But here was Artie Stark. He was on his feet. He was speaking: “Folks, this is to be a pep meeting, not a funeral!” Instant applause. “What we need to do is find out what it takes to win next Saturday’s game. I’ll tell you.” Artie’s round freckled and usually smiling face was serious. “I’ll tell you what we need. It’s practice! How can we win? By getting out on the air! Basketball! That’s it. Basketball on the football field. That takes practice, hours and hours of practice. I know what you’re going to say, ‘Where’s the time? All right for you,’ you’ll say, ‘you don’t have to work, Artie.’ Look!” Artie broke short off to allow his eyes to circle the crowd. “Who’s the best ball carrier we’ve got this year? Who’s the artful dodger? There he is!” He pointed straight at Ballard. “Old Kentucky. That’s who it is!” Once again the crowd cheered, this time long and huskily. Ballard turned red, struggled with something in his throat, made a few gurgling sounds, then sat there in silence.
“What does he need?” Artie demanded.
“He needs practice, to become air-minded. That’s what it will take to win! And practice, that’s what he’s going to get. I’m going to serve up chocolate sodas, banana splits, and ham sandwiches in this old Blue Moon of Johnny’s. I don’t have to work but I’m going to, for good old Hillcrest and all she stands for.”
“No, I—” Ballard was on his feet. It matters little what he meant to say. Wild cheers drowned all his efforts at speech.
As for Johnny, his head was in a whirl. Artie Stark was to be his aid at the Blue Moon! Artie, the most popular boy in the whole school! What a boost the old Blue Moon was going to get!
An hour later, when arrangements had all been made for the future and the crowd had melted away, Johnny was preparing to throw the light switch, lock the door and go home, when his attention was attracted by some stranger who still lingered in the shadows.
Wonder what he wants, Johnny thought. There was something familiar about the stooping shoulders, the large, dark glasses of the stranger. “Did—did you want something?” he asked hesitatingly.
“Yes I—” the stranger came forward. “You may have forgotten. It’s been quite a while Johnny, but I—”
“Good grief!” Johnny exclaimed. “It’s Panther Eye! My old pal Panther Eye!” Next instant he was gripping the other boy’s hand until it hurt.
“Sit down, Pant,” Johnny’s mind spun like a top. “Pant! Good old Panther Eye. Sit down here. I’ll switch off that big light. There now! That’s more like it. What’s the good of light for a fellow like you? See in the dark well as the light. I—I’ll be right back, Pant. Got coffee! Lot of good hot coffee and hamburger, just right hamburger. Have a feast, Pant, and talk just like we used to. Jungles, Pant, and the great, white wilderness. Submarine in the Chicago river. Man! Oh, man!”
At this, as if suddenly realizing he was talking like a madman, Johnny ducked away toward the kitchen where, with shaky fingers, he laid crisp, brown hamburgers between round sliced rolls and poured great, steaming mugs of coffee.
All the time he was thinking. Panther Eye of all people! Panther Eye, you will know if you have been Johnny Thompson’s friend for long, had for a long time been Johnny’s boon companion. Then, quite suddenly and mysteriously, he had dropped out of his life. Nothing very strange about this for, after all, Pant had always been a mysterious person. He could see in the dark quite as well as in the light. This marvelous gift had more than once gotten them out of a tight place. Rumor had it that Pant and a great surgeon had been hunting panthers. A panther had torn out the boy’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, he could see in the dark. A likely sort of story. But then, how could you explain it? Pant had once told Johnny he did it with the aid of some mechanical lighting device. Johnny had not quite believed that. What was one 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 actually trembling with anticipation. Things would happen, they always did when Pant was about, weird, mysterious things. Oh well, this made life seem worth living. So let them come.
“Remember the Dust Eater?” Pant was saying three minutes later. “Remember the 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 be better than the one that went before. There’s no turning back Pant, old boy. 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 old books. They help a lot in understanding life. Satan when asked where he had been is supposed to have said he had come ‘From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.’”
“Well,” Johnny grinned. “Who’s got a better right to follow Satan’s example 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 most like 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, as there 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 different way. 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 the truth, Johnny, antelopes no taller than a good sized cat, crows with great, thick bills, monkeys with capes growing on their backs to keep off the rain, and baboons! All sorts of man-like creatures! That’s Ethiopia. My brother went down there to hunt out these creatures. He got himself lost and I had to go find him.
