CHAPTER XIXJOHNNY GOES INTO ACTION
The first precaution taken by Johnny and Pant, after leaving the shed in the back garden, was to hasten to the water-front where their friends, the rough and ready mining gang, were still living in a cabin near the gasoline schooner. Selecting eight of these, Johnny detailed them to work in two shifts of four each, to lurk about the building where Mazie was being confined. They were instructed to guard every exit to the place, and, if an attempt was made by the kidnappers to change base, to put up a fight and, if possible, release Mazie.
Johnny realized that time was precious, that not one moment must be lost in going to the rescue of his girl-pal, but in this land of many soldiers and little law it was necessary to move with caution. When darkness came, with hisgang of miners and a few other hardy fellows, he could rush the place and bring Mazie away without being caught in the hopelessly entangled net of Russian law.
Pant appeared to have lost all interest in the case. He went prowling along the water-front, peering into every junk-shop he came to. What he finally pounced upon and carried away, after tossing the shopkeeper a coin, amused Johnny greatly. It was a bamboo pole, like a fishing-pole only much larger. He estimated it to be at least five inches across the base.
“Now what in time does he want of that?” Johnny asked himself.
Arrived at the Red Cross station, Pant disappeared with his pole inside an old shed that flanked the Red Cross building. Johnny saw little more of him that day. Pant went out after lunch to return with a cheap looking-glass and a glass cutter. There was an amused grin lurking about his lips as Johnny stared at him, but he said nothing; only returned to his shed and his mysterious labors.
As darkness fell, the clan gathered. The miners in full force and variously armed with rifles, automatics, knives and pick-axes came in from the water-front. Pant came out from his hiding. He carried on his back a bulky sack which did not appear to weigh him down greatly. It gave forth a hollow rattle as he walked.
“Sounds like skulls,” said one miner with a superstitious shudder.
The little band received a welcome shock as they rounded the corner of the street by the cathedral. They chanced to be beneath a flickering street-lamp when some one shouted:
“Hello there, ’ere’s the gang!”
It was Jarvis and Dave Tower. Having alighted from the balloon and procured for their exiled friends comfortable quarters in a place of refuge, they had gone out in search of Johnny Thompson, and here they had found him.
“What’s up?” demanded Dave.
Johnny told him the situation in as few words as possible, ending, “You want in on it?”
“Yer jolly right,” exclaimed Jarvis, “and ’ere’s ’ate to the bloomin’ ’eathen!”
So, strengthened by two good men, the party moved cautiously forward until they were only one block from their destination.
“Split up into two sections,” commanded Johnny in a whisper. “One party under Dave go up street beyond the place, the other under Jarvis stay down street. Pant and I will drop back into the garden and try to establish connection with the prisoner. We’ll get the general lay of things and report. If a shot is fired, that will be a signal to rush the place.”
They were away. Creeping stealthily forward, they entered the gate to the garden. Then, skulking along the wall, they made their way toward the shed where they had spent part of the previous night. Twice the hollow things in Pant’s sack rattled ominously.
“Keep that thing quiet, can’t you?” snapped Johnny. “What y’ got it for, anyway?”
“Show you in a minute,” whispered Pant.
So they crept on toward the goal. No lightsshone from these back windows. The place was dark as a tomb. Somewhere in the distance a clock slowly chimed the hour. A shiver ran over Johnny’s body. Things would happen soon.
“All I ask is five minutes; five minutes, that’s all,” whispered Pant, as he lowered his sack cautiously to the ground and unlaced its top.
Dimly through the darkness Johnny could see him draw several long objects from the bag. When the bag was empty, he began setting these objects end to end. Evidently they were fitted with sockets, for, once they were joined together, they stuck in place. He soon had them all together. Johnny surmised that this was the reconstructed bamboo pole with all obstructing joints taken out; but what Pant meant to do with it, he could not even guess. He watched with impatient curiosity.
“A speaking tube,” he whispered at last. “It’s a good idea.”
“Mebby; but that ain’t it,” breathed Pant.
“Well, whatever it is, be quick about it. Somebody out front may spill the beans anytime. If the military police rush the boys, the game’s up.”
Pant paid no attention. His movements were as steady and cautious as a cat stalking a robin.
“Now, I guess we’re about ready,” he murmured. “Be prepared for a dash. There’s stairs to the right. I may start something.” His words were short and quick. Evidently his heart was giving him trouble.
“All right,” Johnny stood on tip-toes in his agitation.
Suddenly Pant reared his tube in air. Then, to Johnny’s utter astonishment, he dropped on one knee and peered into an opening at one side of it.
“A periscope!” whispered Johnny. “But what can you see in the dark?”
For a moment Pant did not answer. His breath came in little gasps.
