CHAPTER VIIIMAZIE AND THE TIGER

With the firemen came Mazie. She had gone to the central alarm station in the hope of finding Johnny there. Instead she had found the Chief. When the first and second alarms came in from the Zoo alarm box, the Chief had bundled her into his car and they had raced for the park.

Hardly had she alighted from the Chief’s car at the scene of the fire than she felt a slight touch on her shoulder and, on looking up, saw that Jerry, the firemen’s monkey mascot, was on her shoulder.

She was not surprised at this, but so pleased that tears glistened in her eyes. From the time Jerry had saved her life by bringing a rope to her in the burning building, he had apparently thought of her as his especial charge.

Seeing the Chief about to enter the burning Zoo behind the firemen with the spurting hose in their hands, Mazie took his arm to enter with him. Though he frowned at her, he did not say no. It was a terrible sight that met her eyes. Just as they entered, the fire broke through the wooden partition between the office and that portion of the Zoo set apart for birds. The fluttering and screaming of frightened birds was almost more than she could stand. Beautiful yellow canaries, brown warblers, parrots of gorgeous green, magnificent birds of paradise, tropical birds with plumage as varied as the hues of the rainbow—they one and all beat their wings against their cages and cried for freedom as they never had cried before in all their captive lives.

“And all in vain,” the girl fairly sobbed.

“It’s no use,” muttered the Chief grimly, “we may save the animals, but this part of the Zoo is doomed. C’mon. Let’s get out.”

Reluctantly the girl turned away. As she did so she saw a single yellow canary in a small cage near the door—the commonest bird in the world. Why he was there alone she could not tell. She only knew that out of all that priceless collection here was one that might be saved. Seizing the cage, she tore it from its hanging, then followed the Chief into the outer air.

“Dear little bird,” she whispered, as she hung the cage high on the limb of a tree well away from danger, “I have given you a new bit of life. May you sing long and sweetly for that.”

Once more she joined the fire-fighting throng. She was hoping all the time to come upon Johnny. This was the kind of fire he was supposed to investigate. He must be here, but where?

“He might be in there,” she thought to herself as she followed a band of fire fighters into the long, low compartment occupied by the monkey tribe. Jerry, who was still on her shoulder, let out a scream of delight at sight of so many of his kind. His scream was answered by one long wail of terror, for at that very moment a broad tongue of fire came licking through the thin wooden ceiling of the room.

“It’s the garret,” muttered the fireman. “There’s a garret running the length of the building. There’s a company coming against the fire from up there. We can probably stop it here, but this place is doomed. Unless we can get ’em out, every monkey of the lot will burn.”

There had been times when, in her dreams, Mazie had seen human faces distorted with fear, peering down from windows where flames reached out to grip them. But nothing she had ever dreamed of could be as bad as the sight of hundreds of monkeys, baboons, apes and chimpanzees, clinging to their cages and uttering plaintive cries and wild shrieks while their man-like faces were shrunken with fear.

In vain did their keepers attempt to call them down to the doors through which they might escape.

It seemed that they, like the birds, must meet a terrible death. But just when matters were at the worst, Mazie felt a tearing at the shoulder of her coat and turned to see Jerry snatched from his place there. To her surprise and consternation, she saw that the man who held the mascot tightly in his right hand was none other than the pink-eyed man whom she and Johnny suspected of being the firebug.

“Stop him!” she fairly screamed.

But she was too late. The man was already well away and up to the side of the great cage of monkeys. In his left hand he held a fireman’s axe.

The thing Mazie witnessed in the next three minutes impressed a picture on the sensitized film of her brain that she will never forget.

Holding Jerry up to the cage, the pink-eyed man allowed him to cling there for a full half minute. During that entire time the strange little creature kept up an incessant chatter that could be heard even above the screams of the frightened prisoners.

What it was he said, Mazie could not tell. She did realize that this monkey speech of his had an extraordinary effect upon the other monkeys. By the time his half minute speech was up, the screams had died down nearly to a whisper.

