“I don’t wonder at that,” he told himself. “With such men as Knobs about, it’s highly necessary.”
On the third floor he found a hallway leading to a back window. The window looked down upon the roof of a two-story building.
“One could reach that roof at a leap if he found it necessary,” he told himself.
He had not expected to find the Novelty Company open for business. They weren’t.
“Guess that’s about all I can discover for this time,” he concluded as he once more entered the elevator and dropped to the ground floor.
The Chief was well pleased with his report. “Johnny,” he said, “you’d make an inspector, give you time. There’s one thing you wouldn’t know, though, so I’ll tell you. A chemist’s establishment or a drug store is one of the most dangerous risks an insurance company can take. That’s because if it gets on fire it goes up like a flash. There are likely to be dangerous fumes that drive the firemen back, and perhaps an explosion; too many chemicals about and in time of fire they raise the very deuce!
“You don’t understand why that is, eh? Well, that’s because you’re no chemist. I’ve dabbled into it a bit, and you’d better when you get time. It pays to know a little about many things, and a lot about one thing. That’s what makes a useful citizen out of a man.
“I’ll tell you about those chemicals. There’s always lots of chlorides and sulphur about a chemist’s shop. If the chlorides are heated at all they give up oxygen, and oxygen will make anything burn—a wrought-iron pipe or a steel crowbar. The sulphur mixes in and that makes a fire that nothing can stop. It laughs at water. As for chemical engines, it gives them the roaring Ha! Ha! When a fire like that burns out it don’t much matter what you had in the beginning; all you’ve got in the end is ashes, and mighty fine ashes at that.”
Johnny listened to this lecture with intense interest. When it was over he sat in a brown study from which he emerged to exclaim:
“That’s queer!”
“Nothing queer about it,” protested the Chief, “just nature takin’ her course, that’s all.”
“That’s not what I meant,” said Johnny. “I meant it was queer that there’d be a diamond merchant’s place above a chemist warehouse. Queer combination, don’t you think?”
“Yes, queer enough, but you do get some queer ones. Diamond merchant has his fire insurance, though, the same as others. Rate would be high; but low rent probably makes up the difference. Besides, chemists’ places are not as dangerous as they used to be; there are laws regulating the amount of the dangerous stuff they may keep in any one place.”
“Are inspections frequent?”
“Not as frequent as they should be.”
“Honest inspectors?”
“I don’t know. That doesn’t come in my department.”
There the discussion ended, but Johnny pondered long over that diamond merchant’s place above a chemist’s shop. In the end, however, he forgot it to think of his flat-bottomed boat and the marsh south of the city. He had promised to take Mazie out there late this afternoon. She had listened eagerly to the story of his adventure out there, and had said she thought the place must be “perfectly bewitching.”
Johnny was not so sure about that. He had a wholesome awe of the place since that shot.
“But of course,” he had said at last, “that fellow just happened to run across me before I left the city, and followed me out there. There’d be no danger a second time—no danger at all.”
So in the end he had promised to go. They planned to take their lunch along, to arrive about an hour before sundown and to stay for a look at the moon rising over the marsh.
The moon was just rising out of the marsh; turning the dark rushes to a deep bottle green and spreading a bar of gold down a channel. For two solid hours Johnny had managed to throw off his problems and worries and the strange grip of mysteries that had held him so long. In those two delightful hours he had been just a boy, paddling about an enchanted marsh in twilight and gathering darkness.
With his good pal Mazie, he had eaten the lion’s share of a lunch such as only Mazie could prepare; strangely delicious little sandwiches and cake that melted in your mouth, pears from a glass jar, cold chicken, and a thermos bottle of steaming cocoa. Johnny had enjoyed all this.
And now, side by side on the narrow seat of the flat-bottomed boat, they sat through a half hour of deep enchantment, watching the moon rise. For a long time they sat in silence, and who can know what were the long, long thoughts that came to them?
