Johnny looked up, then scowled. He had recognized the voice of a reporter from the city’s pink journal. He hated the paper and disliked this reporter. But when one speaks of a ghost he needs must explain.
Explain he did, and that with the least possible number of words.
“A ghost! A galloping ghost on the scene of a kidnaping that is sure to cause a nation-wide search! What a scoop!” The reporter was away even before Johnny had completed his meager description.
“A galloping ghost.” Johnny pronounced the words slowly as Howe, now quite recovered, stood up beside him, then scowled. “What do you make of that?”
“Not a thing,” Howe answered bluntly. “But, after all, the real question is, is this ghost for us or against us?”
“Do ghosts always take sides?”
“Oh, inevitably!” Howe laughed a short cackling laugh that went far toward relieving the tension of the moment.
“Come!” he said. “Let’s see what Drew has been doing. He—
“Watch out! Duck!” Seizing Johnny’s arm with a vice-like grip, he dragged him down.
Not an instant too soon. There came the crack of a pistol, followed by the dull thwack of a bullet against the side of the car just over their heads. And after that a cold, dead silence.
Drew Lane, Tom Howe’s team mate, had not seen the Galloping Ghost. In truth it was some distance from the sleeping car to the river bank. After picking his way across the tracks, flashing his light this way and that in search of clues—some article dropped in hasty flight, a broken match, a cigaret thrown away—he came at last to a narrow stretch of rock-strewn, cinder-embedded ground.
Here his mood changed. Snapping off his light, he thrust one hand deep in his coat pocket and sauntered forward like some college youth taking the air.
This was Drew Lane’s favorite pose. With his faultless derby, his spotless suit of sea-green and his natty tie, he carried it off well. Many a tough egg had called him a “fresh college kid,” only to find himself the next moment lying on the sidewalk feeling of a lump on his jaw caused only by Drew’s capable fist.
That fist at this moment was curled around a nasty looking thing of blue steel. At a second’s notice Drew could set that blue steel pal of his spouting fire, right through his pocket. And his aim, while indulging in this type of shooting, was the despair of all evil doers.
Drew was approaching what appeared to be a dangerous spot. In the half darkness before him a great steam shovel mounted on a dredge stood with crane outstretched like some fabled bird ready to bend down and pluck his lifeless body from the river. Plenty there were, too, who would have witnessed the act with a grunt of satisfaction.
As he approached the dredge a small craft, moored ahead of the dredge and smelling strongly of fish, gave forth a hollow bump-bump.
Fearlessly the young detective hopped aboard this fishing schooner. For a moment his light flashed here and there.
“No one,” he muttered.
Hopping ashore, he made his way to the scow supporting the dredge. Having reached it, he dropped on hands and knees, to creep its entire length. From time to time, with the aid of his flashlight, he examined several posts and the outer surface of the scow. When at last he stood once more upon his feet it was with a grunt of satisfaction.
“Went south,” he muttered. “Speed boat, all right. Wonder how far? Go up the river in the morning. Find out—”
His thoughts were broken short off by the bark of an automatic. One shot, that was all; then silence.
With the spring of a panther Drew was off the barge, across the narrow open space and lost in the labyrinth of sleeping cars.
In an astonishingly short time he was close to the scene of the mysterious kidnaping.
“Tom! Tom Howe!” he called softly. “Are you there?”
There came no answer. Only from the river came the hollow bump-bump of the fishing schooner. “Tom! Tom Howe!” he called. Still no answer.
Then, without warning, the car before him began to move. For lack of a better thing to do, he hopped aboard and went rattling away into the city’s great depot.
* * * * * * * *
It was during this same night, at a somewhat later hour, that Red Rodgers and the mysterious girl stood in the obscurity of the cabin doorway. Breathing hard and peering out into the night, they were poised as if for flight.
The slight hold of the lock had been broken. They were free to go. But which way? They were on an island. How long was this island? How large was the island? What was its nature? Was it all tangled forest? Were there trails, clearings, deserted cabins? To these questions Red could form no answers.
“We’d better have a try for their boat,” he whispered.
In answer the girl pressed his arm.
Then together they stole out in the night. The shadow of a giant spruce tree swallowed them up.
After that, to an impersonal observer there might have appeared a gliding bit of darkness from time to time, followed by two black figures leaping at one another by the foot of the small dock.
