CHAPTER VII PANTHER EYE'S RETURN
"Sit down, Pant," Johnny's mind spun like a top. "Pant! Good old PantherEye. Sit down here. I'll switch off that big light. There now! That'smore like it. What's the good of light for a fellow like you? See in thedark well as the light. I--I'll be right back, Pant. Got coffee! Lot ofgood hot coffee and hamburger, just right hamburger. Have a feast, Pant,and talk just like we used to. Jungles, Pant, and the great, whitewilderness. Submarine in the Chicago river. Man! Oh, man!"
At this, as if suddenly realizing he was talking like a madman, Johnnyducked away toward the kitchen where, with shaky fingers, he laid crisp,brown hamburgers between round sliced rolls and poured great, steamingmugs of coffee.
All the time he was thinking. Panther Eye of all people! Panther Eye, youwill know if you have been Johnny Thompson's friend for long, had for along time been Johnny's boon companion. Then, quite suddenly andmysteriously, he had dropped out of his life. Nothing very strange aboutthis for, after all, Pant had always been a mysterious person. He couldsee in the dark quite as well as in the light. This marvelous gift hadmore than once gotten them out of a tight place. Rumor had it that Pantand a great surgeon had been hunting panthers. A panther had torn out theboy's eye. The surgeon had shot the panther, cut out its eye skillfully,set it in the place of the one Pant had lost and now, like all cats, hecould see in the dark. A likely sort of story. But then, how could youexplain it? Pant had once told Johnny he did it with the aid of somemechanical lighting device. Johnny had not quite believed that. What wasone to believe? At any rate, here was Pant back again. Where had he been?Johnny wanted awfully to know. They'd have a grand talk about old times.Pant would tell of some fresh adventures. And then? Johnny was actuallytrembling with anticipation. Things would happen, they always did whenPant was about, weird, mysterious things. Oh well, this made life seemworth living. So let them come.
"Remember the Dust Eater?" Pant was saying three minutes later. "Rememberthe airship and all those little brown men way up there in the north?"Pant's strange eyes shone.
"And the Siberian tiger?" Johnny exclaimed.
"Yes! Yes, Johnny! Them were the days!"
"Every day is a good day," Johnny philosophized. "Every day's got to bebetter than the one that went before. There's no turning back Pant, oldboy. We've got to go forward. But what have you been doing, Pant?"
"What Satan always does," Pant smiled strangely.
"What's that?" Johnny stared.
"Don't you remember, Johnny? You should read old and treasured very oldbooks. They help a lot in understanding life. Satan when asked where hehad been is supposed to have said he had come 'From going to and fro inthe earth, and from walking up and down in it.'"
"Well," Johnny grinned. "Who's got a better right to follow Satan'sexample than you, Pant. But where did you walk?"
"Africa, Ethiopia to be more explicit."
"Oh!" Johnny's breath came quick with surprise. "The one place I'd mostlike to have been! What were you doing? What happened? Plenty I'll bet!Tell me about it."
"Well you know," Pant slumped down comfortably in his chair, then, asthere came some slight noise outside, sprang half out of his seat.
"You're nervous," Johnny looked at him in surprise. "Nervous as a cat."
"You'd be too, Johnny, if--" Pant did not finish.
"Well, Johnny," he began again a half minute later, "I've got a brother.Didn't know it, did you?"
"No I--"
"I have, Johnny. And like myself, he's a bit queer, only in a differentway. He's a naturalist of a sort. He hunts up all kinds of queer animals.And Ethiopia's the place to look for them. You'd hardly believe thetruth, Johnny, antelopes no taller than a good sized cat, crows withgreat, thick bills, monkeys with capes growing on their backs to keep offthe rain, and baboons! All sorts of man-like creatures! That's Ethiopia.My brother went down there to hunt out these creatures. He got himselflost and I had to go find him.
"It's a strange place, Johnny, awfully strange. Things happen that youdon't forget, you'll never forget." Pant's eyes sought the dark cornersof the room. His slim fingers toyed nervously with his coffee cup.
"Did you find your brother?" Johnny asked.
Pant did not appear to hear. Perhaps he did not. There are times in allour lives when we are living so much in the past that nothing close to usseems real.
