The Eagles made noise enough to betray themselves as they came hotly along the trail. They paused for a moment directly opposite the two ground-hugging fugitives. For the space of a worried breath Sherlock thought that some doubly sharp eye had seen him and Max in their skimpy hiding place; but the pursuit had paused only to study a confused point on the way. After another moment, the pack moved ahead and past, and out of sight.
At once the two hares were up, running fast toward camp. Not until both of them were puffing did Sherlock signal a slowdown of their clip to a walk. They headed for two huge trees, with barely enough space between for a boy to squeeze through. Sherlock managed it, then Max, and they went on side by side.
“Now come on and give,” Max at last caught enough of his breath to say. “What did you see back there that made you gobble and goggle like that?”
“It’s only a woodland trail leading to the back door,” replied Sherlock. “Hardly ever used, I’d say, but it’s wide enough and hard enough for a car to pass along it.” “So?” Max prompted him.
“So I saw automobile tracks on it.”
“All right, our ghost is motorized. He’s rubber-tired.” “Rubber-tired is just the word,” said Sherlock emphatically. “The tires left a pattern, a zigzag pattern. The same zigzag pattern that was left by the tires on the car that was stolen from Mr. Brimmer.”
HARE AND HOUNDS
It seemed to Sherlock that Max’s neck stretched a foot and thrust Max’s face close to his.
“That doesn’t mean a thing,” Max protested. “We traced tires with that identical mark to another car.”
“Not so loud,” cut in Sherlock. “In fact, save all of your breath. Those Eagles will be hot on our back trail, and we’d better not be seen or heard, either one. Keep dropping that corn, and stay as close to me as you can.” Ducking his head low, Sherlock scrambled through some berry bushes that bristled with raking thorns. It was a stern measure, but even the usually vocal Max forebore to comment until they had gained the other side. Then he said with the air of a philosopher, “After all, there are only two of us, and there are four ,of those Eagles to get all chopped up. Where away now?” Sherlock pointed a little to the left, and led the way into a clearing where scrubby weeds grew, making the trail of corn harder to follow. After leaving the weeds, on they went in a fairly straight line for camp, for they had not enough distance left on Max’s pedometer for any extensive detours or zigzags. For live minutes they kept up the Scout pace, alternately trotting and trudging. For six minutes. Seven. Eight. Finally, up ahead showed a ridge. Sherlock gestured for Max to drop low against the ground, and he himself scrambled across on all fours to keep from making a silhouette against the scantily timbered skyline. Max, following, disturbed something that squirmed and wriggled away from in front of him.
“Yike!” howled Max. “It’s a snake, as big as a blanket roll!”
Startled out of all caution, he jumped up and for a second—only a second—stood erect on the very highest and barest point of the ridge.
“Get down, knuckle-head,” Sherlock snapped at him in a frantic whisper, and Max, recovering, ducked again. But it was too late. He had been seen.
Back on the trail they had left, and none too far back at that, came a cry. “There they are!” one of the Eagles was telling his comrades. Away campward dashed Sherlock, Max a jump behind him. To the rear sounded a mighty disturbance and breaking of underbrush as the whole pack of pursuers broke into a run.
- Neither Sherlock nor Max was a Pete Criley, but both were in good physical condition, sound of wind and sinewy of leg. They could have held their lead had not Max had the assignment of dropping grain. The constant dip into the sack for more disturbed the rhythm of his racing body, and he was forced to slow down, while Sherlock, who might have forged ahead, was obliged by the rules to stay within ten yards of his comrade. The Scouts of Eagle pack, on the other hand, could now take their eyes from the trail and run their fastest. The lightest- footed of the four had Max and Sherlock in sight, and kept them there. The gap between hunters and hunted grew narrower, and narrower again.
“Don’t give up,” Sherlock panted over his shoulder at Max. “Keep going. I see the flags at camp.”
But that swiftest Eagle, now well in advance of his fellows, had pluckily gained and was almost upon him. Sherlock and Max could hear, or thought they could, his own wheezes for breath as he labored to overtake them. Up ahead was an excited cry as Lew Sheehan, on high ground between the Patrol camps, spotted the close running battle.
