Harry Stevens interrupted, “it would have been a wise move to have annexed a lot of that land.”
“If your speculation had developed when the first talk of the canal was heard,” Peter went on, “you would have had to do business with King Ferdinand, of Spain. He would have put the soil on the bargain counter for you one day and shot you up the next. That wouldn’t have been so cheerful.”
“Nice party to do business with,” laughed Harry.
“He was next to his king job, all right,” Peter continued. “He was there with the gunpowder when any subject stood to put anything over on him. He caused Columbus to be returned to Spain in chains, and permitted one of his officials to shoot up the first white man who ever looked out on the Pacific from the divide of the Isthmus. He carried things by a large majority, did Ferdinand.”
“It was his queen who put her jewels in soak to buy a ship for Columbus,” commented Jack Bosworth. “I read about it when I was laid up with my broken arm. You remember the time the horse climbed into my motor car?”
“The police say you never stopped running until you bumped against one of the White Mountains,” laughed Harry. “Who was this white man who first climbed the divide?” he asked; “as I’m going down there, I want to know. I may set up a monument to his memory.”
“Don’t be too sure about going,” warned Glen Howard. “Lieutenant Gordon may kick on the whole bunch of us.”
“Then we’ll all go down in my motor boat,” replied Harry. “You can’t keep me out of the Canal Zone when there’s things doing.”
“The man’s name was Balboa,” said Peter, in answer to the question, as he smiled at this tardy recognition of the services of the explorer. “He went broke at St. Domingo, one day in the year 1510, and hired a fellow to head him up in a wine cask and put the cask on board a ship bound for Darien. He made the trip, all right, and landed broke, but in three years he was captain of the precinct, as they say in Manhattan, and on his way to the Pacific. He looked out on the big ocean for the first time on the 26th of September, 1513. Some say it was the 25th. I don’t know which is right.”
The door of the clubroom now opened and Lieutenant Gordon entered. He was a man of not more than thirty, with a stern though not forbidding face and an alert military figure. His brown eyes lighted up with sudden humor as he dodged the clamorous boys, and dropped into a chair.
“What about it?” asked Jimmie, who seemed to be a favorite with the officer. “Do we go with you, or do we trail along in the motor boat?”
“The man higher up,” began the lieutenant, “says you may go with me if you will try to – ”
There was no necessity for the lieutenant going on with the sentence. He had warned the boys so many times as to their conduct on the Isthmus, if permitted to go with the secret service men, that they now knew in advance what he was going to say, and they repeated his former admonitions with shouts of laughter.
“All right,” said the lieutenant, trying to look dignified, “if you won’t listen you can’t go.”
“Go on an’ talk your chin off,” shouted Jimmie. “We’ll listen to every word until our arms drop to the floor.”
“Never mind that now,” laughed the officer. “I’m too busy at present to speak the advice you’ll all forget before I’m out of the room. Where is Frank Shaw? I came here to see him.”
“He was coming down to-night,” George Tolford replied, “but it is so late now that he may not be here. Anything special?”
“Why, yes,” was the reply. “I want to know what he has been saying to his father about the difficulty in the Canal Zone.”
“Why, he doesn’t know anything to tell,” said Nestor, “not even as much as the boys here now know, for I have talked the situation over with them but not with him.”
“What do they know regarding the situation?” asked the lieutenant, apprehensively.
“Nothing except that the Panama canal is threatened by some unknown influence.”
“Well,” said the lieutenant, thoughtfully, “some one has been leaking, and it seems as if our first move in the game must be made right here in New York.”
“It wasn’t Frank that leaked,” Jimmie asserted, in defense of his friend. “He wouldn’t do such a thing, and he couldn’t tell what he didn’t know, anyway,” with which logical conclusion the boy turned his back to the group.
“There is something wrong somewhere,” Lieutenant Gordon said. “Wait until I tell you what took place this afternoon and you will agree with me.”
CHAPTER II.
THEFT OF THE EMERALD NECKLACE
“Early this afternoon,” the lieutenant went on as the boys gathered about him, “I was interviewed by a reporter for the Daily Planet.”
“Frank’s father owns that newspaper,” Jimmie suggested.
“Yes,” said the officer, “and that is why I thought Frank might know something of the origin of the inquiry. The reporter was not slow in getting at the point he was in my rooms to discuss. Almost the first question he asked me was this: ‘Is it true that the government has ordered you to the Canal Zone to investigate an alleged plot to blow up the Gatun dam?’ Coming from a reporter, as it did, the question knocked me all in a heap.”
Ned Nestor leaned forward with a new interest showing in his face.
“I should think so,” he said. “What did you tell him?”
“I tried to bluff him out at first, but soon learned that he knew more about the Zone situation than I did. He didn’t get much information from me, but I learned from him that the Daily Planet is wise to the whole situation, as the boys say. Now, the question is this: ‘Where did the editor secure his information?’ I asked him in so many words, but he only laughed at me.”
“The place to go for that information,” Nestor suggested, “is to the editor himself. Mr. Shaw would, of course, know all about it.”
“That is exactly what I thought,” said the lieutenant, “so I lost no time in getting to the editorial rooms. Mr. Shaw was there, and treated me very courteously, but the only satisfaction I could get from him was the information that he knew something of what was going on, and was doing his best to secure enough facts regarding the matter for a news story.”
“I may be able to get more than that out of him,” George ventured.
“I doubt it,” the lieutenant said, “for he is afraid some rival newspaper will get an inkling of the matter and beat him out on the sensation he is preparing. It seems that his men have discovered documentary evidence of some sort, papers which might be of great value in the hands of the government.”
“Wouldn’t he give you a hint as to the contents of the papers?” asked Ned.
“No; he wouldn’t even give me an idea as to the parties he suspects. I think he might have done that, in the interest of good government. Well, of course his information is his own, but he might have trusted me not to betray his confidence to his rivals. I must confess that I don’t like his attitude in the matter.”
“The papers may contain nothing the government could use,” Ned observed, “although their value to the newspaper may be great.”
“I would like to get a look at them, all the same,” said Gordon.
“I wish he would call off his reporters,” Ned went on. “If they go about the city asking the questions they asked of you, the plotters will soon know that they are being watched, and that will make their capture more difficult.”
“That is the idea,” exclaimed the lieutenant. “Perhaps we can get him to let the case alone for a few days.”
“That is doubtful,” Ned said, “but there is one ray of light in the situation.