Whatever they were, they were destined to come to an abrupt end. Suddenly, as his ear caught an unaccustomed sound, Johnny put a finger over Mazie’s lips, then stood straight up to allow his eyes to sweep the marsh. The next instant he motioned Mazie down as he dropped flat in the bottom of the boat. For a moment they lay very still.
“Wha—what is it?” Mazie whispered.
“Sh!” Johnny’s all but inaudible whisper answered back. “Not so loud. Some men can shoot accurately at sound. It was often done during the war. I heard the dip of an oar and caught the gleam of a rifle. It’s—it’s the mysterious one! It must be. Lie perfectly still. Not a sound. Perhaps he didn’t see me.”
“I—I won’t move, Johnny.”
Johnny knew that Mazie was frightened, for he felt the wild beating of her heart against his shoulder. But he knew she was game, too, and was proud of her for that.
Fifteen minutes they lay there in the bottom of the boat. Speaking in the lowest whispers, scarcely daring to breath, they listened intently, but caught no further sound.
“Listen, Mazie,” whispered Johnny at last, “we can’t stay here all night.”
“No, we can’t.”
“Are you afraid to stay here alone for a minute or two?”
“N—no. But what are you going to do?” she asked in sudden alarm.
“I’m going after that fellow.”
“Johnny! You’ll be killed!”
“He’ll not harm me. It’s the only way out. I’m going.”
With a grip of her hand he signalled farewell, then with astonishing dexterity he got over the side of the boat and into the water without a sound.
Swimming down the channel until he was opposite the spot where he judged the man to have been, he at last began parting the rushes and making his way slowly through them. He had not gone ten yards when he caught sight of a black form directly before him.
“That’s him!” he breathed. “He’s in a boat. There’s a channel there.”
Lest he be detected and fired upon, he worked his way back to his own channel, swam rapidly up this channel and then crossed the stretch of rushes to the other side.
For a time after that he swam noiselessly in the shadow of rushes down the channel toward the mysterious one’s boat, swam until he made out the form of an oval bottomed, clinker-built boat. A tall man was standing up in it. Johnny again caught the gleam of a rifle barrel.
Johnny took one deep, silent breath, then disappeared under the water.
Swimming strongly under water, he came up to the right of the boat and almost directly beneath it. He could hear the man’s deep breathing and caught fragments of husky mutterings.
“Now’s the time,” Johnny thought to himself.
Gripping the edge of the boat he gave it a sudden upward thrust which all but capsized it. There followed at once a small splash and a large one.
“His rifle goes—now he takes the plunge,” thought Johnny as his heart went racing.
“He’s safe enough now. He’ll not find his rifle at the bottom in this darkness. He’s a tiger without his fangs.”
Johnny even had the temerity to lift himself up as high as he could in the water and peer over the boat.
It was then that he got a real shock. The man was nowhere to be seen.
“Huh! He can’t have drowned,” Johnny reasoned.
The next instant a thought struck him which set him doing the Australian crawl with a vengeance. The man may have known the general direction of their boat and might have gone for it. If he had, what of Mazie?
After three minutes of breathless swimming, Johnny arrived in their channel to find his fears unfounded. Everything was as serene as when he had left it.
“Come on,” he said to Mazie as he climbed into the boat, “we’re going to get out of here.”
Seizing a long pole, he stood boldly upright in the boat and sent it shooting through the water. Ten minutes later he beached his boat, then dragged it to a low shed which served as boat-house.
As he turned about from snapping the padlock, the moon came suddenly out from behind a cloud and shone down one of those long channels of the marsh. In the midst of a channel was a clinker-built boat—and a man was standing in it.
“That’s him,” Johnny chuckled, “I—I’m sort of glad he didn’t drown. Bet he hasn’t got his rifle, though. I’d like to swim back there and beat him up.”
He did not yield to this mad impulse. Mazie was pulling at his sleeve and saying in her most persuasive tone:
“Come on. Let’s go home.”