“It’s a strange place, Johnny, awfully strange. Things happen that you don’t forget, you’ll never forget.” Pant’s eyes sought the dark corners of 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 all our lives when we are living so much in the past that nothing close to us seems real.
“There are spots in that strange land,” Pant went on as if Johnny had not spoken. “Spots so beautiful you fancy they may have been the Garden of Eden. 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 mahogany forests, tangled bushes and vines. The hush of night at noonday in the deep shade of the forests, the bright flash of birds, the damp, sweet smell of a thousand flowers.”
“Yes, Johnny,” Pant sighed, “you do remember. And, Johnny, African jungles are wilder, ruggeder, grander, more lonely. Johnny,” his voice fell, “imagine all that, then try to think what it would be like to catch a sound, a voice, singing beautifully. Not a bird’s voice, Johnny, a human voice, a girl’s voice.
“Not in the jungle either,” again Pant paused, he seemed to be experiencing it all again. “Think of walking a few steps forward then, after parting the bushes, to find yourself looking down upon a—a sort of paradise.
“Try to picture it, Johnny.” Pant leaned forward. “Try to see it as I saw it then, a broad, green pasture, flat as a floor and green as no pasture in America ever is. Back of that pasture a grove of date palms and among these, 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 breathed deeply. “Oranges and grapefruit all green and gold, were there too. And, Johnny,” again his voice fell, “Johnny, right in the foreground of that picture, as if she had been put there by an artist, and the whole thing was 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 about that. Queer isn’t it? I was with her for hours. I never asked myself the question, not once until now. But then, when you’re helping a pretty girl who is in great peril you don’t ask yourself, ‘What race does she belong to?’ 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 tell you—
“But say!” Pant broke off suddenly. “Here it is eleven o’clock! I’ve got just 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 coffee cup. Life had, he thought, always been strange. Curious, mysterious things were always bobbing up. Life was a joyous affair too. It sure was good to live. The coming weeks promised to be full of interest. There was that queer old man and his nephew, Donald Day, down there in the mountains. They took jug-like affairs into a dark, cavern-like place beneath a mill, carried them down empty and brought them up filled with some precious fluid. How could they? What magic was this? He was going to know. His grandfather had given him a small car, a long, low one with a nose like a chisel. Cut the air like a knife, this car. He’d go spinning down to the mountains in it. Take Jensie or Ballard with him.
“Old Kentucky. That’s what they all called Ballard tonight,” he whispered. He was thinking of Ballard. Yes, surely life was joyous, grand and joyous. Things had a way of coming out right if you got a proper start and kept plugging. There was the Blue Moon now. It was going to be a 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 of it. I—” he broke off.
Then, like a ghost, a mental picture of Panther Eye came floating into his consciousness. “He’s been into something I’ll be bound,” he said this aloud to the empty room. “Nothing bad, but something that’s likely to get some people into a lot of trouble of one sort or another. Pant’s just naturally that way.
“Trouble for some people,” he repeated musingly. “But I won’t be one of those people.”
“Oh won’t you though!” He would have sworn that a voice whispered this in his 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 a wild 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 the threshold listening, peering into the dark. Strangely enough, at that moment a curious notion took possession of his mind, it was that the mysterious 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 the Blue Moon.
“Boo!” he shivered.
He was sure he caught an answering “Boo!” But after all it might have been some lonesome old owl talking to himself.
The game on the following Saturday was strange. Johnny, who journeyed with the team to Chehalis, where the game was to be played, had never seen anything like it. Something quite mysterious and startling happened at the beginning of the second quarter. The score stood at 7-7. It was Hillcrest’s ball on their opponent’s twenty yard line, second down, and ten yards to go.
At that moment, while it was being returned from an unsuccessful attempt at a forward pass, in some strange manner, the ball came into contact with a Chehalis player’s toe and went bouncing into the bleachers. Johnny saw this but thought little of it. He was to think a great deal more of it later.
The ball was slow in getting back onto the field. This was not strange however, it was a cold day. Many blankets tended to hamper the spectator’s movements.
When the ball came back it was Rabbit Jones, Hillcrest right half, who received it. The ball, he thought, seemed queer, yet he said nothing. Twenty seconds later the ball was in play. Rabbit had it and was preparing to throw a forward pass to Dave Powers, who had run around left end to receive it.
