HOT WATER AND A GHOST
It was night. The crowd that had screamed its welcome to the returning O
Moo and her crew was gone. A great truck loaded high with Christmas trees
had departed with Marie Neighbor bouncing about on top of it.
The three girls were in the cabin of the O Moo. This, they were sure, was
to be their last night on board. The lady dean had told Florence that a
flat belonging to the university, three rooms, kitchenette and bath, was
at their disposal. The rent seemed terribly high to them, but someway
they must meet it, since the dean had looked very sternly adown her nose
and said, "Of course this sort of thing cannot be gone on with. The
university would be scandalized. Besides, there is no telling what may
happen to you if you remain here."
"Of course," Lucile said with a long face as the three of them discussed
the matter, "she says it's a very nice apartment but it can't be half as
nice as--"
"As the O Moo," Florence put in. "Of course not. Nothing ever can be."
"Oh, well," Marian sighed, "I guess we'll have to do it. But I do think
the old O Moo is a dear. I shouldn't like anything better than rambling
through a whole summer with her almost anywhere on the Great Lakes."
Since this was to be their last night they determined to make the most of
it. They had Mark Pence in for hot chocolate and vanilla wafers. They
told him of their adventures and he spoke modestly of his own.
"So you see," he said, going back to the very beginning of the story as
he now knew it, "when these Negontisks found out they were going to be
deported they hunted out an unscrupulous Chinaman who transformed them
into people of his own race. That wasn't hard. They were Orientals
anyway. All he had to do was to provide them with black sateen suits and
artificial pigtails and the transformation was complete.
"Then the Chinaman saw a chance to make a lot of easy money. He put them
to work in his laundry--virtually made slaves of them. Fixed up that old
scow for them secretly and made them sneak back and forth to work during
the night.
"That lasted for a time, then the greedy old Chinaman suddenly
disappeared. Negontisks sacrificed him to the blue god, like as not.
Served him right too.
"But that was where the police took up the trail. The savages knew there
was trouble coming. They thought you were a plant--that you were set here
to spy on them. They'd been betrayed by some woman before, it seems. When
they couldn't get rid of you by frightening you, they decided to cut you
loose in a storm."
"And now--" began Florence.
"Now they've vanished. Not a trace of them has been seen since that
night."
"Not a trace?"
"Not one."
"Why then," exclaimed Florence leaping to her feet, "I invite you all to
a ghost hunt. A ghost hunt for a blue god."
"Anything for a last nighter," agreed Lucile.
"For this type of ghost hunt," said Florence, "one needs an ax and two
kettles of boiling water."
"I'll provide the ax," volunteered Mark.
"And we the boiling water," chimed in Marian and Lucile in unison.
It was a strange little procession that stole from the shadow of the O
Moo a short time later. Florence led the way. She was profoundly silent.
Lucile and Marian followed, each with a tea kettle of boiling water
carefully poised at her side. Mark, as a sort of vanguard, brought up the
rear with his ax. Now and then Mark let forth a low chuckle.
"Sh!" Marian warned. "You might disturb her serious poise."
Straight away toward the end of the lagoon Florence led them. Once on the
surface of the lagoon her course was scarcely less certain until she had
reached a point in the center of the broad, glistening surface.
"Should be right about here," she murmured.
Snapping on a flashlight she moved slowly backward and forward, studying
the ice beneath the circle of intense light.
"Cold place for a ghost," whispered Mark.
"Ten thousand people have skated over it and cut it down. Can't tell.
Maybe it's gone," Florence said under her breath, but still she kept up
the search.
"Water's getting cooled off in the kettles. Ghost won't mind it at all,"
whispered Mark.
Pausing on tiptoe for a moment, Florence fixed her eyes on a certain
spot. Then, bending over, she brushed the ice clear of frost.
"There!" she announced. "There! That's it."
"Right here," she pointed, motioning to Mark. "Cut here. No--let me have
the ax. You might go too deep."
With measured and cautious swings she began hacking a circle in the ice
some two and a half feet in circumference.
Mark's amusement had vanished. Curious as the others, he bent over and
watched in awed silence. Eight inches of solid ice had been chipped up
and thrown out when they began noticing its peculiar blueness.
"Like a frozen tub of blueing," whispered Marian.
"Sh!" warned Lucile.
"Now, let's have the water."
Florence took one of the teakettles and poured the hot water into the
hole she had cut.
As they stood there staring with all their eyes, they thought they made
out the outline of something.
"Like a dream picture on the movie screen," whispered Marian.
Lucile pinched her arm.
"A face," came from Mark.
Suddenly Lucile gasped, wavered, and all but sank down upon the ice.
"The face!" she cried in a muffled scream. "The horrible blue face."