The action of the figures increased in its intensity, yet there was no sound. They writhed and twisted. One went down upon a knee, but was up again on the instant. They went over in a heap to roll upon the ground. They tumbled about until they reached the dock and all but tumbled into the icy water.
Then, as suddenly as it began, the struggle ceased.
For ten brief seconds one figure sat upon his opponent. Then he beckoned. A third figure appeared. Groping about the dock, this figure at last seized upon some object that cast little shadow. This it handed to the crouching figure.
Some seconds of suspense, and at last two figures, one tall, one short, stood side by side looking at the water and the dock.
As they stood there, some trick of the moonlight and shadows made their two forms appear to melt into one; and that form presented a spectacle of abject despair. Thirty seconds this pose was held. Then the shadow appeared to explode and two figures melted into the shadows to the right.
What had happened? Red Rodgers had fought a battle and won, only to find that he had in reality lost. While groping his way toward the dock he had been detected and pounced upon by the kidnapers’ guard.
From earliest childhood Red had been prepared. A boy, reared among the tough fists of a steel town school, must be. When, in his teens, he had wrestled with red hot steel, this instinct for absolute preparedness had been intensified. Football had added to this training. When one considers that he was as quick as a panther, as strong as a lion and as cool-headed as a prize fighter, one must know that the flabby guard stood little chance. Instantly Red’s arm was about his neck in a clinch that prevented the least outcry.
The outcome of the battle you already know; but not quite. When the boy had conquered his opponent, when he had bound and gagged him, he went to look for the rowboat. Then it was that his lips formed a single word:
“Gone!”
And the girl, who in the moonlight seemed pitifully small, echoed:
“Gone!”
Where was this boat? Had it drifted away? Or had a second kidnaper rowed away to a second island, lying a stone’s throw away, for help?
No answer could be found. One thing remained to be done: to vanish into the night. This the strange pair lost no time in doing.
Drew Lane entered his room at three o’clock that morning. He and Tom Howe occupied a room together in the Hotel Starling. It was a very large place. Their room was on the top floor.
Throwing his coat over a chair he sank into a place by a table in the corner and allowing his head to drop on his arm tried to collect his thoughts. He had been following clues. A reporter from the News had given him a “hot tip” that grew cold almost at once. Casey from the State Street Police Station had given him another. It had led to nothing. After that he had begun setting traps. Calling in three trusted stool-pigeons, he had laid out their tasks for them. Having consulted his chief, he had begun laying plans for raiding all known hang-outs for kidnaping gangs. After that he had picked up a copy of the city’s pink sheet and had read in glaring headlines:
GHOST NO LONGER WALKS. HE GALLOPS.
He had read with some surprise the story of the Galloping Ghost.
“Rotten bit of sensation,” he muttered. “I saw no ghost. Don’t believe Howe did either. But that shot? Who fired it?”
He glanced at Howe’s bed in the corner. Howe lay across it fully clad, sound asleep.
“Like to ask him,” Drew muttered. “Like—”
He made a sudden move with his arm. Some unusually hard object rested beneath it.
To his surprise he found on the table a coarse brown envelope. On the face of it was scrawled:
Sergeants Lane and Howe.
Turning it over, he dumped its contents upon the table. A handful of shavings and one very misshapen bullet, that was all; or so he thought until he thrust in a hand and drew forth a much crumpled bit of paper.
With a quick intake of breath, he flattened the paper on the table.
Words were scrawled across the page. The writing was very bad, as if a right-handed man had undertaken to write with his left hand. In time he made out the message.
Here are some important clues. Guard them with care. When raids are made you will collect firearms. Collect pocket knives as well. You will hear from me later.
“The G.G.”
“Some crank,” Drew muttered.
Then a thought struck him all of a heap. How had the message gotten into their room?
“Howe brought it.
“No. That is impossible. Had he read that note he would have folded it neatly. That’s Howe every time.”
Well, here was fresh mystery. And what of these clues? A bullet. That was always important. But where had it been found? He examined it closely. “Wood sticking to it,” he muttered. “Been dug out.”
But what of the shavings? These too he examined. After studying them carefully he was convinced that some one, while waiting for a second person perhaps, had occupied his time whittling a bit of soft wood he had picked up.
“The world is strewn with such piles made by whittle-bugs,” he told himself. He was tempted to toss them into the waste paper basket. Instead he slid them back into the envelope.
After that he read the note through again. “Collect pocket knives.” His voice took on a note of disgust. “What could be the good of that?”
