A CALL FROM THE DARKNESS
"Perhaps you don't believe I saw anything at the window," replied
Will, somewhat indignantly.
"Oh, I don't doubt that you think you saw something at the window."
Will seized a searchlight, grabbed Tommy by the shoulder, and
pulled him out of the door and around to the north side of the
cabin.
The boys were not dressed especially for a midnight excursion in
the snow, and their teeth chattered as they made their way against
the chilling wind. However, they stuck to their purpose and soon
stood under the window which Will had pointed out."
"There!" the boy exclaimed in a triumphant tone. "Now perhaps
you'll tell me I didn't see anything through the glass."
A light snow had fallen during the late hours of the night, and
there, plainly revealed on the undisturbed surface--undisturbed
only for what they saw--were clearly outlined the footprints of two
people.
One had worn moccasins, the other such shoes as might have been
purchased at any department store in Chicago.
"And the tenant came back!" grinned Tommy.
"Then why didn't he come in?" demanded Will.
"Because he's scared of us!"
The boys followed the tracks toward the morass some distance and
then returned to the cabin.
"Whoever the fellow is," Will argued, "he found it necessary to get
a half-breed or Indian guide."
"How do you know that?" asked Tommy. "That may have been Antoine
in the moccasins."
"I give it up!" replied Will. "I don't know anything about it."
"I shouldn't wonder at all if some faithful Hindu had sailed across
the Pacific ocean, and traveled half across the continent, to
rescue a faked Brass God from the polluted hands of an Unbeliever."
"You don't really think there's any of this Hindu temple business
in this Little Brass God case, do you?" asked Tommy.
"Well, the face I saw at the window looked like that of an East
Indian!" declared Will. "His skin was brassy, and his eyes had the
devil's leer in them just as the eyes of the Little Brass God are
said to have."
"Well," Tommy declared with a yawn, "I'm going back to bed!"
"That's what I'm going to do," Will agreed. "If we sit up here
until we solve this new problem, we'll probably never get any more
sleep as long as we live."
Seeing that the door and windows were securely fastened, the boys,
who had been sleeping together, went back to their bunk, and there
was only the crackling of the fire and the roaring of the wind to
break the silence.
Tommy was soon sound asleep, but Will lay awake listening. Again
he heard the window sash rattle, but this time he did not move.
Then he dozed off into slumberland, dreamed that he was on a
tropical island where the perfume of the roses was so heavy on the
air that breathing almost became a task. He opened his eyes
dreamily, saw the fire blazing cheerily, heard the wind roaring
around the corners of the cabin, and closed them to dream the same
dream over and over.
At last he awoke with a start and sensed a peculiar odor in the
room. He lay perfectly still for a moment wondering what it could
all mean, when a voice as smooth and as evil as the hissing of a
snake, cut through the air. He listened but did not move.
"You have hidden it!" the voice said.
There was a long pause and then the voice broke the silence again.
"Arise and come to me."
The next moment the boy heard Thede moving in the bunk above. The
lad first threw his legs over the rail, and Will heard him drawing
away the blankets. Then the boy slipped softly to the floor and
moved, as one who walks in his sleep, toward the north window.
"Come to me, come to me, come to me!" the voice repeated
insistently.
"I'll come to you, all right, in about a minute," Will mused, "if
you try any of that magic business here."
Thede continued to move toward the window, walking with his hands
outstretched, as the somnambulist frequently walks.
When the boy reached the window he staggered back as if from a
blow, then moved forward again, as if bent on leaving the cabin by
way of the narrow opening.
Will raised himself in the bunk, drew an automatic from under his
pillow, and fired point blank at the glass. There was a crash and
the cabin grew cloudy with powder smoke.
Thede sat down on the floor abruptly and began rubbing his eyes.
"I guess I walked in my sleep," he said. "I do sometimes."
The shot had awakened Tommy and Sandy, who came bounding to the
floor.
"What'd you shoot at?" they asked.
"The Little Brass God!"
"I guess you've got the Little Brass God on the brain!'' grinned
Sandy.
"Yes," Tommy cut in, "you've gone and busted a perfectly good pane
of glass when there isn't another one within a hundred miles."
"Did you hit any one?" George called feebly from the bunk.
