Within, the place was dank and musty and cobwebs spread across the openings where the windows had been. Much broken gla.s.s and a couple of sash weights fastened to ends of rotten sash cord lay upon the floor. In the corner was a makeshift bed of straw, matted from age, damp and unwholesome. The place was in possession of spiders. Whole boards of the flooring had rotted, yielding like mud under the feet of the scouts.
"Some place," said Connie Bennett.
"Oh, here"s a dime," Pee-wee shouted reaching under an open s.p.a.ce in the flooring. "I can get a soda with that."
"Here"s another," said Westy.
It seemed likely that some of the heroes who had made the world safe for democracy had beguiled their time playing c.r.a.ps before going forth to glory.
Suddenly Pee-wee shouted, "Oh look at this! I bet it has something to do with a spy! I bet it has secret papers in it! _Look what I found!_"
From under the edge of the rotten straw our observant young hero had pulled out an oilskin wallet. There were not many such places as this old ruin that did not yield up their treasures to Pee-wee. The veriest ash heap became a place of romance under his prying hand and inquisitive eye. This find was just one of those ordinary oilskin wallets which had held and protected many letters from mothers and sweethearts and which had been shot through and through in the trenches in France. Black spots of mildew were upon it and it had an oily, unpleasant odor.
"_I found it! I found it!_" Pee-wee vociferated, as the scouts all cl.u.s.tered about him eager to see.
"You"re the greatest discoverer next to Christopher Columbus," Roy said.
"Let"s see what"s inside it."
"Didn"t I say to stop here?" Pee-wee demanded.
"You never thought you"d find an ice cream soda here," Roy said.
"You never know where you"ll find one," Pee-wee said in high excitement.
"Didn"t I find a dime in a sewer-pipe?"
"That"s a nice place to find a soda," Roy laughed. "Open the wallet and let"s see what"s in it."
[Footnote 1: A. W. O. L.--Absent without leave.]
CHAPTER VI
SUNDAY THE FOURTEENTH
Pressing about Pee-wee, the scouts read eagerly the contents of that old musty oilskin memento of the days when Camp Merritt was a seething community of boys in khaki. The big spiders lurked in their webs; the repulsive little slugs, made homeless by the lifting of a damp, rotten board, hurried frantically about on the floor; a single ray of sunlight penetrated through a crevice, a slanting, dusty line, and lit up a little area of the dim, musty place. But there was no sound, not even from the scouts, save only the voice of Westy Martin as he read that old, creased, damp, all but undecipherable letter:
_Dear Old Mother:_
I was hoping I might get down to Hicksville before we sail, but I guess I can"t. They don"t tell us much here but it seems to be in the air that we"ll sail in a day or two. Feeling pretty disappointed because I wanted to see you again and say good-bye and have just one good home-cooked meal. I"m sick of beans and black coffee. Don"t worry, you"ll hear from me in France. I don"t suppose you"ll be able to get the end of the porch fixed up, but try to get the window put in before winter. I meant to do that myself. Put a pail under the drain so the water won"t flood under the woodshed. Tell Don to be a good watch dog and be sure to tie him outside at night.
I don"t suppose you"ll hear from me again till we get across.
Don"t worry, pretty soon it will all be over and I"ll come marching home and you"ll be telling people it was me that won the war and I"ll be glad to get a good squint at my old N. C.
hills. It will be over before you know it. Now you have to be brave, see? Just like you were when dad died. Remember what you said then? Now don"t think this is good-bye because I"m sailing but remember the Atlantic Ocean isn"t a one way street. Just chalk that up on the wall, and speaking about oceans don"t forget about the water by the woodshed and do what I told you.
So now good-bye dear old Mum and don"t worry, and I won"t go near Paris like you said. Hicksville is good enough for me.
Your loving son.
There was something about this old missive which sobered the bantering troop of scouts and made even Pee-wee quiet and thoughtful.
"It"s a letter he was going to send," Artie Van Arlen finally said.
"Who?" Doc Carson asked.
Artie shrugged his shoulders. "Somebody or other, that"s all _we_ know," he said. "We don"t even know who he was going to send it to; there are a whole lot of dear old mothers."
"You said it," commented Roy.
"Let"s see the other papers," one of the scouts said.
The only other contents of the wallet were a small paper with blanks filled in, and an engraved calling card. The paper with the blanks filled in was so smeared from long moisture that the written parts were undecipherable. The paper was evidently a leave of absence from camp.
The name was utterly blurred out, but by studying the smeared writing in the s.p.a.ce where the date had been written the scouts thought they could determine the date, or at least part of it. _Sun--1918_ was all they could be sure of.
But fortunately the calling card appeared to confirm this date. It was a card of fine quality and beautifully engraved with the name of Helen Shirley Bates. In the lower left hand corner was engraved Woodcliff, New Jersey. On the back of the card was written in a free feminine hand _For dinner Sunday April 14th, 1918. One o"clock._
"What do you make out of it? What does it mean? Who was he anyway?" the scouts, interrupting each other, asked, as these memorials of an unknown soldier boy were pa.s.sed around from hand to hand and eagerly read.
Of all the scouts Westy Martin, of Roy"s Patrol, was the soberest and most thoughtful. He had the most balance. Not that Roy did not have balance, but he never had much on hand because he was continually losing it.
"Whoever he was," Westy said, "it looks as if he got a leave of absence to go to the girl"s house for dinner. Going this way would be a shortcut to Woodcliff. Maybe he was going to take the train up from New Milford."
"I guess he was going to mail the letter to his mother in New Milford, hey?" Hunt Ward of the Elks suggested.
"Yes, but why didn"t he?" Doc Carson asked.
"It"s a mystery," said Pee-wee. "Do you know what I"m going to do?"
"Break it to us gently," Roy said.
"Some day soon I"m going to hike to Woodcliff and see that girl and find out what that soldier"s name is and I"m going to send the letter to his mother."
"What"s the use of doing that?" Vic Norris asked. "The soldier has probably been home two years by now."
"I don"t care," Pee-wee insisted; "the letter is to his mother and I"m going to see that she gets it."
"Are you going to get a soda while you"re up at Woodcliff?" Roy asked him.
"That"s all right," Pee-wee said with great vehemence; "if you got a letter that went astray you"d want it, wouldn"t you?"
"You"re talking in chunks," Roy said. "Go ahead and see the girl if you want to. I bet she"ll think you"re sweet. Only come ahead and let"s get to camp."
"Unanimously carried by a large majority," Dorry Benton said. "Mysteries aren"t going to buy tar-paper for our old car."
"There might have been a thousand dollars in this wallet," Pee-wee reminded them.
"Except for one thing," Roy said.