“She’s there,” he whispered. “She’s tied. There’s terror in her eyes. There’s something crawling on the floor. Can’t make it out. We gotta get up there quick.”
All at once a shot rang out. It came from the window. The tinkle of broken glass sliding down the bamboo tube told that the periscope was a wreck.
“Periscope’s done for. They saw,” whispered Pant. “Now for it. Up the stairs. They gave our signal. Boys will rush the place from the front. C’mon!”
They were off like a flash. Up the stairs they bounded. A door obstructed their way. Johnny’s shoulder did for that.
Crashing into the room they found a candle flaring. Two persons were struggling to free themselves from imitation dragon costumes. It had been these who frightened Mazie.
“Snap dragon!” exclaimed Johnny, seizing one of the beasts by the tail, and sending him crashing through the panels of a door.
“Snap dragon!” He sent the other through the window to the ground below.
“I’ll teach you!” He glared about him for an instant. Then his eyes fell on Mazie. Without attempting to free her, he gathered her intohis arms and fairly hurled her through the door where he and Pant had entered. Then he took his stand in front of it.
He was not a moment too soon, for now the place was swarming with little yellow men. In the light of the candle, their faces seemed hideously distorted with hate. At once Johnny went into action. His right took a man under the chin. No sound came from him save a dull thud. A second went jibbering over the window-sill. A third crashed against the plaster wall. Pant, too, was busy. Everywhere at once, his wicked little dagger gleamed. But, suddenly, two of the strongest sprang at him, bearing him to the floor.
Leaping at these, Johnny gripped them by their collars and sent them crashing together. His breath was coming in hoarse gasps. He could stand little more of this. Where were the boys?
As if in answer, there came the crash of arms on a door and Jarvis burst into the room. He was followed by the whole gang.
“Ow-ee! Ow-ee!” squealed the yellow men. “The white devils!”
In another moment the room was cleared of fighters. Only three of the enemy remained. They were well past moving.
“Pitch ’em after ’em,” roared Johnny. “Tell the cowards to carry away their wounded.”
The wounded men were sent sliding down the stairs.
“Now then, git out. Scatter. I never saw any of you before. See!”
There was a roar of understanding from the men. Then they “faded.”
Leaping to the back stairway, Johnny picked Mazie up in his arms and carried her down to the garden. Here he cut the bands that held her hands and feet.
“Can you walk?”
“Yes.”
“C’mon then. Gotta beat it.”
They were away like a shot.
A half-hour later they were joking over a cup of chocolate and a plate of sweet biscuitsin the Red Cross canteen. Mazie was still dressed as a Russian peasant girl.
“I say, Mazie!” exclaimed Johnny. “You make a jolly fine-looking peasant!”
“Thanks!” said Mazie. “But if that’s the way they treat peasant girls, I prefer to be an American.”
“What did they do to you?”
“Nothing, only tried to frighten me into telling where the gold was. It’s not so much what they did as what they would have done.” She shivered.
“Did they get any of the gold?”
“Not an ounce. It’s all stowed away here at the Red Cross.”
“Good! Then we’ll have our haven of refuge yet.”
“If we live.”
“And we will.”
They lapsed into a long silence, each thinking many thoughts.
CHAPTER XXSOME MYSTERIES UNCOVERED
The days that followed were busy ones for Johnny Thompson and Mazie. The tumult in the city had died away. There was a chance for work. Feed must be bought for the cattle from Mongolia; the hotel was to be rented. Through the good services of the Red Cross, the most needy of the refugees were to be assembled, and, when the ship from China arrived, the work of unloading was to be directed.
Several busy days had passed before Johnny had time to think of looking up his gang. At this moment he was seated at the head of a seemingly endless table on each side of which was an array of pinch-faced but happy children.
When he started out to find the men the first one he came upon was Dave Tower. Davebegan telling him of the strange case of the professor who had been with the Orientals at the mines, and had drifted north with them in the balloon.
“His mind seems all right now and he is well as any man could be, but he either cannot or will not tell us a thing of his life with the Orientals up there at the mines,” said Dave. “There are some things we would all like to know. Strange case, I’d call it.”
“Yes, but there have been stranger. Say!” Johnny slapped him on the shoulder. “You bring him around to headquarters to-night. I’ve got an idea.”
“Righto. We’ll be there. So long till then.”
When Dave arrived with the professor, he found that the stage had been set for a moving-picture show. He was glad of that; it had been months since he had seen one. He was hardly prepared, however, for the type of show it was to be.
The room was darkened. Beside him, sat the professor. There came the peculiar snap-snapof the carbons as the power came on. The next instant a dazzling light fell upon the screen, and out into that light there moved a half-score of little yellow men. Some were working industriously at a machine which cut cubes of earth from the bank before them. Others were carrying the cubes away and piling them.
