“Going back to the office, Mack, to write this up?” Lefty asked as he got into the car.

The Journal men had no way of knowing that the names of the two missing Boyville School boys had meant anything to Joan and Chub, on the back seat. Joan had gasped when she heard the names and then stared out into the darkness, speechless for a moment.

“No, Lefty, please wait!” She reached over and touched his sleeve. “I—we—we’ve just got to go in, Chub and I. We know that boy, Alex White, and he’s nice, isn’t he, Chub? And I—I’m just sure there’s a mistake.”

Mack slammed the door. “Little Mary Mix-up to the rescue.”

But Chub was her champion. “Don’t mind the old crab,” he whispered. “It’s a big story, and he’ll be glad enough to gobble it up, after we dig it up.” Aloud, he said, “That kid Alex wasn’t the kind that would break parole, and I think, too, that there’s something rotten in Denmark. You see, we know more about this than you three do. We heard that Charley boy threaten to run away, and Alex was ready to fight him.”

“I’m afraid Alex got the worst of it—” began Joan.

“Say, let’s leave the kids here in case anything breaks,” burst out Lefty, “and let us drive over the route again, for traces of the missing boys.”

“Oh, what’s the use?” yawned Mack. “Let’s go home and get some sleep. We can read all about the fire in The Morning Star.”

Chub was already out of the car, holding the door open for Joan. Inside, in the bright yellow light of the big hall of the main building, they stood still, a bit abashed now that they were there, especially with no plans as to what they should do.

Two long lines of boys stretched along the great, bare room, shuffling uneasily in the “sneaker” shoes they wore. Mr. Link was facing them, a list of names in his hands and his glasses on the end of his nose. “Now, boys, hold your places, and we’ll have the roll call over again to make sure. Abbott!”

“Here!” answered one of the boys, in a droning voice.

“Anderson!”

“Here!” came the same singsong answer as the roll call went on. That was what the low drone had been that they had heard before. On and on hummed the voice of the principal and the boys responding.

Then, “Falls!”

Silence.

“Falls!” The principal looked up and glanced down the long lines as he repeated the word. He hesitated a brief half second and then went on to the next name.

Chub and Joan stood, scarcely breathing, waiting for Mr. Link to call Alex’ name. Perhaps he hadn’t heard it before. Perhaps he was late in forming in line. Perhaps he was there now, after all.

“White!” called the principal in a loud voice.

There was no answer.

“White!” This time there was a noticeable annoyance in his voice.

Still, no answer. Again, the principal glanced down the lines, over his glasses, and then went on with the calling of the roll.

Oh, why didn’t Tim and the others hurry? Joan pressed her face against the glass of the door where they were standing, and looked out. The path to the stone gates was deserted. Everything looked so lonesome out here in the country, at night like this. The stars blinked sleepily and peacefully, just as though they had not looked down upon the burning of the West library, and were now looking down on perhaps two runaway boys scuttling over the lonely, moonlit roads. No, Joan was confident that Alex had not deserted, had not broken the honor system. It meant too much to him, she was sure. Something must have happened to keep him from reporting at the school with the rest of the boys. Something terrible. What?

“Do any of you know anything about these two who are missing?” asked the principal, sharply.

A boy at the end of the row volunteered. “They was both with us till we got to the old hospital. Charley thought up going home across the lots ’cause it was quicker, and Alex said all right. They marched us along ahead of them, then, and we just kept on marching, like they told us to.”

“Plain case of parole breaking,” Mr. Link said to his weary-looking clerk. “I told you, Bassett, that it would never do to send them alone. I knew that honor system wouldn’t work.” His mouth became a hard, thin line. “This’ll give us a black eye with the state, I’m afraid. I’m not surprised at Charley Falls, but I thought that White boy had good stuff in him. Might have known he was too innocent looking. He was the one who advocated the honor system, and I fell for it.”

“But why didn’t they run off on the way to the fire, if they had planned to desert all along?” interpolated the clerk.

“No boy could resist the thrill of helping at a real fire,” replied the principal.

“Well, be a little lenient,” suggested Mr. Bassett. “The boys may be delayed. Perhaps they went back to help with the fire, or something. Give them until ten o’clock to report.”

The principal stroked his rough chin. “Well, all right. That’ll do for now, boys. Go to your dormitories, but don’t go to bed. We’ll have another fire drill in half an hour.”