A few more leaps, and the foremost Eagle was beside Max. He reached out an arm as he ran, catching Max by the elbow. He ran thus for another pace or so, getting enough breath into his laboring lungs to make himself heard, according to the rules.
“Caught,” he gurgled happily. “Caught—”
But Sherlock, without slowing his own headlong clip by so much as an inch a second, had shot back his own strong young hand. He fastened it in Max’s shirt and by a sudden powerful pull yanked his lighter friend bodily out of the captor’s grip before the third and final “caught” could be spoken. Off balance, the Eagle runner stumbled and fell. Then Sherlock and Max ran with the last few ounces of breath left in them for their Patrol flag.
Even as they reached it, they saw the drama at the Eagle camp across from them. Ranny Ollinger and Dade Coleman racing for safety as they themselves had raced, with Pete Criley, the star runner of the Hounds, cutting down their lead to almost tackling distance. There was barely a yard to spare as the Eagle’s hare team reached and touched their home flag.
Minutes, long minutes, passed before any of the contestants in either race regained the energy and inclination to move, speak, or do anything but gulp in fresh air, blow it out again, and gulp more. Sherlock played host at the Hound camp to his late pursuers, sagely cautioning them to drink sparingly from the canteen he passed around. Finally, when the slowest runners of both groups had staggered in and relaxed thankfully, there was another assembly before Mr. Brimmer. The Assistant Scoutmaster looked a trifle apologetic.
“We seem to have had our run for nothing, or next to nothing,” he said. “Everybody got plenty of exercise, and at least the place is quiet for once, with all of you tired out. But both runs were so closely contested, finished so near to the same moment, and in each case the hare team got home safely by so narrow a margin, that it’s hard to name a winner. I didn’t think the event could possibly be a tie, but what can I do but call it one?”
Ranny Ollinger had recovered enough to say something. “How can we pick the boss Patrol, then?” he asked.
Sherlock, who had been mopping his streaming face with a towel, paused for a moment. “Let’s not pick a boss Patrol just now,” he suggested. “Let’s call it a tie until later.”
Mr. Brimmer looked at Sherlock, as though surprised at the suggestion. “After all,” he said, “this new Troop is choosing a senior Patrol Leader, and athletic supremacy, while it isn’t everything, will be a big factor in the choice of a leader.”
“I suggest,” went on Sherlock, “that Ranny and I act as senior on alternate days. Sort of like co-captains on a football team, when they take over from each other as each game comes up. Then we can have some final event later to decide thk Patrol rivalry.”
“Not a bad idea,” approved Ranny. “I’m lucky to get a draw out of it so far.”
“Correction, please,” said Sherlock quickly. “I’m the lucky one, it seems to me. After all, Ranny won two of these five events singlehanded, the undress-swim from Max, and the shot put from me, and bossed the Eagles in getting a draw in the hare and hounds race.”
“Which makes the rest of my Eagles sound kind of helpless,” Ranny half-complained.
“All right, all right,” laughed Lew Sheehan. “I’m enjoying this politeness act you two are putting on, but the fact remains that we’ll have to make the decision sooner or later. Mr. Palmer is due back here some time tonight, and perhaps we’ll leave it to him.”
>
“A good idea,” nodded Mr. Brimmer. “Now let’s all rest up. It was almost as much of an ordeal watching those two hare teams come boiling in as it must have been to run with them. I even forgot that evaporated car of mine. Dismiss!”
Each Patrol turned toward its own clump of tents. Doc Watson, whose well-fed person had perspired the most in the chase of the Eagle’s hare team, caught Sherlock’s wrist and drew him a little away from the others.
“I’m beginning to understand that you don’t do anything without your reasons,” he said, “but why did you try to talk yourself out of the S. P. L. spot in this Troop? Personally, I think you rate it over Ranny Ollinger. You’re older than he is, have more merit badges, you shape up as more of a natural leader—”
“I don’t say I wouldn’t like the S. P. L. spot,” Sherlock interrupted his friend, “but I’m too busy right now. Maybe I’d be flattered in a few days if they’d offer it to me, but I’m dodging it today and tonight.”
