“The pity is,” his voice dropped to a low rumble, “that some of our fellow men go over from time to time to join the enemy. It’s a shame and a disgrace. It’s such traitors as these that are keeping Johnny and me awake nights now, as you know all too well,” he said turning to Mazie.
“Wha—what’s that?” exclaimed the girl.
A yellow light had leaped up, over and down, up, over and down. An instrument had begun to chatter.
“It’s the first alarm; close in,” said the Chief. “May be serious; may be only a false alarm.”
“Barney & Kuhl warehouse, 18th and Michigan,” the operator droned into the receiver, “18th and Michigan, the Barney & Kuhl warehouse.”
A moment later, like an echo, his message came back to him through the megaphone.
“That’s a big place. May be serious. I hope not, though. I——”
The chief’s speech was checked by the stutter of an instrument.
Leaping toward the instrument he seized the narrow white tape which, moving out from the instrument, was marked with red dots and dashes.
“The second alarm,” he murmured. “Looks bad. Marshal Neil signs. He’s one of our best. Companies 1, 17, 42, 71 and 98 go out on the call. That makes ten companies in all.
“Leaves a rather large area unprotected.” His brow wrinkled as he studied the broad dark spot on the map.
For a moment he stood there as if in deep thought. Then, to the operator:
“Finley, call 3, 10, 14, 21 and 104 to the positions of the companies just called out.”
Instantly there came the flash of a light, the clatter of instruments, and the thing was done. Well done, too, for a moment later, into the startled silence of the room, came the clatter of the third alarm.
“The third alarm. Five more companies. I must go!” exclaimed the Chief. “Will you go, Johnny? It may be your chance.”
“And Mazie?” asked Johnny.
“Crowd her in,” grumbled the Chief.
A moment later they were speeding southward.
Down deserted streets they sped, past groups of night prowlers, round corners, by slow-moving milk wagons, their gong ever clearing the way.
“Strange,” murmured the Chief, straining his eyes ahead. “Don’t see much smoke. No blaze. No blaze. Mighty queer.”
Then as they whirled around a corner the whole truth came to him in a flash. He had been tricked. Three alarms had been turned in; three, and every one of them afalse alarm! The perpetrator knew what Marshal Neil signed. He knew the call. Before them, lined up for three blocks, was a red row of fire fighting trucks, but no fire.
“It’s a plot,” the Chief muttered through tight set teeth. “I wonder what it means?”
He had not long to wait, for the answer came quickly. This broad area had been cleared of fire fighting equipment that a clean break might be given to another blaze that had been set. Certainly this must be true, for even as they stood there wondering they heard the distant siren of a fire engine.
“It’s the reserves I called up!” the chief exclaimed. “Thank God for them. They have answered the alarm of the real fire. Soon we will all be on our way. Straight ahead!” he exclaimed to his driver.
The car shot ahead and in less than a moment they were amongst the throng of bewildered fire fighters.
“It’s a real fire and a bad one,” said the Chief two minutes later as they came for the first time that night in sight of a furnace-like glow.
“That,” exclaimed the Chief, turning to Johnny, “is one of yours. It’s the old Garrity School.”
“That’s right,” Johnny answered. “It’s not a school now; sort of a social center for downtown folks. The fire starts in the office as usual.”
“Sure enough it does. You’re a wizard.”
“No need to be a wizard to tell that. This is the fourth fire on city property and every one started near the office. Time we were learning something from that one fact, something about how the fires are set. I dug up a bit of evidence in that last fire; couple of wires in——”
“You won’t learn much about this fire until it’s burned out,” broke in the Chief. “Look at her shooting toward the sky. That dirty trick they played us lost us time.” He leaped from the car and was at once in the midst of it, quietly issuing orders.
“Going to be bad,” he said to Marshal Neil. “If we save the Simons Building we’ll be in luck. Wind’s strong from the lake. It’s fireproof, but has no shutters. Full of furniture, new furniture. Burn like stove wood. Get all the lines you can spare playing on that side. Beat it back if you can.”
“Corigon,” he turned suddenly to the driver, “go send in another alarm. Call up the fire boat. She’s got twelve lines. It’s pretty far to the river, but she’ll do in an emergency.
“Neil, tell the boys to get up the fire tower. Clear the Simons Building. Not many people in there, I guess. Some cleaners, though. Better be safe. She’ll go fast if she goes.”
