_A Mystery Story for Boys_
_The_
GALLOPING GHOST
_By_
ROY J. SNELL
The Reilly & Lee Co.
Chicago
COPYRIGHT 1933
BY
THE REILLY & LEE CO.
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I Kidnaper’s Island 11
II Whispers in the Night 22
III “We Must Escape” 30
IV The Ghost Appears 38
V Red Wins to Lose 49
VI The Red Rover Gets the Breaks 56
VII A Journey in the Night 67
VIII “The Rat” 78
IX Red Goes Into Action 89
X The Invisible Footprint 100
XI Hotcakes at Dawn 109
XII Johnny Gets a “Jimmy” 116
XIII Light on the Water 127
XIV Drew Lane Steps Into Something 137
XV “Shootin’ Irons” 146
XVI The Branded Bullet 156
XVII Johnny’s Jimmy 164
XVIII Dreaming at Dawn 173
XIX Night on Isle Royale 180
XX Riding a Moose 190
XXI The Shoe 200
XXII On the “Sleeping Lion” 207
XXIII A Visit in the Night 213
XXIV Uncle Ned Does His Bit 226
XXV The Trail Leads North 236
XXVI Battle Over the Waves 245
XXVII A Haunted Bay 255
XXVIII The Light That Failed 262
XXIX Silent Night 269
XXX Hollow Chuckles 276
XXXI “Play by Play” 289
XXXII “70,000 Witnesses” 296
XXXIII The Flea Flicker 309
THE GALLOPING GHOST
CHAPTER I
KIDNAPER’S ISLAND
Red Rodgers rolled half over, squirmed about, then sat up. For a long
time he had felt the floor beneath him vibrate with the throb of powerful
motors. His eardrums, beaten upon as they had been by the roar of those
motors, now seemed incapable of registering sound.
Not the slightest murmur suggesting life reached his ears. “Not the
rustle of a leaf, nor the lap of a tiny wave; not the whisper of a
village child asleep,” he told himself. “Can I have gone stone deaf?”
Cold perspiration started out upon the tip of his nose.
And then, piercing the silence like a siren’s scream in the night, came a
wild, weird, mad, hilarious laugh.
Startled by this sudden shock of sound, he shuddered from head to foot.
Then, at once, he felt better.
“At least I am not deaf.”
“That laugh,” he mused a moment later, “it was almost human, but not
quite. What could it have been?”
To this question he could form no answer. The wild places, wilderness,
forest, lakes, rivers, were sealed books to Red. He had lived his life in
a city, lived strenuously and with a purpose.
“Some wild thing,” he murmured. “But where am I?” His brow wrinkled.
“I’ve been kidnaped, dragged from my berth in a sleeping car, thrown into
a speed boat, carried miles down a river, bundled into this airplane,
whirled for hours through the air, and landed here. But where is here?
And why am I here at all?”
“Hours,” he whispered slowly. A stray moonbeam lighted a spot on his
knee. He placed his wrist there and read the dial of his watch.
“Yes, hours. It’s five after midnight. And to-morrow, hundreds of miles
away, I was to have made at least two touchdowns. The crowd would expect
at least one sixty-yard dash by the Red Rover.”
“The Red Rover.” That was the name the fans had given him. Well, the Red
Rover would not run. He smiled grimly. But, after all, what did it
matter? They were to play Woodville. What was Woodville? A weak team. Old
Midway’s cubs could beat them. It was a midweek game, mainly for
practice. He wasn’t needed for that. But Saturday’s game! Ah, well, that
was another story.
“But kidnaped!” He brought himself up with a start. “I’ve been kidnaped!
Dragged from my berth. Whirled all the way to some place where wild
creatures laugh at midnight.”
Kidnaped. The whole affair seemed absurd to him. He had read of
kidnapings. There had been many of late. It had always made his blood
boil when some innocent child, some helpless woman had been carried away
to a dismal hole and held for ransom. “Low-lived curs,” he had called the
kidnapers.
“Ransom!” He laughed a low laugh. He was a college student, a football
player for two months of the year, a night clerk in a hotel the rest of
the year, an orphan boy working his way through the university. He
thought there were three dollars in his pocket, but he could not be sure.
“Kidnaped! Must have got the wrong fellow this time. Tell ’em who I am,
and they’ll turn me loose; hustle me back, like as not.”
He was wrong. They would neither turn him loose nor hustle him back.
“All right, Red. You can get out.” These words were spoken as the
airplane door swung open.
“Red!” the boy thought with a start. “So they _do_ know who I am. They
did mean to get me. I wonder why!
“Whew!” he whistled as a cold breeze struck his cheek. “Cold up here.”
“Cold enough,” the other grumbled. “Come on, shake a leg! This boat
swings about.”
“Boat.” It’s strange how a single word tells a long story. The whiff of
cold air had told him that they had flown north. Now he knew that they
had landed on water. But what water? And where?
“There you are.” A hand in the moonlight guided him to a seat in the
stern of a small boat.