“‘You will hear from me again.’ Well, here’s hoping.”
He threw the envelope to a back corner of the table. But startling revelations would drag it again to the light.
“Collect pocket knives.” Down deep in his heart he knew that he would start this collection to-morrow. He hated doing silly things. But more than this he dreaded making fatal blunders. “A clue is a clue,” he had said many times, “be it faint as a moon at midday.”
* * * * * * * *
The battle Red Rodgers waged after leaving the cabin at the edge of the narrow clearing on that mysterious island was something quite outside his past experience. True, he was not unacquainted with struggle and peril. More than once in the vast steel mill he had watched hot sheet steel, caught by a defective roller, curl itself into a serpent of fire, and had dodged in the nick of time. On the gridiron, with mad crowds screaming, with forms leaping at him from right and left, he had over and over battled his way to victory.
Now he faced neither man-made steel nor man himself, but nature. Before him in the dark lay a primeval wilderness; a small wilderness, to be sure, but a real one for all that. Here, on a rocky ridge scarcely one hundred yards wide, for ages without number trees had fought a battle to the death.
He had not gone a dozen paces when he tripped and fell.
He felt ashamed that the girl must put out a slender hand to guide him. “I—I’ve never been in a forest,” he half apologized.
“Not even by day?” The girl’s awed whisper showed her astonishment. Her next remark gave him a shock. “Then you have never truly lived.”
Gladly would he have argued this point. But this was no time for mere talk. It was a time for action. They were on an island within a bay. The bay reached far, to a larger island. The larger island was far from the mainland. If the kidnaper’s statement was to be accepted, there were no people on this larger island save the kidnapers themselves.
“I wonder if there are other cabins on this island?” He whispered this more to himself than to the girl. She answered nevertheless.
“There are none. We must get away as far as we can. To the far end of the island. Then we must think what is to be done next. Come, we must go. Follow close behind me.”
For a full half hour after that they waged a silent battle with nature. Over fallen trees that now tore at them with their tangled branches and now sank treacherously beneath their feet, around rocky ridges that offered dangerous descents into tiny valleys so dark that one might not see his hand before him, they struggled on until with a sigh the girl whispered:
“A trail.”
Too engrossed was Red in the unaccustomed struggle to ask: “What has made this trail?”
He was soon enough to know. In his pocket he carried a small flashlight. Judging that they were now far enough from the cabin to use this, he pressed the button, then cast the light down the trail.
Instantly he sprang back. The light was reflected by a pair of large and burning eyes.
A confused impression of brown hair, of antlers like spiked slabs of wood, and those burning eyes held him rooted to the spot until the girl’s hand at his elbow guided him off the trail and into the broad-spreading branches of a fir tree. There, after a false step, he tumbled into the fragrant boughs.
Without willing it, he drew the girl after him. After that, for a full moment he remained half reclining, feeling the wild beating of the girl’s heart and listening for he scarcely knew what.
When he heard the sound he recognized it; a slow, soft-padded plump-plump, and he was relieved.
“The thing we have met on the trail,” he told himself, “was not a horned demon, but a giant moose.” That he had been utterly at a loss, and that the girl had directed their course in a safe and sensible manner, he also recognized.
After listening to the padded footsteps until they faded out into the silence of the night, he assisted the girl to her feet and whispered:
“You are not a real person. You come from a book. Your name is Alice, and we are having adventures in Wonderland.”
“I am real enough.” She laughed a low laugh. “My name is not Alice, but Berley Todd. I am five feet tall and I weigh ninety pounds. My favorite dish is blueberries with ice cream on top.” She laughed again.
“And that moose, I suppose, was quite an old friend.”
“I suppose not. But a moose will not harm you if you give him the right of way, which I suppose is fair enough since this is his forest.
“But come. We must be near the end of the island.”
Red did not ask, “How do you know this?” He merely followed on.
Scarcely a moment had passed when they came out upon a pebbly shore. And there, as he flashed his light about, he discovered a nondescript raft of spruce logs. Dragged half way up on the shore, it seemed for all its crudeness to be a rather substantial affair.
“I suppose,” he said in a low tone, “that this entire affair has been arranged. You knew the raft was here.”
Becoming suspicious, he flashed his light into a pair of very innocent-appearing blue eyes. “I suppose,” he said slowly, “you know why I have been carried away.”