Therewerepeople in the Simons Building; three at least—Johnny, Mazie and the pink-eyed man whom Johnny suspected of being the firebug. Johnny and Mazie had left the car and had been skirting the engines for a better look at the fire when Johnny had suddenly brought Mazie up with a shrill whisper:
“There he is!”
“Who?”
“The fire—the—the pink-eyed man.”
“Where?”
“There. He’s just crossing the street. I believe—yes, yes. C’mon.”
In imminent danger of being run down by a fire engine, they darted across the street and into the Simons Building.
“You wait here in the corridor,” whispered Johnny. “He went in. I saw him. Want to shadow him.”
“No. I might lose you. I—I’ll go along.”
“C’mon, then.”
On tiptoes they explored the corridors. Then, having found no sign of the man, and having come upon an unlocked stairway door, they started up.
There were no open doors at the second, third or fourth floors, nor at the fifth, nor sixth. Johnny had about decided to turn back when he discovered the seventh floor door stood ajar.
Tip-toeing silently forward, they entered the corridor, a long tunnel-like affair extending as far as they could see, both to the right and left, and lighted only by some small red lamps.
“Down this way. I heard him,” Mazie whispered.
At that identical instant Johnny actually caught sight of a movement in the opposite direction. Without thinking that his companion would do other than follow, he tip-toed down the corridor.
The person, whoever he was, moved silently down the hall to at last suddenly disappear through a door or a side hall to the left. Stealthily Johnny followed on. As for Mazie, being actually confident of her discovery of the person and supposing as a matter of course that Johnny would follow her, she had gone tip-toeing in the opposite direction.
She had not gone a dozen paces when, on hearing a sound at her left, she found herself looking down a corridor darker than the first and which ran off at right angles to the one she was following.
By this time she had discovered that Johnny had vanished; but lured on by slight sounds and spurred forward by the tang of adventure, she followed on down this corridor, then turned into another one to the right, and after that a great way to the left again. When at last she came up square against a door at the end of this last corridor and found that there was no right nor left for her now, she began dimly to sense the fact that she was lost.
She did not realize this in all its fullness until she had started to retrace her steps. Then, to her consternation, she discovered three corridors running to the right.
“Three,” she whispered as her heart skipped a beat, “and which one was it that I came down?”
At that precise moment a fresh suggestion of horror set her knees trembling. Her delicate nostrils had detected smoke! There could be no doubt about it!
“The fire’s just across the street,” she thought, “and the wind is right this way. This building may be on fire at this very moment.”
Her only thought now was of escape. But what was the way out?
She thought of the door at the end of the hall.
“Probably opens on a stair,” she told herself.
It did, but the stair went up, not down. By this time, quite thoroughly frightened, she took the up-going stairs. She had climbed three flights before she realized her folly. At that time she found herself at a door leading down the corridor.
“Follow it to a stairway that is open all the way down,” she told herself.
She had gone a hundred feet or more when light from a room attracted her attention.
There was, she found, no lamps lit in the room. The light entered through the window—the glow of the fire.
Impulsively she rushed to the window and threw up the sash. The sight that struck her eye staggered her like a blow upon the head. Dizzy depths below was the street where the struggling firemen toiled, and half way up to where she stood, and off a hundred or more feet to the right, her own building was belching forth flames.
“How—how am I ever to escape!” she breathed as she dropped limply by the window sill.
All this time Johnny Thompson had not been idle. The clue he followed had led him at last to a room that was open, and in that room he had found, not the man of the pink eyes, but an Italian cleaner waxing the floor. He at once warned the man to leave the building.
Chagrined at his failure to locate his man, he turned about to look for Mazie. Then, for the first time, he knew they were separated.
Realizing the danger of remaining in this building too long, he hastened back over his trail. Having come to the place where they had been separated, he made his way first to the right, then to the left. Calling her name, but receiving no reply, he wandered back and forth for some time. Then, catching the first faint sign of smoke, he hurried back to the head of the stairway and fairly flew down it. He was going for aid. A number of searchers might find her where one would fail.
Into the street, thronged now with firemen, laced and interlaced by lines of hose, soaked and slippery with water, for some time he found no one whom he could feel sure was in charge of men. At last he came upon Marshal Neil. The Marshal was kindly, but inflexible.
“Men have been sent to warn workers out of the building,” he said. “Doubtless they will come upon the girl and bring her down. No others can be spared.”
