THE MIDNIGHT MAN
Through the gloom the Utway twins felt their way down the hill, trusting
to the touch of their feet to keep them on the path that ran through the
pines on the northern edge of the campus. Jerry carried under his
sweater the bulging form of the big frog, whose long legs jerked
fitfully.
Jake grabbed his brother’s arm. “Hark!” he whispered. “I thought I heard
something over to the right—there in the bushes!” They listened.
“You must be dreaming still! I don’t hear anything. Come on! You aren’t
scared, are you?”
“Aw, say! Let’s hurry up, though. We don’t want to get caught. You still
got Alexander good and tight?”
Jerry resisted a particularly violent kick from Alexander, the frog, and
again moved forward. They were now close to the dull patch of canvas
that marked Tent Fifteen, the tent furthest away from the lodge. The
twins had marked beforehand the lower bunk occupied by Mr. Colby, which
was on the far side. With the greatest caution, the twins circled
through the underbrush and crept beneath the moorings of the tent-ropes.
The councilor’s bunk was now at hand. It was their aim to slip Alexander
beneath the blankets, and retreat into the cover of the pines, there to
await the startled yell that would tell them Mr. Colby had discovered
his slippery bedfellow.
Jake put his mouth close to Jerry’s ear. “Say, I know I heard
something—there, right back of the tent! Somebody must be following us!”
“Well, what of it? They can’t see us in the dark. All the more reason to
hurry. Ready?” He fished Alexander forth. “Quick, now—lift up the covers
and I’ll chuck him in——” He got no further.
_Boom!_ A thunderous explosion came from a few feet away, and a
brilliant flare lit the scene like a flash of lightning.
With daylight clearness, the startled raiders could see every feature of
their surroundings, standing out from the night. It was like a stage
play. The inside of Tent Fifteen was lit with a blinding radiance. In a
cleared space at the open rear of the tent, Sherlock Jones stood, a
flaming flashlight-pan held high over his head with one hand, his other
hand clicking the shutter of the camera, placed on a tripod and aimed
straight at the bunk over which bent the white faces of the Utway twins.
In the darkness, Sherlock had poured more powder into the pan than would
have been necessary to light the scene of action, and the resulting
explosion had been greater than he was prepared for.
Jerry jumped backward, for in the momentary light from the pan he had
seen Mr. Colby’s eyes open and shut again, blinded by the dazzling
glare. The boy’s backward movement caused him to bump his head heavily
against the mooring-pole, and he saw more stars than those that shone in
the July heavens. Alexander dropped from his nerveless hand.
Jake Utway, however, was the most startled of all those whose figures
stood out in that brief second of brightness. He could not hold in the
cry that came to his lips. Not six inches away from his was a face—the
face of a man, wild, desperate, knotted with fear!
For some precious seconds he was too paralyzed to move. The flare had
died down, but in his mind’s eye still stood forth, every feature cut
clear in his memory, the face of the stranger. That twisted visage, he
was sure, belonged to no one of the leaders of Lenape, nor any of the
neighboring farmers that he knew. The head was completely bald, the eyes
staring from their sockets, clenched teeth glittering between pale,
drawn lips. He knew that never, as long as he lived, could he forget
that frozen mask of terror.
It seemed ages before he could control his body enough to move.
Stumbling blindly beneath the mooring-pole, he made for the shelter of
the trees. Behind him came the shrill challenge of Mr. Colby: “Halt! Who
goes there? _What is it?_”
Jake ran. He had gone about twenty yards when he tripped over a clump of
brush, fell forward perilously, crashed into the trunk of a tree. He lay
stunned where he fell. Dancing sparks flickered before his eyes; a slow
pain grew in the left side of his face, which had smashed against the
rough bark of a pine.
From a few yards away came the crash of a struggling body, tearing its
way through the bushes. “Is that you, Jerry?” he called hoarsely,
finding his voice and struggling to a sitting position. There was no
answer, but the thrashing sound continued. What was it?