It was at this psychological moment that the pink-eyed man made his next move. With a single stroke of his axe he cut a perpendicular gash four feet long in the heavy wire screening of the cage. A second slash made a horizontal one quite as long. By turning out the ragged corners he made a large hole there. On the edge of this hole he placed Jerry.

Then came the astonishing thing. Jerry seemed to understand his part for, with a twist of his head toward the nearest monkey, he appeared to say: “C’mon.” Then, catching hold of the cage, he executed a swinging jump and landed on the floor. The foremost monkey in the cage followed his example, then another and another.

Calmly the pink-eyed man slashed the side of cage after cage and out of each leaped all those man-like creatures, and man-like still, as if obeying orders, they each and all joined the procession led by Jerry. The procession grew and grew and grew until at last there was not a living creature in the cages.

There arose a hoarse shout of approval from the firemen. Mazie looked around for the hero of the hour—the pink-eyed man. He had vanished!

As she made her way once more into the open air of the park that surrounded the Zoo, she found the trees full of happy chattering creatures who were enjoying to the full such freedom as they had not known for years.

For a time she stood there staring at the burning building. As she turned to go, there came a chatter from the tree above her, followed by a thud on her shoulder.

It was Jerry. With cap gone, his red coat scorched and torn, he still appeared to be the happiest monkey in all the world.

The firemen by this time had the fire somewhat under control, but the mingled sounds of screams, roars and trumpetings which came from the other end of the Zoo was all but deafening.

Having always had a desire to know how different wild animals acted under stress of danger, Mazie decided to re-enter the Zoo and pass through it until stopped by the fire. She could not do this without considerable fear and trembling, nor was this entirely unwarranted. The time was to come, and that within the next quarter of an hour, when she would regret so rash an undertaking.

In the meantime, what had become of Johnny? While all these things were happening to Mazie and her strange companion, Jerry, what success had he had in finding his man?

It is not easy to locate a particular person in a throng of five hundred or a thousand people at night. Johnny thought he knew all about that. He had entered upon just such a task more than once before. More than once, too, he had found himself baffled, beaten back by the mob, in the end defeated. This time he was determined to win.

But even as he entered into the search he asked himself seriously whether or not he had any business with the man he sought.

“I may, and I may not,” he mumbled to himself at last, “but one thing is sure—this thing has got to stop. When the police can’t pin a thing on a particular man they go out looking for suspects and bring in every suspicious looking character. That’s what I’ll have to do.”

At once his mind was at work on possibilities. Two men had come under suspicion; the pink-eyed man and the man with the hooked nose and the limp. If either was the firebug, which was it most likely to be? Johnny remembered the look he had seen on the face of the pink-eyed man the night of the school house fire. It was a look of pleasure which had seemed to say: “I set the fire. Isn’t it grand!” And yet, had he read that look correctly? One thing was sure—a moment later the look had vanished from the man’s face and he was showing an active interest in the saving of a child from the school building.

“And that,” thought Johnny, “would tend to make a fellow love him.”

“On the other hand,” he mused, “he lives in a disreputable looking place; at least I saw him go in there. And he was at that second fire. What’s he doing at every midnight fire if he has nothing to do with them?”

As for the man who limped, he had seen him at but one fire, and that time there was nothing of a suspicious character revealed other than his presence behind the lines.

“And yet I have a sneaking notion,” Johnny mused, “that it was he who shot at me out there on the marsh.”

“Not much proof for that conclusion, either,” he murmured a moment later.

His mind went back to the double telephone wires he had found in the burned schoolhouse and the one he had hidden beneath the bushes but a few moments before.

“Might be something to it,” he said suddenly and quite out loud. “Might——”

He broke short off. Over to the right he had caught sight of his man—the one who limped, and to his great joy he found the fire Chief close beside him.

“See!” he exclaimed, gripping at the Chief’s arm, “See that man! Get that man! He—he—perhaps he’s the firebug!”

The Chief made a lunge toward the man. Johnny followed. It did look too as if he had spoken the truth, for the instant the Chief made a move in his direction the suspected man was away. Not fast enough, however, to escape Johnny’s keen eye.