Then Rabbit did a strange thing. To the vast surprise of all his team mates, instead of carrying out the play, he allowed his arm to drop to shoot the ball at last far and high, curving away toward a spot where no one was.
“Don’t touch that ball!” These words were on Rabbit’s lips. He did not say them. Nor was there any need, for as it reached the highest spot in its long, broad curve, with a boom like a cannon shot, the ball burst.
A sudden cry of surprise rose from the bleachers. But from one pair of lips—Rabbit heard it distinctly—there came, “Ha! Ha! Big joke!”
Who had said it? Rabbit’s gaze from face to face of the opposing team came to rest upon the big right tackle. “Yes,” he assured himself, “he said that. And it was his toe that pushed the ball into the crowd a moment ago. Something queer there.”
Though the boy thought all this, not one word, for the moment, did he say to his team mates. The whole affair puzzled him greatly. Why had he changed his mind so quickly? Why had he thrown the ball for that long forward pass into the great nowhere? Had he known the ball would burst? Well, scarcely that. It had all been very strange. The ball had been cold like ice. He had imagined that he felt it swelling. He had acted, perhaps, on instinct. Who knows?
But no more of that. Here was a new ball. The whistle was blowing. No time, this, for dreaming. Hillcrest must win. Just must! They had lost the week before. The score now stood at a tie. Twenty yards from a touchdown.
“Come on now boys!” Dave Powers urged. “Let’s get in there and win!”
“Dave,” Rabbit whispered, “Dave, send me through their right tackle.”
“That fellow!” Dave stared. “He’ll smear you. He’s twice your size.”
“Try it!” Rabbit was pleading now. “Third down! Please, Dave—try it.”
In the huddle Dave gave his orders quickly. Rabbit was to take the ball through right tackle. His team mates gasped but said never a word.
Rabbit’s fingers trembled as they touched the ground, prepared for the play, but in his eye was a strange gleam.
Snap! The ball hit his hands. He was away. Guard and tackle on his team did their bit. It was not enough. As he leaped at the opposing line, the big tackle blocked his path. Then Rabbit did a strange thing. Coming to a dead halt he said in a low, tense tone:
“Ha! Ha! Big joke!”
Next instant he plunged head on. He struck that big tackle. He brushed him aside like a bag of straw, then plunged forward for a clean gain of nine yards.
“Made it! Made it! Made it!” chanted the Hillcrest rooters. “First down. Ten to go! We want a touchdown! We want a touchdown!”
“Again!” Rabbit panted, as he came up to Dave. “Just one more time.”
“One more time it is,” Dave grinned. “Don’t see how you did it, but it’s worth one more try.”
Again it was. Same play, same old forward plunge, same results. This time Rabbit did not say it all, only “Ha! Ha!” then he plunged. Again the jinx worked. This time he went all the way for a touchdown.
Amid the deafening din made by rooters, Punch Dickman kicked the goal and the score stood 14-7 in Hillcrest’s favor.
“Game’s not over,” Dave warned his team mates. “Not by a long mile. And we’ve got to win.”
“Yes,” Johnny whispered to himself as he heard the words, “They must win.”
He was thinking at that moment, however, more of Ballard than of all the rest of the team. Ballard, he knew, had been practicing entirely too hard. He was nervous and jumpy. If too much of the game depended upon him, he might do something rather terrible. He knew little about the strange events that were throwing the game, almost entirely, to Rabbit’s side of the team. He was thankful it was so.
“If only Ballard can get through a game without any mishaps,” he said to Jensie. “And if he can see his own team win, it will help a lot.”
“Yes,” Jensie agreed soberly, “it will.”
* * * * * * * *
“Dave,” Rabbit whispered, as they marched down the field for the kick-off. “That football did not just burst. It was blown up.”
“Blown up!” Dave stared. “How could it be? How could you blow up a football that’s been constantly in play for a half hour?”
“It went into the bleachers.”
“And came right out again. Rabbit, you’re crazy!”
“No,” said Rabbit, “I’m not. That big tackle knew all about it. That secret knowledge made him soft. I went right through him twice.”
“Twice. That’s right,” Dave whistled low. “It’s the queerest thing I ever heard. How could they? And why?”
“Wanted to get our goat maybe. Perhaps it’s what they’d call a practical joke.
“And look!” Rabbit pulled at Dave’s arm. “They’re taking that big tackle out, putting in another man.”
“Well,” Dave grinned, “you can’t go through him if he’s out of the game.”
