“It blew big guns last night, fellows,” observed Randy Powell.
“Yes, it has been working up to a storm for several days,” said Ben Jolly, casting a weather eye through the open window in the living room.
Breakfast had just been announced by Jolly and as usual all were hustling about to put in an appearance for the famous home-cooked meal.
“We mustn’t complain if we have a day or two of showery weather, Pep,” spoke Frank.
“It means poor shows, though,” lamented Randy.
“We can stand that,” replied Frank. “I think we have been more than fortunate.”
“I should say so,” remarked Jolly—“six shows a day and the house a clear average of three-fourths filled.”
“How are our friends down at the National doing, Pep?” inquired Vincent.
“Oh, so, so,” was the careless reply. “They get their quota from the Midway crowd, which we don’t want. My friend who works for them says they let things go half right, quarrel among themselves, and a few nights ago Peter Carrington had a crowd of his boy friends in a private box smoking cigarettes while the films were running. Peter doesn’t speak to me now when we meet.”
“I thought the building was coming down one time last night,” spoke Jolly. “There was damage done somewhere, for I heard a terrific crash a little after midnight.”
“There won’t be many bathers to-day,” said Vincent, glancing out at the breakers on the beach.
Pep finished his breakfast and went out to the front of the building to take a look at things. Just after he had opened the front doors his voice rang excitedly through the playhouse.
“Frank—Randy—all of you. Come here, quick!” Then as his friends trooped forward obedient to his call he burst out: “It’s a blazing shame!”
“What is, Pep?” inquired Frank.
“Look for yourself.”
“Oh, say! who did that?” shouted Randy.
He and the others stood staring in dismay at the walk, that was littered with glass, and then at the wreck of the electric sign overhead, which had cost them so much money and of which they had been so proud.
All that was left of it was “W—O—L—A—N—D” and woeful, indeed, the dilapidated sign looked. Broken bulbs and jagged ends of wires trailed over its face. Two bricks lay at the edge of the walk and the end of a third protruded from the bottom of the sign.
Randy was nearly crying. Frank looked pretty serious. Pep’s eyes were flashing, but he maintained a grim silence as he went over to the edge of the walk and picked up one of the bricks.
“That was your ‘great guns’ you heard last night,” observed Pep looking fighting mad. “Those bricks were thrown purposely to smash our sign. Why—and who by?”
There was not one in the group who could not have voiced a justifiable suspicion, yet all were silent.
“I think I know where that brick came from,” proceeded Pep, trying to keep calm, but really boiling over with wrath. “I’m going to find out.”
Pep tarried not to discuss or explain. The others stared after him as he marched down the boardwalk in his headstrong way. Pep had in mind a little heap of bricks he had seen two days before. They were made of terra cotta, red in color and one side glazed.
It was at the National that Pep came to a halt. Between the entrance and exit some attempt at ornamenting the old building had been made. There were two cement pillars and the space between them had been tiled. At one side was a plaster board and a few of the bricks that had not been used. The workman on the job had not yet tuckpointed the space he had covered, and had left behind some of his material, a trowel and other utilities.
Pep went over to the heap. He selected one of the bricks and matched it to the one he carried in his hand. He was standing thus when the door of the National opened and three persons came out. They were Peter Carrington, Greg Grayson and Jack Beavers.
“Hello!” flared up Peter, as he caught sight of Pep, “what are you snooping around here for?”
“I’m running down the persons who smashed our electric sign last night, and I’m fast getting to them,” replied Pep. “Carrington, you’re a pretty bad crowd, all of you, and I’m going to make you some trouble.”
“What for? What about?” blustered Peter, and then he flushed up as Pep waved the brick before him.
“That brick and two others like it smashed our sign,” he declared. “There probably isn’t another lot of them in town except here.”
“Well, what of it?” demanded Greg Grayson, sourly.
“I’m not talking to you,” retorted Pep. “We did enough of that after your mean tricks at Fairlands. Whoever smashed our sign did it with some of your bricks. You needn’t tell me they didn’t start out with them from here. There’s plenty of stones along the beach for the casual mischief maker. You’re trying to break up our show. Soon as I get the proofs I’m after, I’ll close yours and show you up to the public for the measly crowd you are.”
“Say,” flared up Peter, “this is our property and you get off of it, or——”
“Or you’ll what?” cried Pep, throwing down the bricks and advancing doughtily.