“This way, Chief,” he exclaimed, then dashed straight away from the fire toward the shore of the lake, whence came the dull roar of rolling breakers.

With fear in her heart Mazie again entered the burning Zoo. This was the most spectacular fire she had ever known anything about and she was determined to see it through to its very end.

Giving a wide berth to three elephants who were blowing hay in air, trumpeting and threshing madly at their chains, with a gulp of pity she passed the patient camels who, seeming resigned to their fate, stood with heads hanging low.

She shuddered as she saw the restless pacing and heard the deafening roar of lions, and started back in fear when a great black leopard leaped squarely against the bars that held him.

The bars were strong. She saw the mad creature drop back stunned, then she pressed on into the room where the firemen were doing noble battle with the flames.

“You’re winning,” she said to a grimy fireman. There was admiration in her tone.

“Yes,” he smiled, “it’ll soon be over now. But,” he added, “we wouldn’t have saved the monkeys if it hadn’t been for Jerry. He’s a wise little rascal.”

“Jerry and—and that man,” said Mazie.

“Yes; old Pinkie.”

“Who is he? Do you know him?” Mazie asked eagerly.

“No, Miss, I can’t just say I know him, but all of us have seen him often. Regular fire fan. Seems like he goes to every fire that’s of any consequence. He’s a queer one. Seems to have a heart of gold, though. I’ve seen him risk his life to save an alley cat.”

“Then he couldn’t be—” Mazie suddenly cut herself short.

“Couldn’t be what, Miss?”

Mazie didn’t answer. “How long have you seen him around fires?” she asked instead.

“Seems like it’s been three years or more. I recall the first time. It was——”

“Oh! Look!” Mazie’s eyes opened wide with terror. And well they might. A tall chimney, undermined by the fire, had come crashing down through the roof. It had not stopped at the roof but had come on through, crushing an iron cage where were imprisoned two royal Bengal tigers. So thoroughly mashed was the cage that it resembled a bird cage which has been stepped on by a large man.

“Look out!” Mazie screamed, as with a growl of rage and pain the larger of the two captives sprang through an opening, free!

And what of Johnny and the Chief? They had gone rushing after that man whom Johnny had so rashly named the firebug. He had led them straight away across a level stretch of grass, across a drive and through a clump of bushes to the shore of the lake. There, with a speed that was astonishing in so large a man who was at the same time a little lame, with cold spray drenching him, he ran on along the stone breakwater to a spot where a second breakwater ran off at a sharp angle to the first. This wall of stone which ran between two stretches of foaming water reached to a fill some distance out in the lake. It was incomplete. Only rough and jagged piles of rock marked its course; as yet there were no beams.

At such a time as this, when seas were running high, it was little less than suicide to venture out upon it; yet the mysterious man did not hesitate an instant. One second he was on the solid shore, the next he was balancing himself on a jagged pile of rocks five yards out to sea, and then he was lost to view in a cloud of spray.

The man had probably figured that his pursuers would not dare to follow. In this he was partly wrong. Johnny’s foot was on the foremost rock when the Chief’s firm hand pulled him back.

“Wait,” he rumbled, “he can’t make it. He’ll have to come back.”

They did wait, and for a time it seemed that the Chief was certainly right; that the man would never succeed in making his way to the broad stretch of filled land which ran for more than a mile along the lake front, and where he might either hide or make his way back to land over some pier or safer breakwater. But, as the spray cleared, they saw him twenty yards out, now thirty, forty, fifty, sixty. Then, for a long time, as the water boomed against the rocks, the spray completely hid the fleeing form.

Then, of a sudden, the moon came out and the spray cleared for a moment. At that moment, after sharply surveying the length of the breakwater, the Chief and Johnny turned to stare at one another.

“Gone!” said Johnny.

“Not a living thing there now.”

“He can’t have made his way to the fill.”

“Probably not. Might have.”

“If he didn’t?”

