GROSSET & DUNLAP

CONTENTS
I.[Perhaps You Have Met Before]
II.[Who Is That Man?]
III.[A Tragic Episode]
IV.[The New Venture]
V.[A Neighbor’s Story]
VI.[The End of One Trail]
VII.[Into the Depths]
VIII.[Shadows]
IX.[The Sign of the Four]
X.[The Work Progresses]
XI.[Alone]
XII.[Signs on the Mountain]
XIII.[The Steady Gaze]
XIV.[The Apparition]
XV.[Out of the Past]
XVI.[Somebody’s Son]
XVII.[Baffled]
XVIII.[Seeing Is Believing]
XIX.[Guesswork or Action]
XX.[Suspense]
XXI.[Despair]
XXII.[Tom]
XXIII.[Strange Partners]
XXIV.[And “Peters” Drops in]
XXV.[A Ghost on the Wire]
XXVI.[Whose Letter?]
XXVII.[Mystery upon Mystery]
XXVIII.[This Is Brent’s Suggestion]
XXIX.[Rivers Is Delighted]
XXX.[The Threads Unravel]
XXXI.[An Evening of Deductions]
XXXII.[The Letter Comes Back]
XXXIII.[Face to Face]
XXXIV.[It Can’t Rain Forever]

TOM SLADE IN THE NORTH WOODS

CHAPTER I—PERHAPS YOU HAVE MET BEFORE

One of the surest signs of approaching autumn in this suburban town of ours, is the reappearance in the main thoroughfares of my adventurous young friend Tom Slade after his summer sojourn in the mountains. When I see that familiar form in brown negligee attire careering down Main Street in the outlandish flivver which seems to be a very part of him, I know that Temple Camp has closed for the season, that the schools are again open, and that soon I shall be raking up dried leaves on the front lawn. The return of Tom Slade is just as much a harbinger of autumn as the coming of the first robin is a harbinger of spring.

My first glimpse of that dilapidated Ford always arouses a cheery feeling in my heart and I am not offended at the rather perfunctory wave of the hand with which Tom recognizes and greets me as he hurries by. I know that when he gets around to it he will run up to see me and beguile me with an account of the summer up at the big scout camp of which he is the very spirit.

Sometimes I think that there is no single character in this whole thriving town who would be as much regretted as Tom Slade, if he should go away. There is a breezy kind of picturesqueness about him that sets him apart and makes him a sort of local celebrity. I think I have never in my life seen him wearing a regular suit of clothes. He goes hurrying about town in the winter months quite hatless; he seems always on the go. I have seen a good many boys in this town, who were scouts not so long ago, grow up and become absorbed in the seething business of the growing community. Some of them are grown into ingratiating young fellows in banks, some are in the real estate “game” as they call it; they are all driving around in good cars and exhaling a distressing atmosphere of sophistication.

When I go into the Trust Company and am welcomed patronizingly by young Ellis Berrian I could almost choke him for his self-sufficiency. He used to caddie for me over at the Warrentown course. These white-collared young gentry are cutting a great swath and producing nothing. They buy cars on the installment plan and talk glibly about the rise in values when the new bridge shall span the Hudson.

The first I ever knew of Tom Slade was when he was a hoodlum down in Barrel Alley (since obliterated, praise be) and he got his name in our local newspaper for knocking down a heroic official who was placing the few Slade belongings in the street by way of executing a court order of eviction. Tom, then fourteen, knocked the official in the gutter—I think it was the gutter.

Then the local scout troop got hold of him and found (as the official had found) that he had an uncanny way of doing what he set his heart on doing. He made a record in scouting. His mother and father both died, and the scouts took him up to camp with them. His heroism up there brought him to the attention of Mr. John Temple, of whom this town may well be proud, and the outcome of the whole business was that Mr. Temple founded Temple Camp up in the Catskills which has grown into one of the biggest scout communities in this country.