u."

"Lieutenant Gordon told me to keep watch of you boys," laughed Tommy, "but
I reckon you're doing pretty well for yourselves."

"You are a secret service man?" asked Ned, satisfied now that Gordon had
indeed thought it necessary to keep them all under surveillance.

"Of course," replied Tommy. "I'm not much of a cook. I guess you found
that out up at the camp."

"It was thoughtful of the lieutenant," Ned said, "but, as you say, we seem
to be getting on very well. Do you happen to know where Gordon is at the
present moment?"

"He was to meet me here," was the reply, "but has not shown up."

"It is dollars to apples," said Gastong, "that the Japs have cornered him.
He told me, on the night you went after the bomb-man, that some one was
sleuthing him."

"I didn't know that you knew him," Ned said, wondering if every person he
had come upon since arriving on the Isthmus was in the secret service.

"Well," said Gastong, "Lieutenant Gordon was on the squad here, you know,
before he went to Mexico, and I used to meet him now and then."

"And he told you, on the first night of our arrival at camp, that we might
need looking after?"

"Well, he told me that it would do no harm to let him know if I saw a mob
of New York boys wandering about the works," laughed Gastong.

"So that is how you happened to be patrolling the Culebra cut in a motor
car on the day the boys ran into Col. Van Ellis at the old house?"

"Well," said Gastong, "Tommy, here, kept me posted in a way, and I thought
I might be useful out that direction."

"It was clever of the lieutenant," laughed Ned. "Suppose you now turn your
attention to him? He may need the help of the Boy Scouts to get out of a
hole himself."

"I reckon you could help him, all right," Gastong replied, confidently,
but still with a look of anxiety on his face. "He has a heap of confidence
in you, Mr. Nestor, but he thought best to take every precaution for your
welfare. That is the reason why he surrounded you, as far as possible,
with secret service people."

Ned was more than amused at the statement, for all the discoveries that
had been made had resulted from the activities of the boys and himself. In
fact, the only help Gordon's chain of secret service men had given his
party was the thwarting of the plans of Van Ellis at the old house.

This had been important, in a sense, as the boys would otherwise have been
held prisoners there and so would not have been able to c