This was true. The full force of its truth came over the Hillcrest team as during the moments that followed, they battled to hold their lead.
Through a series of line plunges and end runs, Chehalis pushed them back, back, back to their own three yard line. Then the Chehalis quarter-back fumbled and Dave retrieved the ball.
This gave Hillcrest a short breathing spell. Then again disaster descended upon them. Rabbit fumbled the ball. It shot high in air. A Chehalis man caught it and carried it across for a touchdown. The goal was kicked. The score was tied. The grandstands became places of wild pandemonium. Then the whistle blew for the end of the third quarter.
“Rabbit,” Dave whispered as they dropped down upon the grass for a moment’s rest, “we’re thinking too much about that busted football. Perhaps that’s what they wanted. Anyway we must not. We’ve got to get in and win! Win! That’s what!”
“We—we will,” Rabbit exclaimed beneath his breath. “All the same,” he added, “I’d like to know how—”
“There you go!” Dave laughed. “Forget it!”
Yet Rabbit could not quite forget it.
With the score standing at a tie the teams settled down to a grimly fought fourth quarter. Chehalis attempted two line plunges, and one end run. Failing to make their downs, they kicked.
Hillcrest caught the kick, carried the ball to their own forty yard line, tried a line plunge, a forward pass and an end run, then kicked. So for ten minutes struggling, sweating, racing, plunging, all to no purpose, they beat their way back and forth across the field.
With five minutes left to play, Chehalis fought their way to Hillcrest’s twenty yard line. There for three downs they stuck. Then, like a flash out of the blue, from his position behind the line of scrimmage, the Chehalis full-back booted the ball straight over the bar for a field goal.
“Three ahead,” someone groaned as play was resumed. “They’ve got us.”
“Nothing like that,” Rabbit retorted. “Four minutes left to play. Touchdown! Touchdown!”
And the bleachers were chanting: “Touchdown! Touchdown!”
The struggle was resumed.
Time out for Chehalis. A player limped off the field. By this time Rabbit was too weary to see who replaced him. Soon he was to know and smile.
Once again play was resumed; Hillcrest’s ball on the opponent’s forty yard line.
They went into a huddle! Came out. The play called for two short lateral passes behind the line. While this was going on Rabbit was to break through the opponent’s scattered defense and prepare to receive a long pass.
Could he make it? He breathed hard. Snap! They were away. So was Rabbit. To reach his required position was easy. Where was the ball? Had the two laterals served their purpose? Yes! Yes! Here came the ball, straight for his outstretched hands and not an opponent near. What luck!
But wait! As he caught the ball and turned to run, he saw before him, not ten yards away, a huge player, in fact, none other than that right tackle, the one he suspected of some unfair trick. He had been returned to the game.
There are times when Rabbit’s mind works with the speed of a steel trap. This was one of those times.
Speeding straight at his opponent, he held the ball straight out before him, at the same time hissing:
“Here! Take it! It might blow up!”
For a space of seconds the big would-be tackler halted in his tracks. The expression on his face was a study.
As for Rabbit, he stopped short, pivoted to the right, flashed by his opponent to speed away and across the line for a touchdown. Hillcrest went into the lead.
In the last two minutes of play, Chehalis made a desperate attempt to score. Two forward passes were knocked down. An end run was blocked, a third forward pass was intercepted. Hillcrest marched down the field for a gain of twenty yards. Then the whistle blew. Hillcrest had won!
There followed the usual wild applause and the hearty congratulations, then Dave and Rabbit sauntered toward the exit.
“I tell you it’s nonsense!” Dave burst out. “Under such circumstances you just couldn’t blow up that football. Suppose it was full of gasoline or gun powder, how would you light it? I tell you it’s impossible!”
“I suppose it is,” Rabbit laughed. “It happened all the same. And I haven’t got a single theory about how they did it. One thing is sure, Dave, the ball was cold, cold as ice. I—
“Look! There’s something under the bleachers, something shiny—dollar maybe.
“Nope,” he said a moment later, “it’s a football pump. And look! What a fat one it is!
“Sayee!” he stopped and stared. “This is the very spot! The ball went into the bleachers right here.”
At that moment Johnny Thompson came up to them. Jensie and Ballard had gone off the field. Ballard was happy, he had played in a successful football game. True, he had been given no very important part in it, this he knew, was more or less a matter of chance. Next time,—well, anyway, he had on this day made no serious breaks. The future might take care of itself.