“He’s gone. Nothing could save him. No one could climb back upon that breakwater once he was washed off. May God rest his soul.”

For a full ten minutes they stood there watching the surface of the water, then turning silently about, started back toward the scene of the fire.

Many of the expected thrills and terrors of life never materialize. It was so with Mazie and the tiger. If the tiger had been roaring in a manner fit to curdle the blood of a pirate, it was because he was afraid. The instant he was free from his cage, acting for all the world like a cat that has suddenly been drenched with cold water, he went slinking away down the long rooms of the zoo.

It was a simple enough matter to drive him into a portable cage, and there the affair ended.

An hour later, Mazie came upon the Chief, who told her of Johnny’s experience but could not inform her of his whereabouts. Failing to find him, she decided to go home.

After taking Jerry back to his master, she returned to the tree where she had placed the rescued canary. Wrapping her cape about the cage to shield the bird from the chill night air, she hailed a taxi and sped along home, content to call it a night.

Johnny was not at all convinced that the Chief was right in saying that the stooped man with the hook nose and a limp had fallen into the lake and been drowned.

“You don’t get rid of a man that easily,” he told himself. “They do it in the movies; but in real life, not once in a million times.”

The more he thought of it, the surer he became that he was right. The moon had been under a cloud for a long time, long enough for the man to have escaped over the breakwater to the made land.

“And besides,” Johnny reasoned, “he was just as likely to fall in on the side of the breakwater away from the spray as he was on the dangerous side. On that side it would have been no trick at all to swim to the shore of that made land.”

Having convinced himself that the affair would bear looking into, he retraced his steps to the lake shore. The wind had gone down. The moon was shining. The breakwater appeared to offer a safe passage to the land beyond.

“I’ll chance it,” he murmured to himself.

As the reader already knows, the unfinished breakwater was composed of sharp edged limestone rock, together with broken fragments of cement taken from old sidewalks and cellar walls. To cross from shore to shore was no easy task, even now. More than once Johnny was obliged to drop on his knees to save himself a slide into the water. As he saw how perilous the passage was he was all but forced to believe that the Chief’s conclusion was correct, that the fugitive had been drowned.

“And if he did,” Johnny thought to himself, “and if he was the firebug, then this chase is ended and, what’s more, he took his secret with him to the bottom of the lake.”

This thought left him a feeling of disappointment so keen that it threw him into a fit of despondency. He knew well enough that he should be glad that the man was gone. The city would then see the end of the havoc that had added so much to the discomfort and unhappiness of its people.

“But all the same,” he told himself defiantly, “that fellow had some secret method for setting fires, an unusual and unknown method. It is decidedly disappointing, after you had been for so long a time hot on the trail, to have that secret buried from your sight forever.

“Well, what is to be, will be,” he mused as he picked his way across the final rugged stretch of cold, wet rock.

When at last his feet touched solid dry land again, his feeling that the man had certainly been drowned left him. Such experiences are not uncommon. One’s feeling toward all of life during a time of peril is always different from that which he experiences in a place of comparative safety.

Strange to say, however, Johnny was, at the moment he stepped on that made land, in greater peril than he had been at any time while crossing the slippery breakwater. Being quite unconscious of this, he struck boldly down the length of that narrow stretch of land.

It was a curious sort of island on which he stood. A city that had built skyscrapers to its very water front, becoming dissatisfied with the waterscape that lay out before it, had decided that a few islands off its shores would add to the decorative effect of its view. So, with the fearless, Titan-like soul that possesses American cities, it had decided to build islands here and there along its shores. This narrow stretch of land, a few hundred yards wide and a mile long, was their first attempt at altering the face of nature.

At the present time, like the world in its beginning, it was “without form and void.” Upon the great mounds of dripping sand raised up from the bottom by dredges, had been hauled all manner of refuse from the land. Loads of clay, great heaps of tin cans, dump loads of broken brick and mortar, caused this man made island to look like the side of a volcano after an eruption.