Sick at heart, Johnny was about to retrace his steps and again enter the building when an exclamation from the man nearest him attracted his attention. The man was not a fireman. Johnny recognized him instantly as the cause of all his present trouble. It was the pink-eyed man. But, having followed the man’s upward glance, he saw that which drove all other thoughts out of his mind. There, in the tenth story window, waving her arms frantically, was Mazie.
What had happened? Simply this: As calmly as her wildly throbbing brain would permit her, Mazie had made her way down every corridor that suggested a possible exit. She had found only two. These two were blocked by smoke and fire. Her only hope of escape lay through that window; a window that was far above the reach of the tallest ladder.
Johnny was struck dumb. How was she to be saved?
“Why not send the monkey up?” calmly suggested the pink-eyed man.
Johnny stared at him blankly. What could the man mean? He must be a madman.
As Johnny thought of this the man began dragging a large ball of strong hempen twine from his pocket.
“Send him up with the end of this,” he said, as calmly as if he had been suggesting tying a parcel with it. At the same time he gave a sidewise nod toward Jerry, the monkey mascot of the hook and ladder company.
Instantly Johnny was at the side of the truck. Here was a chance, though a slim one.
“Did Jerry ever scale a wall?” he asked of the driver.
“Many’s the time. Guess he must’a belonged to an organ grinder.”
“Would he take the end of this to her?” asked Johnny, looking up at the window.
“Mebby. Then what?”
“We’d attach the lower end to a rope from the emergency wagon.”
“And then what?”
“She’d draw up the rope, attach it to something inside the room, and come on down.”
“Hand over hand?”
Johnny nodded.
“A girl?”
“Yes, a girl!” Johnny shouted fiercely. “She’s a girl, but not the soft kind. She’s got nerve, Mazie has. And when she was a kid she could climb a rope. I know. She was my pal. She’s not forgotten how. Question is, are you going to send Jerry up?”
“Sure I am.”
The driver climbed down from his wagon with alacrity, then working his way through the scorching heat to a place beneath the window, he looked up to the window where the girl was plainly visible, patted Jerry on the head, and said:
“See her up there? It’s roasted chestnuts and a box of chocolates fer you if you get up to her.”
With almost human intelligence the little creature took the cord firmly in his teeth and with a leap was away, scurrying up from window ledge to window ledge, making progress where even a squirrel would not have attempted to go.
Mazie, on her part, could not so much as guess what was going on below. She was trapped. They knew that. They would save her if it was humanly possible. She knew that, too. She had caught the bright gleam of the monkey’s cap as he was carried to the wall, but what could the monkey have to do with her rescue?
Strangely enough, in this moment of excitement and great danger, she felt a desire to sing. It often happens that way. And the songs that came to her mind were songs of peace.
“I have a sweet peace that is calm as a river,” she sang softly.
And then:
“I tell Him all that troubles me,I tell Him what amays;And so we walk together,My——”
“I tell Him all that troubles me,
I tell Him what amays;
And so we walk together,
My——”
Her song broke short off. Had she seen a vision? No, there it was again, Jerry’s jaunty red cap bobbing down there above a window, half way between her own window and the ground.
It was strange what a comfort she found in the company of such a small creature, for he truly was company. Was he not much closer to her than any other living thing? Even as she watched, the monkey drew nearer, leaping from ledge to ledge, climbing higher and higher.
Without in the least understanding what it all meant, Mazie found her heart in her mouth as the dauntless little creature, leaping from a window sill, caught a stone ledge with but one hand, balanced there for a second as if about to fall, and then threw himself with a fine show of skill to another and wider ledge where he might pause an instant for breath.
An instant only, then he was at it again, climbing, climbing. Clawing here, leaping there, swinging to a window, up—up—up, until at last, with a sigh of relief, the girl seized him and dragged him in.
The instant she saw the end of the string she understood and hope came ebbing back.
Not a second was to be lost. The fire, which was working toward the center of the building and up, was now only four windows to the right and five down. Had the building not been fireproof it would have burned like a torch. As it was, the fire, fed by the contents of offices and store-rooms, worked its way from room to room.
Rapidly she drew in the cord, and with it the rope attached to the end. When at last she held the end of the rope in her hand she carried it to a heavy table and wrapped it about the top. Then she dragged the table to the window.
At once the monkey, as if to show her the way, went scampering down the rope.