The boys filed out, awed and quiet.

Half an hour! It wasn’t long, and they had to find Alex. Perhaps, after all, he had been tempted to go with Charley. But Joan doubted that. She felt sure Alex had been hurt by that awful Charley, or he would have been here to answer to the roll call.

“Come on, Chub.” She pushed against the door, and they went out. The principal had not even noticed them standing there. “Let’s do a bit of sleuthing on our own.”

Lefty’s car clattered up while they were on the steps. “Come on, kids. No use hanging around any longer,” Mack said. “Those boys have probably got to the railroad by now and have hopped the night freight to Chicago. We’ve about as much chance of finding them as a needle in the well-known haystack. We rode all around by that hospital building, and couldn’t find a sign of them.”

When Joan and Chub said they wanted to hunt themselves, Tim surprisingly took their side. “Why not let the kids try? Maybe they’ll find something.”

On the main road, good-natured Lefty stopped the car when they saw the dark, unused hospital building, off by itself in the empty fields, now flooded with patches of moonlight.

“I wish we had a notebook, so we could be real detectives,” mused Joan, as she and Chub started across the dew-wet grass. The others had stayed in the car. “The Dummy mystery is nothing compared to this.”

Chub examined the ground near the clump of bushes by the hospital steps. The branches were brushed back as if a group of boys had pressed against them. There were bits of grass uprooted, as though with the toe or heel of a boy’s shoe, unmistakable signs of a struggle. Joan found a shred of torn khaki on the prickly bush.

“They had a battle all right, those two,” decided Chub. “But Charley couldn’t have carried a big kid like Alex very far. He must have made Alex go with him.”

It did seem so. For Alex wasn’t anywhere around. They peeped behind bushes, and walked around the hospital without finding anything. As they started to the car, they both stood still. A low moan drifted out from somewhere. They both heard it.

“Some sick guy,” guessed Chub.

“No. They haven’t used this hospital for a long time,” Joan said.

“Well, there’s some one in there, now,” insisted the other. “But maybe it’s only an animal, caught in a trap. We might hunt, anyway.”

Around the building they went, but all the doors were securely locked and all the windows, too. Chub climbed up to examine a window higher up than the rest, through which they hoped to gain entrance. “Locked!” he said, with his jaws set like a real detective. How serious he looked in the moonlight, almost nice-looking, too, for his freckles didn’t show.

He jumped to the ground with a soft thud. “I wish the feller’d moan again, so we could tell where he is.”

Then, it did come again. It sounded in a different place. Not in the house at all, as it had the first time, but—underneath the ground!

“Spooks!” Chub’s plump face was sober. “I heard it sort of muffled, from right over there, underneath the earth.”

“So did I,” affirmed the girl. “But it’d be no use telling the Journalites. They’d only laugh, and call us sentimental. Besides, I don’t see how it could come from the ground.”

“Neither do I.” Chub shook his head. “Unless it’s an animal or—maybe a feller buried alive.”

Joan shuddered. “But we must get into the house, some way. I think it’s some one awful sick, and they must be in the house.”

“We’ll have to break the lock. It may even be Alex in there. But whoever it is, they need help.”

“I suppose we just imagined that it came from the ground,” said Joan. “Perhaps the echo sounded along under ground, some way.” It didn’t seem possible, but this had been such a stirring, mysterious sort of night that anything at all might happen.

“Um.” Chub was banging away at the lock on the back door. It wasn’t really locked after all, just held fast with a stout stick, that had to be knocked out of place. Thump, thump sounded over the clear, night air. There, the door swung open, emitting a gust of damp, unused air. It took nerve to go through the empty place, with only the moonlight to guide them—especially a place that had once housed ill people. There still hung an unearthly, hospital smell about it. Joan kept close to Chub, who stalked about each room, calling, “Any one here?” in a voice that did not quaver. There was never any reply, and finally they had been in every room.

“No use,” decided the boy, and they started toward the back door. Then it came again, the low moan, only it sounded farther away than ever now, and certainly seemed to come from underneath the ground. “The cellar!” Chub led the way down the dark, narrow stairs, feeling for each step. But the place was empty.

“Why, the subway tunnel!” Joan remembered. “I never thought of it until now.” Then she explained, “It’s connected with the main building.”

“But can we find the opening?”