“All right,” smiled Johnny, slapping the water from his soaked trousers, “guess we’d better.”
“All the same,” he mused, “I’d like to know where that fellow stays and how he always happens to be about the marsh at the same time I am.”
“It’s something more than a happening,” said Mazie seriously, “and since you don’t learn anything by coming, it might be well to stay away.”
“Might,” agreed Johnny.
“But for all that,” he thought to himself, “I’m going back out there some time and prowl about the edge of the marsh a bit. That fellow may live out there somewhere.” He thought of the black shack at the edge of the marsh.
“Johnny,” said Mazie as they rode home, “let’s go somewhere to-morrow night; some place where we won’t be bothered and where we can have some fun.”
“For instance?”
“Why not Forest City?”
“I don’t mind. Chute the chutes, roll down the roller coaster, and everything; good old stuff that never grows old.”
“Something like that,” smiled Mazie. “Anyway, it’s a lot of fun to see people having a roaring time of it. And they really do enjoy it. Don’t you think so?”
“Yes,” said Johnny, “and I might as well admit it, I enjoy it myself; makes me think of the picnics and county fairs I used to go to when I was a small boy. All right, we’ll go.”
“How much progress are you making on your investigation?” the Chief asked Johnny as he came in next morning.
“Three suspects and no arrests,” smiled Johnny.
“Tell me about them.”
“There’s the one you gave me—Knobs.”
“Know anything new about him?”
“Not a thing.”
“And the others? Tell me about them.”
Johnny told of the pink-eyed man and the tall stooped one who limped. Without thinking much about it, he told the Chief for the first time of his visits to the marsh, of his mysterious assailant out there, and of his fight with the unknown man on Ben Zook’s island.
The Chief listened intently. “You don’t always take another’s judgment about things, do you?”
“In—in what way?”
“I told you I thought that the man who went out on the breakwater toward that made land you call Ben Zook’s island had been drowned.”
“Why—yes, that’s what you did.”
“You didn’t think so?”
“I thought he might not have drowned.”
“What do you think now?”
“He didn’t drown.”
“You can’t prove it.”
“No, but I will. You’d know the man if you saw him again? Or his picture?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll prove it, then. Just give me time.”
For a moment the Chief sat wrapped in deep thought. Then of a sudden he said:
“You have a rather unusual method of picking suspects.”
“In what way?”
“When the police have a criminal to catch, a crime to clear up, they go over the list of criminals who work at such crimes, then they check up on those persons, possibly shadowing them for days. But you—you simply go to a fire and pick a man who seems particularly interested in the fire. You say to yourself: ‘He might be the man.’ Then you start shadowing him.”
“But if you see him at three or four fires? Doesn’t that look bad?” Johnny asked.
“Not necessarily. Some persons are just natural cranks when it comes to fires. They’d get out of bed at midnight to go to one. For instance, take that pink-eyed fellow you’ve been telling about. It’s a well known fact that those pink-eyed people, albinos they are called, are like owls; they see best at night. The bright light of day appears to blind them, so they like to prowl around at night. This fellow may be that sort and may have taken up with the running down of fires as an innocent hobby.”
“That’s right enough,” said Johnny, “but on the other hand some clever gang of criminals may have noticed his night prowling and may have induced him to join them in setting blazes. And besides, these fires are different, aren’t they? Did anyone ever go about the task of setting fire to all the city’s property before?”
“No.”
“Or any other city’s?”
“Not that I know of.”
“It’s a very special case then, and a special case requires special methods. When I see a man at four fires I’m going to watch him. And, believe me, if I ever see one of those two again I’ll have him arrested. And that goes double for old limpie hooknose! When you see a man at fire after fire; when you chase him and he risks his life to escape from you; when someone very much like him, in a place where you suspect him of being, leaps out at you and all but does you in; when someone very like him twice hunts you in a marsh where you’re trying to enjoy yourself, you can’t help but feel that you’re on the right track.”