“Easy, Carrington, easy,” broke in Jack Beavers and he stepped between the belligerents, “Don’t raise a row,” he pleaded with Pep. “There’s enough going on that’s disagreeable without any more added.” Then he followed Pep as the latter went back to the street. “See here, I don’t want any trouble with you people,” he went on in an anxious way. “So far as I’m concerned, I give you my word of honor I don’t know the first thing about this sign business.”
Pep looked at the speaker’s face and was almost tempted to believe him.
“You needn’t tell me!” he declared. “Those fellows are a mean lot and they ought to be punished.”
Pep returned to the Wonderland with his tale. Frank tried to quiet him, but Pep’s indignation had got the better of him.
“If you can make certain that the National crowd did this damage, we can make them pay for it,” said Frank, “but I don’t want to proceed on guesswork.”
“Oh, you know as well as I do that they did it, Frank Durham!” stormed Pep.
“I think they did, yes,” acknowledged Frank, “but if we go to making any charges we cannot prove Mrs. Carrington will hear of it, and I don’t care to offend her. Drop it, Pep. We’ll have to take our medicine this time. If it gets too flagrant, then we will go to the authorities with it.”
Pep was not fully satisfied, however. He managed to see his friend who worked for the National a little later, and tried to enlist his coöperation in ferreting out the vandals who had damaged the electric sign.
The latter could not be replaced entire without sending to the city for some of the missing letters. This, however, led to one beneficial result. When the duplicate letters arrived some colored bulbs accompanied them, a suggestion of Jolly. Two nights later the brilliant sign invited and attracted attention in its new varicolored dress, showing up as the most conspicuous illumination on the boardwalk.
The gusty, showery weather got down to a chill unpleasant spell finally. On Thursday night the Wonderland was running, but to rather slim audiences. There were few venturesome visitors to the beach in the daytime and the matinee entertainments were curtailed.
That night, however, the Wonderland had never had a more enthusiastic audience. It was comprised of an entirely new crowd—people themselves in the entertainment business and general trade lines, who could pick only a slack business period to seek enjoyment. They knew what a good thing was when they saw it and their generous approbation of the flood film and of Hal Vincent’s ventriloquial acts with his dummies made up for the lack of numbers.
“Fine thing!” said more than one.
When the second show began a good many who had gone out came back again. A pelting rain had set in, accompanied by a tearing wind. Randy had to keep the window of the ticket office closed as well as he could, and Pep shut the roof ventilators.
It was in the middle of the last film that a great gust of wind shook the building. In the midst of it the echo of the service bell of the life saving station down the beach reached the ears of the audience. Many began to get nervous. Just as the film closed there was a clatter and crash and pieces of the broken skylight in the roof of the playhouse clattered down.
There were cries and a general commotion. Many arose to their feet. The rain began to pour in from overhead.
At that critical moment Frank closed the projector and shot on the lights.
“We’re going to have a night of it.”
Ben Jolly spoke the words with a grim conviction that had its effect upon his friends. Each could realize for himself that they were face to face with an emergency.
When the skylight was partly shattered by a loose board blown across the surface of the roof, and the pieces of shattered glass and rain came beating down, the flood of illumination quieted what might have been a panic. Jolly had jumped to the piano stool.
“There is no danger,” he shouted—“just a broken pane of glass of two.”
Then he had resumed his seat and dashed off into a lively tune. People could see now that they were in no immediate peril and could easily get out. The dripping rain, however, dampered their amusement ardor. There was a movement for the exit and the last film was left unfinished.
Frank had got to Randy as soon as he could. He did not wish the report to get out that the Wonderland was in any way unsafe, or have anyone leave the place feeling that he had not got his full money’s worth. He summoned Pep to his assistance after giving Randy a quick direction. The latter immediately proceeded to stamp the date and the seal of the Wonderland across some blank cards. Then he came out into the entrance archway with the others.
“Here you are!” shouted the lively Pep. “Everybody entitled to a free ticket. Good any night this week on account of to-night’s storm. Let no guilty man escape!”
“Ha! ha! very good.”
“This is liberal.”
The crowd was put in rare good humor by Frank’s happy thought. The doors were left open and those who did not wish to go out into the pelting storm, were told they were welcome to linger in the entrance and among the rear seats until the rain let up. Meantime, however, Jolly and Vincent were not idle. While their young friends were coaxing the audience into good humor, the former had found a ladder, of which there were several about the place. Vincent mounted it and got at the skylight.
It was pretty well broken and the wind threatened still further damage. Jolly remembered a large canvas tarpaulin in the cellar that had been used by the painters. By the time the front of the place was cleared of the people he and Vincent had the skylight well battened down and protected.
