The Galloping Ghost by Roy J. Snell
CHAPTER XII JOHNNY GETS A "JIMMY"
That day Johnny Thompson, in quite an accidental manner, came intopossession of certain facts that, while increasing his perplexity at thetime, were destined in the end to go far toward solving a great mystery.
These facts were discovered as he went about the business of purchasing alarge bouquet of chrysanthemums. No, Johnny had not gone soft. He was notbuying flowers for a cigar clerk nor a telephone operator. Far from that.There was a school for crippled children just around the corner from hislodging. He had come to know many of these children. They loved flowers,as all right-minded children do. He was sending them a bouquet. Drew Laneand Tom Howe had gone about the business of conducting a raid which, theyassured him, would be quite a tame affair.
"They'll be expecting us," Drew grinned. "There's never a big bankrobbery pulled but next day all the successful bank robbers are called onby the police. It's the same with kidnapers."
"If you know they're bank robbers or kidnapers, why don't you just sendthem down to State's Prison and have it over with?" Johnny asked.
"That would be neat and quite simple." Drew smiled a broad smile. "Butthe Constitution grants every man a trial. You've got to prove what downdeep in your heart you know, so you have to go out and get the facts."
"And we'll get some facts to-day, whether they realize it or not," TomHowe put in. "Drew's going to collect a gallon of pocket knives. That'ssomething."
"It may be a lot," said Drew soberly.
So Johnny went to the shop at the foot of the river bridge to buyflowers. He liked this shop and its dark-skinned proprietor. The man'sname was Angelo Piccalo.
"Hello, Johnny!" Piccalo welcomed him. "Some flowers to-day?"
"Yes. Big yellow ones for the kids--crippled kids."
"Crippled keeds." The flower merchant grinned a broad grin. "The biggest,the ver' best!"
The flowers had been boxed and paid for, the proprietor stood in hisdoorway bidding Johnny good-bye, when a motor horn sounded close at hand.Johnny started. He believed it a car. To his surprise, though he lookedup and down the street, there was no car near enough to have producedthat sound.
"Speed boat." Angelo Piccalo grinned once more. "My boy. Name Angelo.See! Fine boy, that one. No cripple heem!"
The boy who grinned up at them from the river was surely no cripple. Someeighteen years of age, he was the picture of perfect youth.
"Go to college next year," Piccalo confided. "Beeg gentleman some time,my boy!"
Johnny will never know why he went down the iron steps that led to thelanding place where the speed boat rested. There were times when healmost regretted having done so.
"Hello, Angelo!" he greeted. "That's a fine boat."
"Not so bad." The younger Angelo's eyes took him in at a glance. "Notmuch speed. Trade it in for a better one soon."
"This flower business must pay very well," Johnny told himself. "Bet he'sgot a car, a fast one. Going to college, too."
Angelo had bent over to lift up the rear seat of his boat. He was lookingfor something. Plainly it was not there. Another object was there thatapparently annoyed him.
"Who's been making my boat into a junk wagon?" He lifted out a bent ironbar and was about to drop it in the river, when Johnny stopped him.
"Hey! Don't do that!"
"Why not? You want it? All right. Here it is." The boy tossed the bar toJohnny's feet. It fell with a noisy jangle.
Thinking he had caught some sound from above, Johnny looked up in time tosurprise a black look on the older Piccalo's usually smiling face. Onemoment it was there. The next it was gone.
"Strange!" Johnny thought. "I must have been mistaken." Yet he knew hehad not been, and found himself disturbed by that insistent question,"Why?"
"That's a curious band you have for your wrist watch," he said to the boyin the speed boat. "All green."
"Made of green stones," Angelo explained. "Got 'em on Isle Royale lastsummer. Fine place, Isle Royale. Plenty big fish, wild moose. Plentypretty girls." He grinned broadly. "Found these stones on the beach upthere."
Johnny picked up the iron bar, climbed the stairs and walked away. Thisbar might at one time have been used by a merchant for opening boxes andat another by some gentleman of evil intentions in opening the window ofsome other person's home. It is, I believe, known in some circles as a"jimmy."
Feeling a little foolish walking down the street, he wondered why he hadsaved the bar at all.
"Hate to see the work of some man's hands wasted," he told himself. "Manya poor shopkeeper on Maxwell Street would be glad to own it."
