Who can describe the fury of such a storm, the rushing of wind, waves mounting higher and higher, foam hissing to the right and left of you, darkness all about you, even the gleam of the light from Passage Island lost for long, desperate moments?
And yet you battle as never before. Heading your boat squarely into the teeth of the storm, you rise and fall, rise and fall like a cork in the center of the Atlantic. You battle. You pray. You hope until hope seems vain.
And then, just as all seems over, the storm passes with one long, whispering sigh.
As the moon came out and the rush of wind passed, the boy and girl looked upon a world of steel-blue waves flecked with foam. And on those waves some distance away there rode a boat. It was a white boat with an orange-colored bottom. A great deal of orange was showing; very little white. The boat was upside down.
Once again, as they looked, Red said hoarsely: “Listen!”
As before, there came the long whisper that ended with a sigh.
But even as they rested on their oars there came to their listening ears a louder sound, the drumming of an airplane’s motor.
“They are coming!” Red took up his oars. “Passage Island is just over there. It can’t be far now.”
As you have guessed, the plane heard by the Red Rover and Berley Todd was Drew Lane’s red racer. And Johnny Thompson was riding in the rear cockpit.
Drew had planned his trip well. They should have reached the island before dark. But misfortune had befallen them. Forced down by a leaky fuel pipe, they had found themselves on the surface of a small lake in the midst of a great forest where there was no one. After two hours of labor with a few tools and scant material, they had managed to repair the leak. This delay had forced them to fly in the night, and here they were approaching an island known to them only by reports and by a map that lay spread out before Drew in the cockpit.
Despite his meager knowledge, he did wonderfully well. Having arrived at the east end of the island, he flew directly across it. Catching the gleams of light that came from three narrow bands of water, he knew them to be Rock Harbor, Tobin’s Harbor and Duncan’s Bay. Choosing the middle one of these, he dropped low to go scooting along less than two hundred feet in air.
As he flew, the gleam of a powerful searchlight, attached to the plane, played upon the water.
Of a sudden that light shot upward, then blinked out.
“Found what he was looking for,” Johnny Thompson told himself. “But what was it?”
To this question he could form no certain answer; perhaps a boat, a cabin or an airplane. In fact, Johnny was almost completely in the dark regarding the purpose and probable outcome of this, the latest of Drew Lane’s adventures.
When he had met the young detective he had said never a word. In silence they had climbed into the plane and flown away. Who had kidnaped the Red Rover and Berley Todd? Johnny did not know. Did Drew Lane know? Were the kidnapers on this island? Was the Red Rover? Was Berley Todd? The boy did not know. All he knew was that he appeared to be right bang up against one more exciting adventure, and that was enough.
Tipping the plane at a rakish angle, Drew Lane sent it over a narrow ridge of land to drop at last upon a narrow stretch of black water. This was Rock Harbor. The scout’s cabin was not half a mile away. Hearing the drum of a motor, he extinguished his light, then sprang to the door just in time to see the plane land.
“Hm!” he breathed. “More kidnapers, officers of the law, or just ordinary folks. I expected to have a dull time at this place, all by myself, but blamed if it ain’t been exciting so far.”
At that he buckled his one remaining “shootin’ iron” about his waist and disappeared into the night.
At that same hour a second plane, all silver and white, circled over a stretch of water black as night, then, graceful as a sea gull, sank to rest.
The body of water was Duncan’s Bay. Two miles long, one quarter as wide, with trees growing to the very edge of its lapping waters and never so much as an abandoned shack standing beside it, this bay at all seasons of the year is a dark and lonesome spot as night falls across the world.
Night was here. So too were the chill winds of November. But the single occupant of the plane appeared to give little heed to all this. Unfolding a curious sort of collapsible rubber boat, he filled it with air, took a short paddle from his fusilage, stepped into the rubber affair and paddled ashore.
