CHAPTER IX A MYSTERIOUS ISLAND
Many of the expected thrills and terrors of life never materialize. Itwas so with Mazie and the tiger. If the tiger had been roaring in amanner fit to curdle the blood of a pirate, it was because he was afraid.The instant he was free from his cage, acting for all the world like acat that has suddenly been drenched with cold water, he went slinkingaway down the long rooms of the zoo.
It was a simple enough matter to drive him into a portable cage, andthere the affair ended.
An hour later, Mazie came upon the Chief, who told her of Johnny'sexperience but could not inform her of his whereabouts. Failing to findhim, she decided to go home.
After taking Jerry back to his master, she returned to the tree where shehad placed the rescued canary. Wrapping her cape about the cage to shieldthe bird from the chill night air, she hailed a taxi and sped along home,content to call it a night.
Johnny was not at all convinced that the Chief was right in saying thatthe stooped man with the hook nose and a limp had fallen into the lakeand been drowned.
"You don't get rid of a man that easily," he told himself. "They do it inthe movies; but in real life, not once in a million times."
The more he thought of it, the surer he became that he was right. Themoon had been under a cloud for a long time, long enough for the man tohave escaped over the breakwater to the made land.
"And besides," Johnny reasoned, "he was just as likely to fall in on theside of the breakwater away from the spray as he was on the dangerousside. On that side it would have been no trick at all to swim to theshore of that made land."
Having convinced himself that the affair would bear looking into, heretraced his steps to the lake shore. The wind had gone down. The moonwas shining. The breakwater appeared to offer a safe passage to the landbeyond.
"I'll chance it," he murmured to himself.
As the reader already knows, the unfinished breakwater was composed ofsharp edged limestone rock, together with broken fragments of cementtaken from old sidewalks and cellar walls. To cross from shore to shorewas no easy task, even now. More than once Johnny was obliged to drop onhis knees to save himself a slide into the water. As he saw how perilousthe passage was he was all but forced to believe that the Chief'sconclusion was correct, that the fugitive had been drowned.
"And if he did," Johnny thought to himself, "and if he was the firebug,then this chase is ended and, what's more, he took his secret with him tothe bottom of the lake."
This thought left him a feeling of disappointment so keen that it threwhim into a fit of despondency. He knew well enough that he should be gladthat the man was gone. The city would then see the end of the havoc thathad added so much to the discomfort and unhappiness of its people.
"But all the same," he told himself defiantly, "that fellow had somesecret method for setting fires, an unusual and unknown method. It isdecidedly disappointing, after you had been for so long a time hot on thetrail, to have that secret buried from your sight forever.
"Well, what is to be, will be," he mused as he picked his way across thefinal rugged stretch of cold, wet rock.
When at last his feet touched solid dry land again, his feeling that theman had certainly been drowned left him. Such experiences are notuncommon. One's feeling toward all of life during a time of peril isalways different from that which he experiences in a place of comparativesafety.
Strange to say, however, Johnny was, at the moment he stepped on thatmade land, in greater peril than he had been at any time while crossingthe slippery breakwater. Being quite unconscious of this, he struckboldly down the length of that narrow stretch of land.
It was a curious sort of island on which he stood. A city that had builtskyscrapers to its very water front, becoming dissatisfied with thewaterscape that lay out before it, had decided that a few islands off itsshores would add to the decorative effect of its view. So, with thefearless, Titan-like soul that possesses American cities, it had decidedto build islands here and there along its shores. This narrow stretch ofland, a few hundred yards wide and a mile long, was their first attemptat altering the face of nature.
At the present time, like the world in its beginning, it was "withoutform and void." Upon the great mounds of dripping sand raised up from thebottom by dredges, had been hauled all manner of refuse from the land.Loads of clay, great heaps of tin cans, dump loads of broken brick andmortar, caused this man made island to look like the side of a volcanoafter an eruption.
Johnny found it a very difficult place to walk. One moment he wasclimbing a mound of clay, the next he was wading knee-deep in soft sand,and after that rattling through a whole desert of tin cans.
For all that, there was a certain thrill to be had from walking there. Hewas upon an island. As far as he knew the island was without aninhabitant. Certainly two years before it was entirely unknown to thecivilized world.
He chuckled at the thoughts he had thus conjured up. "And yet," helaughed, "the island is within gunshot of one of the largest cities ofour land."
If he had concluded that the place was entirely deserted, he was destinedto a rude and shocking disillusionment. Suddenly, out from behind a tallheap of rubbish, a large figure launched itself at him with such sureeffect that it sent him crashing to the ground.