At that he wrapped it in his morning paper and at last deposited it inback of a small desk in Drew Lane's room. There it was to remain untilthe time appointed. Then it was to offer its bit of evidence regardingcertain dark deeds committed on a night in November of that same year.
* * * * * * * *
The snow that had fallen steadily since the hour before dawn upon thattiny island in Tobin's Harbor of Isle Royale ceased at ten o'clock.
Standing before the window, Red Rodgers watched a scene of matchlessbeauty unfold before him. Dark, unruffled waters widened moment by momentuntil at last trees, great dark giant spruce and slender ghosts ofbirches, began appearing.
When at last the snow fog had vanished altogether he saw on thenot-too-distant shore spruce and balsam standing like rows of tall tentsof the Indians.
And even as he stood there some dark object moved amongst the birchtrees.
"A moose!" he exclaimed under his breath. Then again he wondered that thegirl had shown no fear at their encounter with an antlered monarch backthere on the trail.
"Life," he told himself, as he watched the great sleek creature on theopposite shore step out to stand ankle deep in water, head high, antlersgleaming, "Life is strange! Here I have lived all my life in a city.Never would have known of this other world but for the work of theseoutlaws who carried me away. And now--"
He paused. Well, what of now? He could form no answer.
He turned about to look long and steadily at the sleeping girl.
Yes, life surely was strange. Nothing like this had come to him before.As he looked at the perfect repose of that face, something welled upwithin him.
"She trusts me," he whispered. Until this moment he had not known thatsuch perfect trust existed in the world. "She trusts me. She believes inme. Her father may be rich. That does not matter. I will neither desertnor betray her. We shall fight it out together, to the bitter end."
To this serious-minded boy who until this moment had known little of lifeas it is lived save on the gridiron and in the steel mills, this was asolemn covenant never to be broken.
"But now," he asked himself, "what is to be done now?"
This problem he thought through with care. "They're likely to be lookingfor us," he told himself. "Yes, their search will be rather a wild one,when they know." He put a hand to his pocket. Then his face sobered. Hadhe made a mistake?
"If only we can make a clean get-away they are sunk!" he muttered,clenching his fists. "I am not sorry I took the chance."
Once again his thoughts returned to the problem at hand. "A step in thesnow will betray us," he told himself. "Now the unmarked snow says we arenot here. Better to wait for darkness."
Having come to this conclusion, he sank deep in his chair and fell fastasleep.
He awoke some hours later to be greeted by the faint aroma of tea brewingand biscuits baking on the hearth.
"It's dark now," a voice whispered in his ear. "We must be moving soon.But first we must eat."
Red ate that meal in silence. He was thinking hard. "The game for to-dayis over," he told himself. "We have won. No radio must tell me that. Theydidn't need me to-day. Probably the Grand Old Man would not have put mein to-day at all; save me for Saturday's game. He said I was getting slowon my feet. Well, probably I was. Tired, that's what I was. Footballtakes
"Saving me." He grinned in spite of himself. "I was saved all right; putaway for the winter, like as not; pickled like a cucumber in a jar."
Without really thinking what he was doing, he rose and began pacing thefloor.
"Worried?" The girl smiled up at him.
"Yep, quite a little. About Saturday's game." He dropped into a chair."You see, our coach, the Grand Old Man, we call him, is getting along inyears. This may be his last season. Who knows? It's almost sure to be hislast winning team. Five of our best men graduate this year. Breaks up theline. And, well, you know, the coach is such a square shooter, he's sohuman and kind, seems to love his boys so, that you just naturally wantto do things for him."
"Yes, I know," said the girl quietly. "And I know the success of the teamdepends on you, Red Rover. Read all about it in the papers. You're goingto play on Saturday. And I'll be cheering on the side lines."
Red flashed her a grateful smile. "That's right, keep on kidding me. Itall helps."
"I'm not kidding. We will get away."
"But tell me more about this island. Well, no, perhaps we had better beon our way."
Rising, they went to the window. A large silver moon was tipping everywave with a point of light.
"We can't go to the lighthouse to-night." There was a note of finality inthe girl's voice. "The waves out there are as high as a house.
"And we'd better not venture out just now, either. The moon's too bright.In an hour or two there may be clouds. See, they are coming in from thenorth."
"And where shall we go when the clouds are here?"
"Home." The girl whispered the word softly. "To my island home."