A MYSTERIOUS ISLAND
Many of the expected thrills and terrors of life never materialize. It
was so with Mazie and the tiger. If the tiger had been roaring in a
manner fit to curdle the blood of a pirate, it was because he was afraid.
The instant he was free from his cage, acting for all the world like a
cat that has suddenly been drenched with cold water, he went slinking
away down the long rooms of the zoo.
It was a simple enough matter to drive him into a portable cage, and
there the affair ended.
An hour later, Mazie came upon the Chief, who told her of Johnny’s
experience but could not inform her of his whereabouts. Failing to find
him, she decided to go home.
After taking Jerry back to his master, she returned to the tree where she
had placed the rescued canary. Wrapping her cape about the cage to shield
the bird from the chill night air, she hailed a taxi and sped along home,
content to call it a night.
Johnny was not at all convinced that the Chief was right in saying that
the stooped man with the hook nose and a limp had fallen into the lake
and been drowned.
“You don’t get rid of a man that easily,” he told himself. “They do it in
the movies; but in real life, not once in a million times.”
The more he thought of it, the surer he became that he was right. The
moon had been under a cloud for a long time, long enough for the man to
have escaped over the breakwater to the made land.
“And besides,” Johnny reasoned, “he was just as likely to fall in on the
side of the breakwater away from the spray as he was on the dangerous
side. On that side it would have been no trick at all to swim to the
shore of that made land.”
Having convinced himself that the affair would bear looking into, he
retraced his steps to the lake shore. The wind had gone down. The moon
was shining. The breakwater appeared to offer a safe passage to the land
beyond.
“I’ll chance it,” he murmured to himself.
As the reader already knows, the unfinished breakwater was composed of
sharp edged limestone rock, together with broken fragments of cement
taken from old sidewalks and cellar walls. To cross from shore to shore
was no easy task, even now. More than once Johnny was obliged to drop on
his knees to save himself a slide into the water. As he saw how perilous
the passage was he was all but forced to believe that the Chief’s
conclusion was correct, that the fugitive had been drowned.
“And if he did,” Johnny thought to himself, “and if he was the firebug,
then this chase is ended and, what’s more, he took his secret with him to
the bottom of the lake.”
This thought left him a feeling of disappointment so keen that it threw
him into a fit of despondency. He knew well enough that he should be glad
that the man was gone. The city would then see the end of the havoc that
had added so much to the discomfort and unhappiness of its people.
“But all the same,” he told himself defiantly, “that fellow had some
secret method for setting fires, an unusual and unknown method. It is
decidedly disappointing, after you had been for so long a time hot on the
trail, to have that secret buried from your sight forever.
“Well, what is to be, will be,” he mused as he picked his way across the
final rugged stretch of cold, wet rock.
When at last his feet touched solid dry land again, his feeling that the
man had certainly been drowned left him. Such experiences are not
uncommon. One’s feeling toward all of life during a time of peril is
always different from that which he experiences in a place of comparative
safety.
Strange to say, however, Johnny was, at the moment he stepped on that
made land, in greater peril than he had been at any time while crossing
the slippery breakwater. Being quite unconscious of this, he struck
boldly down the length of that narrow stretch of land.
It was a curious sort of island on which he stood. A city that had built
skyscrapers to its very water front, becoming dissatisfied with the
waterscape that lay out before it, had decided that a few islands off its
shores would add to the decorative effect of its view. So, with the
fearless, Titan-like soul that possesses American cities, it had decided
to build islands here and there along its shores. This narrow stretch of
land, a few hundred yards wide and a mile long, was their first attempt
at altering the face of nature.
At the present time, like the world in its beginning, it was “without
form and void.” Upon the great mounds of dripping sand raised up from the
bottom by dredges, had been hauled all manner of refuse from the land.
Loads of clay, great heaps of tin cans, dump loads of broken brick and
mortar, caused this man made island to look like the side of a volcano
after an eruption.
Johnny found it a very difficult place to walk. One moment he was
climbing a mound of clay, the next he was wading knee-deep in soft sand,
and after that rattling through a whole desert of tin cans.
For all that, there was a certain thrill to be had from walking there. He
was upon an island. As far as he knew the island was without an
inhabitant. Certainly two years before it was entirely unknown to the
civilized world.
He chuckled at the thoughts he had thus conjured up. “And yet,” he
laughed, “the island is within gunshot of one of the largest cities of
our land.”
If he had concluded that the place was entirely deserted, he was destined
to a rude and shocking disillusionment. Suddenly, out from behind a tall
heap of rubbish, a large figure launched itself at him with such sure
effect that it sent him crashing to the ground.