The spot upon which he landed had perhaps at one time been a barren stretch of sand. Overgrown now with tangled grass and low bushes, it forms a perfect camping ground. Such it has been for countless generations. From this spot ten thousand camp fires have sent their golden gleams across the black waters of Duncan’s Bay. Each in turn has faded into the darkness of night. Had this strange visitor, a slender person in a long black coat, cared for such things, he might have dug beneath his very feet and found there charcoal and half burned bones from fires that had gleamed a hundred, perhaps two hundred years ago. For, since Isle Royale lifted its rocky head from out the deep and took on a cap of green, this spot has been the camping place of man.
The stranger did not dig. He stood there long as if in silent contemplation.
He might have fished, for in these very waters such great northern pikes (wolves of all fresh water seas) as are not found elsewhere play among the wavering weeds. Had he cared to wait for dawn, then had he put out across the narrow bay to set a silver spoon gleaming through the black waters, he might have experienced such a thrill as is seldom accorded a fisherman.
He did not wait for dawn. Instead, by the gleam of a small flashlight he studied a slip of paper for a moment; then turning abruptly about, lost himself in the dense brush that lines the slope of a high ridge just back of this narrow clearing.
Duncan’s Bay is separated from Tobin’s Harbor—which, as you will recall, was the landing place of first the kidnapers’ plane and after that Drew Lane’s red racer—by a tall and narrow ridge of rocks heavily overgrown with brush.
A half hour after this tall person from the silver plane vanished from the camping grounds of Duncan’s Bay, a strange apparition might have been seen at the very crest of the ridge.
At this spot, known as Lookout Louise, one may stand at a point some hundreds of feet above the water level and look down upon the dark and somber bay that lies below. On this particular night, viewed from this height, the silver plane seemed a giant sea gull with wings outspread.
But the apparition—he wore a long flowing robe of filmy white. As the moon came out to gleam upon him, his head appeared as white as his robe. And his body was bones, just gleaming white bones, or so it would have seemed had some one been there to look. There was no one.
For one full moment he stood gazing down at the black waters and the silver plane. Then, turning slowly about, he gave utterance to a low, hollow chuckle as weird as the song of the wind in the pines of a churchyard at midnight. Then, like the phantom he seemed, he dropped away into the shadows that lay above Tobin’s Harbor where at that very moment the fate of Drew Lane, Johnny Thompson and the kidnapers swung uncertainly in the balance. And even as this strange apparition vanished, he appeared to gallop.
“Red! Red! The light is gone!” Berley Todd’s voice rang with tragedy.
She had endured much that night, had this little daughter of the rich. She had rowed until she felt herself near to exhaustion when of a sudden she had discovered that they were pursued. Getting her second wind, she had rowed as she had never dreamed any one could row. She had dodged bullets and battled a storm. Now the light from Passage Island that had guided them all the way had failed. It was too much.
“Red! The light is gone!”
Somewhere in the dark, waves were dashing against rocks. The roar of it filled her ears. Still their boat, tossed about, moved forward.
“We must row.” Three words escaped Red’s tight set lips; no more.
The roar of waters sounded louder. The boy changed their course. They glided from danger. Now and then the girl caught the gleam of a white-cap when with the hiss of a sea serpent it broke close beside them.
Then of a sudden the boy put all the strength of his splendid arms into a dozen titanic strokes. They rose to the crest of a wave; another, yet another and then as if by magic they glided out upon a sea of glass.
The girl caught her breath. What was it? Had she fallen asleep? Was she dreaming?
No, no. As if by pre-arrangement, the moon came out to shine upon a scene of matchless beauty. A harbor, walled in on every side by steep, rocky cliffs, lay about them.
“This,” said Red Rodgers, with a touch of the dramatic in his voice, “is the harbor on Passage Island. We are safe!”
Sinking down to a place in the prow, the girl allowed her head to drop into her hands while she strove in vain to drive from her senses the ceaseless roar of the beating surf.
After a time she lifted her head to admit into her consciousness certain vital facts. Her feet were ankle deep in water, and had been for an hour; yet she had not known it. Her hands were blistered. Her arms ached. Red had found a flashlight and had switched it on. They were nearing a shore. On the shore was a narrow dock and a boathouse. All this came to her as if she were a very small child reading it from a book.