Johnny found it a very difficult place to walk. One moment he was climbing a mound of clay, the next he was wading knee-deep in soft sand, and after that rattling through a whole desert of tin cans.

For all that, there was a certain thrill to be had from walking there. He was upon an island. As far as he knew the island was without an inhabitant. Certainly two years before it was entirely unknown to the civilized world.

He chuckled at the thoughts he had thus conjured up. “And yet,” he laughed, “the island is within gunshot of one of the largest cities of our land.”

If he had concluded that the place was entirely deserted, he was destined to a rude and shocking disillusionment. Suddenly, out from behind a tall heap of rubbish, a large figure launched itself at him with such sure effect that it sent him crashing to the ground.

Now Johnny, as you will know well enough if you have read our other book “Triple Spies,” was not the sort of a fellow to take the count on the first down. It would have been a nimble tongued referee who could have counted three before Johnny was getting to his feet.

Thoroughly aroused and angered by this sudden, cowardly assault, he was now quite ready for trouble.

He did not have long to wait for it, either. At once the man came at him. This time someone received a surprise, and it certainly was not Johnny. Came a sound as of a wagon tongue ramming an automobile, and the huge hulk of a man who had started the row, staggered backward. Boxing was the one thing Johnny knew a great deal about. Long years ago his father had taught him a great deal about defending himself. He had added to this knowledge as the years went by.

Johnny had not the slightest doubts of his ability along these lines. But that he was in grave danger, he knew quite well. While his assailant paused before resuming the attack, he allowed himself a few darting thoughts as to how this affair would end. Who was this man? Could he be the man they had driven out upon the breakwater, or was he some tramp who had come out here to sleep? Was he armed? If he had a knife or gun the affair would probably end shortly and tragically. Was it best to run? Probably it was, but being Johnny Thompson, he did not propose to run. He’d stand his ground and fight, and since fight he must, why not on the offensive? No sooner thought than done. With muscles tense, every nerve alert, he leaped squarely at the astonished giant.

Johnny’s chance came and he took it. As the man threw up his hands in an involuntary motion to shield his face, Johnny landed a haymaker square on his chin.

There are few men who can withstand such a blow but this man appeared to be made of uncommon stuff. He staggered like a drunken man but he did not fall. The next second he set his huge fists swinging.

As Johnny stepped back he stumbled over some hard object and all but fell. The obstacle suggested a way out, but he did not take it. In this ten seconds of confused thought he was suddenly seized in a death-like grip. The man, so much heavier, bore him to the ground with a crash that all but knocked his senses out of him.

In the struggle that followed his hand was pressed against something hard at the man’s belt.

“A knife!” Johnny thought excitedly.

The next instant his hand was on the hilt. Ten seconds of struggle and he had freed the hand with the long-bladed knife gripped tight.

Wildly his heart beat. The advantage was his. Should he follow it up? One thrust, perhaps two, and the struggle would end.

A second of thought. “No! No! Not that!” Suddenly his hand shot up and out. The knife, executing the arc of a circle, clanged to the ground some distance away.

A short, tense struggle followed, then again Johnny was free.

Breathing hard, hair disheveled, face bloody, clothes torn, he backed away to allow his mind three more flashing thoughts: “What next? Fight or flee? How will it end?”

He would fight. The man might be the firebug. If he could but subdue and capture him, the prize was won. Besides, had not the man set upon him from ambush? Did he not deserve a drubbing?

Suddenly he felt a strong desire to see the man’s face. If he were the man he thought him, he would recognize him. The man’s back was to the moon. Johnny executed a flank movement, that the moon might give him a view of that face. Again he tripped and all but fell. One hand touched the ground. It rested for a second on half a brick. Should he seize the brick? It was a weapon! But he had always fought fair.

“No! No!” he breathed.

He had always fought fair. Little did he know of the ruthless warfare of the underworld, of those denizens of crime who seize any weapon, who strike any creature—even the defenseless and weak—whose creed is ruthlessness and cruelty, and who know neither honor nor pity.

