ld. 'Specially now, when England and France are such close partners
of ours, like. So I'm a brother to that wireless operator, if he used to
be a scout.--Maybe I got no right to ask you to do anything, but maybe
you'd find out if that man's watch is an hour slow. Maybe you'd be
willing to do that before you send a wireless."

The captain looked full at Tom, with a quizzical, shrewd look. He saw
now, what he had not taken the trouble to notice before: a boy with a
big mouth, a shock of rebellious hair, a ridiculously ill-fitting
jacket, and a peaked cat set askew. Instinctively Tom pulled off his
cap.

"What's your name?" said the captain.

"Tom Slade," he answered, nervously arranging his long arms in the
troublesome, starched sleeves. "In the troop I--used to belong to," he
ventured to add, "they called me Sherlock Nobody Holmes, the fellers
did, because I was interested in deduction and things like that."

For a moment the captain looked at him sternly. Then the Secret Service
man, still whistling with a strangely significant whistle, stepped over
to Tom.

"Put your cap on," said he, "frontways, like that; now come along with
me, and we'll see if Doctor Curry from Ohio can accommodate us with the
time."

He put his arm over Tom's shoulder just as Mr. Ellsworth used to do, and
together they left the store-room. It seemed to Tom a very long while
since any one had put an arm over his shoulder like that....

CHAPTER XIX

THE TIME OF DAY

When that flippant youth, Archibald Archer, making his morning rounds
from stateroom to stateroom, beheld Tom Slade hurrying along the
promenade deck under the attentive convoy of one of Uncle Sam's sleuths,
he was seized with a sudden fear that his protege was being arrested as
a spy.

But Tom was never farther from arrest in all his life. He hurried along
beside his companion, feeling somewhat apprehensive, but nevertheless
quite important.

The federal detective was small and agile, with a familiar, humorous way
about him which helped to set Tom at ease. He had a fashion of using his
cigar as a sort of confidential companion, working it over into one
corner of his mouth, then into the other, and poking it up almost
perpendicularly as he talked. Tom liked him at once, but he did not know
whether to take literally all that he said or not.

"Long as you told me your name, I guess I might as well tell you mine,
hey? Conne is my name--Carleton Conne. Sounds like a d