“This harbor,” Red spoke at last, “is about a mile from the lighthouse. There is no safe landing there for such a night. The light is not out. We were passing along close to a rocky wall that hid the light.
“There is a trail from this place to the lighthouse. And at the lighthouse there is a fire and blankets, food and good cheer.”
“Food and good cheer,” the girl repeated after him as in a dream. “Then we will go there.”
They did go there, though the girl will not recall the long stretch of pasture-like land over which they passed, nor the ridge they scaled to descend on the other side and to catch again the blinking rays of that cheering light. She will not recall all this because she walked as one in a dream.
At the lighthouse, besides two men, there was a woman, the head keeper’s sister. To her care Berley Todd was entrusted. When she had wrapped her in hot blankets and poured steaming broth down her throat, she bundled her off to bed where for long hours Berley dreamed of kidnapers, wild waves and cracking guns.
The Red Rover did not sleep. Never more awake in his life, he found himself in a position to act; and the Red Rover was born for action alone. For days his immediate future, the possibility of getting back to Old Midway in the great game, his very life itself, had hung in the balance. Now the balance had swung down. Fate had given him a break.
As he stood outside the lighthouse, his mind still in a whirl, a short chubby man with a beaming sort of smile approached him.
“I am Pierre Gagnon. And you,” he beamed afresh, “are the great Red Rover.”
“That’s what they call me,” Red said quietly. “But that doesn’t matter. Only one thing truly matters. How am I to get back to the city in time for that game?
“You see—” He was growing eager now; all the dull feeling of weariness had left him. He yearned for battle. “You see, a lot depends on that game. Not—not for me, but for others. There’s the school, great Old Midway! It gave me a chance. Took me out of the steel mill and taught me the things I needed most to know.
“Then there’s the Grand Old Man, our coach. The cleanest sportsman the world has ever known. And this is his last year, his last game. That game must be won!
“There’s the public, too. They’re hoping against hope. They suppose that I’ll be there. They bought tickets to help out a great cause. They should get a show for their money.
“So you see,” he smiled grimly, “it’s up to us, just you and me. To-morrow at two p. m. the team lines up. Seventy thousand people will be crying for victory. You should see it, Pierre, you really should! It’s inspiring!”
“You’ll go in an airplane,” said Pierre. “You must. There can be no other way. We have here a radio telephone. We can speak with Detroit, Chicago, any big city of the midwest. To-day there are airplanes everywhere. It will be easy. Come! We will send out the call.”
“The call. Wait!” Once again the boy’s mind was in a whirl. “The call.” It would be heard everywhere. Men would rush to newspaper offices to sell the story. “The Red Rover found!” would be flashed across the country. The radio, the press, and after that every man, woman and child would take up the cry: “The Red Rover has been found!” He thrilled at the thought, thrilled to the very center of his being. But did he want this? A voice deep within his very soul whispered: “No.”
“Wait!” His hand was on the arm of the genial lighthouse keeper. “Wait for a time, at least.”
He recalled the sound of drumming motors that had struck his ears out there while he and the girl still tossed upon the waters. “There may be some other way,” he told himself. “No brass bands for me. If only I can slip back to the city unheralded; if I could take my place behind the line when the great moment comes; if only I could do that without even the Grand Old Man knowing! Oh, boy!”
Once again he murmured, “Wait.”
It would seem that Red Rodgers’ reasons for wishing to rejoin his team were all that one might ask; yet at the very moment he stood there talking with the chubby lighthouse keeper, Drew Lane was telling Johnny Thompson of reasons that to him seemed tremendously important. These reasons had to do with the cause of the kidnaping. Who would not find this a subject of absorbing interest?
Drew Lane possessed an all but superhuman power of finding his way about in the dark. Though he had never before seen Isle Royale, he not only was able to land safely in the channel known as Rock Harbor, but once ashore, he experienced little difficulty in making his way across the ridge to the other channel that lay on the opposite side.