All this had taken time. When at last the girl, with a little prayer for protection on her lips, gripped the rope firmly and glanced down, she saw that fire had burst forth from the window two rows to her right and six stories down. Would the window directly beneath her soon be belching flames? Would it burn off the rope before she had reached the ground?
Panic seized her for an instant. Then, calmly, she finished the song she had begun a moment before:
“And so we walk togetherMy Lord and I.”
“And so we walk together
My Lord and I.”
Then, calm as a May morning, she wrapped her feet about the rope and began the descent, hand over hand, right, left, right, left. It was painfully slow, but there was no other way. To slip was to come to a terrible death.
The strain on Mazie’s arms as she let herself down the rope which hung from the window of the burning building seemed greater than she could bear; but with the grim determination of near despair she worked her way down, hand over hand, hand over hand.
The palms of her hands burned like fire. In spite of her greatest efforts her hands slipped a little, an inch here, an inch there, and the effect of these slips was like the grasping of a red hot iron.
One window she passed in safety, another and another. As she reached the sill of the fourth her feet touched it. With a dizzy faintness she steadied herself there and looked down.
The sight that met her eyes was appalling. The window directly under her belched forth a sudden burst of red flame. Then, as the wind shifted, the flames were sucked in again. Was there hope in that? No. The rope had caught fire!
Clinging desperately to her place, she hoped for a clearer moment of consciousness—and was granted it.
Calmly she looked down. What was to be done? She dared not pass that window. A sudden burst of flame would destroy her. Besides, she could not. The rope was all but burned in two.
For a time, because of the smoke, she could not see below. Then of a sudden it cleared and she saw firemen ranged around a white circle directly under her.
“A net,” she breathed.
At the same instant she heard Johnny Thompson’s booming voice:
“Go down the rope as far as you dare, then drop.”
“Drop?” she echoed, “how can I?”
Then, as if to mock her, smoke shut off her view and in the center of the smoke were darting red flames.
“I can, and I will!” she breathed through tight set teeth. With hands that ached she gripped the rope and began once more that agonizing hand over hand descent.
Having gone as far as she dared, she dangled for ten seconds in midair. At that instant she caught the sound of Johnny’s voice:
“It’s all right, Mazie. Drop!”
He could not see her, but he knew she was there. A lump rose and stuck in her throat. Then, with a little upward swing of her feet, she let go.
It was all over in one wild instant. Smoke, fire, a mad rush, then a sudden springy shock, followed by an upward toss, a second bump, and then Johnny Thompson was helping her support herself on her unsteady feet.
“That,” said Johnny, “was a very narrow squeak.”
Hardly had Johnny led Mazie to the emergency wagon, where her hands were treated and bandaged, than his mind was once more at work on his problem—the origin of this fire and of all those other fires. It was not that he was unmindful of the welfare of his friend—Johnny was one of the best of friends—but the problem was assuming gigantic proportions. But for the fireproof building standing directly in its way, this very fire, Marshal Neil had assured him, would have swept across the city for a mile and would have left ten thousand homeless ones in its wake.
“The man who sets these fires,” Johnny said to himself savagely, “has no heart, and no sense. What could be his motive? What could the city have done to him bad enough to deserve such a revenge? What could the people of the city have done? Somehow, somewhere, we must find him!”
He thought of the pink-eyed man. In the excitement of the rescue he had lost him. Nor could he find him now, though he searched diligently for an hour.
“I’ll visit his place down there by the river,” he told himself. “I may discover something there.”
He had given up the search and, having returned to Mazie’s side, was standing watching the firemen as they battled with the blaze which at last was giving way before them. Then he noticed a man within the lines who did not wear a fireman’s uniform.
“Queer looking chap,” he whispered to Mazie, pointing as he spoke.
The man did look queer. He was an extraordinarily tall man and stooped almost to the point of deformity. His nose was large and hooked like a beak. He limped slightly as he walked. His clothing fitted loosely. His stiff hat was dented in three places.
“See here, you!” said a policeman, stepping up to him, “you can’t stay inside the line.”
“Dot’s all right, mister.” The man showed his white teeth in a grin, but it wasn’t a pleasant grin.
“You’ll have to go outside the line.”
“Dot’s fair enough, mister.” The man moved away. As he passed Johnny and Mazie he shot them a piercing glance. Even after he had gone back to the line of staring spectators, Johnny felt that his gaze held something of hatred for him. What was the meaning of that look? How had the man gotten within the lines, where only firemen were allowed? What had he wanted there? He resolved to keep an eye out for that man in the future. It was well that he did—very well indeed.