“We’re going to have a bad night,” he reported as he came down the ladder dripping. “A view of the beach from that roof to-night would make a great moving picture.”
“I hope the storm won’t move us, Mr. Jolly,” said Frank a trifle uneasily, as a fierce blast shook the building.
There was nothing to do but to doubly secure all the doors and windows. The roof of the living room proved to be leaky, but the use of pans and kettles to catch the water provided against any real discomfort.
“I think we had all better stay up,” suggested Jolly. “I was in one of these big coast storms a few years ago and before the night was through we had some work on hand, let me tell you.”
The speaker proceeded to light the gas stove, put on some coffee to boil and then announced that he was going to make some sandwiches. This suited all hands. It seemed sort of cheery to nest down in comfort and safety while the big storm was blowing outside. Pep and Randy began a game of checkers. Vincent was mending one of his speaking dolls. Frank was busy at his desk. They made quite a happy family party, when all chorused the word:
“Hello!”
“Lights out,” observed Jolly, himself the center of the only illumination in the room, proceeding from the gas stove.
“The electric current has gone off, that’s sure,” remarked Vincent. “That means trouble somewhere.”
They waited a few minutes, but the electric lights did not come on.
“Light the gas, Randy” suggested Frank. “I think we had better light one or two jets in the playhouse, too, so we can see our way if any trouble comes along.”
The playhouse was wired for electric lights, but had a gas connection as well. The jet in the living room was lighted.
Pep went out and set two jets going in the playhouse. They heard him utter a cry of dismay. Then he hailed briskly:
“Come out here. Something’s happened.”
They all rushed in from the living room. Something had, indeed, happened. Pep stood in half an inch of water, which was flowing in under the front doors.
“Why this rain must be a regular deluge!” cried Randy.
“It’s not rain,” sharply contradicted Pep.
“What is it, then?”
“Salt water. Hear that—see that!.”
During a momentary hush they could hear a long boom as if a giant wave was pounding the beach. Then a great lot of water sluiced in under the doors.
“Open up, Pep,” directed Frank, “we must see to this right away.”
The moment the doors were opened a lot of water flowed in. But for the incline it would have swept clear over the floor of the playhouse. Meeting the rise in the seats, however, it flowed in about fifteen feet, soaking the matting and coming nearly to the boys’ shoe tops. Then it receded and dripped away over the platform outside.
All along the beach the electric lights were out, but the incessant flashes of lightning lit the scene bright as day. Here and there among the stores lanterns were in use, even candles, and where they had gas it was in full play.
The beach clear up to the boardwalk was a seething pool now. Whenever a big swell came in it dashed over the walk and beat against the building lining it.
“See here,” cried Randy in a great state of perturbation, “there isn’t any danger of the boardwalk going; is there?”
“Part of it is gone already down near the slump,” declared Frank. “Look, you can see the beach from here. I hope the waves won’t upset any of the buildings.”
“They can’t, right here, Durham,” declared Jolly promptly. “You see, there’s a drop from us inland. The water will drain off, if it doesn’t come in too heavy.”
“I’ll bet there’s trouble over on the flats,” suggested Randy. “See the lights moving around.”
“Lock the doors, Pep,” spoke Jolly. “We’ll take a look around and see just how bad things are.”
It was no easy task maintaining their footing on the boardwalk, for it was slippery and at places gave where it had been undermined. Once a big wave swept over the exploring party and threw them in a heap against a building. People came running past them from the lower level of the Midway.
They could hear the life saving corps yelling orders and the storm bell sounding out constantly in the distance. It was as they came to the street that cut down past the National, that Frank and his friends paused to survey a scene of great excitement.
The street, as has been already noted, dropped away from the boardwalk to a depression fully twenty feet below its level. This made it a natural outlet, not only for the waves that beat up over the boardwalk, but also for what drained laterally on both sides.
“Why, it’s like a regular water course,” declared Frank. “I say, there’s someone needing help.”
“Just look at the National!” exclaimed Pep, as they returned from carrying some crying children away from the menace of the flood.
The rival playhouse stood at the lowest part of the depression. A long platform ran to its entrance. This was fully four feet under water and the lower story of the place was two steps lower down. Here the surplus water had gathered, growing deeper every minute. The street in front was impassable, and running two ways a veritable river, which cut off the National as if it was an island.
“I hope no one is in it,” said Frank.
“But there is!” cried Randy. “Look, Frank—that window at the side. Some one is clinging to the window frame.”