“This,” he said to Johnny as they at last came out upon a short boat landing, “is Tobin’s Harbor. At the back of this harbor the powerful amphibian that carried the Red Rover to Isle Royale lies at anchor. Thus far we are in luck. If the Red Rover is still in their midst we shall be in greater luck. And if we succeed in rescuing him without having our much treasured heads blown off, ours will be the greatest luck in all the world.”
“But whose plane is that amphibian?” Johnny could no longer suppress a question.
“You have a right to know.” Drew Lane’s tone was serious. “It’s quite a story. We have some distance to go. Here’s a boat beside the landing. Probably chained up, but we’ll break her loose. Suppose we get her off? Then you can row while I talk.”
“O.K. Let’s go.”
The padlock that held the boat was a cheap one. Two knocks with a rock opened it as though it were a clam shell.
Ed, the scout, crouching with his dog at the top of the ridge, heard those blows, but wisdom counseled no interference.
Only when the boat was gone did he descend the hill. After skirting the shore for a short distance, he proceeded to drag a light canoe from the center of a clump of bushes where it stood on end, safely concealed. In this, by cutting off at an angle, he was able to keep Drew Lane and Johnny Thompson within striking distance without himself being observed. Did he mean to strike? Perhaps he could not have answered this question himself.
“It’s a curious business.” Drew spoke in low tones, as Johnny with long, strong strokes drove the light rowboat along. “If you hadn’t been in on it perhaps we would have gotten nowhere. You had all the luck.”
“I?” Johnny lost a stroke.
“Luck no end!” Drew rumbled. “Remember the jimmy bar? The invisible footprint? The shavings? Sure you do. They were red hot clues that led us straight to the spot.”
“Then—then it was Angelo, the—the flower shop keeper?” Johnny lost two strokes.
“It was Angelo.”
For a time after that there was silence. This silence was broken by Johnny. His voice was husky. “I only feel bad for the boy, young Angelo. He is a fine young chap. And he has had everything—big car, speed boat—going to college. Everything. And now—”
“Now his father is going to be broke. We are here to arrange all that. We must not fail. To-night Angelo Piccalo is rich. He believes he is safe, that his riches are safe. To-morrow night at this hour, if our plans work out, he will be broke, broke and in prison.
“Too many times—” Drew’s voice was tense with pent-up emotion. “Too many times we go out and get a rich crook and he is able to buy his freedom, by corrupting a judge or a jury with the very money he stole from honest men. This time there shall be no chance for this; not a chance. We—
“Look!” His voice suddenly fell to a hoarse whisper. “Look! Over yonder is the light of a camp fire. Must be their camp, the kidnapers’ camp.
“Here!” Drew bent over, then straightened up to thrust a thing of cold steel into Johnny’s hand. “Put this in your pocket. And this.”
Johnny obeyed.
“Don’t use ’em unless you have to.” The young detective’s tone was low and tense. “But if you have to, shoot often and straight. It’s a tough bunch. Don’t know how many, but plenty, I’m afraid.
“As for the boy, Angelo,” his tone changed, “don’t worry too much about him. He’ll have to get along without his car and speed boat all right. But then there are plenty of people who’ll tell you big cars and speed boats do a boy more harm than good. Gives them false notions of life; that’s what they’d tell you. I don’t know much about that. An old police flivver with, like as not, a share of bullets waiting at the end of the road—that’s as far as I ever got.
“But one thing Idoknow.” He sat up straight and stiff. “Crooked dollars never did any one any real good. And every dollar Angelo Piccalo spent on that boy was crooked. Flowers! That flower shop was only a blind.”
“It seems strange,” Johnny mused, pulling hard at the oars. “Angelo is an artist at heart. He can make flowers talk. He loves music, and the best in pictures. Why should such a man be a crook?”
“A man’s love of honesty has—
“Look, Johnny! Swing a little more to the left. We’ll keep well out. Then when we’ve passed their camp we’ll swing in. They’re in a sort of clearing. Trees beyond them. Plenty of chance to slip up. They’ll not see us out here on the water. The moon is low yet.”
