A STRANGE CONVERSATION
For a long minute after the stranger had departed, Ned Blake stood
staring after him, a puzzled frown wrinkling his forehead.
“Humph!” grunted Dick, who also was gazing after the hurrying figure.
“He must have been in an awful rush, if he’d pay twenty-five dollars
just to get here ahead of the express. What do you make of it, Ned?”
Dick had to repeat his question before Ned roused himself to reply; but
now the conversation was interrupted by the plaintive voice of Tommy
Beals, who had dragged himself from the end of the cross-plank and was
stamping the blood back into his aching feet.
“Gosh, I’m about froze to death!” he wailed. “Froze and starved! What’s
the program, Ned?”
Ned cast a quick look at the fast-gathering shadows, which already lay
in a black smudge along the shore of the lake. “We’d better not try to
get home tonight,” he decided. “I’ve no mind to chance jumping that
crack after dark. There’s a hotel close by the station where we can get
a good dinner and a bed. We’ve got the cash to pay for both.”
“Yeah, that’s the idea!” exclaimed Tommy fervently. “A steak smothered
in onions and French fried spuds! What?”
“How about the boat?” asked Dick.
“We’ll furl the sails and push her in against the dock,” replied Ned.
“We can unship the tiller and hide it so that nobody will be tempted to
run off with her.”
This was quickly done and the boys turned their steps toward the Union
Station, the lights of which gleamed a scant hundred yards ahead. The
express had thundered into the station while they were taking care of
the boat, and now, as they crossed the tracks, her rear lights were
blinking in the distance as she picked her way through the switch-yards
westward bound.
“There goes our twenty-five-dollar passenger,” remarked Dick, with a
characteristic jerk of his thumb toward the departing train. “He had
plenty of time to catch her, I guess.”
“I can’t get it out of my mind that I’ve seen that man somewhere before
today,” began Ned. “I couldn’t see his face clearly, he was so muffled
up, and yet there was something about him that seemed familiar—the way
he stood—or walked—or something.”
The hotel was just across the street from the station, and here the boys
registered after bargaining for a room containing three beds.
“And now for that steak and onions,” gloated Tommy Beals as he headed
for the grill room closely followed by Dick.
“I’ll be with you in a jiffy,” Ned called after them as he paused at a
telephone booth. “I’ll just shoot a word to the folks that we’re O.K.
and will be home in the a.m.”
It took Ned several minutes to complete his call, and then, as he was
about to step from the booth, he halted suddenly at the sound of a voice
in the telephone compartment next to his own. There was a familiar note
to the harsh growl. As Ned paused in surprise, the words came clearly to
his ears.
“Sure, I made it on time and Miller was there, too. Where was _you_?”
Silence a moment; then the voice continued. “Local _nothing_! I told you
I’d be in on the express—stop or no stop. As a matter of fact I got
there ahead of time—never mind how. Now listen.”
For a moment the heavy voice rumbled on but in a lower tone so that no
word reached Ned’s ears; then the door of the booth was jerked open and
its occupant crossed the hotel lobby with a rapid stride. He was joined
by a tall, red-faced man and the two disappeared through the door
leading to the street. For the second time within half an hour, Ned
Blake found himself staring after a short, thick-set figure in a fur
coat. There was no doubt of it. The growling voice in the telephone
booth had been that of his mysterious passenger on the _Frost King_.
Hurrying to the grill room, Ned acquainted his companions with what he
had learned.
“Then that yarn about wanting to catch the Detroit express was all
bunk!” exclaimed Dick.
“Evidently,” agreed Ned. “But also it’s sure that he had some important
date that coincided with the arrival of the train. That red-faced man
‘Miller’ showed up on time but somebody else missed out. I wonder what
the game is.”
“We should worry about him or his business,” was Tommy’s cheerful
comment as he eyed with huge satisfaction the nicely browned steak,
which at the moment was being placed before him on the table. “Right now
I’m for enjoying this feed that he’s paying for. Afterwards, I’ll
_wonder_—if you insist,” and Tommy helped himself lavishly to the savory
fried onions that accompanied the steak.
Long exposure to the biting wind had induced appetites which required a
deal of satisfying, but at length even Tommy’s splendid yearnings had
been appeased and he sank back in his chair, the picture of well-fed
contentment. Hardly had the boys left the dining-room, when drowsiness
came upon them as the natural reaction to long hours in the open air
supplemented by a heavy meal.
