“Sounds interesting.” Drew drained his cup. “Wish you’d take a look at these through your microscope.” He pushed a handful of shavings toward his partner. “The Galloping Ghost left them, you remember.
“And here is the collection of pocket knives. You’ll be able to tell whether one of these did the whittling.
“You see,” he explained, “some fellow connected with the kidnaping sat and whittled while he waited for the Red Rover to fall asleep.
“Strange how often men’s habits convict them,” he philosophized. “If you’re a whittler you’ll have your knife out on every occasion, whittling, just whittling.
“This man,” he took up a shaving, “must be a nervous sort. See how short these are. If he were a meditative person, quite at ease, he would take long, smooth strokes.”
“I’ll look these over.” Tom swept the shavings into an envelope. “There might be something in it. Can’t afford to neglect the least clue. If it interests the old G.G. it should have our attention. By the way, what’s your idea about this Galloping Ghost? Who is he? And what’s he after?”
“You answer.” Drew grinned. “All I know is that he seems to be on our side. That’s enough for the present. I—
“Be careful!” He turned suddenly to Johnny. “Don’t bend that. It might be important.”
“What is it?” The boy held up a thin bit of sheet aluminum that had been pressed into a curious form.
“That,” Tom explained, “is an impression taken from the bottom of a sleeping car window. When the Red Rover was kidnaped the window was jimmied. The end of the bar made a deep impression in the wood. It was an old bar with several nicks in it. If I ever come upon it I could identify it by this impression.”
“This,” said Johnny, “is getting too deep for me. Invisible footprints on sheets. Shavings from some whittler’s knife. Impressions in wood. These are to bring a man to justice. Pipe dreaming, I call it.
“By the way!” he exclaimed. “I have a jimmy bar all my own. Saved it from a watery grave.”
Stepping to the corner he produced a paper-wrapped package and then revealed the bar he had taken from the speed boat of Angelo Piccalo, Junior.
“Let’s have a look!” Tom Howe’s eyes fairly bulged.
“Say, boy!” he cried ten seconds later. “That’s the bar! Where’d you get it?”
“Why, what do you mean? The bar?”
“I mean it’s the bar that pried that car window open. See! The impression fits exactly. I say! Where’d you get it?”
“Nothing to get excited about,” Johnny grumbled. “Some one stuck it in the back of Angelo’s speed boat. Young Angelo, you know, son of the flower shop man.”
“Back of the boy’s speed boat. Humph!” Slouching down in his chair, Tom fell into a brown study.
“I’ll dig into this whittling business,” he said, at last rousing himself. “There might be something in it. You never can tell.”
After ten winks caught in the scout’s cozy cabin, Red Rodgers and Berley Todd were up before dawn.
“I don’t think much of the bush wolves as weather prophets,” Red said in a hoarse whisper. He was ever conscious that their lives were in danger. “What a morning! We must get a rowboat and be away for Passage Island.”
“In the light of day?” The girl pressed his arm hard. “They’d see us. Then all would be at an end. But no, perhaps not. There are islands, small islands all in a row that lie half a mile off this main shore. Once behind those, we would be hidden.”
“Let’s have a look. Which way is the shore?”
“Over this way.” The girl led him down a path that, circling a clump of bushes, led them past a group of buildings that loomed large in the blue-gray dawn.
They passed through tall grass drenched with dew, to climb at last a pile of rocks and finally reach a great boulder that overlooked the water.
In this moment of hushed silence just before dawn, the water was like glass, smooth white glass.
“What could be sweeter? We must find a boat at once.” Red turned his eyes upon the girl.
He realized at once that she had not heard him. She was listening instead for some sound that must come from far away.
Without willing it, he also listened; heard it, too, a long, deep, long-drawn sigh. No human sigh was this, but the sigh of great waters. He heard it again and yet again.
“It is as if Father Superior were waking from his sleep,” the girl whispered. “It tells of a coming storm. We must not go. We must wait.”