Again for a time there was silence, such silence as one finds only on a calm bay of Isle Royale at night. Now came from afar the sharp yip-yip-yip of a bush wolf. And now, from the opposite shore of the bay they caught the faint plash-plash of a moose swimming along the shore. Or was it a boat? Johnny’s heart skipped a beat.
“Can’t see us. Works both ways. We can’t see them. Might slip up on us. Then—”
“This artist business,” Drew broke in with a hoarse whisper. “Curious thing. A man can be a fine musician or a painter, and still be a crook. They’ve got some fine artists in Sing Sing. Art and conscience have no connection, it seems. The only thing that saves a fellow from being a crook is a desire deep down in his heart to be honest, to do right by all men.”
Drew lapsed into silence. There were many things Johnny wished to know. How was it that Drew felt so sure he was on the right track? What fresh evidence had he uncovered? How much had his own discoveries helped to bring things about? But this, he knew, was no time for questions. They were nearing a camp. Was it the enemies’ camp? Who could doubt it? The big amphibian could not be a quarter of a mile from that camp.
So in that silence, broken only by the cries of wild things in the night, he rowed on.
And after them, in utter silence, there came a canoe.
On a moose trail that leads down the steep slope of the ridge lying between Duncan’s Bay and Tobin’s Harbor a flashlight gleamed. Once, twice, and yet again Johnny Thompson saw that light flashing among the trees high up and far away, and he wondered a long wonder. He said nothing to Drew Lane. The time had come for silence and action. Bending low, he drove their boat forward at increased speed.
Meanwhile the light on the slope blinked on and off, was lost among the shadows of tall spruce trees, came out into the open, vanished behind overhanging rocks, then was lost to view altogether as it reached lower levels where giant spruce trees, a primeval forest, cast deep shadows over a small world as dark as a tomb.
“That light,” Johnny told himself, “is no witch light of the night. Some one is coming down the ridge. Wonder who? And why? Drew said this island was practically uninhabited in winter. Looks as if the ghost of every Indian, explorer or trader who ever visited these shores has returned to-night.
“Ghosts,” he whispered to himself, “surely are queer!” He was thinking of the Galloping Ghost.
“Now we’ll swing in.” It was Drew who broke this curious chain of thoughts.
Fifteen minutes more of silent rowing and their boat touched without a sound on a mossy shore.
“Good!” Drew breathed. “Bushes here. We can hide the boat. May need it in case—”
He did not finish, but Johnny caught the meaning—in case the men they were after were too strong for them. He had visions of Drew stumbling through the brush carrying his bullet-riddled body. It was not a pleasing vision. He put it out of his mind.
And indeed there was need of this. There was little or no trail on this side of the channel. Here a moose had crowded his way through the brush; and here, becoming discouraged, he had left the next comer to make the best of things and had taken to the water.
There was need for extreme caution. The snapping of a twig, the sudden rush of a moose disturbed in the night, would betray their presence.
“About half the way,” Drew breathed at last.
A stretch of barren, sloping rocks greeted their eyes.
“Skirt it.”
They crept across in the shadows.
“Must be nearly there. Get ready.” Drew was calm. Though little more than a boy, he was a seasoned trooper.
“There! There’s a gleam of light!” Johnny gripped his arm.
“Just around this next clump of pines we’ll get a clear view. And then—”
They were around those pines before Johnny in his suspense breathed twice.
“Now! You ready?” Drew squared his shoulders.
“Now then, you fellows!” His voice sounded out strangely in the night. “We got you covered. Reach for the stars!”
There was a sound of sudden commotion by the camp fire. Three figures leaped into view. But they were not “reaching for the stars.” Their hands hung awkwardly at their sides.
“Now what—” Drew all but dropped his gun.
“That’s not the bunch we’re after,” he said in a low tone aside to Johnny. “Got to keep ’em comin’ though. Got guns. May shoot us without knowing what it’s all about.
“As you are!” he commanded sharply. “One move, and out goes your light.”
