JOHNNY GETS A “JIMMY”
That day Johnny Thompson, in quite an accidental manner, came into
possession of certain facts that, while increasing his perplexity at the
time, were destined in the end to go far toward solving a great mystery.
These facts were discovered as he went about the business of purchasing a
large bouquet of chrysanthemums. No, Johnny had not gone soft. He was not
buying flowers for a cigar clerk nor a telephone operator. Far from that.
There was a school for crippled children just around the corner from his
lodging. He had come to know many of these children. They loved flowers,
as all right-minded children do. He was sending them a bouquet. Drew Lane
and Tom Howe had gone about the business of conducting a raid which, they
assured him, would be quite a tame affair.
“They’ll be expecting us,” Drew grinned. “There’s never a big bank
robbery pulled but next day all the successful bank robbers are called on
by the police. It’s the same with kidnapers.”
“If you know they’re bank robbers or kidnapers, why don’t you just send
them down to State’s Prison and have it over with?” Johnny asked.
“That would be neat and quite simple.” Drew smiled a broad smile. “But
the Constitution grants every man a trial. You’ve got to prove what down
deep in your heart you know, so you have to go out and get the facts.”
“And we’ll get some facts to-day, whether they realize it or not,” Tom
Howe put in. “Drew’s going to collect a gallon of pocket knives. That’s
something.”
“It may be a lot,” said Drew soberly.
So Johnny went to the shop at the foot of the river bridge to buy
flowers. He liked this shop and its dark-skinned proprietor. The man’s
name was Angelo Piccalo.
“Hello, Johnny!” Piccalo welcomed him. “Some flowers to-day?”
“Yes. Big yellow ones for the kids—crippled kids.”
“Crippled keeds.” The flower merchant grinned a broad grin. “The biggest,
the ver’ best!”
The flowers had been boxed and paid for, the proprietor stood in his
doorway bidding Johnny good-bye, when a motor horn sounded close at hand.
Johnny started. He believed it a car. To his surprise, though he looked
up and down the street, there was no car near enough to have produced
that sound.
“Speed boat.” Angelo Piccalo grinned once more. “My boy. Name Angelo.
See! Fine boy, that one. No cripple heem!”
The boy who grinned up at them from the river was surely no cripple. Some
eighteen years of age, he was the picture of perfect youth.
“Go to college next year,” Piccalo confided. “Beeg gentleman some time,
my boy!”
Johnny will never know why he went down the iron steps that led to the
landing place where the speed boat rested. There were times when he
almost regretted having done so.
“Hello, Angelo!” he greeted. “That’s a fine boat.”
“Not so bad.” The younger Angelo’s eyes took him in at a glance. “Not
much speed. Trade it in for a better one soon.”
“This flower business must pay very well,” Johnny told himself. “Bet he’s
got a car, a fast one. Going to college, too.”
Angelo had bent over to lift up the rear seat of his boat. He was looking
for something. Plainly it was not there. Another object was there that
apparently annoyed him.
“Who’s been making my boat into a junk wagon?” He lifted out a bent iron
bar and was about to drop it in the river, when Johnny stopped him.
“Hey! Don’t do that!”
“Why not? You want it? All right. Here it is.” The boy tossed the bar to
Johnny’s feet. It fell with a noisy jangle.
Thinking he had caught some sound from above, Johnny looked up in time to
surprise a black look on the older Piccalo’s usually smiling face. One
moment it was there. The next it was gone.
“Strange!” Johnny thought. “I must have been mistaken.” Yet he knew he
had not been, and found himself disturbed by that insistent question,
“Why?”
“That’s a curious band you have for your wrist watch,” he said to the boy
in the speed boat. “All green.”
“Made of green stones,” Angelo explained. “Got ’em on Isle Royale last
summer. Fine place, Isle Royale. Plenty big fish, wild moose. Plenty
pretty girls.” He grinned broadly. “Found these stones on the beach up
there.”
Johnny picked up the iron bar, climbed the stairs and walked away. This
bar might at one time have been used by a merchant for opening boxes and
at another by some gentleman of evil intentions in opening the window of
some other person’s home. It is, I believe, known in some circles as a
“jimmy.”
Feeling a little foolish walking down the street, he wondered why he had
saved the bar at all.
“Hate to see the work of some man’s hands wasted,” he told himself. “Many
a poor shopkeeper on Maxwell Street would be glad to own it.”