“Can’t keep my eyes open,” mumbled Dick after a prodigious yawn. “Me for
little old bed-o, even if it is only seven-thirty.”
The idea was accepted unanimously and the boys lost no time in seeking
their room and making ready for bed. But now the puzzling question
regarding their unknown passenger recurred to Ned with redoubled force.
Before his mind’s eye there passed countless faces and figures of men he
had known or seen. He was groping painfully in an effort to place one
thick-set figure in a fur coat.
“What’s the matter, Ned? Do you see a ghost?” grinned Dick at his friend
who sat on the edge of the bed, shoe in hand, staring blankly at the
opposite wall.
“Not unless ghosts wear fur coats,” muttered Ned, flinging the shoe
under the bed. “Hang it all! I’m sure I’ve seen that fellow—or at least
somebody a whole lot like him. I wish I could remember when or where!”
“While you’re _wishing_ you might as well wish for that _roll_ he
packed,” chuckled Tommy. “Gosh! I’ll bet there was half a thousand
dollars in it—and that fur _coat_!” Here Tommy rolled up his eyes
enviously.
“One thing I _am_ sure of,” continued Ned, “whoever he is, he probably
does at least a part of his business in Canada. That last bill he gave
me was Canadian money. I noticed it when I paid the dinner charge.
Luckily, they accept Canadian money here.”
“What do you suppose he had in that suitcase he was so fussy about?”
queried Dick. “It was darned heavy—from the way he handled it.”
“That’s another question I’d like answered,” admitted Ned, “also, what
was he doing in Truesdell, when all the time he was so anxious to get to
Cleveland that he was willing to risk his neck on the _Frost King_, just
to save half an hour or so?”
“Heigh, ho! I’ll give it up,” yawned Tommy and, with a sigh of unalloyed
satisfaction, the plump youth rolled over luxuriously and buried his
face in the pillow.
Dick was only seconds behind Tommy in his plunge into the depths of
sleep; but long after his companions were sunk in blissful oblivion, Ned
lay racking his brain in what proved to be a futile effort to find some
reasonable solution of the puzzle. Weariness at last closed his eyes,
but through his troubled dreams there persisted these tantalizing,
half-formed questions, always on the point of being answered but ever
eluding his grasp.
The sharp rattle of icy particles on the window awakened Dick Somers
next morning. Springing out of bed, he roused his companions and they
stared out at a world rapidly whitening under a driving storm of snow.
“This will never do!” cried Ned. “We’ve got to get a move on or we’ll be
snowed in down here!”
After a quick breakfast of bacon, eggs, rolls and coffee, the boys
hastened down to the lake. The snow was, as yet, only about two inches
deep, but it was whipping out of the north with a power that warned of
much more to come. Sails were quickly hoisted and the _Frost King_ shot
away, homeward bound.
Holding close enough to the shore so that its dim outline served as a
guide, Ned kept his bearings; and although slowed somewhat by the fast
gathering snow, the ice-boat made fair speed. Constant wind pressure had
closed the shoreward end of the big crack and a cautious crossing was
made without difficulty. Through a six-inch depth of snow, the _Frost
King_ plowed to a stop beside the dock at Truesdell, where the crews of
other boats were busily engaged in removing the canvas from their craft.
“That’s what we’ve got to do right now,” declared Ned. “This storm feels
like a genuine blizzard that will probably put an end to ice-boating for
the rest of the winter.”
As rapidly as possible the sails were removed, the stiffened canvas
folded up and stored in a safe place and the boat itself hauled as far
up on shore as possible, pending the time when the boys would return her
to her former place of storage.
“Well, we’ve had a bully time and a swell feed and have fifteen
simoleons to divvy up among the crew of the _Frost King_,” chortled
Tommy Beals as they trudged homeward. “I’ll say that’s good enough for
anybody.”
“Yes, it’s O.K.,” agreed Ned, “but I’m going to keep my eye out for that
fellow in the fur coat, and the next time I get a look at him, I’ll try
to find out who he is or whom he reminds me of.”
As it transpired, however, many months were to pass and many strange
happenings were to take place before Ned Blake again found himself face
to face with the mysterious stranger.