Johnny, however, was not thinking of Ballard at that moment. He was turning that strange air pump over and over in his hands. It was, he saw, a very ordinary pump, over which had been soldered an outer casing. The space between the pump and the casing was padded with asbestos. “As if the pump might get too hot,” he said to Dave as, assisted by Rabbit, Dave told what they knew of the strange occurrence.
“Keep still about this,” Johnny counseled at last. “The crowd thought the ball just naturally blew up; that happens, you know. Let them think it. We’ll get at the bottom of this mystery yet.”
Strangely enough, as often happens, this mystery was closely related to another and, had Johnny but known it, the solution of one would go far toward untangling the other.
That night the “ghost” walked again—that is, Panther Eye returned. It was late, how late Johnny did not quite know. He was seated beside the great, wood-burning stove in the great front room of the Blue Moon.
The crowd was gone. And what a crowd it had been, a merry mob of college folks celebrating a football game. Yells, songs, wild, fantastic dances and eats, lots of eats, and good, hot drinks, that was what the long evening had been. The Blue Moon was a success, a howling success. As he sat there in the half-darkness—one dim light shone in a far corner—Johnny was in a mellow mood.
And then, without a sound, the door opened. There came the shuffling of feet. Johnny caught the pale gleam of two balls of fire. “Pant’s eyes,” he whispered with an involuntary shudder.
“Hello, Johnny, I’m back,” came in a hoarse whisper.
“Hello, yourself,” Johnny was on his feet. “Wait. The coffee’s still hot. There are mince pies, the turnover sort you can hold in your hands. I’ll be back in a flash.” He was.
“Pant,” Johnny leaned forward eagerly as his strange visitor finished his last bite of pie. “Last time I saw you, you were telling me of a beautiful valley in Ethiopia and something about a girl, perhaps a white girl, you didn’t seem to know. You said—”
“Yes,” Pant gave forth a low, hollow chuckle. “Yes, Johnny, that was strange and—and exciting too.
“You see,” he settled back in his chair, his unusual eyes half closed. “That girl was watching a small herd of cattle. They don’t have fences in Ethiopia, at least, not in most places. So there was the girl and her cattle, the green pasture like a magnificent oriental carpet, and the small house set among the palms.
“It was warm, midafternoon. I sat down on a fallen tree to rest myself and to just—well sort of enjoy that beautiful picture.
“I must have fallen asleep—” suddenly Pant’s eyes opened very wide. He went through the preliminary motions of springing to his feet. “Yes, I MUST have fallen asleep for, of a sudden, I heard a most unearthly scream.
“I sprang to my feet just in time to see a huge, dark-faced man leap into the brush. And, Johnny,” Pant drew in a long breath, “he was carrying something on his back, carrying it like a sack of oats. He was carrying that girl.”
“Oh-oo,” Johnny exclaimed.
“It’s quite common, that sort of thing there in Ethiopia,” Pant went on more quietly. “You see, Johnny, they still have slaves in Ethiopia, perhaps a million or two, no one seems to know exactly. And if you’re to sell slaves, you must steal them. That’s what this fellow was doing. Probably he was a Mohammedan, most of them are, a pretty low-lived lot.”
“And you—” Johnny began eagerly.
“Well, Johnny—” again the low, hollow chuckle, “it wasn’t any of my business, not really. I hadn’t come there to reform the country. I just wanted to see what it was like and to hunt up my brother. But this fellow, that big, dark-faced man with a hooked nose, I learned about the nose later, that fellow had spoiled my picture—you know, the girl, the cattle, the carpet of green, the jewel of a house. It was all spoiled after he had taken the girl. I wanted that girl back in the picture. So—natur—ally—” Pant’s voice dropped to a drawl, “I went after him.”
“Pant,” exclaimed Johnny, “you are queer!”
“That’s what I’ve been told,” Pant grinned broadly.
“So you went after him,” Johnny prompted.
“Yes—I followed him. And that was the longest bit of following I’ve ever done. That man, with the girl on his back, kept me coming along at a good pace for hours and hours. Didn’t even stop for dark, just marched on and on. Must have known every step of the way. And I—there I was pussy-footing along, expecting every minute to have him whirl about and drop me with the young cannon of a revolver he had slung from his belt.
“I didn’t carry a weapon, Johnny, just a big pocket knife, that’s all. I’d left my light rifle at a bamboo shack in the jungle. I figured that the night, darkness, and that fellow’s falling asleep was my only chance. And here he was marching on and on.