The men did not move. Instead, as Drew approached them slowly, they stood blinking into his flashlight.
Drew took in the scene at a glance. The camp had been made on a shelving rock. A little back from the fire lay the hind quarters of a moose.
“Great luck!” he thought to himself. “Poachers. Not allowed to kill moose on this island.”
“Honest, mister,” it was a grown boy who spoke at last, “we only kill what we got to have to eat. We can’t starve.”
“Ya, we do,” put in a heavy-set man with ham-like hands.
“We-l-l—” Drew was thinking fast. “I’m an officer of the law. I could take you all right. But I’m after bigger game. There are kidnapers on this island. Know that?” He turned to the boy of the group.
“No, I— There’s some queer ones back there at Baley’s cabin. We seen ’em. Sort of black. But not niggers, I don’t think.”
“They’re the ones. How’d you like to help catch them?”
“We—” The boy stared. Then of a sudden he started talking rapidly in a strange language. His two beefy companions listened with popping eyes.
“They’ll do it, all right,” Drew whispered to Johnny. “Got to! Between the devil and the deep blue sea, they are. Go to jail for poaching or help catch crooks. What would you do?”
“We’ll go,” the strange boy said simply.
“Ya. We do,” one of the men agreed.
“Good! Now we are five,” Drew exulted. “Not a bad lot,” he mumbled to Johnny. “Just ignorant and hungry. Good shots, too, I’ll bet on that.”
Johnny took a long breath. All that suspense, and the kidnapers still some distance away! He felt very much like an empty sack. But he must carry on. Shaking himself, he set his teeth hard. “All right, I’m ready.”
Once again they plunged into the night. Now they were five men and two boats.
And all the while the mysterious flashlight was making its way along the shore, coming from the opposite direction toward Baley’s cabin which might, Johnny believed, be the scene of a bloody battle within the hour.
This time, after a careful study of the situation, Drew decided that the journey should be made entirely by water. The island was narrow, the boy moose hunter explained. A dock virtually formed a door step to the cabin. One had but to reach that dock, and he was at the cabin.
“You fellows lead the way,” Drew commanded. “Not too fast. Watch your oars. Not a creak from them. Keep your oarlocks damp. And don’t talk! Not a whisper! If these men get the drop on you, whang! You’re gone!”
“Ya. We do,” the older of the men agreed hastily. Johnny noticed that his knees were shaking.
“Good shock troops,” was his mental comment. “No good for a real scrap.”
A half hour of breathless suspense, and they were gliding along the island’s short shore line, nearing the dock.
“Now!” Drew had driven their boat alongside the others. “You fellows fall back. We’ll take the lead. Wherever we go, you follow close!”
They caught this whispered command, fell back, then followed on.
Drew had driven their boat to the very side of the dock, and was in the act of creeping toward the prow, when he paused to hiss:
“Listen!”
No need for this command. Johnny’s keen ears had caught it, the most unearthly sound heard on land or sea—a hollow chuckle that fairly dried the marrow in his bones.
“Wha-what is it?” he whispered.
“Who knows?” Drew was creeping forward once more.
“Light in the cabin,” came back to Johnny faintly. “They’re there all right. We’ll creep up on ’em. Get the drop if we can. We—”
“Listen!”
Again came that hollow chuckle. “As if it came from an empty cabin.” Johnny shuddered.
“All set. Come on.” Hollow chuckles meant little to Drew Lane.
Forgetting the moose hunters at their backs, they crept across the short stretch of planking that led to the cabin door.
Johnny thought he heard his heart’s wild beating. Some creature, small and very fast, shot across the way before them. It was with the utmost difficulty that he kept his lips sealed.
“Now!” Drew’s hand was on the knob. “I’ll throw the door open. You cover ’em. Shoot if they make a false move. Kidnapers have little claim on life.”
“If the door is—”
Johnny did not finish. The door was open. He found himself standing beside Drew in the dark; the candle light of the room was gone. Two bulky figures stood before them. On the table something bright gleamed.
“Guns!” he told himself.