“Does sound like there was something in it,” argued the Chief. “But, after all, you have positively identified the man only twice, at the two fires, and on neither of these occasions was he doing anything he could be arrested for. If he were to walk into this room at this very moment you might take him to jail, but unless he happened to be carrying damaging evidence on his person you’d have to turn him loose. You really haven’t anything on him—and you can’t hold an innocent man.”
“He ran when we chased him.”
“Honest people often do that.”
“Well,” Johnny paused in thought, “you wait. Give me time. I’ll bring you something yet, see if I don’t!”
That evening as Johnny descended to the ground floor on his way to keep his appointment with Mazie, he was surprised to find an orange wrapper in the box behind the door. So Ben Zook had remembered the signal!
“Ben Zook,” he whispered, “he has something to tell me. That man has been back on Ben’s island. I must go out there. I wish—” he paused, irresolute, “no, I promised Mazie, and I won’t go back on my word. I’ll go out and see Ben Zook when I come back—if it’s not too late, and I imagine it’s never too late for him.”
Forest City was a place of many marvels; at least so it had seemed to Mazie in the days when, dressed in rompers, she had come there to play. The moment you entered the gate you came in sight of two very merry giants, reposing upon a carpet of green and dressed in suits of red and white checkers, six inches to each checker, each with his head propped upon an elbow and putting out a red tongue at you.
The giants of course were made of stucco, and the field they reposed upon was the side of the building, also made of stucco. That mattered little. The place was one of enchantment and the merry giants guarded the pleasant mysteries of it all.
Immediately behind the giants was a great room where, for a single thin dime, you might purchase any number of thrills. You might try walking through a revolving tank; walking up a stairway that went down as fast as you went up; sliding down a wooden chute that had ten times as many bumps in it as a dromedary has humps. You might try any number of things that would set you screaming with delight or thrilling with sudden and quite groundless fear.
Nor was this all. There was the skating rink and the City of Venice where you glided in slow moving boats amid stately plaster-of-Paris castles and ancient ruins of the same general composition. There was the palace of mirrors; the chute the chutes; the ferris wheel, and, best and most terrible of all, the roller coaster, a contrivance that, providing you had never ridden upon it before, was capable of crowding a great many thrills into a short minute of time.
To Mazie and Johnny, who, after all, were yet quite young, this place had never lost its charm. They entered into the gayety as wildly as the rest; at least Johnny had on every other occasion. This time Mazie found him every now and again pausing to stand and stare at the teeming thousands of men, women and children. He would stare for a full minute, then with a sudden start would say:
“C’mon, let’s go in here,” or “Let’s go over there.”
At last, after leading him to a refreshment stand where they ordered a cooling drink, Mazie turned to him with a sudden question:
“What’s the matter with you to-night?”
“I don’t know,” said Johnny slowly. “Mazie, do you believe in premonitions?”
“What’s that? Some new religion?”
“No. It’s seeing things before they come to pass.”
“I don’t know. Why?”
“Well, it’s strange. C’mon, let’s go over there and sit down.”
“There!” he exclaimed a moment later as they sat on a bench, with the throngs marching, parade-like, past them, “There! I saw it again!”
“It’s like this,” he said, mopping his brow. “I’ll be walking along here looking at those faces—mostly happy faces, aren’t they?”
“Yes.”
“They ought to be happy. This is their play time and their play place.”
“Yes, Johnny, but what then?”
“Why, then of a sudden I see the look on those faces change. A look of terror comes upon them. I seem to see them crowding and crushing, trampling upon one another as they try in mad despair to escape from something.” Again he mopped his brow.
“Escape from what, Johnny?” Mazie whispered.
“Fire,” Johnny whispered tensely.
Then, gripping the girl’s arm until it hurt, he fairly hissed: “Mazie, I tell you this place is doomed! I can see it all too plain. It’s a premonition, a warning of the firebug. If only I knew when and how!”