"I thought it might be." Florence's voice was tense with emotion.
She poured the second kettle of water into the hole.
The pool of water was blue, but through it there appeared the dim
outlines of an unspeakably ugly face.
With trembling fingers Florence tested the water. Twice she found it too
hot. The third time she plunged in her hand. There followed a sound of
water being sucked up by some object. The next instant she placed on the
ice, within the circle of light, a strange affair of blue stone.
Covering her eyes Lucile sprang back shuddering. "The blue face! The
terrible blue face."
Marian and Mark stared curiously.
Florence straightened up. "That," she said with an air of great
satisfaction, "is the marvelous and much-sought blue god."
"Oh! Ah!" came from Marian and Mark. Lucile uncovered her eyes to look.
"Perfectly harmless; merely a blue jade carving. Nevertheless a thing of
some importance, unless I miss my guess," said Florence. "I suggest that
we take it to the police station."
"To-night?" exclaimed Marian.
"Oh, yes! Right now!" demanded Lucile through chattering teeth. "I could
never sleep with that thing on board the O Moo."
Arrived at police headquarters, they asked for their friend, the
sergeant. When he came out, his eyes appeared heavy with sleep, but once
they fell upon the thing of blue jade it seemed that they would pop out
of his head.
"It ain't!" he exclaimed. "It is! No, it can't be."
Taking it in his hands he turned it over and over, muttering to himself.
Then, "Wait a minute," he said. Handing the blue face to Florence, he
dashed to the telephone.
There for a moment he quarreled with an operator, then talked to someone
for an instant.
"That," he said as he returned, "was your friend, Mr. Cole, from down in
the new museum. He lives near here. He's coming over. He'll tell us for
sure. He knows everything. Sit down."
For ten minutes nothing was heard in the room save the tick-tock of a
prodigious clock hung against the wall. From Florence's lap the blue god
leered defiance to the world.
Suddenly a man without hat or collar dashed into the room. It was Cole.
"Where is it?" he demanded breathlessly.
"Here." Florence held out the blue face.
For a full five minutes the great curator studied the face in silence.
Turning it over and over, he now and again uttered a little cry of
delight.
Florence, as she watched him, thought he could not have been more pleased
had a long-lost son been returned to him.
"It is!" he murmured at last. "It is the blue god of the Negontisks."
"See that!" exclaimed the sergeant, springing to his feet. "I told you
he'd know. And that's the end of that business. The whole gang of 'em was
caught in Sioux City, Iowa, last night, but they didn't have the blue
god. They'll be deported."
"Will--will you give it back to them now?" faltered Lucile.
"Give it back?" he roared. "I'd say not! You don't know what crimes have
been committed in the name of the blue god. No! No! We'll not give it
back. If they must have one when they get to where they're going they'll
have to find a new one."
"Sergeant," said Cole, "I'd like to speak with you, privately."
"Oh! All right."
The two adjourned to a corner, where for some time they conversed
earnestly. The sergeant might be seen to shake his head emphatically from
time to time.
At last they returned to the group.
"I have been trying," said Cole thoughtfully, "to persuade the sergeant
to allow you to sell the blue god to our museum. It is worth considerable
money merely as a specimen, but he won't hear to it; says it's sort of
contraband and must be held by the police. I'm sorry. I'm sure you could
have used the money to good advantage."
"Oh, that's all right--" The words stuck in Florence's throat.
"Hold on now! Hold on!" exclaimed the sergeant, growing very red in the
face. "I'm not so hard-hearted as I might seem. There's a reward of five
hundred dollars offered for the arrest and conviction--or words to that
effect--of this here blue god. Now you girls have arrested him and before
Mr. Cole he's been convicted. All's left is to make out the claims and
I'll do that free gratis and for nothing."
"Five hun--five hundred dollars!" the girls exclaimed.
The sergeant stepped back a pace. It was evident that he was in fear of
the embarrassment which might come to him by being embraced by three
young ladies in a police station.
"I--I'll lock him up for the night," he muttered huskily and promptly
disappeared into a vault.
"Well, I guess that's all of that," breathed Florence. "Quite a thrilling
night for our last on the O Moo."
"Not quite all," said Cole. "There's still the blue candlestick. The
state makes no claims upon that. In the name of the museum I offer you
two hundred dollars for it. How about it?"
"Splendid! Wonderful!" came from the girls.
"All right. Come round in the morning for the check. Good-night." He
disappeared into the darkness.
"We--we're rich," sighed Lucile as they walked toward the O Moo, "but you
know I have a private fortune."
She drew a letter from her pocket and waved it in air. "One hundred
dollars for my story. Hooray!"
"Hooray!" came from the rest.
