upon his heel.

"But that ain't what I was going to say, either," said Tom dully.
"Anybody that knows anything about wireless work knows that operators
have to have exactly the right time. That's the first thing they
learn--that their watches have got to be exactly right--even to the
second. I know, 'cause I studied wireless and I read the correspondence
catalogues."

"Well?" encouraged the Secret Service man.

But it was pretty hard to hurry Tom.

"The person that put that bomb there," said he, "probably started it
going and set it after he got it fixed on the shelf; and he'd most
likely set it by his own watch. You can see that clock is over an hour
slow. I was wonderin' how anybody's watch would be an hour slow, but if
that Doctor Curry came from Ohio maybe he forgot to set his watch ahead
in Cleveland. I know you have to do that when you come east, 'cause I
heard a man say so."

A dead silence prevailed, save for the subdued whistling of the Secret
Service man, as he scratched his head and eyed Tom sharply.

"How old are you, anyway?" said he.

"Seventeen," said Tom. "I helped a feller and got misjudged," he added
irrelevantly. "A scout is a brother to every other scout--all over the
wor