“Don’t you?” The eyes opened wide.
“As I live, no.”
“Then you’ll have to ask some one else. It’s plain enough why they took me. Want my dad’s money. Expect my help in getting it. They’ll have no help from me!
“And now, Mister Man-who-don’t-know-why-he’s-here, let’s thank kind Providence for this raft which some summer fisherman left here, and shove off. Looks like we might go across with nothing more than wet feet. What luck!”
“And what do you think is on the other shore?”
“Cabins. Cabins and cottages, fireplaces, blankets, easy chairs, and things to eat; not so near, but not so far away, either.”
Red stared at her in silence. Did this girl speak from knowledge of the island, or was she romancing, bolstering up courage with dreams that might prove false?
He dared not ask. Putting his stout shoulders to work at shoving off the raft, he had it afloat at once. Then, after selecting a stout spruce pole and assisting the girl to a place beside him, he shoved away toward that other shore that, looming dark and distant, seemed to beckon and to whisper of “cabins and fireplaces, blankets, easy chairs, and things to eat.”
“Well,” he sighed, “thus far we get the breaks.”
While Drew Lane sat meditating on the various aspects of the kidnaping, Tom Howe groaned and sat up.
“Drew,” he drawled, rubbing his head, “I’ve been felled by a ghost, a galloping ghost.”
“You don’t mean to say you believe that stuff!” Drew held up the pink sheet.
“I believe,” said Howe with a wry grin, “that I have a large lump on the top of my head and that it’s sore. I believe it was put there by a thing that looked like a ghost. That’s all I have to say about that.”
“Well, then, what have you to say about this?” Drew held up the envelope containing the shavings and bullet.
“What is it?”
Drew showed him the contents and read the note.
“Curious sort of writing,” he ended. “And look how he signed it: ‘The G.G.’”
“That,” drawled Howe, “could stand for ‘The Galloping Ghost.’”
“Itmust!” Drew struck the table with his fist. “But why all the secrecy?”
“That,” Howe replied thoughtfully, “will probably come out later. The only question that matters seems to be: Is this ghost with us or against us?”
“With us. Can’t be any doubt about that.”
“Then we’d better follow his suggestions.”
“Collect pocket knives?”
“Why not? Interesting collection. What sort of knives do crooks carry? Bet you can’t tell. Well, now we’ll know.”
“Guess you’re right. But say!” Drew exclaimed. “What did you get from the car, the one the Red Rover was snatched from?”
“A bed sheet.” Howe held it up.
“Marked?”
“Not a mark.”
“Then what—?” Drew stared at his partner.
“Some one had stepped on the bed, probably with his shoe on. I thought I’d try the ultra-violet ray on it. Surprising what it brings out sometimes.”
“Probably worth a try.” Drew was not enthusiastic. Howe had gone in for scientific crime detection lately. Drew was still for going out and getting his man.
“Howe,” he demanded after a moment of silence, “who fired that shot back there in the train yards?”
“You answer that. A hand was all I saw, a hand thrust out from behind a car. Fired point-blank at me. And missed.”
“This may be the bullet,” Drew mused, weighing the battered bullet from the mystery envelope in his hand.
“It might be. Don’t seem likely, though. That bullet struck the side of a steel car.”
“Might have glanced. Mighty fine evidence. Find the gun that fired this bullet and you’ve got the man. Gun scratches the bullet as no other gun would. Microscope brings out that, doesn’t it?”
“Sure does. You find the man and his gun. I’ll do the rest.” Howe gave vent to a low chuckle. “Nothing would please me more! Not a nice thing, this being shot at.”
“Kidnapers are not nice people.” Drew’s tone changed. “Fact is, they’re about the worst people in all the world. Should be shot at sunrise, every man of ’em.
“It’s not so bad,” he philosophized, “stealing diamonds. They’re only a lot of stones after all. And money. ‘Who steals my purse steals trash. ’Twas mine. ’Tis his, and has been a curse to thousands.’
“But think!” He sprang to his feet. “Think of the cowards that steal a human life, a helpless woman, an innocent child, and then send back word, ‘Money, much money, or we will take the life of this one we have snatched.’
“That—why, that’s like going into battle holding a woman before you to stop the bullets! Howe, old boy, we’ve got a task laid out for us, a man-sized task, and we’re going to do it! You see if we don’t!”
Howe smiled in a quiet way. A quiet chap, was this slender detective; quiet, but feared in the underworld as many a big blustering cop was not.