Well had it been if Johnny had known, for hardly had his hand left the brick than another came crashing against his own head, sending him crumpling down like an empty sack.

Consciousness did not entirely desert him. He had lost the power to move, but could still hear, feel and think. He caught the heavy thud of the villain’s footsteps as he approached, felt his hot breath on his cheek, then saw him lift the very brick he himself, but ten seconds before, had rejected as a point of honor.

His thoughts ran rampant. All his past lay before him, all his hopes for the future. He had expected to die sometime, somewhere, but not like this, not alone on a island built up by dump carts and scows.

“No! No! Not here!”

At the instant when all seemed lost, he heard a sudden compact, saw the big man go hurdling over him, and then to his vast surprise heard him struggle to his feet to go clump-clumping away.

Then, as a clearer consciousness came ebbing back, Johnny opened his eyes to see a face looking down upon him; a strange, wizened, full-bearded face that seemed the face of an overgrown owl.

For a time he felt that he must have become delirious, and was seeing things in mad dreams. Just then the man spoke.

“Hurt much?”

“N—no. Guess—guess not,” Johnny said, struggling to a sitting posture.

“All right. When you feel like it I’ll help you over to my house.”

“Your house? Where is it?”

“On the island, just round the corner here.”

“A house on this island?” Johnny whispered to himself. “Why, then, this surely is a mysterious island.”

“Who are you?” Johnny asked as he sat staring at this strange little man.

“Ben Zook’s my name. What might be yours?”

“Johnny Thompson.”

“What was you doin’ on my island, Johnny?”

“Looking for a man.”

“Find him?”

“I—I’m not sure. I was trying to find out whether I had found him or not when he hit me with a brick.”

“It probably was him,” said Ben thoughtfully.

For a moment the two of them sat staring away at the dark waters of the lake. Then Ben spoke:

“Well, if your gyroscope’s workin’ sufficient well to let you navigate without too much of a list to starboard, we might set sail. I’ve got some coffee, and I guess there’s still a fire. It will do you good.”

“Yes,” said Johnny, struggling to his feet and standing there unsteadily, “yes, I think it would. Lead on, friend. Sort of map out the route for me, will you? I’m a stranger in these parts.”

“Thought you might be,” chuckled Ben. “Don’t have many visitors, I don’t, an’ most of ’em’s what you’d call of an undesirable class—bums that’s been run off the parks, mostly. Me—I’m no bum. I earn my living. I feed the chickens.”

Johnny thought that a rather strange occupation in a city of three million. Since he was too busy watching his steps over the irregular surface of made land to give attention to other things, he let the thing stand as it was for the present.

“Probably just a way of saying something else, I guess; hasn’t a thing to do with real poultry,” was his mental comment.

In a surprisingly short time Johnny found himself nearing that side of the island next to the lake, and a moment later was led to a spot where red coals glowed in a sort of out-of-doors fireplace fashioned from broken bits of brick.

“Here’s my house,” said Ben Zook, a touch of pride in his tone. “It’s not everyone that lives in a brick house these days.”

At first Johnny thought he referred to the rude fireplace and was prepared to laugh; but, as he turned about he caught sight of a dark, cavern-like hole in the side of a great mound of clay. Even as he looked his newly found friend lighted a candle. The mellow glow of this tiny lighting plant revealed three walls of brick and mortar and a roof of wood. The whole place was not over ten feet square, and the ceiling was barely above his head. There were no windows and no door, but the end next to the fire stood open and that served the place of both.

“What do you think of it?” asked Ben Zook.

“I think,” said Johnny heartily, “that had Robinson Crusoe come upon a home like this on his island he would have wept for joy.”

“Why, so he would, Johnny, so he would!” exclaimed Ben, more than pleased by this compliment to his extraordinary abode.

A half hour later, Johnny’s slight wounds having been quite skilfully dressed by his surprising host and his spirits revived by a strong cup of black coffee, the two sat staring out at the lake.

“Do men come out here often?” Johnny asked.

“Not so often. It ain’t safe crossing on the breakwater. I’ve got a sort of flat bottomed boat I paddle across with every morning when I go over to feed the chickens.”