"Of course," sighed Lucile, "the editor said the check would spoil me for
life, but since the story was worth it he was bound to buy it. Regular
fatherly letter, but he's a dear and the check is real money."
"To eat has a more pleasant sound than to sleep," said Florence when they
were once more in the cabin of the O Moo. "What do you say to lamb chops,
french fried potatoes, hot coffee and doughnuts?"
"At two in the morning?" grinned Mark.
"What's a better time? All in favor, say 'aye.' The ayes have it."
"There are a few things I don't yet understand," said Lucile as they sat
enjoying their repast.
"And a lot that I don't," added Mark. "Miss Florence Huyler, the
pleasure's all yours."
"Well," said Florence, "it was about like this: The Negontisks were
living in that old scow. Instead of three or four sleepy old Chinamen,
there were twenty or thirty near-savages skulking about this dry dock.
Being afraid of us, they tacked a note of warning to our yacht. When we
didn't leave they decided to frighten us or kill us, I don't know which.
They chased me into the old museum and tried to surround Lucile among the
ice-piles. Lucile's seeing the blue face in the old Mission was of course
an accident; so too was my finding the blue candlestick. That man who
chased me lost it. When other plans failed they decided to set us adrift,
which they did."
"But the blue god frozen in the ice?" questioned Marian.
"You remember the two men with the sled and the one man who appeared to
come from nowhere? Well, I guess he was dropped off the sled with the
blue god, a jug of blue water, and an ax. He cut a hole in the ice and,
after covering the blue god with blue water left it to be frozen in. I
stumbled upon the spot next morning. Little by little I guessed what was
hidden there and how it was hidden."
"Seems strange they never came back for it," said Lucile.
"Police were too hot on their tracks," declared Mark. "They didn't dare
to."
"And that," said Florence, "is the story of the blue god. Quite an
exciting episode. To-morrow we enter upon the monotonous life of modern
city cave dwellers. Good-bye to romance."
"Well," said Mark, "you never can tell."
He rose. "I must bid you good-night and good-bye. I work in the 'stacks'
of your great university library. Come to see me there sometime. Perhaps
I might dish up a bit of excitement for you, you never can tell."
He bowed himself out of the cabin. Fifteen minutes later the cabin was
dark. The cruise of the O Moo was at an end.
The Roy J. Snell Books
Mr. Snell is a versatile writer who knows how to write stories that will
please boys and girls. He has traveled widely, visited many
out-of-the-way corners of the earth, and being a keen observer has found
material for many thrilling stories. His stories are full of adventure
and mystery, yet in the weaving of the story there are little threads
upon which are hung lessons in loyalty, honesty, patriotism and right
living.
Mr. Snell has created a wide audience among the younger readers of
America. Boy or girl, you are sure to find a Snell book to your liking.
His works cover a wide and interesting scope.
Here are the titles of the Snell Books:
_Mystery Stories for Boys_
1. Triple Spies
2. Lost in the Air
3. Panther Eye
4. The Crimson Flash
5. White Fire
6. The Black Schooner
7. The Hidden Trail
8. The Firebug
9. The Red Lure
10. Forbidden Cargoes
11. Johnny Longbow
12. The Rope of Gold
13. The Arrow of Fire
14. The Gray Shadow
15. Riddle of the Storm
16. The Galloping Ghost
17. Whispers at Dawn; or, The Eye
18. Mystery Wings
19. Red Dynamite
20. The Seal of Secrecy
21. The Shadow Passes
22. Sign of the Green Arrow
_The Radio-Phone Boys' Series_
1. Curlie Carson Listens In
2. On the Yukon Trail
3. The Desert Patrol
4. The Seagoing Tank
5. The Flying Sub
6. Dark Treasure
7. Whispering Isles
8. Invisable Wall
_Adventure Stories for Girls_
1. The Blue Envelope
2. The Cruise of the O Moo
3. The Secret Mark
4. The Purple Flame
5. The Crimson Thread
6. The Silent Alarm
7. The Thirteenth Ring
8. Witches Cove
9. The Gypsy Shawl
10. Green Eyes
11. The Golden Circle
12. The Magic Curtain
13. Hour of Enchantment
14. The Phantom Violin
15. Gypsy Flight
16. The Crystal Ball
17. A Ticket to Adventure
18. The Third Warning
* * * * * * * *
Transcriber's note:
--Obvious typographical errors were corrected. Non-standard
spellings and dialect were left unchanged.
--Promotional material was relocated to the end of the book, and
the list of books in the three series was completed using other
sources.
--Standardized the ship name "O Moo", variously spelled "O'Moo" and
"O-Moo" in promotional material.
--Added an ellipsis on page 14 indicating where a line or two was
apparently omitted in the printed edition.