“‘Might as well give it up,’ I told myself, ‘he’ll be breaking into a clearing before long,—into a whole village of his sort. Then what will be the good?’
“I was really about ready to give up when the fellow turned abruptly to the right, went staggering up a stiff slope for maybe a thousand feet, then vanished, just vanished—” Pant paused.
“A—a cave,” Johnny breathed.
“A cave,” Pant nodded his head.
“Just what you wanted.”
“Just that—” Pant nodded once more.
At that instant, through the half open window there came the high shrill note of a whistle—just such a night call as Johnny had once heard in the heart of a jungle at midnight.
Pant sprang to his feet. He went gliding to a window. There, crouching low, he peered through a crack beneath the drawn shade out into the night. He remained thus while the clock ticked off three full minutes, then, without a word of explanation, resumed his place by the stove.
“You see,” he went on exactly where he had left off, “he had taken that girl into the cave. He was armed, I was not. I could see in the dark, he could not. But probably he had matches. Most likely he’d make a fire. I had to have that girl back for my picture there at the edge of the jungle. Besides—” Pant paused to stare at the floor, “I don’t like slavery. Do you?”
“No one does, Pant, at least no one but those who keep slaves or make a business of selling them.”
“That’s just it!” Pant agreed. “So of course I had to rescue that girl. Don’t get me wrong, Johnny. I’m no romancer. Not a bit of it. But I had to get that girl.”
“For your picture.”
“For my picture.
“He fell asleep—that man. I crept into the cave. The girl was there unharmed. Terribly frightened, of course. Bound hand and foot. I should have killed him, that slave-snatching son of Ali. But to try that would have been dangerous. Besides I hate corpses. Don’t you, Johnny? Can’t seem to forget ’em ever. Remember that man in the mine back there in Russia?”
Johnny nodded.
“I never forgot how he looked, Johnny.”
“So you carried the girl away and that was all of it?” Johnny relaxed.
“No.” Once more Pant was on the prowl. Springing to his feet, he wandered like a cat looking for a mouse all over the place. Then he came back and sat down. “That,” he went on, “was only the beginning. You’d be surprised, Johnny, you really would. Perhaps—” he spoke slowly, “perhaps, you won’t believe the rest of it. I—I guess I better not tell you. It’s too—”
“No! No!” Johnny’s voice rose. “Go on. Tell it all!”
“It wasn’t easy—” Pant went on at last in a slow drawl, “to find the way back over the way we came, in fact, it was impossible. I tried to remember the way we had come. But you know the jungle, Johnny, vines that trip you and thorny bushes that turn you back. Rough and rugged it was too, great rocks here and deep ravines there.
“The girl found it difficult to walk, she’d been bound for hours. I helped her along until she showed me she could go it alone.
“Strange sort of girl, that one, Johnny. Never said a word—just marched straight on behind me. Perhaps she didn’t know my language. Quite surely she didn’t. Think of the languages spoken in Africa—French, Dutch, Italian, German, and all the black lingos.
“We marched on for hours,” Pant heaved a heavy sigh. “All the time I was looking for the way back. I found a river I’d seen. Then, in passing around a rocky barrier, I lost it. All I could do was to make sure we were going down, not up. That would take us toward valleys. What valleys? Who could tell?
“All the time I was thinking of the girl. Was she all white or only one of those white-blacks they call albino. And what did she think of me? Perhaps she thought me one more slave trader who had stolen her from this big fellow with the hooked nose.
“Johnny,” Pant sat up quite suddenly, his strange eyes gleaming, his tone mysterious. “Johnny, did you ever see a man in one place, just see him a time or two, not know him very well—and then, weeks later did you think you saw him again in a different place thousands of miles away where he couldn’t very well be?”
“No,” Johnny grinned. “There are some things that have never happened to me. That’s one of them. Why?”
“Oh—oh nothing,” Pant settled back. “About this girl now. It was queer, Johnny, downright queer. We’d come to the top of a high ridge. Dawn had come, as it always does in the tropics, with a rush and with the joyous scream of a thousand birds.
