THE UNANSWERED CALL
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.