"Kind of. Did you ever notice how you get fool ideas when there's a steady noise going on?" "So?" said Mr. Conne, as he led the way along a hall. "It was the noise of my machine." "How about the smell, Tommy?" Mr. Conne asked, glancing around with that pleasant, funny look which Tom had known so well. "You don't get ideas from smells," he answered soberly. In the Quartermaster's office he waited on a bench while Mr. Conne and several other men, two in uniform and two that he thought might be Secret Service men, talked in undertones. If he had been a hero in a book, to use Mr. Conne's phrase, these officials would doubtless have been assembled about him listening to his tale, but as it was he was left quite out of the conference until, near its end, he was summoned to tell of his capture of Major von Piffinhoeffer and asked if he thought he could identify a close relation of that high and mighty personage simply by seeing him pass as a total stranger. Tom thought he might "by a special way," and explained his knowledge of breed marks and specie marks. He added, in his stolid way, that he had another idea, too. But they did not ask him what that was. One of the party, a naval officer, expressed surprise that he had ridden all the way from Cantigny and asked him if it were not true that part of the road was made impassible by floods. Tom answered that there were floods but that they were not impassible "if you knew how." The officer said he supposed Tom knew how, and Tom regarded this as a compliment. Soon, to his relief, Mr. Conne took all the papers in the case and left the room, beckoning Tom to follow him. Another man in civilian clothes hurried away and Tom thought he might be going to the dock. It seemed to him that his rather doubtful ability to find a needle in a haystack had not made much of an impression upon these officials, and he wondered ruefully what Mr. Conne thought. He saw that his arrival with the papers had produced an enlivening effect among the officials, but it seemed that he himself was not taken very seriously. Well, in any event, he had made the trip, he had beaten the ship, delivered the message to Garcia. "I got to go down and turn my grease cup before I forget it," he said, as they came out on the little stone portico again.