They had not long to wait. As the water took on the faint pink of dawn a mist appeared to rise from afar and to steal upon them.
One by one the distant points of land became misty suggestions, mere ghosts of earth. Like ten thousand great white fish leaping in the sea, two miles away white-caps appeared, while in the foreground with the gray-black sky as a reflecting mirror, the water took on a startling clearness.
Gulls ceased to soar and scream. Settling upon a rocky ledge, they stood erect, silent, like uniformed officers observing the outcome of a battle. From time to time a member of the party, some aid-de-camp, came soaring in to report the results of his observation.
And all the time ten thousand spots of gleaming white advanced. Now they were two miles away, a mile and a half, a mile, half a mile. Like some dirigible swept from its mooring, a fragment of cloud detached itself from the vast mass and came sweeping over. It left in its wake a disturbing chill.
And now the spots of white lay before them, at their very feet. A burst of wind swept the hair back from the girl’s temples. The wind increased in volume. Waves began beating at the rocks. A few large rain drops spattered.
And then, with a suddenness that was startling, the storm broke. Rain came down in torrents. Wind twisted at the birches, and set all the spruces whispering and sighing. The ever-increasing roar of water on the rocks vied with the din of crashing thunder. The sky, laced and interlaced by lightning, revealed itself as some vast shroud. There are no storms like the storms of November.
But even the fury of nature is futile. Men do not agree upon man’s destiny. No more does nature agree upon its own. Rain beating upon the water subdued it. White water vanished. The beating of waves subsided. Having outdone itself, in its mad fury, the wind swept the clouds to other lands and other waters. A brief half hour and a scene of surpassing beauty, a tiny world studded with diamonds lay before the waiting pair.
“It is over,” Red whispered from the depths of a great spruce where they had found shelter.
“For now,” came the girl’s experienced reply. “For all that, we do not stir from this spot. Superior has moods all its own. And remember, Superior never gives up its dead.”
Leading the way out from their sheltered nook, she perched herself upon a high rock. Red took a place beside her. When she spoke again a dreamy look had overspread her countenance.
“This,” she said, spreading her arms wide, “this is Isle Royale. Forget the drifting leaves, the gray tossing branches. It is summer now. Night has come and a great golden moon paints a patch of silver down the bay. The rippling water seems alive. Every tiny wave bears a tinier craft upon its bosom—the silver schooner of a fairy.
“Listen! From far down the bay comes, wafted on by the breeze, the faintest suggestion of a song. What is it, the whisper of a bird talking to his mate?
“No. There comes the put-put of a motor, yet even this seems to keep time to the music that, gathering power and sweetness, floats on and on down the bay. A craft appears. All white in the moonlight, it seems as unreal as a fairy’s dream.
“Strange men who drift about our island in tiny gas boats. Like gypsies they are. They are here. Who are they? You do not care to know. Where did they come from? The mines, the forests, the pulp mills perhaps. This does not matter. They are here. They have a tune for you. They belong to the night.
“So, with the moon hanging high, they drift down that silver patch of moonlight to vanish into the night. And still, long after they are lost from sight, comes wafted in by the wind and waves faint, sweet music that one cannot forget. This,” she sighed, “is Isle Royale in summer. And you have not seen it, and have never heard it.”
“But all this—” Red smiled down at her. “All this is play. And I never play.”
“But you will! You must!” she exclaimed in a breath. “You will play with me here. See! A storm is rising, a three days’ storm.
“See! It is light. We are in danger! We must hurry back to our refuge.” Like a gleam of white light she was away.
Once again it was night on Isle Royale. All day a wild south-easter had lashed the waters of Lake Superior into foam. All day in the scout’s cabin Red Rodgers and Berley Todd had waited for that which they felt to be inevitable—the arrival of the kidnapers and the battle that must follow. Or would there be a battle? The snow had melted. No footprints remained. Perhaps Ed could make the outlaws believe they were not there.