"I don't know!" replied Will. "I'm going out to see in a minute."
But Tommy and Sandy were out of the door and chasing around the
corner of the house before Will could disentangle himself from the
blanket.
Instead of passing outside, then, he stepped over to the window and
looked out. The boys were there looking over the freshly fallen
snow with an electric searchlight.
"Did I see anything?" asked Will with a note of victory in his
voice.
"Somebody saw something!" answered Sandy. "There's blood on the
snow! Some one found a bullet!"
"I'm going to dress and find out where these tracks lead to!" Tommy
declared. "This is too much mischief for me!"
"Stick your face up in the air," advised Will with a grin.
"Snow!" shouted Tommy with a gesture of disgust. "These tracks'll
be full of the beautiful before we could walk forty rods!"
"That's about the size of it!" agreed Will. "So you may as well
come back into the house and we'll go back to bed."
When the boys entered and closed the door again, it was four
o'clock and they decided not to go back to bed again that night.
"How'd you know there was some one there?" Sandy asked of Will.
"I heard the window sash rattle, then a strong perfume--something
like opium or hasheesh--was forced into the room, then the fellow
on the outside began to work his hypnotic spell."
"You say it right!" exclaimed Tommy.
"It's just as simple as anything you ever read in a daily
newspaper," declared Will. "This Little Brass God we are tracing
up belongs either in a Hindu temple in India, or the Hindus think
it belongs there. At any rate, some dusky old hypnotizer has been
sent after it!"
"You'd better get a new dream book!" Sandy broke in. "Whoever came
to the window tonight, came there to find out what we were doing in
this cabin! That's all there is to that!"
"Whoever came to the window tonight," Will repeated, "came there
for the purpose of hypnotizing one of us boys into telling where
the Little Brass God is hidden!"
"Then he must be about fourteen miles off his trolley," laughed
Sandy. "We don't know where the Little Brass God is hidden."
"He threw an Oriental perfume or narcotic of some, kind into the
room and let out his persuasive language," Will went on. "If you
don't believe he hypnotized Thede, just ask him what he heard just
before he got out of bed."
"I heard some one calling to me," Thede answered.
"What did he say?"
"He told me to come to him."
"And you was obeying that command when you started toward the
window?"
"I guess that's right," answered the boy, "but it's all so hazy
that I don't know much about it."
"And then I fired at the window and broke the spell and also the
pane of glass!" explained Will. "If he comes back here again, I'll
shoot from the outside! We can't be kept awake nights by any East
Indian magic."
"East Indian granny!" declared Sandy.
"You read about such occurrences in the newspapers every day!"
declared Will. "We see people hypnotized and forced to obey the
commands of others, not only in the private parlor but on the open
stage. Sometimes, too, the hypnotic influence is assisted by
strange Oriental perfume. There's nothing extraordinary about it
at all! In fact, there is only one word that describes it, and
that is the word uncanny."
"Fix it anyway you want it!" grinned Tommy. "There's a broken
window, and there's blood on the snow, and we found Thede lying on
the floor when we sprang out of bed. If that doesn't make a good
case of circumstantial evidence, I don't know what does!"
"This Little Brass God is getting on my nerves!" declared Sandy
after a short pause. "We've been up against smugglers on Lake
Superior; up against rattlers and wreckers in the Florida
Everglades, and up against train robbers on the Great Divide, but
this ghost business gets my goat!"
"Perhaps you'd like to go back to Chicago empty-handed?" asked
Tommy.
"Not so you could notice it!" was the reply. "If there's anything
I like, it's nice little Boy Scout excursions like this. All we
have to do to get busy is to get a camping outfit together and
march off into the wilderness. Everything else comes right along
as a matter of course. Everything else, from magic haunches of
venison, which appear when you wave your hand, to Little Brass
Gods, which grin down from the wall one second and vanish in smoke
the next!"
"Aw, come on to bed!" cried George.
"I'm going to sit up and get breakfast!" declared Tommy. "Sandy's
got a grouch on, and there's nothing on earth so good for a grouch
as a slice of broiled venison."
Tommy dressed himself and chased outdoors in order to bring in the
meat supply. He returned without it. The venison was gone!