After seeing the fire under control and putting Mazie in a taxi, Johnny went directly down to the river front. After following a narrow walk at the river’s brink for some little distance, he stopped to flatten himself against the wall close to the door.
“This is the place,” he whispered to himself.
The spot he occupied was completely in shadows. The night was dark. The uncertain light from the distant bridge lamps did not reach him. A person standing ten feet away could not have seen him. He was at the entrance to the building which he supposed to be occupied by the pink-eyed man. He had hurried to the place as rapidly as possible in the hope that the man was still out and that returning to his lair he might reveal something of himself.
As Johnny stood there in the shadows he could catch the gleam of reflected light on the surface of the river. The sight charmed him. A slow, deep, dirty, sullen sort of stream, was that river. Flowing between walls of brick, stone and cement, where once it had meandered across a great sweep of marshes, it seemed a prisoner chafing at his bonds.
As Johnny pictured the marshes, whose rushes had waved over the very spot where he now stood, he thought of other marshes south of the city where in hours of idleness, or at times when he wished to think unmolested, he at times poked a flat-bottomed boat down the narrow channels that ran between the rushes.
“It’s a great place to think things through,” he told himself. “If nothing comes of this I’ll go down there to-morrow afternoon.
“Yes, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll sleep till noon, then catch the twelve-thirty train out there.”
For an hour he waited there in the darkness. Then, growing restless, he gave up hope of the man’s return and decided to do a little investigating.
Drawing a small flashlight from his pocket he lighted his way down a narrow passage that lay between this building and the one next to it.
On this side, rather high up, he discovered a small, square window, but large enough to let a person through. Down the passage he saw two discarded packing boxes. Working silently, he put one box on the other, then climbed on top. He was now on a level with the window. Flashing his light on the panes, he found them too dirty to see through. Laying his flashlight on the top of the box, he tried the window and to his surprise found it unfastened. It swung in at his touch like a door on hinges. At the same moment he felt a slight movement at his knee, then heard a thud.
“My flashlight!” he grumbled. “Rolled off. Just have a feel inside anyway.”
Swinging his feet over the sill, he sat there for a moment thinking. Should he enter. If he did, what would he discover? Would he be in danger?
To his surprise he found that his feet touched something and without thinking much of what he was doing he stood up. The next instant, with a rolling and a crashing that was appalling, the whole world appeared to sink and go thundering down beneath him.
A moment later, his nostrils filled with dust and with something resting on his chest, he lay quite still and listened.
He caught a faint sound but concluded it was only scurrying wharf rats. After that the place was so quiet that he fancied he could hear the settling of the dust.
What had happened? What was this on his chest?
He laughed silently to himself as he put out a hand to touch it. A barrel—that was all it was, an empty barrel. He sensed what had happened in an instant. He had stood upon the top of a pyramid of empty barrels. The bottom of the pyramid had caved in and the whole heap had gone thundering, carrying Johnny along.
Two minutes later he was stealing out of the passage. He had had quite enough of that place for one night.
Three o’clock next day found him in the center of a marsh whose dark waving bullrushes stretched away for a mile or more in every direction. With his coat for a pillow he lay sprawled out the length of his flat bottomed boat. A pair of oars and long pole lay at his side. These would bring him back to shore when he chose to come. A cold leg of chicken, a swiss cheese sandwich, a piece of apple pie and a bottle of milk would appease hunger when hunger came. He was at peace with the world and quite prepared to solve all the problems of the universe with which he had anything definite to do.
It was a dreamy day. White clouds moved slowly across the sky. Cobwebs floated in air. Now and again a gentle breeze made a softly sighing sound in the rushes. Just as he was dreaming himself off into a cat nap a dark shadow passed over him, then broke suddenly into a hundred little shadows that were not shadows at all.
Surprised by this phenomena, which he had felt rather than seen, he opened his eyes. What he saw was a large flock of black birds. Contrary to their usually noisy custom, as if to avoid disturbing the Sabbath quiet of the place, they settled every one upon a swaying bullrush without so much as a single “O-ka-lee.”
“Good old birds!” Johnny sighed. And well he might, for beyond doubt they had been directed there by the all seeing eye that they might, in a very short time, be instrumental in saving his life—or at least in giving him a fighting chance.