“Drew,” he said after a long silence, “why did they snatch the Red Rover?”
“Revenge, perhaps. The university has been fighting kidnapers. Think what a bold stroke it would be to carry off their super-star just a few days before the final great game of the season!”
“Sounds pretty,” said Howe thoughtfully. “But it doesn’t click. Crooks waste little time on revenge. Dough is what they are after. Money. Money. Money. That is their long cry.”
“But where’s there money in snatching a football star?”
“Who knows? Perhaps they’re being paid.”
“Paid? By whom?”
“Northern wants to win. Isn’t Northern Old Midway’s ancient rival? Doesn’t the championship hang in the balance? What’s a few thousand dollars when such a prize is at stake?”
“But universities are not like that!”
“Not the schools. Of course not. But alumni. Who can say what some rich and over-enthusiastic alumnus would risk to see that game won?”
“Not much sense to that.”
“Perhaps not. But what then?”
“They may be hoping that Old Midway will dig deep to get their star back.”
“If that’s the racket we’ll know soon enough. There’ll be letters, phone calls, demanding ransom. What say we turn in? To-morrow is just around the corner. And to-morrow we must be out and after ’em.”
“What’s the first move?”
“Trace that speed boat down the river, the one that carried him away. It went south, that’s clear enough. I saw where they tied up to an old scow. Scraped her side when they left; rubbed off a lot of mud. The shape of the spot showed plain enough which way they were going. Somehow we’ve got to find their hide-out and get the Red Rover back.”
Had the speaker been privileged to see the Red Rover at that moment ankle deep in icy water, making his way as best he could with pole and improvised paddle on a raft that, turning round and round, seemed to go nowhere, he would surely have understood that a long trail lay before him. Not being granted such a vision, he crawled into his bed and went sound asleep.
* * * * * * * *
There was no sleep for Red Rodgers and his mysterious little friend on the raft.
There had been clumsy, flat-bottomed boats in the rust-blackened slips where monster ore boats lay near Red’s boyhood home, but no rafts.
Just how does one propel a raft? By a long pole where water is shallow. But one does not endeavor to drive the raft in the direction he wishes to go. He is more likely to achieve his end if he shoves in the opposite direction. For a raft, like an ox, a mule or a reindeer, is likely to go its own cranky way.
This Red learned soon enough. Scarcely had he begun poling than the raft started spinning like a top. It was only under the girl’s expert direction that he at last started for the shore that loomed dark and ragged in the distance.
They had not gone a dozen yards when the bottom sank beneath the end of the pole.
“Now we must paddle.” Heedless of the icy water, the girl dropped upon one knee, seized a narrow slab of wood and began a vigorous dip-dip that in time, it seemed, must take them somewhere.
Following her example, Red, on the opposite side, did his bit.
Under this treatment the raft behaved admirably. Keeping in view only the shore they had left, they paddled for a good half hour when, with a shock that all but sent them splashing into the water, they struck a hard object that gave out a hollow sound.
“Shore?” There was relief in Red’s tone.
“No shore.” The girl stood up. Her head struck something and she bounced down again.
“Thunder and guns! What now?” Red turned about to stare with all his eyes. The thing they had bumped into was a hydroplane, the very one that had carried them to this deserted spot.
“Oh!” The girl seized his arm. “Can—can you fly it?” Hope and fear were mingled in her tone.
“I—I’m sorry,” Red stammered. “To-night I took my first airplane journey.
“And I can’t say I wanted to come,” he added as a witty afterthought.
“But say!” he exclaimed suddenly. “You just hang on here a bit. I—I’ll be right back.”
They were beneath one of the machine’s great wings. Reaching up, he swung himself to the upper surface, and disappeared into the dark.
“Dangerous business,” he muttered to himself. “May have heard that bump, those fellows. May see my light. Might come upon us here any minute, but it’s a chance you can’t pass up.”
By dropping here, climbing there, then moving over to the right, he reached one of the twin motors. There, after flashing his light for a moment, he put out a hand, fumbled about, then pocketed a small object. These actions were repeated when he reached the second motor.
After that, with a sigh of relief, he dropped back upon the raft.
“Fix ’em!” he muttered. “Fix ’em plenty, the dirty dogs!
“Now come on. Let’s get out of here quick! Wish we could take one of those pontoons for a boat; but that’s impossible.”