Now Johnny, as you will know well enough if you have read our other book"Triple Spies," was not the sort of a fellow to take the count on thefirst down. It would have been a nimble tongued referee who could havecounted three before Johnny was getting to his feet.
Thoroughly aroused and angered by this sudden, cowardly assault, he wasnow quite ready for trouble.
He did not have long to wait for it, either. At once the man came at him.This time someone received a surprise, and it certainly was not Johnny.Came a sound as of a wagon tongue ramming an automobile, and the hugehulk of a man who had started the row, staggered backward. Boxing was theone thing Johnny knew a great deal about. Long years ago his father hadtaught him a great deal about defending himself. He had added to thisknowledge as the years went by.
Johnny had not the slightest doubts of his ability along these lines. Butthat he was in grave danger, he knew quite well. While his assailantpaused before resuming the attack, he allowed himself a few dartingthoughts as to how this affair would end. Who was this man? Could he bethe man they had driven out upon the breakwater, or was he some tramp whohad come out here to sleep? Was he armed? If he had a knife or gun theaffair would probably end shortly and tragically. Was it best to run?Probably it was, but being Johnny Thompson, he did not propose to run.He'd stand his ground and fight, and since fight he must, why not on theoffensive? No sooner thought than done. With muscles tense, every nervealert, he leaped squarely at the astonished giant.
Johnny's chance came and he took it. As the man threw up his hands in aninvoluntary motion to shield his face, Johnny landed a haymaker square onhis chin.
There are few men who can withstand such a blow but this man appeared tobe made of uncommon stuff. He staggered like a drunken man but he did notfall. The next second he set his huge fists swinging.
As Johnny stepped back he stumbled over some hard object and all butfell. The obstacle suggested a way out, but he did not take it. In thisten seconds of confused thought he was suddenly seized in a death-likegrip. The man, so much heavier, bore him to the ground with a crash thatall but knocked his senses out of him.
In the struggle that followed his hand was pressed against something hardat the man's belt.
"A knife!" Johnny thought excitedly.
The next instant his hand was on the hilt. Ten seconds of struggle and hehad freed the hand with the long-bladed knife gripped tight.
Wildly his heart beat. The advantage was his. Should he follow it up? Onethrust, perhaps two, and the struggle would end.
A second of thought. "No! No! Not that!" Suddenly his hand shot up andout. The knife, executing the arc of a circle, clanged to the ground
somedistance away.
A short, tense struggle followed, then again Johnny was free.
Breathing hard, hair disheveled, face bloody, clothes torn, he backedaway to allow his mind three more flashing thoughts: "What next? Fight orflee? How will it end?"
He would fight. The man might be the firebug. If he could but subdue andcapture him, the prize was won. Besides, had not the man set upon himfrom ambush? Did he not deserve a drubbing?
Suddenly he felt a strong desire to see the man's face. If he were theman he thought him, he would recognize him. The man's back was to themoon. Johnny executed a flank movement, that the moon might give him aview of that face. Again he tripped and all but fell. One hand touchedthe ground. It rested for a second on half a brick. Should he seize thebrick? It was a weapon! But he had always fought fair.
"No! No!" he breathed.
He had always fought fair. Little did he know of the ruthless warfare ofthe underworld, of those denizens of crime who seize any weapon, whostrike any creature--even the defenseless and weak--whose creed isruthlessness and cruelty, and who know neither honor nor pity.
Well had it been if Johnny had known, for hardly had his hand left thebrick than another came crashing against his own head, sending himcrumpling down like an empty sack.
Consciousness did not entirely desert him. He had lost the power to move,but could still hear, feel and think. He caught the heavy thud of thevillain's footsteps as he approached, felt his hot breath on his cheek,then saw him lift the very brick he himself, but ten seconds before, hadrejected as a point of honor.
His thoughts ran rampant. All his past lay before him, all his hopes forthe future. He had expected to die sometime, somewhere, but not likethis, not alone on a island built up by dump carts and scows.
"No! No! Not here!"
At the instant when all seemed lost, he heard a sudden compact, saw thebig man go hurdling over him, and then to his vast surprise heard himstruggle to his feet to go clump-clumping away.
Then, as a clearer consciousness came ebbing back, Johnny opened his eyesto see a face looking down upon him; a strange, wizened, full-beardedface that seemed the face of an overgrown owl.
For a time he felt that he must have become delirious, and was seeingthings in mad dreams. Just then the man spoke.
"Hurt much?"
"N--no. Guess--guess not," Johnny said, struggling to a sitting posture.
"All right. When you feel like it I'll help you over to my house."
"Your house? Where is it?"
"On the island, just round the corner here."
"A house on this island?" Johnny whispered to himself. "Why, then, thissurely is a mysterious island."