Red opened his eyes wide at the scene that lay before him, a broad, deep
bay fringed by a black ribbon of spruce and balsam. The moonlight,
forming a path of gold across the water, fell upon some dark object. As
the oars of the boat creaked, the dark object made a splashing sound; it
moved.
As if reading the boy’s thoughts, the oarsman ceased his labors to cast
the circle of a powerful flashlight in the direction of the moving
creature.
With a quick intake of breath Red stared enchanted; for there, not twenty
yards away, standing at the end of the small island which he had reached
at this moment, was a moose.
Nowhere in all his life had the boy beheld such complete majesty. Erect,
silent, powerful, the monarch of the forest stood there defiant and
unafraid.
“Where in all the earth could one find a spot such as this?” Red breathed
to himself. “A spot so sheltered that even the shyest of the forest’s
great ones shows no fear.”
He had expected the oarsman to drag a rifle from the prow and fire
point-blank at this moose. Instead, he sat there for a second, his rough
face disfigured by a semblance of a smile; then, pocketing his
flashlight, he once again took up his oars.
For Red there was little enough time for thought. The boat swung about.
Before them lay a point of land, perhaps the end of an island. At its
extreme end was a little half-clearing where a score of girdled birches
pointed their barren trunks, like dead fingers, toward the sky.
At the edge of this clearing was a small log cabin. From this a pale
light gleamed. Toward this cabin the boat directed its course.
“‘This is the forest primeval.’” The words sprang unbidden to the boy’s
lips. “‘The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, bearded with moss, and in
garments green, indistinct in the twilight, stand like Druids of eld,
with voices sad and prophetic, stand like harpers hoar, with beards that
rest on their bosoms.’
“And to-morrow was to have been—”
As he closed his eyes he saw what it was to have been: a wild, shouting
throng; college songs, college yells, bands, waving banners. “Go, Midway!
Go!” Two squads battling for victory. Wild scrambles. Futile dashes. And,
with good fortune, a mad dash of fifty yards to triumphal victory.
“Life,” he whispered, “is strange.”
The boat bumped. A narrow landing lay beside him.
“We get off here.” There was something impersonal in the tone of this
strange pilot of the night. “This’ll be home for you, son, for quite some
considerable time.”
“I hope you’re wrong,” Red thought.
The room he entered a moment later was small and very narrow. In one
corner was a cot, in another a table and chair. Across from the table was
a curious affair of sheet iron that, he guessed, might be a stove. The
place was agreeably warm. There must be a small fire. On the table a
candle burned.
Turning about to seek for an explanation of all that had been happening
and of his strange surroundings, he was not a little startled to find
himself alone. The door had been silently closed behind him. And locked?
Well, perhaps. What could it matter? He was, beyond doubt, surrounded by
water, the merciless water of the north country—some north country in
November; surrounded, too, by determined men, hostile men, perhaps, who
had apparently ordained that his stay in the cabin should be a long one.
Once again, as he dropped into the chair, there came to his mind that
forceful interrogation:
“Why?”
As before, he could form no adequate answer.
His mind was busy with this problem when, with startling suddenness, his
attention was caught and held by the low sound of voices.
“Have you signed?” It was a man who spoke. The voice was not gruff; a
low, smooth, persuasive voice, too smooth, too persuasive.
Quite in contrast was the answer. Unmistakably feminine, it came sharp
and crisp as the crash of icicles fallen from the eaves. “I will never
sign.”
“But consider.” The man’s voice was not raised, still smooth, persuasive.
“You are on an island.”
“An island. I thought so,” Red whispered to himself. “But who can this
girl be?” That the one beyond the partition was a girl he did not doubt.
“I will never sign!” the girl broke in upon the other’s oily speech. “My
father owes you nothing.”
“Consider,” the other persisted. “You are on a narrow island within a
bay. The water of the bay is icy cold. You might swim it in safety,
though I doubt it. Should you succeed, it would be but to find yourself
upon a much larger island. That island is fifteen miles from the nearest
mainland, a hundred from the farthest. Can you swim that, or row it even
if you should find a boat? Ah, no. The waters of this great lake are
terrible in their fury. And Superior never gives up her dead.”
There was something so sepulchral about these last words that the
listening boy shuddered in spite of himself.
“On such an island there are people.” The girl’s tone was stubborn,
defiant.
“There is no one.” The tone of the speaker carried conviction. “In
summer, yes. In winter, no. We are here alone.”
“Then,” said the girl, “I shall stay here until summer comes. Winter will
soon be here. And ‘if winter comes,’” she quoted, “‘can spring be far
behind?’”
“Very far.”
There was a quiet cadence in the speaker’s tone that sent chills coursing
up Red Rodger’s spine. At the same time he hardly suppressed a desire to
shout: “Bravo!” to the girl.
The closing of a door some seconds later told him that this was a cabin
of at least two rooms and, strangely enough, between these rooms was no
connecting door.