For a time after a breakfast of sour dough flapjacks they sat discussing possibilities. After that, overcome by their long vigil, they slept.
Now that night had come, they were as wide awake as night owls.
“It’s tough to be waiting without knowing what they are about,” Red exploded at last. “I’d almost rather meet them face to face and fight it out.”
“Oh, no! Not that!” The girl shuddered. “But we might have a look at them from the Palisades. Surely we’d not meet them on that trail. And, if we should, we could lose ourselves on the instant.”
“Safe enough,” Ed commented.
“What are the Palisades?” Red rose as if prepared to go.
“The highest point on this ridge,” the guide explained. “Trees are cut away there. You can look down a hundred feet to Tobin’s Harbor. Their camp’s back there. If there’s a light showing they will still be in camp. If one moves on the water, you’ll know they are out looking around.
“No need for me to go,” he added, nodding at Berley Todd. “She knows every step of the way.”
“In the dark?”
“In the dark. But there’s a little light. Better take your flashlight. Don’t use it unless you have to.”
A short time later two dusky figures stole out into the night, a tall one and a short one.
In silence they passed through a narrow fringe of spruce, birch and balsam with here and there a cottage looming black and silent in the dark.
Once the girl seized Red’s arm to point through a clump of shapely spruce trees. “That,” she whispered impressively, “is my home—my summer home.”
“If the storm keeps up, shall we go there, perhaps to-morrow night, you and I and Ed?”
“Perhaps.”
They mounted a low hill, then followed along a tree-grown ridge. He marveled at her ability to find her way in the dark. “Great little sport, this one,” he told himself. “Not soft like so many girls.” This was true. The hand that gripped his arm was as hard and muscular as a boy’s. So was her arm.
In his mind’s eye he saw Lake Superior flecked with foam, four miles of it. “It’s going to be tough, at best.”
“Here!” the girl whispered in his ear. “It’s just up there. The trail’s almost straight up. Follow me. Be sure of your footing.”
Her dark form loomed above him, but from her lips came no panting breath. “Fit,” he told himself. “As fit as a marathon runner.” A moment of wild scrambling and he stood beside her. At that instant the clouds parted and, for a space of seconds, the harbor lay beneath them in all the dark, majestic beauty of a moonlight night. Almost directly beneath them, a golden ball, lay the reflection of the moon. Off to the left a dark bulk loomed.
“Island.” Berley caught her breath as she whispered: “Kidnaper’s island.”
Then a black cloud obscured the light and the harbor. The distant shore lay beneath them, a vast well of darkness.
Darkness? Not quite all. From the far end of that long, narrow island on which their log prison stood, a pale yellow light shone.
“They are there,” the girl whispered.
“At least some of them,” Red amended.
“We can go down this way.” Once again the girl led.
In time they came to a spot Red recognized, the short dock at which they had disembarked on the previous night. The rowboat they had taken from the island still bumped at the dock.
To Red, reared as he had been close to the slips where rusty ore boats lay at anchor, a boat, any sort of boat, had an all but irresistible appeal.
Apparently some such spell hung over the girl, for when he gave her his hand to help her into the boat she did not say, “No, no! We dare not.” Instead, she whispered: “We will glide along in the shadows.”
The oars made no sound. Sky and water seemed one. To the girl, as she sat in the stern, they appeared to float in air.
And then, all in a flash, this stillness was shattered. The prow of their boat struck some solid object with a dull thud. That same instant it reared high in air to pitch the dreaming girl into cold, black waters of night.
Paralyzed by the suddenness of it all, the boy, riding high in air but still clinging to his seat, saw her go.
For a space of seconds he hung there in midair. Then with a dull splash the boat fell once more to the water. At that same instant he saw that which caused him to rub his eyes and stare. At a speed quite impossible for a swimmer of the girl’s skill or strength she was streaking away across the water toward an island that loomed out of the dark.
“A trap,” he thought. “They—they got her!”