Professor Todd moved uneasily. He put his hands to his eyes, as if to shut out the scene. Then unexpectedly he cried out, as if in pain:
“My head! My head! He struck me.”
“Who struck you?”
Dave looked about. There was no one near them.
“The yellow man; he struck me,” cried the professor. Then he covered his face with his hands and his body swayed back and forth with suppressed emotion.
Johnny moved silently toward them.
“It’s coming back to him. When he regains control of himself, he will know everything. It was the flash of light and the familiar scene that did it. Of course, you know that is the film hesent out to us when he was a prisoner in the mine.”
What Johnny said was quite true. When the man was again in the cool out-of-doors, he was able to give a full account of his life with the Orientals. They had made him prisoner because they feared to have him at large. Other white men might appear, as indeed they had, and he might reveal their plans. He had known in a vague sort of way that some mysterious deathtrap had been set in Mine No. 1, and when, through a crack in the wall to his prison, he saw the white men arrive, he determined to attempt to warn them. This he did by singing songs to the Orientals and, at the same time, making phonographic records to be sent rolling down the hill later.
“But you don’t actually know how Frank Langlois was killed?” There was disappointment in Dave’s tone.
“No, I do not,” said the professor.
“Oh, as to that,” said Johnny. “Didn’t Pant tell you?”
“Pant? I haven’t seen Pant since the fight to save Mazie.”
“Isn’t he with the bunch?”
“No—nor hasn’t been. Jarvis says his goggles were smashed in the fight. Says he saw him without them. No one’s seen him since.”
“You don’t think they got him?”
“Not Pant. He can’t be got, not by a mere band of Orientals. But what’s this he told you about Langlois?”
“Oh! He stayed up there, you know. He went into Mine No. 1 and prowled round a bit. Found where the yellow bunch had run a high-tension insulated wire through a crevice in the rock to the head of that pool into which Langlois drove his pick. They ran a second wire to the base of the pool and connected the two to a heavy battery circuit. They had discovered that the pool rested upon a chalk rock which was good insulation. There was, therefore, no ground to it. But the damp spot on which Langlois was standing when he swung the pickwas grounded. The minute he struck the pool the whole current passed through his body.”
“Electrocuted!”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s settled,” said Dave, after a moment’s reflection. “Now what about Pant? Where is he?”
“Let’s go ask the gang.”
In a little cabin close to the water-front, they found the gang. They were all there but Pant.
“Where’s Pant?” asked Johnny.
“On his way to America,” said one of the men. “Saw him on the steamer not a half hour ago. He told me to tell you he’d left the gold for you up at the Red Cross.”
“Have his goggles on?”
“Nope.”
“And his eyes?” The men, leaning forward eagerly, listened for the answer to this question.
“Steamer was pullin’ out; I was too far away to see ’em.”
“Oh!” The men sank back in disgust.
“As for that,” said Jarvis, “I seen ’im plainenough the night of the scrap. ’E’d ’ad ’is goggles smashed to bits. I saw ’is eyes plain as I see yours.”
The men leaned forward again.
“An’,” Jarvis went on, “an’ ’ope I may die for it, if ’e ain’t got one panther eye. I saw the pupil of it shut up in the light just like a cat’s.”
“You’ll die for it, or say you’re wrong, anyway, about the panther part,” smiled Johnny.
“D’ y’ mean to say I lied?” demanded Jarvis hotly.
“Not exactly that. You saw what you expected to see, that’s all. As far as the panther part is concerned, you’re dead wrong.”
All eyes were now turned on Johnny.
“You see,” he smiled, “the pupil of a panther’s eye does not contract to a line in the light as a house cat’s does. It contracts to a smaller circle, just as yours and mine do. Go consult your encyclopedia. Ask any hunter of big game, or keeper of a zoo, and he’ll tell you that I’m right.”
The laugh was plainly on Jarvis, and he got it from everyone.
“All the same,” he maintained stoutly, “that don’t prove that Pant ain’t got a cat’s eye, an’ you all know ’e ’as or ’e’s a devil. ’E can see in the dark.”
There was no disputing this point, and there the argument dropped.
Two months later, having got the haven of refuge well established and turned over to the management of the Red Cross, Johnny and Mazie were on a Pacific liner bound for America. Johnny might return at some future time to the Seven Mines, but for the present he had had quite enough of Russia.
The gang were all on board. With Dave went two persons—the beautiful young exiled Russian girl and her mother.
As the steamer lost the last glimpse of land, Johnny drew from his pocket a wireless message he had received that morning. It read:
“Come over. Get in on something good. Secret Service and a three-ring circus, Pant.”
“Secret Service and a three-ring circus,” repeated Johnny. “Sounds pretty good. Worth looking up. Pant’s a queer one. Bet he’s found something different and mysterious. I’ll bet on that.”
He had. But this story must be told in our next volume.