At that he wrapped it in his morning paper and at last deposited it in
back of a small desk in Drew Lane’s room. There it was to remain until
the time appointed. Then it was to offer its bit of evidence regarding
certain dark deeds committed on a night in November of that same year.
* * * * * * * *
The snow that had fallen steadily since the hour before dawn upon that
tiny island in Tobin’s Harbor of Isle Royale ceased at ten o’clock.
Standing before the window, Red Rodgers watched a scene of matchless
beauty unfold before him. Dark, unruffled waters widened moment by moment
until at last trees, great dark giant spruce and slender ghosts of
birches, began appearing.
When at last the snow fog had vanished altogether he saw on the
not-too-distant shore spruce and balsam standing like rows of tall tents
of the Indians.
And even as he stood there some dark object moved amongst the birch
trees.
“A moose!” he exclaimed under his breath. Then again he wondered that the
girl had shown no fear at their encounter with an antlered monarch back
there on the trail.
“Life,” he told himself, as he watched the great sleek creature on the
opposite shore step out to stand ankle deep in water, head high, antlers
gleaming, “Life is strange! Here I have lived all my life in a city.
Never would have known of this other world but for the work of these
outlaws who carried me away. And now—”
He paused. Well, what of now? He could form no answer.
He turned about to look long and steadily at the sleeping girl.
Yes, life surely was strange. Nothing like this had come to him before.
As he looked at the perfect repose of that face, something welled up
within him.
“She trusts me,” he whispered. Until this moment he had not known that
such perfect trust existed in the world. “She trusts me. She believes in
me. Her father may be rich. That does not matter. I will neither desert
nor betray her. We shall fight it out together, to the bitter end.”
To this serious-minded boy who until this moment had known little of life
as it is lived save on the gridiron and in the steel mills, this was a
solemn covenant never to be broken.
“But now,” he asked himself, “what is to be done now?”
This problem he thought through with care. “They’re likely to be looking
for us,” he told himself. “Yes, their search will be rather a wild one,
when they know.” He put a hand to his pocket. Then his face sobered. Had
he made a mistake?
“If only we can make a clean get-away they are sunk!” he muttered,
clenching his fists. “I am not sorry I took the chance.”
Once again his thoughts returned to the problem at hand. “A step in the
snow will betray us,” he told himself. “Now the unmarked snow says we are
not here. Better to wait for darkness.”
Having come to this conclusion, he sank deep in his chair and fell fast
asleep.
He awoke some hours later to be greeted by the faint aroma of tea brewing
and biscuits baking on the hearth.
“It’s dark now,” a voice whispered in his ear. “We must be moving soon.
But first we must eat.”
Red ate that meal in silence. He was thinking hard. “The game for to-day
is over,” he told himself. “We have won. No radio must tell me that. They
didn’t need me to-day. Probably the Grand Old Man would not have put me
in to-day at all; save me for Saturday’s game. He said I was getting slow
on my feet. Well, probably I was. Tired, that’s what I was. Football
takes it out of a fellow.
“Saving me.” He grinned in spite of himself. “I was saved all right; put
away for the winter, like as not; pickled like a cucumber in a jar.”
Without really thinking what he was doing, he rose and began pacing the
floor.
“Worried?” The girl smiled up at him.
“Yep, quite a little. About Saturday’s game.” He dropped into a chair.
“You see, our coach, the Grand Old Man, we call him, is getting along in
years. This may be his last season. Who knows? It’s almost sure to be his
last winning team. Five of our best men graduate this year. Breaks up the
line. And, well, you know, the coach is such a square shooter, he’s so
human and kind, seems to love his boys so, that you just naturally want
to do things for him.”
“Yes, I know,” said the girl quietly. “And I know the success of the team
depends on you, Red Rover. Read all about it in the papers. You’re going
to play on Saturday. And I’ll be cheering on the side lines.”
Red flashed her a grateful smile. “That’s right, keep on kidding me. It
all helps.”
“I’m not kidding. We will get away.”
“But tell me more about this island. Well, no, perhaps we had better be
on our way.”
Rising, they went to the window. A large silver moon was tipping every
wave with a point of light.
“We can’t go to the lighthouse to-night.” There was a note of finality in
the girl’s voice. “The waves out there are as high as a house.
“And we’d better not venture out just now, either. The moon’s too bright.
In an hour or two there may be clouds. See, they are coming in from the
north.”
“And where shall we go when the clouds are here?”
“Home.” The girl whispered the word softly. “To my island home.”