Knowing nothing of this, he settled back into his place and once more closed his eyes. These nights of fire chasing had cost him much sleep.
This time he had fallen quite asleep when, with a start, he found himself sitting bolt upright.
It was the action of the birds that had wakened him. With a shrill cry of alarm the birds had leaped from their swaying perches and had flown away.
“Now I wonder—” Johnny murmured to himself.
He was given scarcely ten seconds to wonder, for of a sudden a shot rang out and a bullet whizzed so close to his cheek that he felt the sting of it.
“That was meant for me!” Johnny breathed tensely.
The next instant he lay flat on his back, his trembling hands gripping the pole.
“Got to get out of here,” he thought. “Got to get out quick, and got to do it lying down.”
Even as the pole silently touched the water, then sank to grip the bottom, he speculated on his chance of escape. He was unarmed. At times he had brought a shot gun to the marsh. Not to-day. There were no ducks—to early in the season.
“Only chance is to lose him,” was his mental comment as he drove the boat forward into the channel. At the same time he felt an almost uncontrollable desire to see the face of the man who had fired the shot. He had a notion that were he an artist he could paint the man’s picture, even though he did not see him. In this he probably was mistaken.
As Johnny gave the pole at the side of the boat a vigorous shove, then another and another, he found no time for thoughts other than directing the silent maneuvering of his clumsy bark. A prod or two on this side, then as the boat swung to the right the same number of pokes on the other side, and he moved silently down the narrow channel. A division in the narrow course was greeted with delight. If the man who had fired that shot was following he could not follow both channels at once.
“That gives me a fifty-fifty chance of escape,” Johnny thought as he chose the right fork.
It is hard work, this poling a boat while lying flat on one’s back. Johnny found himself perspiring at every pore. Yet he persevered, and his perseverence was rewarded for, as he moved slowly forward, he came to a place where the channel was cut squarely across by another.
“A four corners,” he rejoiced. “I might go straight ahead, or to the right or left. The natural thing to do would be to turn right, so I go left.”
Skilfully he maneuvered the turn and went gliding down the new channel.
Ten minutes later, still lying on his back and looking up at the clouds, he lifted his pole without a sound into the boat and then allowed himself time to think matters through.
Who was this intruder upon his privacy; this would-be killer? What had been his motive? Was he connected with the firebug affair? It would seem so, for in this city Johnny had not gone against the wishes of anyone save that firebug.
“Well, old boy,” he whispered, setting his teeth tight, “you’ll not get me, and what’s more, give me time and I’ll bring your dishonorable occupation to a sudden halt. See if I don’t!”
For a time after that he lay there looking up at the slow moving clouds, but they brought him no peace. He was annoyed at the situation that had so suddenly presented itself. He had come here to think things through; yet how does one dare to engage in an all absorbing chain of thought when at any moment some form of craft may come gliding in upon him and—bam! his head is blown off!
Manifestly there was no thinking to be done. What then was to be his course?
“Shall I lie here baking in the sun till dark, then sneak away home? Hanged if I do!” he exploded almost out loud. “This channel has some sort of an end that brings a fellow to shore. I’ll poke along down it and when I’m there I’ll make a break for it.”
In this undertaking he was more fortunate than he had hoped. He had not poled himself a hundred rods when he came to the piers of a low railroad bridge that crossed the swamp.
“Huh, easy enough,” he breathed.
Sitting up, he drove his boat under the bridge and out on the other side. After that, knowing that the embankment must hide him from the enemy if he were still on the marsh, he stood boldly up, poled his boat to shore, drew her up beside the railway, then crept up the bank to peer over at the other half of the marsh. He was now well above the tops of the rushes and could plainly see every foot of the marsh.
“Huh, fellow’d say I dreamed all that,” he grunted. The place was completely deserted. Even the black birds were gone.
Off on the far side of the marsh he made out a shack he had never seen there before. A rude black frame set on posts, it seemed oddly like some dark ghost of a house that had walked to the edge of the swamp in the hope of seeing its reflection in the water.
“I wonder if that shack’s got anything to do with—anything,” he mused.
Even as he thought this a man came out of the place and walking around a corner of the house disappeared at the back. He was a large man; that Johnny could tell plainly enough. And it seemed that the man limped slightly. But of that he could not be sure, the distance being too great.
It was a thoughtful Johnny who walked back down the track to the nearest station, then took the train for the city. Matters were getting serious, very serious indeed, and he had not thought things through at all.