Seizing the oars, he swung the boat about and began rowing madly.
* * * * * * * *
It was during this same hour that Johnny Thompson happened upon something that mystified him more than he was willing to admit. This affair might have ended badly but for the boy’s splendid physique and careful training.
He was about to pass over the river bridge on his way home when his eye was caught by a brilliant display of flowers in Angelo Piccalo’s window. Coming to a halt, he stood there studying the flowers for some little time. “Some flowers I never saw,” he told himself. “Have to ask Angelo about them. Those red, heart-shaped ones and—”
His thoughts broke off. Two men, having crossed the bridge, hesitated a moment, then went down the stairway leading to the breakwater landing.
“That’s queer,” he told himself, “at this hour of the night!”
As he lingered his wonder grew, for two more men appeared from the dark bridge and descended into the depths below, and after these came three others.
“I’ll have a look,” he told himself.
As he shifted his position a door at the foot of the stairs opened and a man disappeared. “Odd sort of business. A door opens. No light comes out. Yet the man goes in. Something wrong about that. That’s beneath Angelo’s flower shop. He’s my friend. I’ll have a glimpse inside.”
His glance inside netted nothing but darkness. Putting out a hand, he pressed against a surface that yielded—a silent, swinging door.
At once he was in a large, smoke-filled room. A curious place it was, fitted with tables and a counter; yet there was apparently nothing to sell.
A strange feeling of discontent appeared to hover over the room. Johnny felt a desire to vanish. He resisted this to stare at the men who sat about in groups grumbling in monotones and at two who complained loudly in a strange language to a large, poker-faced man leaning over the counter.
All this will remain in the boy’s mind as a scene from some mystery drama, for a rough voice at his ear said:
“How’d you get here?”
Startled, he looked at the speaker. He was almost twice Johnny’s size. And he had help. A companion stood at his side. Together they glared at the boy.
“I walked in,” he said in deliberate tones.
“Well, walk out again.”
“Who says so? This is Angelo’s place.”
“It may be, and it may not. Out you go!”
Seizing the boy by the shoulder, they pushed him through the folding doors and, following, gave him a sudden shove and a vicious kick that landed him outside.
It was a brutal and cowardly act. Unfortunately for the perpetrator, he followed halfway through the door. Like a flash of light, Johnny was on his feet. The next instant his left arm was about the big man’s neck with a vise-like grip that both choked and silenced him in one act. Next Johnny’s good right played a tattoo on the other’s face. He went down like a log. With a deft twist, Johnny pitched him into the river.
Just in time he caught the shadow of the second man as he leaped toward him. Dropping like a deadfall, he stopped the headlong plunge of the man and sent him to join his pal in the river where they did a spluttering act.
“Coarse lot!” Johnny grumbled. “On second thought, I’ll not stay.”
Climbing the stairs, he vanished into the night.
This affair was to linger in his memory. What place was this? What were those men doing there? Some were grumbling, some smiling. Why? Was this Angelo’s place? It couldn’t be. But it was beneath his flower store. Would he rent the space to such men if he knew their nature?
“Naturally he wouldn’t,” Johnny assured himself. “I’ll speak to him about it next time I see him.”
This resolve was never carried out. Before he chanced upon Angelo’s flower shop again, strange discoveries were made. These discoveries were to change his entire course of action.
As Red Rodgers raced after the floating figure of the girl he gained little by little. Boat length by boat length he decreased the distance. Now she was twenty yards away, now ten, now five, as he pulled madly at the oars.
And then, as he glanced over his shoulder a cry of surprise and dismay escaped his lips. With a snort and a mad splashing of water a dark bulk sprang from the water, rattled over the pebbly shore, and then disappeared into the dense forest that covered the narrow island.
For one full minute he looked in vain for Berley Todd. Then, catching the sound of what seemed a low laugh, he whirled about to find her two white hands clinging to the prow.
“Please give me a hand!” she pleaded. “I’m soaked. And boo! It’s so cold!