A cloud had gone over the moon. He felt the girl’s cold hand as she steadied him down to a safe place of balance on the raft, and he chided himself for being so long.
“Cabins,” he whispered. “Cabins with fireplaces, easy chairs, blankets, and things to eat.”
All this seemed very, very far away. And yet with youth “hope springs eternal.”
Once again they worked their imperfect oars. In a surprisingly short time they once more bumped. With a low cry of hope, the girl sprang ashore.
“There should be a trail,” she called back.
“Moose trail?”
“Moose and men. Here! Here it is! We go this way.”
She led on over a trail so carpeted with moss that their footsteps made no sound.
“This girl knows a lot about this island,” Red said to himself. “How come?”
Once again he was tempted to believe that she was in league with the kidnapers. “That doesn’t make sense either. Mixed up mess. Just have to tramp on and see how it all comes out.”
He tramped on.
The path followed by Red Rodgers and the girl was little more than a wild animal trail along the edge of a wilderness.
Evening dew had placed its cold wet hand over all. Here they passed through clumps of alder that showered icy drops upon them, here waded waist deep in ferns that were like a tossing sea, and here again they crowded their way through clusters of young spruce huddled close together like children afraid of the night.
They had not gone a quarter of a mile when they were soaked to the skin. Still, without a word, the girl, gripping Red’s small flashlight, trudged pluckily forward.
“We could lose ourselves in this wilderness,” Red commented.
“Not if we follow the shore.”
That, Red told himself, was true enough. But where would the shore lead them? To cabins, fireplaces, chairs, things to eat? He fancied that this girl had been romancing, dreaming to keep up her courage.
“Queer old world,” he told himself. “Here I was, twenty-four hours ago, watched over like a child. Must eat this, must not eat that. Must sleep so long. Was there an ache, a slight sprain? Send for the rub-doctor. Did I cough once? Send in the M.D. And now this. In the wilderness. Drenched to the skin. No doctor. No osteopath. No one to tell me what to eat. Free!
“And yet, such freedom! I may be caught any time and brought back.
“Back to what?” He shuddered. Well, they’d have to find him. That would be difficult. And then they’d have a fight on their hands. He was strong, as strong as a bull moose. They’d not get that girl again without a fight.
“Queer sort of girl,” he mused. “Queer place this. You meet a moose on the trail, you politely step aside and he walks calmly past. You’d think he’d snort and vanish or roar a challenge and charge. Never heard of such things. That girl’s got the place bewitched. I—”
“Look!” The girl had come to a halt. One hand was on his arm. With the other she parted the bushes. “Do you see?”
“See what?”
“That dark spot over yonder.”
“Y-yes.”
“It’s another island. There’s a cabin on it, and a boat house. Boats too. And in the cabin there is a fireplace and easy chairs, blankets, and—and things to eat.” She swayed a little.
“It—it’s not far.” She steadied herself on his arm. “I—I think I could swim it.”
“But you’ll not!” Red began stripping off his coat. “I’ll swim it and bring back a boat. Here, hold this. I’ll take off my shoes, too. The rest doesn’t matter. I’ll be soaked anyway.”
Another moment and he was in the water swimming strongly.
Red was a fine swimmer. In the slips where rusty ore boats lay at anchor in his home city he had learned to swim before he could talk well.
The distance to the island he found surprisingly short. Before he knew it he was touching rocky shoals that led up to a low bank lined with spruce and birches.
As he stood there shaking the water from him like a spaniel, he saw a dark bulk to his right.
“Boat house.” He flashed the electric torch, which he had carried across in his teeth.
“And there’s the cabin.” Once again his light darted about. There appeared to be a number of small cabins grouped around a larger central one.
“Mysterious sort of place!” he told himself. “Wonder who built it. Who lives there? And when?”
A cold blast of wind came sweeping up the narrow channel. It chilled him to the bone.
“Going to storm. I must get back.
“A fireplace and easy chairs, blankets, things to eat,” he whispered as he stumbled along over the slippery stones.
He thought of the girl standing back there alone, drenched with dew, chilled by the wind.
“I must get back. At once!” He quickened his steps.
On reaching the shore side door of the boat house, he found it locked. With a mutter of disgust, he hurried along a narrow plank walk to the other end. There he plunged waist deep into water, to make his way beneath the great outer door.
“Room for a rowboat beneath this door,” he murmured. “Let ’em keep their launch. No gas anyway.”
