“I’m wet enough to swim home,” Frank put in.

“Well,” Sandy continued, “there’s a little shack behind us—­looks like one of the squatter shacks on the Lake front—­an’ we can go in an’ rest up.  Here’s where the only friend I have in China lives.”

“Go on in, then,” Jack replied, his teeth chattering with the cold.

“We ought to keep on,” Frank advised.  “This is no time to rest and get dry when Ned is in trouble!”

“That’s right,” from Jack.  “Trot ahead, little one!”

“I’ve got to go in here, anyway, an’ get my uniform,” the boy explained.  “I’ll be more protection to you boys if I have it on.”

“Protection to us!” laughed Jack.  “You’re a joker!”

“Hurry up, then, and get it,” Frank urged.  “We’ve got to be getting along toward the telegraph office.”

“Ain’t you comin’ in?” asked Sandy.

“No; we’ll want to remain if we go in.  Hurry.”

“Do you think he’s on the level?” asked Jack, as the boy disappeared through the low doorway.

“I don’t know,” was the reply.  “It doesn’t seem as if an American lad, and a Boy Scout at that, would play a treacherous game against his own countrymen.”

“No, it doesn’t; yet what is he stopping here for?  He ought to be as anxious as we are to get over the ground.”

Then Sandy came stumbling to the door, on the inside, and asked the boys, through the rough boards, to come in with their lights.

“There’s somethin’ mighty strange here,” he said.

“This may be a trap!” Jack said.  “Shall we go in?”

“We may need this boy as a guide,” Frank observed.

“All right, then.  In we go.”

There was only one room to the shack, which was of mud, with thick walls and a leaky roof.  There was a table, a chair, a heap of clothes in a comer, and nothing else, save for a puddle of water on the floor.

Sandy stood in the middle of the floor, his feet in the puddle, when Frank’s searchlight illumined the bare room.  His eyes were staring in a strange way and his face was deadly pale.

“Look there!” he exclaimed, his lips forming the words badly.  “The old woman who fed me when I was broke an’ sick lies under the clothes, stupid from some dope.  The house has been poked over.  I saw a face at the little hole in the wall as I came in.  What does it mean?”

Whisperings were heard at the door.  Frank extinguished his light and the boys stood in darkness as complete as ever fell since the dawn of creation.

“What do you think?” asked Jack, of Frank.

“Looks like a trap.”

Sandy sprang forward and seized Frank by the arm, and his voice shook as he began.

“No!  It ain’t no trap!  I didn’t bring you here to get rolled for your wads, or anythin’ like that.  I stopped here to get me telegraph messenger uniform.  I can go anywhere in the city with that on, and not be molested.  I don’t know what this means, but there are Chinks all around this house.”