“I always wanted to do it,” she chuckled as she tumbled into the boat.
“Do what?” Red was dumbfounded.
“Ride a moose.”
“Ride—a—moose?”
“Sure! Didn’t you know it was done? Easy enough. All you have to do is to find one swimming and run him down with a canoe or an outboard motor, and then hop overboard and seize him by the antlers. As long as he is in the water he can’t harm you. But on shore, just look out!
“That,” she added quietly, as Red once more swung the boat about and rowed for shore, “was Old Uncle Ned.”
“Old Uncle Ned? Oh, yes, you spoke of him once before.”
“He’s huge, and is quite a character on the island. Comes coughing around timid ladies’ windows at night.” She laughed quietly.
“When you ran into him he must have been feeding on grass off the bottom. He came up quick and pitched me out. Somehow I was thrown on top of him, and I got hold of his antlers. The rest was too good to lose, so I just hung right on and took a ride.
“I hope,” she ended quite meekly, “that you don’t mind.”
“N-no.” Red was rowing hard. “But you’ll be frozen before we reach the cabin.”
“Oh-o nn-o.” The girl strove in vain to prevent her teeth from chattering. “I-I’m all—all right.”
The instant they touched the dock she was out of the boat and on the dock doing a wild dance. She stopped suddenly right in the midst of this to stare away at the black water.
“Wha-what’s moving over there?” She sank away into the shadows.
For a time Red could discover nothing. Then it seemed to him that he did make out something moving close to the surface of the water.
“It may be a boat. Perhaps we had better—”
“See!” She whispered excitedly. “Itisa boat!”
Suddenly a bright light shone across the water. A figure crouching behind the light was faintly seen. He was in the prow of a boat.
But now the thing within that circle of light caught and held their attention. A moose, splendid in his glory of shapely body and wide-spreading antlers, stood at the point of the island. Apparently blinded by the light, he stood there like a statue.
“How perfect!” Red breathed.
“Monarch of the forest!” the girl whispered low.
And then stark tragedy came crashing across the waters. A high-power rifle roared. The moose leaped high and then fell with a splash into the black water. The light blinked out, and again all was night.
As if to escape the sight, Berley Todd turned and glided silently up the hill. She was closely followed by the Red Rover.
* * * * * * * *
While the Red Rover and Berley Todd were meeting with strange adventures on the “Mystic Isle,” Drew Lane and his companions were striving in vain to unravel the tangled skein of mystery that surrounded their disappearance.
“Everything’s gone haywire!” Drew exclaimed disconsolately, thrusting out his feet before him and staring moodily at his littered desk.
“Not so bad as that, I’m sure,” Johnny Thompson put in hopefully.
“Just exactly as bad, and worse!” Drew struck the desk a blow with his fist that set even a “Meditating Buddha” dancing. “Why, look at it; we raid two well-known headquarters, and what do we get? A quart of pocket knives. The Galloping Ghost suggests that we whittle soft wood with each one of these, then examine the cuttings for irregularities on the edge of the knife, after which we are to compare each with the shavings found on the night of the now famous kidnaping. And what do we find? Exactly nothing. The whittling was not done by any one of these knives. So back they go. And where are we? Nowhere.
“The Chief’s yelling his head off. People are saying the police are asleep. Daily papers are impatient. University people are furious. The Red Rover is still a captive, and each day brings the great game nearer. Football! Why did anyone ever invent the game?” He sprang to his feet and began pacing the floor.
“Why did they kidnap Red anyway?” he demanded fiercely. “I ask you that. No ransom money has been demanded. Why?”
“Perhaps,” suggested Johnny, “they mean to wait until the very day of the game. They may figure that is the psychological moment for making a demand.”
“There might be something to that,” Drew said earnestly. “Might be a lot. And if there is—” Once again his voice rose. “If there is, we’ve got to get them before that time comes! Kidnaping’s been too easy. Too many soft-livered millionaires have paid large sums for their release or the release of some child. We’ve got to give ’em a lesson!”