“You only dream it,” said Mazie. “The old fires and firebugs have got on your nerves.”
“No, Mazie,” said Johnny more soberly, “it’s more than that. Perhaps you might call it a hunch. It’s all of that. It’s the thing to expect. That firebug has burned school houses, a recreation center, the zoo. He seems to be bent on destroying everything that brings happiness to people. Why not this place next? And think what it would mean, Mazie! Think of ten thousand, maybe twenty or thirty thousand people, half of them children, gliding in boats through the City of Venice; children on the roller coaster and the chute the chutes; children a hundred feet in air on the Ferris wheel; board walks thronged with people; and then, of a sudden, the cry of ‘FIRE! FIRE!’ My God, Mazie, think! Think! Mazie, somehow I must get that man!”
“Johnny,” said Mazie, “are there any people in the world who hate happiness?”
“Plenty of them, I suppose; enemies of happiness.”
“Don’t you think your firebug is one of them?”
“He might be.”
“If he isn’t, what could be his motive? He has nothing to gain.”
“No; that’s right. Most fires that are set are set for gain. A man secretly moves his insured stock away, then sets fire to his building, or hires some firebug to do it, that he may collect insurance on goods that were not burned. There is nothing of that in this. Sometimes revenge is the cause. But what could one man have against a whole city?”
“What could he?”
“Nothing. Our firebug must be an enemy of happiness.”
“Why don’t you have the Chief round up all such persons? Your firebug might be among them.”
“That might work. I’ll suggest it. Those people, though, are hard to find.”
“Come on,” said Johnny after a moment’s thought, “let’s get out of here, it makes me uncomfortable staying here. I’m afraid I’ll see it again.”
They left the grounds and took a car for Mazie’s house. There, amid the cushions in Mazie’s cozy corner and with a cup of steaming cocoa before him, Johnny managed to snatch from this night of unhappy dreams one little moment of happiness.
After that, having thought of his resolve to visit Ben Zook yet that night, he rose and bade Mazie good-night.
“Good-night, Johnny,” she smiled as they parted, “and good luck.”
“Let us hope for it,” Johnny’s smile was a dubious one.
In the earlier days of Johnny’s experiences on the Chicago river, he had made many strange friends. Among them was an old man who owned a boat, a clumsy but quite seaworthy craft in which he was accustomed to paddle about the river and at times even on the lake. This boat had been kept in a small brick structure close to the base of a wharf. The old man had once shown Johnny where he kept the key and had told him to help himself to the boat whenever he needed it for a short trip. He had not seen this old man since his return to the city.
“Wonder if he’s still alive, and if his boat and the key are still there?” he said to himself as he neared the river. “If it is, that’s the surest way to get out to Ben Zook’s island.”
A few moments’ walk brought him to the spot. The key was there in its old place and, once the door was open, Johnny found the boat in its place and in good repair. The grips of the oars were worn smooth from recent use. A warm feeling swept over Johnny at this discovery. In this ever changing world it is good to discover that an old time friend is still in the land of the living.
“Just take you out for a little exercise,” he whispered to the boat as he sent her gliding into the water.
It was a glorious night for a row. A low-hanging, golden moon, a lake that was ripply but not too rough, and balmy night air—who could ask for more? Johnny’s splendid muscles relaxed and expanded, expanded and relaxed with the harmony of a well directed orchestra.
“Fine!” he breathed, “I’ll soon be there.”
He was, too; almost sooner than he wished. He regretted the necessity of bringing this grand little trip to an end, but the hour was late.
Just as he turned to leave the boat a faint delicious odor smote his nostrils.
“Hot dog!” he exclaimed as he went racing over the rubbish heaps that lay between the shore and Ben’s cabin.
In his eagerness he forgot that Ben Zook was not expecting him.
