HE AWAITS THE WORST AND RECEIVES A SURPRISE
After a while the monotony was broken by two soldiers coming to take his brother away. Tom did not know where they were taking him; it might be to court martial and death. He knew nothing about court martial, whether it was a matter of minutes or hours or days, only he knew that everything in military administration was quick, severe and thorough. He wanted to speak to his brother, but he did not dare, and after the grim little procession was gone he listened to the steady, ominous footfalls, as they receded along the deck.
Soon they would come for him, and he made up his mind that he would be master of himself and at the last minute he would hold his head up and look straight at them, just like the statue of Nathan Hale which he had seen....
He realized fully now that he had been caught in the meshes of his brother’s intrigue, and that there was no hope for him. To have saved himself he would have had to spare his brother and allow the intriguing to go on. Well, it made no difference—here he was. “And it ain’t so much, anyway,” he said, “if one boy like me does get misjudged, as long as the ship is saved and those papers about the motor were found.”
So he tried to comfort himself, sitting there alone, twisting his fingers and gulping now and then. All his fine, patriotic memories of the Slades were knocked in the head, but even in these lonely hours he was stanch for Uncle Sam. Uncle Sam might make a mistake—a terrible mistake, as he presently would do—“but anyway he’s more important than I am,” he said.
Occasionally he listened wistfully to the sounds outside and they made him wish he could see as well as hear. He heard the creaking of the busy pulleys, the men calling “Yo-o-ho!” as they handled the winch-ropes, the dull thud of the heavy bales upon the quay, the cheerful, lusty calls of the workers, the loud voices of the French people, and that incessant accompaniment of all, the clatter, clatter, clatter, of wooden shoes.
Sometimes he would lose his mastery of himself and regain it only to listen again, wistfully, longingly. He hoped those German prisoners who walked as if they were wound up with a key, noticed all this hurry and bustle. They would soon see what it meant for Uncle Sam.
There were voices outside and Tom’s heart beat like a hammer. Could it be over so soon? The door opened a little and he could see that someone was holding the knob, talking to a soldier. He breathed heavily, his fingers were cold, but he stood up and looked straight before him, bravely. They had come to get him.
Then the door opened wider and a familiar voice greeted him.
“H’lo, Tommy. Well, well! Adventures never cease, huh?”
Tom stood gaping. Through dimmed eyes he saw a cigar (it seemed like the same cigar) cocked up in the corner of Mr. Conne’s mouth and that queer, whimsical look on Mr. Conne’s face.
“Mr. Conne——” he stammered. “I didn’t know—you was—here. You don’t believe it, do you?”
Mr. Conne worked his cigar leisurely over to the other side of his mouth.
“Believe what?”
“That—I’m—a—a spy and—and a traitor.” He almost whispered the words.
Mr. Conne smiled exasperatingly and hit him a rap on the shoulder. “Anybody accuse you of being that?”
“That’s what they think,” said Tom.
“Oh, no, they don’t, Tommy. But they’ve got to be careful. Don’t you know they have?”
“I got to go and—get shot—maybe.”
“So? Fancy that! Sit down here and tell me the whole business, Tommy. What’s it all about?”
“I—got to admit it looks bad——”
“They wouldn’t have done anything with you till they saw me, Tommy. Even if they had to take you back to New York. Trouble was, Wessel’s dying. How could they prove what you said about me getting you the job?”
He put his arm over Tom’s shoulder as they sat down upon the leather settee, and the effect of all the dread and humiliation and injustice and shame welled up in the boy now under that friendly touch and he went to pieces entirely.
“Did you think I didn’t know what I was doing when I picked you, Tommy?”
Tom could not answer, but sat there with his breast heaving, his hand on Mr. Conne’s knee.
“Did you just find your brother there by accident, Tom?”
“I—I got to be—ashamed——”
“Yes,” Mr. Conne said kindly; “you’ve got to be ashamed of him. But you see, I haven’t got to be ashamed of you, have I? How’d you find out about it? Tell me the whole thing, Tom.”
And so, sitting there with this shrewd man who had befriended him, Tom told the whole story as he could not have told it to anyone else. He went away back into the old Barrel Alley days, when he had “swiped” apples from Adolf Schmitt and his brother Bill had worked in Schmitt’s grocery store. He told how it used to make him mad when his brother “got licked unfair,” as he said, and he did not know why Mr. Conne screwed up his face at that. He told about how he “had to decide quick, kind of,” when the officers confronted him in his brother’s stateroom, and how the thought about Uncle Sam being his uncle had decided him. He told how he had had to keep his face turned away from his brother so that he “wouldn’t feel so mean, like.” And here again Mr. Conne gave his face another screw and Tom did not understand why. That was one trouble with Tom Slade—he was so thick that he could not understand a lot of things that were perfectly plain to other people.