The flashes of lightning, indeed showed a forlorn figure at the spot Randy indicated. And then Vincent, after staring hard, cut in with the sharp announcement:
“It’s certainly Jack Beavers!”
“Hey, you!” yelled Pep, making a speaking trumpet of his hands and signaling Peter Carrington’s partner. “Help me fellows,” and Pep sprang upon a platform that had drifted away from its original place in front of some store.
Frank was beside him in a moment. Randy had got Jolly to help him tear loose a scantling from a step protection. He joined the others, using the board to push their unstable float along.
The water was over six feet deep and the scantling was not much help. A great gust of wind whirled them ten feet nearer to the playhouse building. At the same time it blew over the chimney on its top.
The boys saw the loosened bricks shower down past the clinging form in the window.
“He’s hit!” shouted Pep. “He’s gone down!”
Jack Beavers fell forward like a clod and disappeared under the swirling flood. In an instant the motion picture chums acted on a common impulse and leaped into the water after him.
It was a moment of great suspense for Ben Jolly and the ventriloquist as, without a moment’s hesitation, the three motion picture chums dived from their frail raft. The surface of the flood was so strewn with pieces of floating wreckage—the bottom and sides of the newly formed water way so treacherous—that it was a tremendous risk to get into that swirling vortex.
Frank and his companions were no novices in the water. They saw that Jack Beavers had been struck down from the window sill by the falling bricks, and had probably been knocked senseless. Almost immediately after diving the heads of the boys appeared on the surface.
“Got him!” puffed Randy.
“Lift him up,” directed Frank, swinging out one hand and catching at a protruding window sill of the building. This purchase gained, all exerted themselves to drag up the limp and sodden form of Peter Carrington’s partner. Frank and Randy kept the upper part of the man’s body out of the water. Pep swam after the floating platform they had used a a raft. Jack Beavers, apparently more dead than alive, was placed upon it. His rescuers pushed this over to where the water was shallow and then carried the man into a drug store fronting the boardwalk.
“I suppose I had better stay with him,” observed Vincent, as Beavers, after some attention from a physician who happened to be in the drug store, showed signs of recovery. “I know him the best, although I can’t say truthfully that I like him the best.”
“Yes, he’s struck hard lines, and it’s a sort of duty to look after him,” said Ben Jolly.
He and the boys put in nearly two hours helping this and that group in distress among the storekeepers of the slump. They got back to the Wonderland to find that its superior location had saved it from damage of any consequence.
A wild morning was ushered in with a chill northeaster. Daylight showed the beach covered with wrecked boats and habitations. The tents over on the Midway were nearly all down. The National was still flooded and the street in front of it impassable. Very few of the frame buildings, however, had been undermined.
The worst of the storm was over by afternoon, but no entertainment was given until the next evening. A big transparency announced a flood benefit, and five thousand dodgers telling about it were circulated over the town.
It was a gala night for the Wonderland. There were few of the minor beach shows as yet in condition to resume operations, and after twenty-four hours of storm everybody seemed out.
“At least seventy-five dollars for the benefit of the poor families down on the beach,” observed Pep. “Say, let me run down and tell them. It will warm their hearts, just as it does mine.”
“All right,” acceded Frank. “I guess you can promise them that much, Pep.”
Frank and Jolly stood in front of the playhouse talking over affairs in general as Pep darted away on his mission of charity. A well-dressed man whom Jolly had noticed in the audience, and one of the last to leave the place, had loitered around the entrance. Now he advanced towards them.
“Is there a young man named Smith connected with your show?” he inquired.
“Yes, sir,” replied Frank. “He has gone on a brief errand, but will soon return.”
“I’ll wait for him,” said the stranger, and he sat down on the side railing.
Frank went inside as Randy appeared with his cash box. Jolly remained where he was. Finally Pep came into view briskly, happy faced and excited.
“Some one to see you—that man over there,” advised Jolly.
“Is that so? Stranger to me. Want to see me?” he went on, approaching the stranger.
“If you are Pepperill Smith.”
“That’s my name,” vouchsafed Pep.
“The same young man who was the guest of Mr. Tyson at Brenton?”
“Guest!” retorted Pep, in high scorn. “Oh, yes, I was a guest! Fired me the first time he got mad.”
“Oh, well, we all have spells of temper we are sorry for afterwards,” declared the man smoothly.
“Is Mr. Tyson sorry?” challenged Pep.
