CHAPTER III
THE WATER WHEEL
Phil Morgan was no more suspicious by nature than his chums. Merely athought had come into his mind that had not come into theirs; and hedisliked to be annoyed by anything in the nature of an unsolved problem.He always wanted to know why.
In this particular case he wished to know why the man called Blake hadtried to hide himself in the clump of bushes beside the Upper Road whenthe automobile load of boys had come along and caught him examining theface of the Elmvale Dam through a field-glass.
It was through a break in the trees that partly masked the dam the manhad been looking, and Whistler knew that the spot in which he wasinterested must be directly beside the overflow of the dam--where thewater splashed down into the rocky river bed.
Whistler did not lose interest in the attempt to inspire some of thefactory workers to enlist in the Navy, and he worked just as hard as hismates all through the noon hour. But the puzzle connected with the mannamed Blake continued to peck at his mind like an insistent chick tryingto get out of its shell.
Hans Hertig's desire to get some of his old friends to enlist bore somefruit. Three men promised to go down to the enlistment bureau onSaturday afternoon, when they had a half holiday.
The Seacove party then wanted to go to a dining-room for dinner; butWhistler excused himself. He was hungry enough; but he "had other fishto fry," he whispered to Torrance.
"Come around by the Upper Road--same way we got here," directedWhistler. "I'll meet you at the bridge. Wait if I'm not there."
"What is the matter with you, Whistler?" demanded Al.
But although Morgan went away without making answer, he knew that hischum would do as he was asked, and bluff off the others when they askedquestions, too.
Philip Morgan hurried past the factories and the few houses which lay inthis direction. The land near the dam which had been built across thevalley was so sterile that few people lived in this neighborhood.
Up on the ridges, on either side, were farms; but this was a wild pieceof scrub at the foot of the dam. One could jump a rabbit in it, or getup a flock of quail at almost any time during the hunting season.
Like most boys of Seacove, as well as Elmvale, Whistler was familiarwith this stretch of untamed ground and plunged into it with fullknowledge of its tangled brier patches and rough quarries. He starteddiagonally for the dam, and in a brief time came to the edge of theshallow channel, which now carried the overflow of the huge reservoirbehind the dam down to the cove.
As he followed this stream, he could not help thinking of thepossibility of a break occurring in the high wall of masonry whichloomed ahead of him. If there should be any undiscovered weakness in thewall! Or if an enemy should sink a charge of dynamite, or some otherhigh explosive, at the base of the dam and blow a hole through it!
He did not see any one moving about the dam either above or below. Heknew that on the ridge, level with the top of the barrier, lived a manthey called the dam superintendent. He sometimes walked across theembankment, from end to end; a privilege forbidden to others.
But Whistler was quite sure that this dam superintendent seldom went tothe foot of the wall, or examined the face of it for any break in thestonework. Of course, the dam had stood secure for so many years thatit seemed improbable that it would fail in any part now.
But Whistler Morgan was not considering any leakage of the water throughthe masonry which might endanger the foundation of the dam. Such seepagemust have shown itself long ago if the barrier had not been properlyconstructed.
It was of a sudden, unexpected, and treacherous blow-out that the youngsailor was thinking. That man in the bushes, who had seemed so desirousof hiding from the passers-by and whose interest in the face of the damhad been so marked, puzzled Phil and excited his suspicions.
Blake. And Blake was an English name! He looked about as much like anEnglishman as he, Whistler, looked like Dinkelspiel!
"I have seen plenty of Britishers," thought the young fellow, "and notone of them ever looked like this chemist, or whatever he is. And he's astranger--worked here only a month.
"He was not tapping rocks or getting botanical specimens over here whenwe fellows came along the Upper Road. His interest was in this dam--ifit was at long distance. I wonder if we ought to report him to themarshal's office.
"And get him, if he's innocent of any wrongdoing, into hot water,"Whistler added, wagging his head. "Say! that won't do. We fellows camenear getting poor Seven Knott into trouble, thinking him a German spy,"he added, referring to an incident mentioned in "Navy Boys After theSubmarines."
Thus meditating he drew nearer to the place where the flashboard wasdown and the water poured into the rocky river bed. There were steppingstones here, so it was easy for an agile person to get across thestream.
A blue haze of spray rose from the foaming water on the rocks, and theresounded a pleasant murmur from the falling water. Birds darted in andout of this spray, fluttering their pinions in the bath thus provided.
On this side of the waterfall Whistler could discover nothing on theface of the dam nor along its foot that seemed in the least suspicious.The masonry was perfect.
He crossed the river bed, leaping from stone to stone, and stepped up soclose to the falling water that the spray splashed him. It was somewhereabout here, he thought, that the man, Blake, had focused his field-glassfrom the roadside.
There was absolutely nothing out of the way here that he could see. Thebrush was kept cleared out at the foot of the dam for a dozen feet orso; there seemed to be no cover here. Not a stone had been overturnedalong this cleared path.
The water splashed and bubbled at the foot of the fall. Did it seem tosplash more vigorously just here at the edge of the pool, hidden by thespray in part, and partly by the overhang of a great rock on whichWhistler stood?
The observant youth stooped, then knelt beside the stream. The rock waswet and his garments were fast becoming saturated. But he paid noattention to this.
There was something down there in the pool, at its edge, strugglingbeneath the surface. Not a fish, of course!
Suddenly he thrust in his hand, wetting his sleeve to the elbow. Quicklyhe made sure that his suspicion was correct. There was some kind ofwater wheel whirling down there.
He moved a flat stone which seemed to have lain for ages in its presentposition. Yet under that stone was the end of the wheel's axle withcogwheels rigged to pass on the power engendered by the wheel to somemechanical contrivance not yet placed.
Whistler returned the flat rock back to its former position, and movedslowly back from the place on hands and knees. Then he stood up andlooked all around to see if he had been observed. Particularly did helook through the break in the trees toward the spot where Blake, thestranger, had stood when Whistler and his friends had first spied him.
There was nobody in sight as far as the young fellow could see. He movedback into the shelter of a clump of brush. He heard an automobilechugging up from the village and believed Al and the others wereapproaching the bridge where he had asked his chum to wait for him.
But he lingered a bit. He was deeply moved by his discovery. This was noboy's plaything. The mechanism was the effort of a mature mind, perhapsthe result of inventive genius of high quality.
Some inventor might be secretly experimenting with water power here; andif Whistler told of his discovery he might be doing the unknown a gravewrong.
Yet Blake's peculiar actions and the fact that the foot of the dam hadbeen chosen for the experiment troubled the young fellow vastly.
There was nothing along the wall, as far as he could see, or upon itsface, that excited Whistler's further suspicion. Just that little waterwheel under the rock whirling and splashing by the power of the fallingstream. It was perfectly innocent in itself; yet Philip Morgan had neverbeen more excited and troubled in his life.
He went slowly back to the road and found the car waiting on the bridge.The other boys were loud in their demands as
to what he had been doing,and Frenchy and Ikey did their best to pump information out of him.
"What for did you go up there to the dam yet?" demanded Ikey.
"Cat's fur, to make kittens' breeches," declared Whistler. "BecauseI couldn't get any dog fur. Now do you know?"
And this was all the satisfaction there was to be got out of theirleader at this particular time.