"There are spots in that strange land," Pant went on as if Johnny had notspoken. "Spots so beautiful you fancy they may have been the Garden ofEden. Beautiful? Yes, beautiful beyond compare--" Pant drew in a long,deep breath. "Just imagine, Johnny, passing through a tropical jungle.You can imagine, can't you? Remember--"
"Yes," Johnny said quietly, "I remember Central America. The mahoganyforests, tangled bushes and vines. The hush of night at noonday in thedeep shade of the forests, the bright flash of birds, the damp, sweetsmell of a thousand flowers."
"Yes, Johnny," Pant sighed, "you do remember. And, Johnny, Africanjungles are wilder, ruggeder, grander, more lonely. Johnny," his voicefell, "imagine all that, then try to think what it would be like to catcha sound, a voice, singing beautifully. Not a bird's voice, Johnny, ahuman voice, a girl's voice.
"Not in the jungle either," again Pant paused, he seemed to beexperiencing it all again. "Think of walking a few steps forward then,after parting the bushes, to find yourself looking down upon a--a sort ofparadise.
"Try to picture it, Johnny." Pant leaned forward. "Try to see it as I sawit then, a broad, green pasture, flat as a floor and green as no pasturein America ever is. Back of that pasture a grove of date palms and amongthese, set like a diamond in green jade, a jewel of a house.
"Bananas hung on bunches at the edge of a garden near by," Pant breatheddeeply. "Oranges and grapefruit all green and gold, were there too. And,Johnny," again his voice fell, "Johnny, right in the foreground of thatpicture, as if she had been put there by an artist, and the whole thingwas not real, just painted, was a girl."
"A white girl?" Johnny spoke at last.
"She may have been all white," Pant spoke slowly. "I don't know aboutthat. Queer isn't it? I was with her for hours. I never asked myself thequestion, not once until now. But then, when you're helping a pretty girlwho is in great peril you don't ask yourself, 'What race does she belongto?' now do you?"
"Helping a beautiful girl in great peril!" Johnny sat up.
"Yes, that's what it came to in the end. That's what I was going to tellyou--
"But say!" Pant broke off suddenly. "Here it is eleven o'clock! I've gotjust ten minutes to make it!" He grabbed for his hat.
"Make what?" Johnny received no answer. Pant was gone.
"Same old Pant," Johnny murmured after a moment's thought.
Johnny sat there for a short time staring into his half drained coffeecup. Life had, he thought, always been strange. Curious, mysteriousthings were always bobbing up. Life was a joyous affair too. It sure wasgood to live. The coming weeks promised to be full of interest. There wasthat queer old man and his nephew, Donald Day, down there in themountains. They took jug-like affairs into a dark, cavern-like placebeneath a mill, carried them down empty and brought them up filled withsome precious fluid. How could they? What magic was this? He was going toknow. His grandfather had given him a small car, a long, low one with anose like a chisel. Cut the air like a knife, this car. He'd go spinningdown to the mountains in it. Take Jensie or Ballard with him.
"Old Kentucky. That's what they all called Ballard tonight," hewhispered. He was thinking of Ballard. Yes, surely life was joyous, grandand joyous. Things had a way of coming out right if you got a properstart and kept plugging. There was the Blue Moon now. It was going to bea success. Students needed such a meeting place, good, clean atmosphere,and all that.
"Just takes one good push," he murmured. "Tonight it got that push.Ballard got his push too. He'll make a great football star. I'm sure ofit. I--" he broke off.
Then, like a ghost, a menta
l picture of Panther Eye came floating intohis consciousness. "He's been into something I'll be bound," he said thisaloud to the empty room. "Nothing bad, but something that's likely to getsome people into a lot of trouble of one sort or another. Pant's justnaturally that way.
"Trouble for some people," he repeated musingly. "But I won't be one ofthose people."
"Oh won't you though!" He would have sworn that a voice whispered this inhis ear. Springing to his feet, he flashed a look here, there,everywhere.
"No one!" he exclaimed. "Of course not. Time I was going home. Been awild day. I'm beginning to hear things. Be seeing them pretty soon."
At that he switched off the light, opened the door, then stood on thethreshold listening, peering into the dark. Strangely enough, at thatmoment a curious notion took possession of his mind, it was that themysterious Panther Eye had not been there at all, that Pant was dead,that only Pant's ghost had been to visit him here in the big room of theBlue Moon.
"Boo!" he shivered.
He was sure he caught an answering "Boo!" But after all it might havebeen some lonesome old owl talking to himself.