The unknown thing was almost upon him now. His whole face stinging with
the recent blow, he tried to flounder to his feet. His upraised arm came
into contact with flesh! Some heavy body fell upon his, a writhing mass
of humanity. His groping hand clutched a bony arm clothed in some rough,
thin material. At least his unknown attacker was human! Gritting his
teeth, Jake Utway pulled himself together and grappled with his strange
antagonist.
The battle was brief. The enemy seemed more bent upon escaping from
Jake’s clutch than remaining to wrestle. It was a question which of the
two was the more frightened. Jerry found and clung to a flailing leg
until a sudden kick sent him sprawling again. The branches of the
undergrowth crackled as the panic-stricken attacker fought his way free.
Painfully Jake scrambled to his feet. With his body scratched by the
bushes and bruised in a dozen places, and his face throbbing from its
blow against the tree, he now thought of nothing but regaining his tent
undiscovered. Jerry must already have made his way back to his own tent.
Jake hoped that Mr. Avery was not among those hurrying forms that passed
near him in the dark, hastening toward the scene of commotion; but there
was a chance that he had not been disturbed, as the lanky councilor was
known throughout the camp as a sound sleeper who had to fight his way to
wakefulness at Reveille. Jake’s knowledge of the lay of the land now
stood him in good stead, and he quickly found the path and scurried
toward Tent Ten, stripping off his shirt and sweater as he went. He
breathed a sigh of relief as he came to the step of his own tent.
Nothing seemed out of the way. His peering eyes made sure that Mr. Avery
had not stirred. With shaking fingers Jake undressed fully, scrambled
into his pajamas, and got into the rumpled blankets a fraction of a
second before he heard steps at the tent door.
The Chief’s low voice floated through the night. “Taking pictures, were
you? Well, Jones, if I didn’t know that you were a bit cuckoo, I might
wonder what you were up to. As it is——”
“But, Ch-Chief!” Sherlock whimpered. “If you knew what I was taking a
picture of, you’d——”
“Shh! Don’t wake up the whole camp!” came the command. “If you have any
explanation to make, you can save it until morning. Now, not another
word. You’ve made enough racket for one night!”
Jake could not help grinning beneath the covers. Evidently Sherlock,
impeded with his camera and other apparatus, had not made his getaway in
time. What could the amateur detective have been doing there at that
hour? It must have been he whom they heard following them on their
expedition. Well, time enough to worry in the morning! He listened
sleepily as Sherlock stowed away his outfit, not dreaming that the
camera contained an exposed film which might be a highly incriminating
record of their midnight misdoings.
Sherlock, however, made sure that his precious camera was carefully
placed in his locker. He was not minded to lose his sole evidence that
he had risked all to obtain proof of the raid. He cast a grim glance
toward Jake’s outstretched form as he donned his pajamas for the second
time that night. Little did the brothers reck that Sherlock Jones, the
detective, had not failed!
Sherlock wakened in the morning a few minutes before Reveille, and
glanced across the tent to see if the adventure of the night had left
any marks upon his mutinous tent-mate. It had. The most blundering
detective could not have failed to note the clue which a tree-trunk had
left on the face of Jake Utway. His left eye was ringed about with an
inflamed patch of black-and-blue bruises—the most gorgeous “shiner”
Sherlock had seen in some time. As he looked, Jake opened the uninjured
eye and glanced achingly about him. His gaze fell on the grinning Jones,
sitting upright in his bunk.
“How are all the frogs this morning?” Sherlock greeted him. “Say, you
ought to ask Ellick for a chunk of beefsteak to drape over that eye of
yours. In a couple days you’re going to have a bee-yootiful sunset on
your face. It’s already started to turn all colors of the rainbow.”
Jake felt his eye tenderly. “There was some commotion in the night, and
I got up and must have walked into something,” he said, with due regard
for the truth. “You better shut up,” he added belligerently, “if you
don’t want to carry around one just like it.”
Sherlock said nothing, but smiled to himself. He had already decided to
refer to his latest case under the resounding title of “The Clue of the
Black-and-Blue Eyebrow.”