A swing of the light showed him a sizeable launch suspended above the water. But that which gladdened his heart was a staunch little rowboat tipped on its side and resting on a narrow ledge at the right of the hole of black water.
“All we ask,” he grumbled. “Oars? Ah, yes! There they are. Now to tip her over.”
This he accomplished without a sound. The oars dropped silently into their places. He was in the act of pushing the boat into the black hole of water when a blood-curdling scream, coming from the shore side, froze every drop of blood in his veins.
“They—they got her!” he gasped. “And after all this!”
For a space of many seconds his heart stood still. Then it raced like an engine without a governor.
“They’ve got her. Will they keep her? We’ll see!”
Red’s fighting blood was up. And could Red fight? Ask the boys of the gridiron. Count them as they go down before him; one, two, three. Yes, Red could fight. He could fight steel and had; could fight hard opponents on the gridiron. And as for these kidnapers—dirty dogs, buzzards, beasts in human form—he’d show ’em!
* * * * * * * *
It was at this same hour that Tom Howe received a visitor, and a very curious specimen of humanity he was. You will need to become well acquainted with him, as he plays an important role in our story. That is one of the jolly features of this life we live; on life’s stage the humblest individual can, and often does, play an important role.
This visitor, who knocked timidly on the young detective’s door just as he was dressing, was known all up and down the river front as “The Rat.” I say he was known; the truth is that he was known to but a few. As a sort of compensation, those few knew him very well. Tom Howe knew him well.
He had a curious occupation, did the Rat. He found out things that people wished to know. And his particular province was the river. He never left it save to deliver a message. At night, in a narrow boat, little more than a canoe and painted dark gray inside and out, he might have been seen cruising up and down the river. Or rather, he was not likely to be seen; his craft and his dirty, dull-colored garb blended in with breakwaters, with piles and all manner of dark and shadowy places.
Thus the Rat lurked about the river at night, gathering scraps of information which might be sold for a price to certain gentlemen who wished to know such things.
Was the Rat particular regarding the character of his customers? Probably not. Some were favored before others, for all that. Tom Howe and Johnny Thompson might have his services at their very best, and that with no thought of charge. Every creature, even a rat, has a sense of gratitude. Johnny Thompson, who, as you will recall, was a great friend of Drew Lane and Tom Howe, had once found the Rat dying of fever. He and Howe had saved him from the hospital, which he dreaded with the fear of death, by hiring a nurse to care for him in his river front hovel.
Now, after an all-night search at Howe’s request, he had something of importance to report.
The Rat had a way of seeming in a great rush. He puffed as he talked and from time to time his sharp nose shot forward, his small black eyes popped just as a rat’s will.
“Dat speed boat, it—it—dat boat,” he puffed now, “you know de Wop what camps under de Twelfth Street bridge?”
“Yes, I know,” Howe replied eagerly.
“De Wop saw it. Fine speed boat. Very fast.”
“What color?”
“Col-color? Can’t see. Too dark.
“You know de Chink got laundry by de river just past de scrap yard?”
“Yes, I know him.”
“He heard de speed boat.” The Rat took a turn around the room.
“So it went that far?”
“Dat far!” The Rat bulged his eyes. “Dat’s not a start. You know de t’ree bums dat hang round de old warehouse way down de river, de big warehouse?”
“Yes.”
“Dey saw it.”
“That’s not strange,” Drew Lane put in. “A speed boat comes near being a curiosity that far down the river. They’d be sure to notice it.”
“Dat’s it.” The Rat took another turn around the room. “Dat’s what I say.
“You know de gypsies campin’ by de river? Cottonwood trees grow on dat place.”
“Yes. I know the place.”
“Dey don’t see it, don’t hear it.”
“Perhaps they were asleep.”
“No, no. Not dat. Squattin’ by de fire, playin’ cards. Dey don’t hear dat boat. Don’t see it, I tell you.”
“Then,” said Drew Lane, “our search narrows. The boat landed somewhere between the old warehouse and the gypsy camp. Can’t be more than six blocks apart. Let’s see, what’s out that way?”
“Some homes,” said Howe. “Some shacks—abandoned, tumble-down places—a roadhouse or two. The airport is not far away.”
“That’s right, the airport.” Drew said these words with little animation. At that moment the airport did not enter deeply into his conscious thoughts. In time it was to take on a deep significance.