've got his finger prints
here, too, on this card--"

"G-o-o-d night," laughed Roy. "The boy scout Sherlock Home Sweet Holmes.
I suppose you'll have that poor girl in Atlanta Penitentiary before you
get through."

"Let's see the finger prints?" Westy asked.

Pee-wee showed him the card and there, sure enough, was a finger print
on the face of it and two on the back. It looked as if someone with
greasy hands had taken the card up as one usually holds a card....

CHAPTER VII

THEN AND NOW

Within ten or fifteen minutes more they were in the old camp. They
entered the reservation territory at its western edge and cutting across
soon came to the concrete road which runs north and south through the
middle of the camp. This is the Knickerbocker Road which traversed the
reservation territory before ever Camp Merritt was heard of, and bears
its scanty traffic now through that pathetic scene of ruin and
desolation. It is the one feature of the camp that was not of its
temporary character.

Up this road through Dumont to the south, there once passed a never
ceasing procession of autos, encountering guards and sentinels for a
mile south of the camp. The atmosphere of military officialdom permeated
the public approaches for miles in both directions.

If one were so fortunate as to have a pass, he could by dint of many
stops and absurd inquiries and parleys, succeed in reaching the large
gate posts on which was printed UNITED STATES RESERVATION. Through this
the Knickerbocker Road, being especially privileged, passed without
challenge, straight through the middle of the camp and out of its
northern extremity, then through the pleasant little town of Haworth.

On either side of this road, within the confines of the camp, were board
shacks of every size and variety. They were for every purpose
conceivable and, large and small, they were all alike in this, that they
had a makeshift, temporary look, and were a delight to the eye of the
tried and true camper. They were all alike in this, too, that civilian
patriots had charged twenty dollars a day to put them up. This was in
odd contrast to the one poor, hapless soul who was to receive three
hundred dollars for the work of tearing several of them down.

As the scouts, his one hope now, came up onto the central road and hiked
southward toward the main entrance, they scrutinized the weather-beaten
and windowless structures on either side for a sign of their friend. But