Doc’s eyes widened owlishly. “You’re tying this up with that haunted house business,” he guessed, “but just why and how I don’t catch.”
“A Senior Patrol Leader, and especially one who’s just appointed, is pretty busy,” explained Sherlock. “Special duties, conferences with the Troop leaders, and so on. I want these next few hours as free as I can manage, to do some deducting that isn’t exactly routine Scouting.”
“But Mr. Palmer will be here tonight some time, in person,” reminded Doc. “Mr. Brimmer said so.”
“That’s one of my reasons for what I’m doing,” Sherlock told him. “He’s not only my Scoutmaster, but he’s a police officer, active in the very investigation we’re worked up about. It would be my duty, as Scout and as citizen, to tell him all I know and most of what I guess. So I want to go into action before he arrives. Knock off now, the rest of the bunch is looking this way and wondering what we’ve found to mumble about.”
The Hounds, still jaded by their woodland race, switched from Scout uniform to swimming trunks and headed for the pond. Already the Eagles were there,
washing away the dust of their exertions. Ranny Ollinger slid grinning through the water toward where Sherlock came to the edge and poised for a dive.
“How about a final challenge coming from you and your mob?” he invited. “We’ll take you on in anything you name—spelling bee, bathing beauty contest or just who can bake the best cocoanut cream pie.”
“Don’t mention cocoanut cream pie,” pleaded Doc over Sherlock’s shoulder. “That’s my favorite dessert, and I’ve traveled four hungry miles since dinner at noon.”
“A little hunger might improve you,” said Max, coming up in turn and measuring Doc’s ample figure with his eye. “Look, Ranny, you Big Chief Eagle Patrol Leader, I say we’ll challenge you to—”
“Silence for six seconds,” Sherlock bade Max. “Ranny, give us an afternoon and evening to pull ourselves back together. Then we’ll dream up something to settle this tie.”
“Afternoon and evening off?” Ranny repeated, and then gurgled a bit, for water had trickled into his open mouth as he paddled. “You can’t take it, huh? Well, suit yourselves. We’ll listen to any challenge at any time.” And he turned on his side, swimming away with lazy skill.
Sherlock dived in, Doc followed with a splash like a giant frog, and Max came in two seconds behind him. The three paddled idly to a stretch of bank where the other Scouts did not follow, and Sherlock turned in the water so that his head was close to the heads of Doc and Max.
“As soon as it’s bedtime,” he said softly, “with everybody else soundly corked off, we go back to visit our ghost.”
“Oh me!” groaned Max. “After our second call, whatever it is will feel socially obligated and start coming here. Can’t we just sneak up and look and listen, without being spotted?”
“I want us to be spotted,” said Sherlock firmly. “I want the whatever-it-is, as Max calls it, to know we’re poking around its happy little refuge. I want it to do something about us.”
“But not do something to us,” pleaded Max. “I want to grow up and be a writer, not stop right here and be a ghost’s victim. Look, I’ve often heard creepy stories around campfires, and didn’t believe them any more than the next guy. I don’t want anybody to tell a true story about me, and wind up by saying my body was never found.”
“I know what Sherlock’s driving at, Max,” put in Doc Watson confidently. “It’s going to be like one of those scientific experiments. There’s an organism of some sort to be identified, usually. You give it a certain treatment, a stimulus, that’s the word. The organism does something about the stimulus, a reaction, they call it. And the type of reaction shows the kind of organism, alive or dead, animal or vegetable. Right, Sherlock?”
“Right, Watson, and not so elementary at that.”
“It’s far from being elementary,” agreed Max. “It sounds like teacher’s pet reciting in sophomore biology.”
“Well,” said Doc modestly, “I am studying to be a doctor like my dad, and I do pay attention to things like that, though I don’t figure on doing any school work on vacation, least of all in camp.”
“We’re getting off the beam,” said Sherlock. “Are you in, Max?”
