  Since there were no new clues to be followed out, and because he had grown tired of haunting the central fire station with its incessant clatter of telegraph instruments and its eternal flashes of light, at ten o’clock that night Johnny went again to the river and taking his old friend’s boat from its place of concealment rowed slowly toward Ben Zook’s island. The lake was calm as a millpond and there was no reason for strenuous rowing. Then, too, he wished to think as he rowed. Johnny was one of those fellows who thought best in action. His thoughts that night were long, long thoughts, long and tangled. It was as if he had a half dozen skeins of yarn all tangled together and was trying to find the ends of each and to disentangle it from the others. His mind was still working upon those black cylinders out in the black shack. He had a feeling that the man he had seen asleep out there was none other than the one who had twice gone gunning for him out there in the marsh. If that were true and if he were the man who had been at the Simons Building fire and at the Zoo and later on Ben Zook’s island, then those black cylinders must have some significance. He smiled at this complicated chain of circumstances. “Fat chance!” he murmured to himself. “And yet that might be true, and if it is there’s some connection between the telephone with double wiring and that scrap of black pasteboard we found on the island after that blaze. “Black pasteboard!” he exclaimed suddenly. “That’s it! The piece we found is part of one of those cylinders!” “But if it is,” he said more soberly a moment later, “then why would they burn it out here on Ben’s island? Lot’s of sense to that!” So in the end he got nowhere in his thought unravelling process. However, his arms were working mechanically all the time and he was nearing the island. As he thought of this he suddenly sat straight up and, as if eager to reach his goal, began to row with all his power. He was eager, too, for he suddenly recalled that he was bound on a very pleasant mission. Was he not to tell Ben Zook that at any time he wished he might leave the island for a place of trees, green grass, flowing water and a real cabin of fair dimensions? Small wonder that he hurried. As he neared the shore his heart warmed at thought of the smile that would come to the face of the kindly, cheerful, little old man. “Surely,” he thought to himself, “in spite of the fact that he’s a bit strange and uncouth, he’s a real gentleman after all and deserves a great deal more than is coming to him.” He smiled as he thought of the little chicken coop Ben Zook had showed him. A low-roofed affair with a roost of bars about three feet long; five chickens on the roost, blinking at the light; a single goose in a corner with his head under his wing; this was Ben’s poultry house and his brood. There’d be more to it now—a real chicken house and perhaps a hundred fine fowls. It would be a Paradise for Ben Zook. As he mused happily on these things his boat touched the shore. Springing out nimbly, he dragged the boat up the beach and turned his face toward Ben’s house. At that moment, as a cloud passing over the moon sent a chill down his spine, something seemed to whisper to him that all was not well. That he might dispel this dark foreboding, he lifted up his voice in a cheery shout: “Ben Zook! Oh, Ben Zook, I’m coming.” The distant skyscrapers, like some mountainside, caught his words and flung them back to him, seeming at the same time to change his “Oh” to “old.” “Ben Zook! Old Ben Zook!” Again and again, more faintly, and yet more faintly: “Ben Zook! Old Ben Zook. Ben Zook—Zook.” As the echo trailed away in the distance, a foreboding came over Johnny. There had come no answering call. Still he tried to cheer himself. “He’s asleep,” Johnny told himself. “Little wonder, too. I was out here till near morning.” After that he trudged in silence over the piles of broken brick, sand and clay. As he came at last within sight of Ben’s place he was cheered by the sight of red coals on the grate. “It’s not been long since he was here, anyway,” he said. Yet his feeling that Ben was not in his house proved true. The place was empty. “Probably gone for a stroll down the beach,” was his mental comment as he dropped down in Ben’s big arm chair. The chair was a comfortable one. The fire, with a chill breeze blowing off the lake, was cheering too, yet there was no comfort for Johnny. He had not been seated two minutes when he was again upon his feet. “I don’t like it,” he muttered. The next moment he was chiding himself for a fool. “He’ll be here in a moment and I’ll tell him about the reward.” Johnny smiled at the thought. Walking to the tiny poultry house, he opened the door and, flicking on his flashlight, looked within. The calm assurance of chickens on their roost, of the single goose who did not so much as take his head from beneath his wing, did much to allay his fears. “Just look about a bit, anyway,” he mused. “May find another case of diamonds,” he added with a forced chuckle. As he stepped over the first mound of clay he thought he detected a sound behind him. Stopping dead in his tracks, while little tufts of hair appeared to rise at the back of his neck, he said in a low, steady tone: “Ben. Ben Zook.” There came no answer, no other sound. He crossed another mound, and yet another. Then again there came a sound as of a brick loosened from a pile. “Ben. Ben Zook,” he called softly. Once more no answer. Then, just as he was about to go forward again, having thrown his light ten feet before him, he started back in horror. There at his feet lay a dead man! Trembling in every limb, feeling sick as if about to fall in a faint, yet battling it back, he stood still in his tracks for such a space of time as it might take to count one hundred. Then, finding he could once more trust his wobbly knees, he moved forward three paces, threw his light at his feet, took one good steady look, put out a hand and picked something up, held it for ten seconds, bent low for a better look, then like one who had seen a ghost he went racing and staggering across the piles toward the shore and his boat. Fear lent him wings. Nor did he stop at the shore. With one motion he shoved the boat into the water; with another, regardless of wet feet, he sprang aboard and before he could think twice found himself well out into the lake. There at last he dropped his oars to sit staring back at the island and to at last slump down in his seat. His mind, first in a whirl and next in a dead calm, was trying to tell his senses something that seemed impossible. At last, raising his face to the sky, he said solemnly: “Ben Zook is dead! Poor, harmless, golden hearted Ben Zook! Someone killed him. I’m going after the police boat now. The police will do what they can to find the man. But, by all that’s good, I will find the murderer and he will pay the price for his cowardly crime.” Having thus made his vow, he found that strength, hope and courage came ebbing back. Seizing his oars he rowed rapidly toward the city. From that time until the end Johnny conducted his search with such reckless daring that it could bring but one of two things: A crown of triumph or a quiet six feet of sod in a church-yard. |
|