Now Johnny, as you will know well enough if you have read our other book
“Triple Spies,” was not the sort of a fellow to take the count on the
first down. It would have been a nimble tongued referee who could have
counted three before Johnny was getting to his feet.
Thoroughly aroused and angered by this sudden, cowardly assault, he was
now quite ready for trouble.
He did not have long to wait for it, either. At once the man came at him.
This time someone received a surprise, and it certainly was not Johnny.
Came a sound as of a wagon tongue ramming an automobile, and the huge
hulk of a man who had started the row, staggered backward. Boxing was the
one thing Johnny knew a great deal about. Long years ago his father had
taught him a great deal about defending himself. He had added to this
knowledge as the years went by.
Johnny had not the slightest doubts of his ability along these lines. But
that he was in grave danger, he knew quite well. While his assailant
paused before resuming the attack, he allowed himself a few darting
thoughts as to how this affair would end. Who was this man? Could he be
the man they had driven out upon the breakwater, or was he some tramp who
had come out here to sleep? Was he armed? If he had a knife or gun the
affair would probably end shortly and tragically. Was it best to run?
Probably it was, but being Johnny Thompson, he did not propose to run.
He’d stand his ground and fight, and since fight he must, why not on the
offensive? No sooner thought than done. With muscles tense, every nerve
alert, he leaped squarely at the astonished giant.
Johnny’s chance came and he took it. As the man threw up his hands in an
involuntary motion to shield his face, Johnny landed a haymaker square on
his chin.
There are few men who can withstand such a blow but this man appeared to
be made of uncommon stuff. He staggered like a drunken man but he did not
fall. The next second he set his huge fists swinging.
As Johnny stepped back he stumbled over some hard object and all but
fell. The obstacle suggested a way out, but he did not take it. In this
ten seconds of confused thought he was suddenly seized in a death-like
grip. The man, so much heavier, bore him to the ground with a crash that
all but knocked his senses out of him.
In the struggle that followed his hand was pressed against something hard
at the man’s belt.
“A knife!” Johnny thought excitedly.
The next instant his hand was on the hilt. Ten seconds of struggle and he
had freed the hand with the long-bladed knife gripped tight.
Wildly his heart beat. The advantage was his. Should he follow it up? One
thrust, perhaps two, and the struggle would end.
A second of thought. “No! No! Not that!” Suddenly his hand shot up and
out. The knife, executing the arc of a circle, clanged to the ground some
distance away.
A short, tense struggle followed, then again Johnny was free.
Breathing hard, hair disheveled, face bloody, clothes torn, he backed
away to allow his mind three more flashing thoughts: “What next? Fight or
flee? How will it end?”
He would fight. The man might be the firebug. If he could but subdue and
capture him, the prize was won. Besides, had not the man set upon him
from ambush? Did he not deserve a drubbing?
Suddenly he felt a strong desire to see the man’s face. If he were the
man he thought him, he would recognize him. The man’s back was to the
moon. Johnny executed a flank movement, that the moon might give him a
view of that face. Again he tripped and all but fell. One hand touched
the ground. It rested for a second on half a brick. Should he seize the
brick? It was a weapon! But he had always fought fair.
“No! No!” he breathed.
He had always fought fair. Little did he know of the ruthless warfare of
the underworld, of those denizens of crime who seize any weapon, who
strike any creature—even the defenseless and weak—whose creed is
ruthlessness and cruelty, and who know neither honor nor pity.
Well had it been if Johnny had known, for hardly had his hand left the
brick than another came crashing against his own head, sending him
crumpling down like an empty sack.
Consciousness did not entirely desert him. He had lost the power to move,
but could still hear, feel and think. He caught the heavy thud of the
villain’s footsteps as he approached, felt his hot breath on his cheek,
then saw him lift the very brick he himself, but ten seconds before, had
rejected as a point of honor.
His thoughts ran rampant. All his past lay before him, all his hopes for
the future. He had expected to die sometime, somewhere, but not like
this, not alone on a island built up by dump carts and scows.
“No! No! Not here!”
At the instant when all seemed lost, he heard a sudden compact, saw the
big man go hurdling over him, and then to his vast surprise heard him
struggle to his feet to go clump-clumping away.
Then, as a clearer consciousness came ebbing back, Johnny opened his eyes
to see a face looking down upon him; a strange, wizened, full-bearded
face that seemed the face of an overgrown owl.
For a time he felt that he must have become delirious, and was seeing
things in mad dreams. Just then the man spoke.
“Hurt much?”
“N—no. Guess—guess not,” Johnny said, struggling to a sitting posture.
“All right. When you feel like it I’ll help you over to my house.”
“Your house? Where is it?”
“On the island, just round the corner here.”
“A house on this island?” Johnny whispered to himself. “Why, then, this
surely is a mysterious island.”