“But how are you to get them?”
“We must find a way. There’s still that invisible footprint on the sleeping car bed sheet.”
“And there’s my jimmy bar,” said Johnny hopefully.
“Yes, that’s the very bar, right enough. But where did you find it? In the speed boat of a boy in his ’teens. You can’t very well pin a super-kidnaping on a mere boy.”
“N-no,” Johnny said slowly, “and you wouldn’t want to. Young Angelo is a fine chap. Good looking, and all that. Got everything—speed boat—going to have a faster one—big car—going to college, and all that.”
“All that?” Drew sat up and stared at him. “Didn’t know there was that much in the cut flower business, not these days. Flowers, you’d say, are a luxury. And luxuries have been hit hard. Guess I’ll quit being a cop, and go in for flowers.”
Johnny thought of the rough reception accorded him in the place beneath the flower shop, and wondered a big wonder. Should he tell Drew about that? Well, perhaps, some time. Not now. He hadn’t quite thought the thing through yet.
“But the man with the scar and the fiery eyes!” he suggested. “You’ve got the goods on him. That was his gun. He fired that shot at Tom, didn’t he?”
“Yes, he fired the shot. But he’s vanished off the earth, so far as we can see.
“And besides,” he added, pushing a sheet of paper toward the boy, “besides, there is this.”
“The old G.G. again!” Johnny said, catching his breath.
“None other. Read it.”
Johnny read:
Drew Lane: You are on the wrong track. The man who fired the shot was not the kidnaper. For his motives consult the Rogues’ Gallery. The trail you seek leads north.“The G.G.”
Drew Lane: You are on the wrong track. The man who fired the shot was not the kidnaper. For his motives consult the Rogues’ Gallery. The trail you seek leads north.
“The G.G.”
“North!” Drew exploded. “How far north? Which way? How? By train, plane or boat? If he wishes to help us, why doesn’t he be more explicit?”
“Perhaps,” suggested Johnny, “that’s all he knows at present.
“And,” he added thoughtfully, “we ourselves might go on from there.”
“How?”
“Well, you know, in the newspaper offices they have what they call an Exchange Department. Papers from all over the world are on file there. If a fellow went there and studied all the papers published up north in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Canada, he might discover a clue. Some paragraph telling of some mysterious occurrence might just put a fellow on the right track.”
“It might.” Drew’s tone was dubious. “Sounds a little like it came out of a book. But you go ahead and try it. Jimmie Drury over at the News will see that you get a look at the files. Tell him I sent you.
“And while you’re on the ramble, just drop over to the State Street Station and see if you can find the picture of a crook with a cross branded on his temple. Old G.G. suggested that.
“But I’ll tell you what I am beginning to think of that Galloping Ghost! I think he’s a fake! Or even worse, a crook that’s giving us a bum steer, throwing us off the trail. I’ve more than half a notion to burn every other love letter he sends us before I read it.
“Because, look!” Once more he was pacing the floor. “If an honest fellow was wearing a sheet and posing as a ghost, if he had some real information about a case like this—one that interests the whole country—why wouldn’t he let us in on his secret, come right round in his street clothes and tell us his story? What I say is—”
He broke straight off to stare at the door. Some one had begun rattling it violently.
“Johnny, see who’s there.”
Red Rodgers and Berley Todd lost no time in making their way back to the scout’s cabin. If those men who blinded and shot the moose were the kidnapers then they were safest under the protection of Ed’s “shootin’ irons.”
“Those men,” Ed said, when he had heard their story, “more’n likely were not your kidnapers at all. Moose hunters, more’n likely.”
“Moose hunters!” Berley Todd exploded. “You’re not allowed to kill a moose on Isle Royale!”
“Who said you were?” Ed threw back his head and laughed. “They’re not allowed to kidnap star football players and little half-portions like you, but here you are all the same!