“I must go over to the scene of that last fire,” he told himself. “Do it as soon as I get to the city. May learn something there.”
He did go there. It was night when he arrived. The great, black, burned out skeleton of the Simons Building loomed above him as he searched, and its vacant window holes stared at him like the empty sockets of a skull. Somehow they seemed to accuse him of slowness and stupidity. He fairly flinched beneath their stare.
His search did not last long. Where the office of the one time recreation center had been was now a twenty foot pile of smouldering rafters, plaster and brick.
“Nothing to be learned there,” he murmured as he turned away.
At that same moment he caught sight of a dark shadow that flitted past the corner of the Simons skeleton, and after that he distinctly caught a chuckle which ended in well formed words:
“This is only the beginning.”
Johnny shuddered. But courage did not desert him. With a dash he was around that corner. His bravery was to no avail. If there had been a figure there other than a ghost, it had vanished. Nor did a careful search reveal any living creature.
“Only the beginning,” he murmured at last. “This calls for hustle. In the future I shall use different methods. If I see a suspicious character, the pink-eyed man or the man with hooked nose and limp, I shall have him arrested and look for a reason after. But maybe I won’t see them again.”
That night brought good fortune. As the clock struck twelve, Johnny was walking through the zoological garden and there, quite by chance, ran square into what was to prove to be one of the most spectacular fires of history.
“Fire! Fire! Fire!” came ringing out upon the night.
One sweep of the horizon, then a surprised exclamation escaped Johnny’s lips. “The Zoo is on fire!” He then made a dash for it.
Fortunately he was not far away; most opportune, too, was the fact that he knew a great deal about the Zoo. Endowed with a natural interest in all living creatures, especially those of strange lands, he had many times visited this particular place.
He knew at a glance just where the fire had its origin. The building was extremely long and low. Birds and beasts were arranged in order according to size. First the monkeys, then wolves, hyena and the like; then lions, tigers and all other large creatures. At the extreme west end were two large rooms inhabited by no living thing. One room was a sort of office used by the keeper and the other a store room for a great quantity of material of anthropological interest, mostly from the Arctic. This material, no longer upon display, lay heaped pile upon pile; garments, blankets, spears, harpoons—all dry as dust and food for flames. It was in this store room that the fire was already fiercely raging.
“Perhaps there is yet time,” Johnny panted as he came racing up.
“Time for what?” demanded a policeman who had arrived before him. “Where’s the fire department?”
“They’ll be here in a moment.” Johnny tried the office door. It was locked. With a spring he was away, then back, shoulder first, at the door with a blow that splintered a panel.
“Here, don’t do that!” shouted the policeman, springing forward.
He was a second too late, for Johnny had once more rammed the door. The door went in, and he with it.
The thing he did then would have seemed strange had there been anyone by to see it. The fire, already bursting through the partitions, scorched his face and hands, but into the smoke he plunged, to drag away, not some object of great value, but a very ordinary desk telephone. Gripping the wires of the phone he yanked them free, then with this trophy under his arm he made a dash for safety.
Under the screen of smoke he escaped the eye of the policeman. Having hurried to the edge of some bushes, he examined the thing under his arm for a moment, then with a grumbled: “I thought so,” began coiling the wire about the phone.
Having done this, he shoved the whole affair far under the bushes, then turned his face again toward the fire.
By this time the tumult was appalling. Vying with the shrill scream of approaching fire sirens and the clamor of gongs, was the mad roar of frightened lions and tigers, while above it all sounded the wild trumpeting of the elephants.
“It’s going to be a terrible fire,” Johnny shivered. “Too terrible to tell.”
At that moment he darted suddenly forward. He felt sure he had recognized a familiar stooping figure in the gathering throng. Johnny had decided that it was about time to begin making a few arrests and ask questions later.
One moment Johnny sighted the familiar, stooping figure, the next he had lost him in the throng which appeared to have sprung up from the ground. However, he did not despair of finding him again. As for the fire, it was now none of his affair. Terrible as it promised to be, he could do nothing to stop it. That was the firemen’s part. Already they were stretching their hose. After a single thought given to the safety of the trophy he had hidden under the bushes, Johnny bent his every thought and energy toward the finding of that man.
“For,” he told himself, “it may result in the unravelling of a great mystery and bring to a sudden end a series of great catastrophes.” At that he lost himself in the throng.