There it was again. “The—the chickens?” Johnny stammered.

“Yes. I got a regular job. Don’t pay very big, but it keeps me, and besides, when a chicken gets sick and looks like he’d die, they give him to me. I bring ’em out here and dope ’em up. Then if they get all right I take ’em back and sell ’em. I’ve got five chickens, a guinea hen and a goose right now.”

“Where are these chickens you feed?” Johnny asked, more perplexed than ever.

“Commission house. South Water Street. Come in by car loads and in crates and have to be fed, you know. I feed ’em an’ water ’em. That’s my job. An’ this island, it’s my chicken ranch. Roam all over it, my poultry does, in the daytime. At night I shut ’em up. I’d like a better place, where there was grass an’ shade, but seems like a fellow can’t save enough for that. This here island, it don’t cost me nothin’. They just let me stay here, the park folks do. An’ the house, it didn’t cost nothin’ neither, only the price of a bag of lime. Sand came from the lake; bricks I picked up from rubbish piles. Pretty neat, ’eh?” He proudly surveyed his three walls.

“Pretty neat,” Johnny agreed.

“I like it best with the end open to the fire. It’s more healthy. But if folks are goin’ to come out here at night, ’taint goin’ to be safe. I’ll haf to build a door. Not folks like you, but that other fellow’s kind. Seems like I’ve seen that man out here before.”

“Big man—with a stoop and a limp?” Johnny asked.

“That was him.”

“And a hooked nose?”

“Didn’t see his face.”

“What was he doing?”

“Standin’ with his back to the island and his face toward the city, an’ far’s I could tell he was standin’ there a shakin’ his big fists at the city an’ a swearin’ fit to kill.”

“That was just what he would do if he is the man I think him to be,” said Johnny, quietly.

“Would he now? What’d anybody do a crazy thing like that for?”

“You tell me,” said Johnny. “There are some like that.”

“Crooks and cranks,” said Ben. “Why didn’t you hit him first?”

“I did, but he had a hard head.”

“Hit him with a brick?”

“No, my fist.”

“Never do that to a crook, Johnny. They wouldn’t do that to you. Put ’em to sleep with the best thing you can grab, then argue with ’em after they wake up. Talk about honor among thieves; there ain’t none. They’re a low lived lot, too lazy to work. Half of them have got heads like kids and the other half are full of hop. A dirty bunch of low lifed cowards who take knives and guns to rob people.

“An’ look at the stuff they write about ’em in them there paper books and magazines. You’d think they was high class gentlemen down on their luck and doin’ an honest turn by robbin’ some one just so as to get back on their feet again, wouldn’t you? Or mebby goin’ in for it as a sort of sporting proposition. Livin’ dangerously, they’d call it. Danger! It’s their victim that gets the danger! Honor! Romance! Living dangerously! Bah! Hit ’em first, that’s my motto!”

“And that,” said Johnny, rubbing his bruised head, “is going to be my motto in the future.”

When the next opportunity presented itself Johnny did not forget this resolve. He followed it through, and with the most astonishing results.

“Ben,” said Johnny a moment later, “I want to keep in touch with you. That fellow may come back.”

“That’s what I been thinkin’ an’ I don’t like it.”

“Of course you wouldn’t. And if he did you’d want him taken care of.”

“Certainly would, Johnny, unless I could get close enough without him seein’ me to take care of him with a brick.”

“Don’t do anything rash,” Johnny continued. “If he shows up, let me know. I’ve got a room facing the water front. I’ll bet you can see that window from the place where you work. There’s a door at the back of the building. You’ll know the place; the first building to the right after you cross Wells Street bridge. That back door isn’t locked. In a dark corner behind the door is a small box with a slot in it. If that man comes back you just hop right over there and slip an orange wrapper in that box. There’s plenty of them in South Water Street. That will be a message to me, and it won’t tell a thing to anyone else, even if they rob the box.”

“All right, Johnny, I’ll do that.”