“I’m in,” said Max with an air of surrender, “chiefly because I don’t see my way out. With you two so hot about chumming with the spirit world, I’ll have to tag along. But the kind of scientific experiment I like is one with little bits of friendly organisms, moored down to a glass slide under a microscope. And speaking of science,” he turned to a new line of thought, “what if the tenant of the haunted house is a scientist himself ? A mad scientist, with clawlike hands and grinning teeth and eyes that shine in the dark like phosphorus? While we’re talking about one kind of experiment, he may be planning another kind, with us as the subjects. Probably he’ll shoot us full of some kind of fiendish drug that will turn us into monkeys.”
“He wouldn’t waste that kind of drug on you,” Doc snubbed him, and Max’s smile came back, the kind that wreathed his face when he was at his favorite sport of mock-scornful repartee.
“Score one for you, Doc. You’ve been hanging around me long enough to get the ribbing habit. They say it’s contagious. Doc’s an apt pupil, Sherlock. Now what?”
“When we start,” said Sherlock, “we’ll dress for the occasion, but not with robes or sheets this time. They show up in the dark, and they catch on thorns and twigs if we have to leave in a hurry. Wear your darkest, closest-fitting stuff. I’ve got a lightweight black sweater with long sleeves.”
“So have I,” said Doc eagerly, his round face gleaming with excited anticipation.
“I’ve got a dark blue jersey, but it’s sleeveless,” said Max. “Not quite so good.”
“We can make it as good,” Sherlock promised him. “Smear burnt cork on the hands and arms and face, commando style. We’ve got corks, haven’t we? I put one in a little glass jug of syrup I brought along for flapjacks. We can scare up one or two more, and that’ll be enough.”
“And burn ’em by daylight,” contributed Doc. “No matches after dark, or the whole camp will sit up and wonder out loud what we’re doing.”
“Go to the head of the class, Doc,” applauded Max. “The best time to burn our corks is at the fire while we’re cooking supper. And speaking of supper, what’s it going to be?”
Doc, by now the official supervisor of the Patrol’s cooking arrangements, thought a moment. “Hamburger steaks,” he said. “Potatoes and onions fried together. Bread and butter. For dessert there’ll be pie, furnished to the whole troop by Lew Sheehan. He’s baking up a bunch in some kind of camp oven he made himself and feels specially proud about working.”
“That sounds good,” said Sherlock, and lifted his mouth an inch higher above the water so as to smack his lips in safety. “I’m like you, Doc; the afternoon’s exercise has starved me down to a skeleton.”
“Skeleton!” breathed Max, and shuddered. “How can
you use words like that when we’re going where we’re going tonight?”
RETURN TO THE MYSTERY
Night and the time for bed seemed to take a long time in coming, at least to the three eager ghost hunters.
Finally, after both Patrols had eaten heartily, washed dishes, and broken up the evening s session of song and stunt at the campfire, the tired Scouts found themselves ready for sleep. But Sherlock and Doc, though tired, had their prospects of adventure to keep their eyes open. They lay on their cots until all was still in the neighboring tents, and then crept away down the hill toward the road. Max was there before them.
As Sherlock had advised, each had worn his darkest clothes, and each had put on rubber-soled shoes for greater quietness of movement. At a point where a gap among the roadside trees gave the moon a chance to shine down and give them light, they carefully blackened their exposed faces, necks and arms with the charred tips of the burnt corks.
“You two look like end men in a minstrel show,” pronounced Max, studying his friends. “Where’s your banjo, Sherlock?”
“If I had one, I’d play you a song called Silence Is Golden ” said the Patrol Leader. “Max, I don’t suppose you can take off your glasses in this dim light, so keep your head down and let’s not have any moonshiny reflections from them. Now, we’ll hold our last verbal conference right here, get so we all understand what we’re going to do, and then move on to the house without any more talk.”
“No more talk?” echoed Max sadly.
“I know that’s what the Bill of Rights calls a cruel and unusual punishment for you,” Sherlock told him, “but this is a cruel and unusual situation.”
Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1947 Page 7