“We stood there on the ridge looking down at a sort of barren plateau when some baboons, a whole troop of them, came marching out from the jungle. Huge fellows they were. Powerful beasts with arms a foot longer than mine. Powerful? Johnny, one of them could have grabbed me and broken every bone in my body. But they wouldn’t, Johnny, I knew that well enough. Once, for a whole week, I’d lived in such a place, just to watch them. If I met one on the trail he’d try to bluff me. He’d march straight at me swinging his huge fists and cracking his teeth as if he meant to tear me to bits. When he was twenty feet away he’d stop dead in his tracks. Then I’d laugh at him, laugh big and loud. And the poor old fellow would turn and go slouching away like some huge bully who’s been running a bluff.
“No, they wouldn’t harm us, Johnny, those baboons, but they were interesting to watch. They played a sort of ball game with a cocoanut, tossing it about. They did the leap-frog act better than any boys you’ve ever seen. They had just seated themselves in a circle for some other game, when all of a sudden, a sound from the jungle startled them.”
“A sound?”
“A shot, Johnny, a shot fired close at hand! You may think I wasn’t startled. That big boy with the hooked nose was my first thought. I dragged the girl into the fronds of a low growing palm.
“It wasn’t the big fellow with the hooked nose, Johnny. Worse than that.” Pant rose to take one more prowl about the room. “Wild men, Johnny, a whole troop of them! And were they wild! Such faces! Such bodies! Such weapons!
“Scared, Johnny? Of course I was scared. All these wild men hate whites. All whites looked the same to them. One glimpse of my face and the face of the girl! That’s all that would be needed. They’d get us, those wild men. Worse than a whole drove of those little tropical pigs, these wild men were. They’d sure get us.
“I looked around for some place to hide. Then I glanced back where the wild men were. I saw right away they had troubles of their own. They were looking back and scurrying for shelter all at the same time.
“Somebody was after them. We were close to the border. Had they been on a raid? Were whites after them or some other black men? There wasn’t time to settle that.
“Gripping the girl by the wrist, I led her back among the bushes, then along the ridge a short distance. And what do you think I saw, Johnny?”
“Can—can’t guess,” Johnny stammered.
“A cave, Johnny, a perfectly good cave. Wouldn’t believe it would you? Well, you’ll not believe what happened after that—you couldn’t.”
“Yes, Pant,” Johnny’s voice was low, “I’ll believe it if you say it’s true. Couldn’t be any stranger than the things that happened to us up there on Behring Straits in Russia.”
“Don’t seem that they could be,” Pant rumbled down deep in his throat. “You’ll be surprised, Johnny. Downright surprised. We—”
Pant broke short off to sit staring at the window. The shade was drawn. Only one small light was turned on. This left the window in deep shadows. The light from a street lamp was brighter than the light from within. The wind was blowing, tossing tree branches about. Like ghostly fingers, these branches traced strange moving patterns on the shade.
Johnny was shocked by the change that had come over his companion’s face. Lips parted, nostrils wide, eyes aglow with strange fire, he sat there staring as if entranced.
“Only the shadow of tossing branches,” Johnny said reassuringly.
“No, Johnny,” Pant’s voice sounded hollow, “No, Johnny, that was not all. Excuse me, Johnny. I—I’ve got to go.” Next instant without a sound the boy was gone.
Then Johnny, staring once more at the curtain saw, for an instant only, a pair of massive shoulders, a giant head, a strangely hooked nose—all this appeared in dark silhouette on the window shade. One instant it was there, the next it was gone. Only the eerie, wind-traced tossing shadows were left.
For a full five minutes Johnny sat there staring. At last, with a heavy sigh, he arose to go.
Once again, as he snapped off the light, then for a period of seconds, stood in the doorway, as on that other night, he was seized with a strange notion, that Pant had not been there, only his ghost; that the strange boy had been killed over there in Ethiopia—his spirit returned to haunt his friends.
“Nonsense!” he exclaimed. “It’s true I didn’t touch him but ghosts don’t eat mince pie.”
The change from the shadows of the Blue Moon and the weird whispers of Panther Eye to the low roar of Dave’s boiler room and Dave’s own low rumbling voice was almost startling. Dave was real, and quite human, the heating plant, made up as it was of bricks and pipes, pumps and boilers, was about the most substantial thing in the world. No spooks here.
In this place for six hours every day Dave reigned as king. He had come to love that room as some people love their homes. The mild, clean air, made pure by the constant breathing in of those twin boilers, brought unconscious joy to his heart. The low hiss of steam, the faint roar of the fires on the grates, the quish-quash of the pumps, were music to his ears.