“Case is not parallel though,” he added thoughtfully. “These men who come to the island for moose need the meat to feed their families; anyway that’s their excuse.
“And it’s good enough excuse for me!” he added emphatically. “I’m neither deputy nor game warden. I’m here to guard the buildings of this resort from fire and theft. If I interfere with these moose hunters I’m likely to be found cold and stiff under the snow.”
“But it is a shame!” Berley said quietly. “Moose are such magnificent creatures! And Isle Royale is about the only place you can see them. Think of the hundreds who come to the island every year just to see them.”
“Y-e-s,” Ed drawled, “I’ve thought of them and I’ve wondered why the moose are not protected in winter. But that distinctly ain’t my job. So there you are.”
“I’m not so sure those men were not members of the kidnaping band. There must be batteries and spotlights on the plane. They could hook those up and use them. They’ll be needing meat. Why shouldn’t they hunt moose?”
“Might be, but I doubt it.” Ed stirred the fire.
“Oh, oh!” exclaimed Berley Todd, as a sudden thought took possession of her. “Suppose those were moose hunters. Suppose they were to meet the kidnapers. Suppose they think the kidnapers are wardens and deputies; and the kidnapers think they’re detectives from the city. Suppose they meet and shoot it out!”
“And then suppose we come upon them all dead with their boots on,” Red drawled. “They do that in the movies.
“Ed,” he demanded, “when will this storm end?”
“Perhaps day after to-morrow.”
Red stared angrily at the fire. The girl threw him a teasing glance as she sang low:
“Come, play with me.”
“All right!” he exclaimed almost fiercely, “I’ll play with you to-morrow and the day after if need be; anyway until the kidnapers catch up with us or we are able to leave the island.”
“If you care to row,” Ed suggested, “it’s not too rough in the harbor. If you were to wear my canvas coat and cowboy hat—” He turned to Red. “If you went out before dawn and if Berley, here, sat low in the stern, no one would know but that it was just old Ed and his dog. You could play around among the little islands all day and be safe.”
“Shall we?” Berley’s tone was almost wistful. “We’ll take a lunch and eat it on the rocks.”
“Might be worse,” Red admitted. “Rowing will at least keep me in trim for the great day. And now for some sleep!” He disappeared behind the narrow curtain that led to one of the cubby-hole bedrooms in Ed’s cabin.
“The great day,” he whispered to himself, as he slid beneath the covers. That day now seemed very, very far away. But quite unconsciously he was losing his feeling of long weariness. The spring of youth was flooding back through every nerve and fiber of his being. “If only I could get a whack at that line,” he thought dreamily. “If only I could!”
* * * * * * * *
The person banging at Drew Lane’s door was none other than the person known as the Rat. Drew was surprised to see him. The Rat, like others of his kind, seldom appeared unless called. The object he unwrapped before the young detective’s astonished eyes was, he thought, worth a trip half way round the world. It was the shoe that had made the invisible footprint on the sleeping car sheet. Once Drew’s eyes fell upon it, he sat and stared. A full minute had passed into eternity before he could say:
“Where did you find it?”
“You know dat place beside de river? Down below de flower shop? Angelo Piccalo’s shop? Dat’s de place.”
Drew looked at Johnny. Johnny looked at Drew.
“Rat,” said Drew, “you’re a great old finder. Here’s a fiver. Now scram!”
The Rat vanished.
For a long time the detective and his young friend sat staring at the shoe.
“Johnny,” said Drew at last, “they say you can’t keep birds from flying over your head, but you can prevent their building nests in your hair. Also, ‘Where there is much smoke there must be some fire.’ First there’s the jimmy bar, and now there’s this shoe. Looks as if we were beginning to see light. Do you get me?”
“I—I think I do,” replied Johnny, in anything but a cheerful voice.
Johnny was on his way early next morning. He crossed the bridge and was about to pass the flower shop without going in, when Angelo stepped out of the door.