Astonishment all but overcame him as he realized that their presence was not even suspected. Then men were standing with their backs to them.
It took but one glance at the window in the opposite wall to discover the cause of this unheard-of suspense. Outside the window was a grinning, gleaming skull. And even as Johnny saw it there came again that unearthly chuckle.
Quite as paralyzed as those before him, Johnny stood open-mouthed, staring.
It was Drew Lane who broke the spell. “All right there!” His tone was smooth and cold as ice. “You, Tony Piccalo, and you, Spike O’Connor! Just reach for the sky! And if you can’t get it, just keep on reaching!”
With one hand he held his own automatic, with the other he was removing the gangsters’ weapons to his own pockets.
The men whirled about. For a second silence too deep for words hung over the place.
“Oh, all right,” one of the men grumbled. “You got us. We don’t fight spooks. That was the Galloping Ghost.”
“I don’t believe in ghosts.” Drew switched on his flashlight. “Now, then, you fellows sit right down there in the corner, and I’ll tell you what we want you for, and why.
“No, I won’t.” His voice changed as his eyes roved the room. “Where’s the Red Rover and that girl, Berley Todd? Come, now! Quick! Where are they?” The steel in his gun was not harder than the ring in his voice.
“Honest—” The man known as Spike O’Connor, a bad one according to his own previous estimation, was shaking. “Honest, we don’t know.”
“Don’t know?” Drew’s finger trembled at the trigger.
“Fact!” the other man put in hastily. “Got away from us, they did, more’n three days ago. We sent out a man to look for them. He didn’t come back. We sent out two more. They didn’t come back. I tell you, this island gets ’em! Ghosts and all that.” The way this bad man trembled was good to see.
“Perhaps I might be able to help you,” came from the doorway. Johnny whirled about to find himself staring into a pair of friendly eyes that gleamed beneath a ten-gallon hat. Ed, the scout, had caught up with them at last.
“They’ve been with me until to-night, the Red Rover and Berley Todd have.” The scout advanced to the center of the room. “Now unless that squall we had an hour or two ago took ’em out to sea, they should be on Passage Island where there are civilized human beings.”
“In that case,” said Drew, spinning about, “we’ve got to fly over to Passage Island. And that on the double quick! Can’t let this get out.
“Where is this Passage Island?” he demanded of the scout. “Can a fellow land there in a sea plane?”
“Four miles off Blake’s Point. Land on the lee side all right.”
“Then we’re off.”
“Here, Johnny, slip these on ’em.” He dangled two pairs of handcuffs. “It’ll be a little crowded with four of us in the red racer, but we’ll make it. We—”
He broke off to stare at the doorway. Standing there was a very tall and very thin young man in a tight-fitting suit.
“Jimmie Drury!” he exclaimed. “How’d you come here?”
“Walked, old son. Walked. How’d you suppose?” Jimmie Drury, reporter for the News, grinned from ear to ear. “Worth it, too! Grand story. Good old scoop!”
“Good enough story,” Drew grumbled. “But you’ll not shoot it till I tell you when. I’ll tell you about that later.
“We’re off for Passage Island,” he grinned. “You’ll walk there, too, I suppose; just four miles of Lake Superior. And they tell me Superior never gives up her dead.”
“I’ll be there, never fear!” Jimmie laughed. “Sooner than you’d think! Before you arrive, perhaps. Who knows?”
At one o’clock the next afternoon the cement seats of Soldiers’ Field, where seventy thousand spectators were to witness a football classic of unparalleled interest, began filling up. The place had been sold out for ten days. Even before the Red Rover vanished every ticket was gone. There were several reasons for this. It was a charity game; the entire net proceeds of the game were to be expended on the city’s needy. It was the great game of the year. The rivalry between Old Midway and Northern had ever been keen, never keener than now, for this game was to decide the championship of the conference. The Red Rover was to play, and it had been rumored abroad that this would be his last game, that he would not return to his squad in the following autumn. It was to be the Old Midway coach’s last game. He had definitely retired. And those who loved the Grand Old Man of football were legion.