The look of alarm which appeared on the little old man’s face as he sprang to his feet at sound of footsteps sent a stab of self-reproach to the boy’s heart.
“It’s only me, Ben, only Johnny Thompson!” he shouted reassuringly.
The next moment he was shaking the island hermit’s hand and sniffing delightedly.
“Hot dog!” he said again.
“Yep, Johnny, you diagnosed the case. Old man eatin’ hot dog this time of night. Ought to die of indigestion. Draw up a chair and help yourself.
“Don’t fall over my heatin’ plant,” he warned as Johnny, taking a step backward, struck something that gave forth a hollow sound.
“What is it?” he asked.
“My heatin’ plant; goin’ to be when I get her installed. Goin’ to be good’n cold out here this winter. House is too small for a stove. Goin’ to be stylish, I am; have a outside hot water plant. That old tank is good as new. There’s old pipe enough round the dumps to make my coils and radiation. I’ll borrow tools some day and put her together.
“Johnny,” the old man exclaimed as he helped him to a piping hot frankfurter on a stick, then settled back in a huge arm chair, “you’d be surprised at the things that get brought out here. This chair now; pretty nifty, eh?”
“Looks all right.”
“Found her out here. There’s about everything you want out here; bricks, coal, wood, milk bottles, cookin’ utensils, three or four baby buggies an’ everything else.
“And, Johnny,” his voice dropped almost to a whisper, “the other day I found something that looks real valuable. Mebby you’ll take it over town an’ see. Mebby you would, Johnny. They wouldn’t think nothin’ of it if you had it, but if I took it over an’ it was the real thing, they’d take me by the neck an’ say: ‘Ben, you been stealin’.’”
Going back into the back corner of his house, he loosened a brick in the floor and drew out a small black velvet case.
“There’t is, Johnny. Saw it stickin’ out from the end of a heap of ashes. Wind’d been blowin’ middlin’ stiff an’ had blowed a lot o’ fine stuff away so it showed. Open her up.”
Johnny started as the lid was lifted. A flash of light that made the firelight seem dim had struck his eye.
“Diamonds,” he breathed.
“I dunno, Johnny. I thought it might be so.”
Reaching up, Johnny took a small mirror from the wall. Then, taking a diamond set in a pin from the case, he drew it across the glass. There followed a scratching sound. As he lifted the diamond away he saw a distinct white line on the glass.
“Looks like the real thing,” he said in a low tone. “Can’t be quite sure. And what a lot of ’em! This one, a brooch with six; a lavalliere with four; two ear-rings with one each; and four loose ones. If they’re real, they’re a fortune. Been stolen, I suppose?”
“That’s what I figured, Johnny. Stole, then the thief had a hard time to make a clean getaway. He hides ’em in a ash can, intendin’ to come back for ’em. The ashman comes along and away they go.”
“Might be right,” said Johnny.
“You’ll take ’em over and see about ’em, Johnny?”
“Glad to.” He put the case in his pocket.
“Have another hot dog, Johnny?”
“Sure will.”
“You got my message? The orange wrapper?”
Johnny nodded.
“He’s been at it again.”
“Who? At what?”
“That big stooped man with a limp. He’s been out here again, standin’ on the shore close to the city an’ shakin’ his fists an’ cursin’ worse’n a pirate.”
“He has?” Johnny was surprised. “What did you do?”
“Well, I tried to get close to him but a stone rolled under my foot an’ I guess he heard me. Anyway, he went lopin’ off like a antelope, an’ that’s all I saw of him.”
“Queer he’d come back out here,” Johnny mused. Then of a sudden a thought struck him. Perhaps this man was not a firebug at all, but a thief. Perhaps this case of diamonds had not been brought out here in a dump wagon, but by this strange man. Perhaps he had hidden it here. Perhaps there were other cases hidden on the island. He thought of the diamond merchant’s place on Randolph Street, and of that man Knobs haunting the same building. What if Knobs and the hooked nose man with the limp were in a partnership of crime? Well, at least it was something to think about.