“Gooda morning, meester Johnny! Dees ees one—a fine morning.”
“Yes, sure, Angelo, it is fine.”
Apparently a box had been opened beside the flower shop door. The box was gone, but some broken fragments of wood remained. Picking up one of these, Angelo began to whittle absent-mindedly. His actions so fascinated the boy that he found it hard to talk coherently. However, he forced himself into the task of talking about the weather, the river, speed boats and rare flowers. In the meantime he watched the keen blade of Angelo’s knife chipping out short, sharp shavings of wood.
“He’s nervous. His fingers tremble,” he told himself.
A customer appeared. Angelo went inside. After a furtive glance, Johnny bent over, seized a handful of Angelo’s shavings, then hurried away.
A block down the street he paused to drop the shavings into a used envelope and thrust them into the side pocket of his coat. “Exhibit A,” he murmured as he marched on toward the office of the News where he was to study Exchanges. “Exhibit A. I wonder!”
That morning, in the ghostly hour just before dawn, Red Rodgers and Berley Todd crept out into the frosty air of Isle Royale.
“To-day,” the girl whispered, “we are to play.”
And yet, as she stood upon the rocks watching the waves that, now roaring as they rose, now whispering as they fell, broke upon those rugged shores, she seemed to see beneath their surface grim black hands stretching out to grasp her.
It was strange, those black waters in the eerie hour before dawn. Even the staunch young athlete felt it and was silent.
Once stout oars were in their hands, however, all was changed. To feel the rise and fall of the boat, to skim the crests of waves, to catch the rhythmic rowing that, like a song in the night, seemed to lift them and bear them down—this was life.
“How she can row!” Red told himself, as he felt the push of her oars send the boat along.
“When the time comes,” he said aloud, “we will make it.”
“Yes,” the girl replied, “but the time is not to-day.”
That she spoke the truth Red was soon enough to know. In the sheltered channel of Rock Harbor the waves were mere rushing ripples of foam. But once they came to a gap between two small islands that looked out into the open sea, great swells caught their frail craft and, tossing it back, flecked them with foam.
“The voice of many waters.” In the girl’s tone there was a touch of awe. “In that storm, on the open lake, no small boat could live. To-morrow we play.”
Surrendering himself to the will of the elements, Red Rodgers played. But even as they sent their boat gliding along to the time of a song, as they climbed some rocky ledge to stand breathless looking off at the storm-tossed waters, or fought their way forward through masses of tangled vegetation to some crag where they might find a broader view, he whispered to himself:
“I am keeping fit. Even this is training for the day that is to come.” And then, as his mind sobered, he wondered: “Will that day ever come?”
At noon they built a fire on a tiny beach and brewed coffee. They ate their lunch in silence. There was that about this day of storm which made silence seem a mood to prize.
Just as the sun was sinking in the west, they turned the prow of their boat into a narrow opening, then shot her squarely into the teeth of a storm. Throwing all the force of their perfect bodies into the business of rowing, they conquered one gigantic wave, another, another, and yet another.
Their boat was but a cork in the midst of a great ocean, yet they dared accept the wild waves’ challenge. Again, again, and yet again, they fought their way up and over, up and over until they were twenty boat-lengths out to sea.
Then, with a laugh that was good to hear, Red swung the boat about and they went riding the waves back to shelter and safety.
“That,” he breathed, “is life—life—life!”
Five minutes later they lay upon a bed of moss at the back of a tiny island known as “Sleeping Lion” because of the mane-like crest of bushes that crowns its ridge, watching the blue-black waters turn to the silvery gray of night.
Never had the boy witnessed such a sight. Starting at the rocks nearest them, the spray moved along the island shores. And every separate spray seemed a light that flashed with one white gleam, then faded into darkness.
“Old Father Superior is lighting his lamps,” the girl whispered. Once again there was awe in her tone.
So they lingered on the “Sleeping Lion” until the afterglow had faded and Father Superior’s lamps were lost in the shades of night.