They began to feel around the wall of the room they were in. It was a small cellar, and had apparently at one time been used as a kitchen or laboratory. By an old sunken sink, which gleamed in the dimness like a tooth in a darky’s mouth, a part of the wall moved under their pressure and swung inward, into an opening.

“Hot dog!” cried the boy. “All the earmarks of a real detective story. Sliding panels and everything.”

“It doesn’t slide, and it isn’t a panel,” objected Joan, as she watched him step into the darkness of the aperture. “Oh, dear, I don’t know whether to go or not. If we only had a flashlight or even matches. I feel like Alice in Wonderland! Oh, wouldn’t this be a wonderful place for a person to hide, like that bookkeeper I read of—Richard Marat?”

“It’ll be a good place for Dummy to hide in after we prove him a spy,” conceded Chub’s voice from within the depths. Then he halloed ahead, “Anybody here?”

The answer was a low groan, sounding farther away than before. Joan stepped in, hands stretched out ahead.

She hurried till her hands felt the rough serge of Chub’s coat—at least that was familiar. Nothing else was in this terrible, eerie place. Of course, having been in the tunnel before, she had some idea what it was like, though she could not see. This seemed to be a smaller part of it, for she could almost touch the stone wall on each side with hands outspread. Chub was crouching along, half stooped—he did not know how high the tunnel was. Joan was walking erect, when suddenly something banged into her forehead. Something hard and cold and without anything attached to it. It hit her whack in the middle of her forehead. The surprise as much as the shock quite stunned her for a second. She stumbled, uttered a cry as she fell to one side, landing on the hard cement floor of the tunnel, her arms grasping something—something solid and bulky. A leg! With stocking and shoe with dangling laces! Someone moaned.

“S’matter?”

Joan could tell from Chub’s voice that he was still ahead of her. In a voice weak with pain and fright, she called, “Ch-Chub-bb! Have I got ahold of your leg?”

“No.” His steps sounded on the stone as they came to her.

“T-then whose is it?” Was it part of the hospital equipment, an artificial leg abandoned here in this ghostly place? Or—was it a human leg, left from some horrible accident? Joan shivered and her whole body became icy cold. Just then, her worst doubts were eased, for the moan came again and the leg in her arms stirred of its own accord. She loosened her hold and let it drop, whereupon the owner gave another groan.

Chub was feeling with his hands where the body should be. “Yep, brass buttons all right. It’s a Boyville School kid, and not big enough for Charley. It’s Alex.” His hand had now reached Alex’ head on the floor. He lifted it up. “Are you hurt much, old scout?”

Another moan was the only answer.

“It’s Chub and Joan—from the Journal,” went on Chub. “Can’t you speak?”

Joan felt Alex’ hot breath upon her face as he struggled to answer. “That—that blamed Charley—he got away—”

“Did he beat you up and hide you in here?” Chub wanted to know.

“Yes,” Alex’s head wobbled unsteadily in the dark. “Charley put me in there and locked the back door. Guess he forgot about the old tunnel. I was trying to get to the main building that way, and I—must have fainted. My leg’s hurt. But it’s not much farther, though. Think you could help me?”

“Sure thing!” Chub got to his feet to help the injured boy, when whang! something smooth and solid struck him in the back of the head, a terrific blow that made him wince. “Gosh, that Charley guy must be around right here in this tunnel, with an ax or something. Wish we had a match or a flash.”

“I got hit, too.” Joan rubbed her forehead.

“I’ll fix him.” Chub swung his clenched fists wildly about in the darkness, ready to fight, and Joan flattened herself against the chill wall. But though he battled in the blackness everywhere, he succeeded only in butting into the tunnel walls or against Joan or Alex. There seemed to be nothing there. And yet, both he and Joan had been hit, and hit hard. Could Charley have some mysterious contraption rigged up to torture them? Determined not to give up, Chub still swung at the air, and finally his fingers touched something smooth and round, just before him, about on a level with his head. Well, at least the unseen foe wasn’t an animal. Still, it might be a bomb. No, too small for that, the boy decided as his stubby fingers went all over the surface of the thing. Then his sudden laugh filled the cave.

“I-it’s an electric light bulb hanging down from the ceiling,” he announced. “Wait a minute. I’ll see if it turns on.”