“Do you know, Johnny,” said Ben Zook, suddenly changing the subject, “I’ve got to sort of like this island. ’Tain’t much account as it is, all broken bricks and dust, but in time grass would grow on it—tall grass that waves and sort of sighs in the breeze. I’d like it a lot, then, Johnny.” Ben’s voice grew earnest “I’d like to own this island; like to have it always to myself.”
“You don’t want this island, Ben,” said Johnny quietly. “Let me tell you what it’s going to be like, and then I’m sure you wouldn’t want it all to yourself. Ben, bye-and-bye all this rough ground is going to be smoothed down. The island will be broadened and fine rich dirt will be hauled on. Grass will be sown and pretty soon it will all be green. Trees will be planted and squirrels will come to live in them.”
“I’d like that, Johnny.”
“There will probably be a gravel walk winding in and out among the trees,” Johnny continued. “Tired women with little children, women from those hot cramped flats you know of in the heart of the city, will come here with their children. They’ll sit on the grass and let the cool lake breeze fan their cheeks while their children go frolicking away after the squirrels or throw crumbs to pigeons and sparrows.
“There’ll be a lagoon between this island and the shore, a lagoon of smooth, deep water. There will be boat houses and nice clean-hearted boys will bring nice girls out here to take them riding in the boats.
“And perhaps on a fine Sunday afternoon there will be a band concert and thousands will come out to hear it. But you know, Ben, if you had it all to yourself they couldn’t do any of these things. You don’t really want it now, do you, Ben?”
“No, Johnny, I don’t.”
For a time Ben was thoughtful. When at last he spoke his voice sounded far away.
“I’ve tried never to be selfish, Johnny. Guess mebby if I’d held on to things more, not given so many fellows that was down and out a boost, I’d have more of my own. That’s a fine dream you got for Ben Zook’s island. I’d be mighty proud of it, Johnny. I shore would.” Again he was silent for a long time.
“Johnny,” he said at last, “do you see that path of gold the moon’s a paintin’ on the lake?”
“Yes, Ben.”
“Sort of reminds me of a notion I had when I was a boy about the path to Heaven. Foolish notion, I guess; sort of thought when the time come you just walked right up there.
“Foolish notion; but Johnny, here’s a sort of idea I’ve worked out settin’ thinkin’ here all by myself. It’s a heap of fun to live, Johnny. I get a lot out of it; it’s just like I’d never grown up, like I was just a boy playin’ round.
“And you know, Johnny, when I was a boy there was a big family of us and we always had a lot to do. I’d be playin’ with the other boys, and then suddenly my mother’d call:
“‘Ben, come here.’
“Just like that. And I’d go, Johnny; always went straight off, but before I went I’d say:
“‘Well, so long, fellers, I got to go now.’ I’d say it just like that.
“And you know, Johnny, I’ve been playin’ round most of my life an’ havin’ a lot of fun, even if other folks do call it workin’, so when that last call comes from somewhere way up above I sort of have a feelin’ that it’ll come from someone a lot bigger an’ wiser than me, just like my mother was when I was a boy. An’ I hope I’ll be brave enough to say, just as I used to say then:
“‘Well, good-bye fellers, I got to go now.’ Don’t you hope so, Johnny?”
“I hope so, Ben,” Johnny’s voice had grown husky.
“An’, Johnny, when my mother called me it wasn’t ever because she felt contrary and wanted to spoil my fun; it was always because she had something useful she wanted me to do for the bunch. I’m sort of hopin’, Johnny, when that last call comes it’ll be for the same reason, because the one that’s a lot bigger an’ wiser than me had got somethin’ useful he wants me to do for the bunch of us. Do you think it’ll be that way, Johnny?”
“I—I’m sure it will, Ben. But Ben, you’re not very old. That time’s a long way off.”