“He is, for a fact. You see—well, he gave you some papers, cheap stocks or bonds; didn’t he, instead of cash for your services? He thought maybe you’d rather have the money. I’ve got a one hundred dollar bill for you. If those papers are lying around loose you might hand them over to me.”
“I haven’t got them,” said Pep, and the man looked disappointed. “Maybe my friend preserved them. Oh, Mr. Jolly,” and Pep called the pianist over to them and explained the situation.
“H’m!” commented Jolly thoughtfully, when Pep had concluded his story, and glancing keenly at the stranger, “you seem to have discovered some value to the stock you refer to.”
“Oh, I suppose these stock brokers know how to juggle them along,” responded the stranger, with assumed lightness.
“Well, as I understand it, they were given to my friend Smith.”
“Undoubtedly—why, yes, that is true.”
“As their custodian,” continued Jolly, “I want to look into this matter.”
“I wouldn’t. Waste of time. All a tangle,” insisted the stranger. “Look here, let me give the boy two hundred dollars.”
“You can give Pep all you want to,” observed Jolly, “but I shall advise him to see how the market stands on that stock before he delivers those securities.”
“Hum! ha! quite so,” mumbled the stranger in a crestfallen way.
“And we will let Mr. Tyson know our decision in a day or two.”
“I see—well, I will report the result of my negotiation to my client.”
“Negotiation? Aha! Client? A lawyer, then,” observed Jolly, as the man reluctantly moved away. “Pep Smith, I’ll investigate that stock of yours with the first break of dawn. There’s something more to this than appears on the surface.”
“Wasn’t that Jack Beavers I just saw you talking to?” inquired Hal Vincent of Frank, as the latter approached him on the boardwalk.
“Yes, poor fellow,” replied Frank. “I have been having quite a conversation with him.”
“Making a poor mouth about his misfortunes, I suppose?” intimated the ventriloquist.
“Not at all, Mr. Vincent,” explained Frank soberly. “He is all broken up, but more with gratitude towards us for saving his life the night of the storm than anything else. He acts and talks like a new man. Peter Carrington and Greg Grayson left him in the lurch with a lot of debts, and he is trying to get on his feet again.”
“In what way?”
“Some friend has happened along and is willing to fix things up at the National. He came to me to say that he felt he had no right to come into competition with us, after owing his very existence to our efforts the other night.”
“What did you tell him, Durham?”
“I told him to go ahead and make a man of himself and a success of the show, and that he need expect nothing but honest business rivalry from us.”
“Durham,” spoke the ventriloquist with considerable feeling, “you’re pure gold!”
The bustling pianist appeared on the scene all smiles and serenity at that moment.
“Where’s Pep Smith?” he inquired.
“Up at the playhouse.”
“That so? All right. Come along, and see me give him the surprise of his life. You know I went down to Brenton to see Mr. Tyson about that stock? Well, I’m back—minus the stock. I’ve got something better. Look there.”
Ben Jolly held a certified check before the dazzled eyes of his friends. It read: “Pay to the order of Pepperill Smith Two Thousand Dollars.”
“This good fortune will about turn Pep’s head,” declared Frank Durham.
“Why, those shrewd fellows will get double that out of it,” said Jolly. “It seems that the company is on the rocks, but a reorganization is being attempted and it can’t be put through without a majority of the stock. Pep’s holdings fit in snugly, so they had to pay me my price.”
Pep Smith gasped as Jolly recounted all this over again to him in the living room back of the photo playhouse.
“What are you going to do with all that money, Pep?” inquired Randy.
Pep waved the precious bit of paper gaily and jumped to his feet with glowing eyes.
“What am I going to do with it?” he cried. “And what could I do but put it into the Wonderland business fund! Why, just think of it! When the season is over at Seaside Park we have got to look for a new location; haven’t we?”
“That’s sure,” agreed Ben Jolly. “You boys have made a success of the motion picture business so far and I want to see you keep it up.”
And so, with both playhouses in the full tide of prosperity, we bid good-bye to our ambitious young friends, to meet again in another story to be called: “The Motion Picture Chums on Broadway; Or, The Mystery of the Missing Cash Box.”
“My, but we have been lucky!” declared Randy.
“That’s what,” added Pep.
“Well, we’ve had to work for our success,” came from Frank.
THE END
THE TOM SWIFT SERIES
By VICTOR APPLETON
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FROM FARM TO FORTUNE, Or Nat Nason’s Strange Experience
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FALLING IN WITH FORTUNE, Or The Experiences of a Young Secretary
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