So here they were gathering early. Some coming from afar had arrived early. Some, fearing that the place had been oversold, were hastening to secure their seats.
All morning there had been a whisper abroad. “The Red Rover will play to-day.” Thus the whisper ran. One heard it on the street corner, behind the counters in department stores, in the corner cigar store. When the over-curious rang up a newspaper office they were greeted by a curt denial. “We know nothing of it. Wish we did!” Bang! went the receiver. The phones of Old Midway’s office rang constantly. “No! No! No!” the patient clerks repeated over and over. “He has not returned to Old Midway.”
So over that great city expectancy hung like a thin cloud. And the early arrivals on the field whispered:
“Will he be here?”
* * * * * * * *
In the office beside the lighthouse on far away Passage Island sat Drew Lane and Johnny Thompson. Whatever else happened, they would not see the game. There were two others who would not see that game. Tony Piccalo and Spike O’Connor sat moodily in the far corner.
“It’s some time before the game,” Drew commented dryly, casting a significant glance at a radio that stood against the wall. “Just about time for a little story. You’ll be interested in this.” He turned to Johnny. “You’ve guessed at a part of it. Now it all may be told.
“You fellows—” He addressed himself to the others. “You fellows are not kidnapers by profession. Give the devil his dues. But for all that, the fellow who stoops to kidnaping in order that he may gain an end just once is lost, or should be. It’s the lowest crime on the docket, the least romantic, the most cowardly.
“You,” his voice rose, “are professional gamblers, and that rates you pretty low, too.”
He turned to Johnny. “You see, what happened was this. These fellows, with Tony’s brother, Angelo, have been operating a gambling den beneath Angelo’s flower shop for a long time. Race track stuff, baseball pools and all that. Somehow we didn’t get next to them until you found that jimmy bar that lifted the Red Rover’s window, and the shoe that made the invisible footprint was brought in by the Rat. Then we began to suspect something.
“When you brought in that batch of shavings from Angelo’s favorite pocket knife and we found they matched those made near the scene of the kidnaping; when you told us about being thrown from that room beneath the flower shop, we knew we were on the way.”
The pair of culprits sat listening in stolid silence. Johnny heaved a sigh. So he had been useful in this search. He was glad.
“We found out in no time at all,” Drew went on, “that these birds had organized a football pool. They were betting on a grand scale on to-day’s game, giving all manner of odds. And why not? You cowards!” He shot a look at the corner of the room. “You knew all the time that you meant to kidnap the Red Rover and hide him on Isle Royale until the game was over.
“The game.” His voice dropped. “The game has not yet started. The kick-off is at two o’clock. And such a game as it will be!
“You see,” he turned again to Johnny, “when we knew what you had discovered, the rest was easy. Tony, here, is a licensed pilot and owns that big amphibian. Owns it! Strange what some men will do to get more money when they are already rich! But crooked money calls for more and more, always more and more. That’s why a crooked dollar is such a terrible thing to possess.
“Since Tony had that plane and he had been at Isle Royale last summer, as young Angelo told you, as soon as we saw that clipping about the mysterious plane over Isle Royale, we knew just where to go.
“You know the rest.” He smiled at Johnny. “How we found them and got them, how we flew here in the red racer just in time to prevent the broadcasting of our great discovery.
“What you don’t know, and what these fellows don’t exactly know,” his eyes snapped, “is what is about to happen down there in the city.
“There’ll be a football game played. Right! The Red Rover will play. He’ll win!
“And here comes the kidnapers’ reward. Some crooks get to jail rich. They beat the rap or go free in two years, still rich. None of that here!”
He turned once more to the corner. “You fellows, you and your associates have bet your last dollar on the team that was to defeat Old Midway because of your crookedness. We know where all that money is stored. That team will not win. My pal, Tom Howe, and plenty more cops are ready to see that every dollar you wagered is paid. And then—you—will—be—broke!”
A groan came from the corner.
“You think that’s too tough!” Drew leaped to his feet. “It’s not! Nothing is too bad for a kidnaper.