“I hope so, Johnny. It’s a grand privilege to live. But you can’t tell, Johnny; you can’t, can you now?”
For a long time after that they sat there in silence. Johnny was slowly beginning to realize that he liked this strange little Ben Zook with his heart of gold.
“Look, Johnny!” Ben exclaimed. “A fire!”
“What! Another?” cried Johnny.
“Down there by the water front.”
Johnny followed his gaze to the south where there was a great blaze against the sky.
“It’s queer,” he said after ten seconds of watching. “It doesn’t really seem to be on the shore. Looks as if it were on the far end of this island.”
“The island, Johnny? What could burn like that out here? Look at her leap toward the sky!”
“All the same, it is. Come on, Ben. We may learn something. Arm yourself, Ben. It may mean a fight.”
As he said this Johnny picked up a scrap of gas pipe two feet long. “I’ve not forgotten what you said about striking first and arguing after,” he chuckled.
“I’ll take the hand grenades,” said Ben, loading an arm with half bricks.
Thus armed, they hurried away over a rough path that ran the length of the island.
They had not covered half the distance to the end when the flare of light began to die down. It vanished with surprising rapidity. Scarcely had they gone a dozen paces, after it began to wane, when the place where it had been, for lack of that brilliant illumination, appeared darker than the rest of the island.
“What about that?” Ben Zook stopped short in his tracks.
“Come on! Come fast!” exclaimed Johnny, determined to arrive at the scene of this strange spectacle before the last glowing spark had blinked out.
As he rushed along pell-mell, stumbling over a brick here, leaping a mound of clay there, quite heedless of any danger that might surround him, he might have proven a fair target for a shot from ambush.
No shot came, and in time he came to a comparatively level spot of sand in the center of which there glowed a few coals.
After bending over these for an instant he scraped away the last remaining sparks with his bit of gas pipe, then stood there silently waiting for the thing to cool.
“What was it?” Ben asked as he came up.
“Don’t know.”
Johnny drew a flashlight from his pocket and threw its circle of light on the spot.
“Listen!” whispered Ben, pulling at Johnny’s coat sleeve and pointing toward the lagoon. Faintly, yet quite distinctly, Johnny heard the creak of oar locks.
“A boat,” he whispered back.
“Yes, Johnny, they was somebody out here. And I bet you it was—that man!”
“The limping man?”
“Yes.”
“Well, what do you suppose was the reason for the bonfire?” Johnny bent over to pick up a fragment of black cardboard heavily coated with black paint. This was curved about, forming the segment of a circle. The inside of the circle was black and charred like the inside of a giant firecracker that has been exploded.
Immediately Johnny’s mind was rife with solutions for this fresh mystery. The men were thieves. They had come to this deserted spot at night to divide their loot and to burn any damaging evidence, such as papers, wrappers and whatever else might be connected with it. They were smugglers. The flare of light was a signal to some craft lying far out on the lake, telling them that all was clear and that they might run in. Other possible solutions came to him, but not one of them seemed at all certain. So, in the end, having pocketed the one bit of evidence, he walked back with Ben to his shack. There he promised Ben to return soon to sit out a watch with him on the island; then going down to his boat, he pushed her off.
An hour later he was in his own bed fast asleep, with Ben Zook’s diamonds safe under his pillows.
His last waking thought had been that if those were real diamonds there would be a reward for their return, and that the reward should go to Ben Zook. It would at least be a start toward the purchase of his long-dreamed-of poultry ranch in the country.
The forenoon was all but gone when Johnny stirred in his bed, then sat up abruptly to stare about him. He had been dreaming, and woven into the web of his dreams was the face and figure of his one time fellow adventurer, Panther Eye, known familiarly as “Pant.” He had dreamed of seeing the dark fights and narrow escapes, and had dreamed of seeing red lights against a night sky, and blinding white flares. In his dreams he had again fought a mountain feud. All this with Pant at his side.