第60章 BOY WHO CRIED WOLF(2)

"Next time you talk to my scouts," he declared, you'll talk on 'Votes for Women.' After what you said to-night every real estate agent who dares open a map will be arrested.We're not trying to drive people away from Westchester, we're trying to sell them building sites.""YOU are not!" retorted his friend, "you own half the county now, and you're trying to buy the other half.""I'm a justice of the peace," explained Van Vorst."I don't know WHY I am, except that they wished it on me.All I get out of it is trouble.The Italians make charges against my best friends for overspeeding and I have to fine them, and my best friends bring charges against the Italians for poaching, and when I fine the Italians, they send me Black Hand letters.And now every day I'll be asked to issue a warrant for a German spy who is selecting gun sites.And he will turn out to be a millionaire who is tired of living at the Ritz-Carlton and wants to 'own his own home' and his own golf-links.And he'll be so hot at being arrested that he'll take his millions to Long Island and try to break into the Piping Rock Club.And, it will be your fault!"The young justice of the peace was right.At least so far as Jimmie Sniffen was concerned, the words of the war prophet had filled one mind with unrest.In the past Jimmie's idea of a holiday had been to spend it scouting in the woods.In this pleasure he was selfish.He did not want companions who talked, and trampled upon the dead leaves so that they frightened the wild animals and gave the Indians warning.Jimmie liked to pretend.He liked to fill the woods with wary and hostile adversaries.It was a game of his own inventing.If he crept to the top of a hill and on peering over it, surprised a fat woodchuck, he pretended the woodchuck was a bear, weighing two hundred pounds; if, himself unobserved, he could lie and watch, off its guard, a rabbit, squirrel, or, most difficult of all, a crow, it became a deer and that night at supper Jimmie made believe he was eating venison.Sometimes he was a scout of the Continental Army and carried despatches to General Washington.

The rules of that game were that if any man ploughing in the fields, or cutting trees in the woods, or even approaching along the same road, saw Jimmie before Jimmie saw him, Jimmie was taken prisoner, and before sunrise was shot as a spy.He was seldom shot.Or else why on his sleeve was the badge for "stalking." But always to have to make believe became monotonous.Even "dry shopping" along the Rue de la Paix when you pretend you can have anything you see in any window, leaves one just as rich, but unsatisfied.So the advice of the war correspondent to seek out German spies came to Jimmie like a day at the circus, like a week at the Danbury Fair.It not only was a call to arms, to protect his flag and home, but a chance to play in earnest the game in which he most delighted.No longer need he pretend.No longer need he waste his energies in watching, unobserved, a greedy rabbit rob a carrot field.The game now was his fellow-man and his enemy; not only his enemy, but the enemy of his country.

In his first effort Jimmie was not entirely successful.The man looked the part perfectly; he wore an auburn beard, disguising spectacles, and he carried a suspicious knapsack.But he turned out to be a professor from the Museum of Natural History, who wanted to dig for Indian arrow-heads.And when Jimmie threatened to arrest him, the indignant gentleman arrested Jimmie.Jimmie escaped only by leading the professor to a secret cave of his own, though on some one else's property, where one not only could dig for arrow-heads, but find them.The professor was delighted, but for Jimmie it was a great disappointment.The week following Jimmie was again disappointed.

On the bank of the Kensico Reservoir, he came upon a man who was acting in a mysterious and suspicious manner.He was making notes in a book, and his runabout which he had concealed in a wood road was stuffed with blue-prints.It did not take Jimmie long to guess his purpose.He was planning to blow up the Kensico dam, and cut off the water supply of New York City.Seven millions of people without water! With out firing a shot, New York must surrender! At the thought Jimmie shuddered, and at the risk of his life by clinging to the tail of a motor truck, he followed the runabout into White Plains.But there it developed the mysterious stranger, so far from wishing to destroy the Kensico dam, was the State Engineer who had built it, and, also, a large part of the Panama Canal.Nor in his third effort was Jimmie more successful.From the heights of Pound Ridge he discovered on a hilltop below him a man working alone upon a basin of concrete.

The man was a German-American, and already on Jimmie's list of "suspects." That for the use of the German artillery he was preparing a concrete bed for a siege gun was only too evident.

But closer investigation proved that the concrete was only two inches thick.And the hyphenated one explained that the basin was built over a spring, in the waters of which he planned to erect a fountain and raise gold fish.It was a bitter blow.Jimmie became discouraged.Meeting Judge Van Vorst one day in the road he told him his troubles.The young judge proved unsympathetic."My advice to you, Jimmie," he said, "is to go slow.Accusing everybody of espionage is a very serious matter.If you call a man a spy, it's sometimes hard for him to disprove it; and the name sticks.So, go slow--very slow.Before you arrest any more people, come to me first for a warrant."So, the next time Jimmie proceeded with caution.