For a time they sat there staring at the lake. Then slowly their heads drooped, and with arms crossed like their primitive ancestors, the ape-men, they sat on this strange island so near and yet so far from a great city, sat by the fire asleep, but ever ready at the slightest sound to seize a club or a stone in defense of their lives and Ben Zook’s crude home.

“Johnny,” began the Chief as Johnny entered the office late that afternoon, “there’s a man in town I want you to watch. I want——”

Suddenly he paused to stare at the swollen side of Johnny’s head. “Who hit you?” he asked.

“I—I got a bump there.” Johnny did not wish to tell the Chief about his island experience. He was afraid the Chief would not like his going against advice; and besides, if something came of this little excursion, something really big, he felt that he had a right when the time was ripe to spring it as a surprise. He was truly relieved when the Chief did not press the question.

“As I was about to say,” the Chief resumed, “there’s a man come to town recently, a man I want you to get in touch with if you can. That is, I mean locate and shadow him. The fact that he wasn’t here at the time this series of fires started doesn’t necessarily prove that he hasn’t a hand in them. The brains of a gang is not always on the spot all the time.

“This man,” he leaned forward in his chair, “is credited with a dozen big blazes in New York, and now he’s come to Chicago.

“He’s been credited with them but, shrewd as the New York police are and persistent as were the insurance patrols, not one of these fires has been surely pinned on him. So here he is in Chicago.

“His name is Knobs Whittaker; at least Knobs is what he goes by. The reason for the name is that on each side of his bald head, well above his ears, is a sort of knob. You’ve seen cattle that had their horns treated when they were calves and had no horns to speak of—just knobs?”

“Yes.”

“Well, his knobs are like that.”

“Sort of a dehorned Devil?”

“Exactly that, from what I hear.”

“There,” said the Chief after fumbling about in the pigeon holes of his desk, “is the address where he was last seen. He was seen entering the door that leads up the stairs to the second floor. I wish you’d go over there this morning and give the place the once over. You may see Knobs, though I doubt it. Anyway, fix the building in your mind and find out all you can about it.”

“Right,” said Johnny as he pocketed the slip of paper handed to him.

The place, he noted, was on Randolph near Franklin, not five blocks from his own room.

“Right down town,” he thought to himself. “Lot of wholesale shops in there; shoes, plumbing goods, machinery, and the like. Very respectable place. You wouldn’t look for anything queer in there; but then, you never can tell.”

In this conclusion Johnny was right.

The building to which he had been directed, and where Knobs had last been seen, proved to be a narrow four-story structure with a small square hallway at the front. On the right side of this hallway one might read the names of the occupants. On the first floor was a manufacturing chemist; on the second a wholesale diamond merchant; on the third a publisher of cheap juvenile books; and the fourth had been taken over by the National Novelty Company, whatever that might be.

Johnny was studying this board and beginning to wonder in a vague sort of way if the top floor had been taken over by Knobs and if he thought his business of setting fire as being in a way a distinct novelty, when a broad shouldered, smooth shaven man of neat appearance alighted from the small elevator and, as men will do, removed his hat to dust his bald head with a silk handkerchief.

Johnny took in the top of that head at a glance. With great difficulty he suppressed an exclamation of surprise. Above each ear there was a distinct, glistening knob.

With the greatest of effort he tore his gaze from the man and, leaping into the elevator, called hurriedly:

“Third floor.”

He had taken the elevator because he did not wish to fall under the suspicions glance of that man. He had chosen the third floor because he was quite sure books were safe; this notorious firebug would have nothing to do with them.

“So that,” he thought to himself as the elevator crept upward, “is Knobs!”

He found himself tremendously impressed by the appearance of the man. He had personality, which is more than one may say of most of his kind. He looked dangerous, a square-jawed villain who would stop at nothing.

Because he had been so greatly impressed and also because Knobs had twice been seen in the building, Johnny made a careful survey of the premises. The diamond merchant’s place on the second floor, he discovered, was well wired with a noted burglar insurance company’s apparatus.

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