It didn’t, so they were still in darkness. Chub and Joan pulled Alex to his feet. He could not muffle his cries. Joan’s heart ached for the hurt boy. Then, with an arm around the neck of each, Alex managed to walk along. They decided not to attempt getting him up the cellar stairs. Better to go on to the main building.

“Gee, I’m glad it’s you, Jo, and not that simp of an Amy,” Chub said, as they went along.

It was a slow and painful procedure, but as Alex had said, it was not very far, and at last they reached the door that must lead to the main building. It was barred, and she and Chub thumped mightily on it. Would no one ever, ever hear? Would they have to go all the way through the tunnel again and across the fields to the car, and the long way around? Alex might not be able to stand such strain. He was weak, and seemed to be bleeding, for Joan felt something warm and thick trickle against her hand when she brushed against him. His coat felt stiff in spots, too.

Chub would not give up. He kicked and pounded on the door till finally they heard a bolt being slipped on the other side. The door gave way and the three of them almost tumbled out into the big hall of the main building. The boys were lined up there again, and the principal was calling the roll, in the same singsong drone as before.

“Edmonds!”

“Here.”

“Falls!”

Alex broke away with a painful effort and bolted weakly forward. “He got away! I tried—I tried—” His voice trailed off as he toppled down into a khaki heap on the bare floor.

The principal, himself, picked him up. “My poor boy, whatever happened?”

The clerk went hustling out to summon the school nurse. When she arrived she bandaged Alex’ wounded leg. Soon the boy was revived enough to answer the questions put to him by the principal. He was very pale, but eager to tell what had happened.

“You saved the honor system, White,” Mr. Link said when he heard the story, and he patted Alex’ shoulder.

Just then, “the Three Musketeers from the Journal,” as Chub called them later, appeared at the big doors across the room. All three blinked in the yellow light and stared at Joan and Chub and the scene before them.

“How did you get here?” was written on each of their faces. And how Mack’s eyes snapped when he heard about the subway tunnel!

“We waited and waited for you two to come back,” Tim explained. “Then we went all through that hospital and couldn’t find you. We came back here to telephone the police you’d disappeared.”

“What luck!” Lefty was setting up his tripod. “I have one more exposure left.” Mr. Link and Alex posed together for the picture.

“You can say that I believe in the honor system, now, after this night,” the principal told Tim. “Falls got away but White’s behavior proves to me the system is worth while. We’ll always use it, from now on. And I’ll see to it, myself, that this boy has some fitting reward.”

Alex smiled—a weak grin, but a broad one.

Joan smiled, too. She supposed that Amy would hope that the reward would be pretty uniforms. Seeing that Mr. Link seemed a different person, she asked, “Do you think that the appropriation might be used for a printing office? Alex is wild to learn to run a linotype machine, and there are no schools in Plainfield.”

The principal met her steady gaze, and then glanced back to the boy. “Why, I’m sure of it. There’s no reason why a fourteen-year-old boy shouldn’t learn to run a linotype machine if he wants to! Boyville will have its own printing office just as soon as possible. You’ve earned it, Alex.”

The Star had the story of the fire, of course, but not the part about the honor system and about Alex’ bravery. So Joan felt she had helped Tim again.

Cookie had said once, “Fires are like bananas—they come in bunches!”

It did seem so, for only a few days after the West estate fire, the office, which had been placid enough a minute before, began to buzz.

“Big fire on Main Street,” shouted Mr. Nixon, slamming down his desk phone and jumping up. “And Mack’s out to lunch.”

There was no one to send but Tim. Lefty heard the news and came rushing through the office, from out back where he had been in his dark room. He was slipping the strap of his camera over his neck as he hurried along.

“You’ll have to go, Martin,” Mr. Nixon said. “You’ve been doing better lately. A fire’s broken out in one of the buildings on Main Street—near the Presbyterian Church.”

Tim, grabbing his hat off the hook, started for the door on a run.

“Get details,” the editor yelled after him. “You know, the origin of the fire, owner’s name, who discovered it, loss, and amount of insurance. And, for Pete’s sake, be accurate.”

Get details! Joan, propelling herself out of the office, almost upon Tim’s heels, bumped into Amy.

“Amy, there’s a fire on Main Street,” she gasped. “And Tim’s going to cover it.”

“Cover it?” echoed Amy. “What with?”

“Write it up, that means,” explained Joan, with mock patience. “Come on and go with me. We can watch and get details too. Oh, maybe Tim’ll make the front page!”