“Why don’t you come in, Link?” I said. “Makes no difference how rusty your voice is.”
He shook his head. His eyes were turned to that old spot where once, not so long ago either, he and his pop had their home in an old houseboat on the river.
“It does me good to be here,” he said. “Hawkins, I wish—I wish you’d go in and get the fellows to sing one song for me. Sing ‘Home, Sweet Home.’ ”
Which we did.
CHAPTER 7
The Loud Voice
“There is no place like home
No matter where I roam;
Be it ever so humble,
There’s no place like home.”
THAT may not be the way it’s written, but that’s how we sung it that night—the night our Skinny Guy had come back and stood outside on the porch and asked us to sing it. You see, he had lived a happy life here on this riverbank. That was before he got rich. Yeah. Best times a fellow has is when he is barefoot and raggedy running ’round doing nothing but being a boy. Link was a regular boy. Never grew up. Never could forget the old days. So here he was, back again, in his old clothes, on his old riverbank, listening to his old pals singing the sweetest tune ever written.
And you know, I couldn’t get him inside the clubhouse. No. He wanted to stay outside there. As the boys struck into the second chorus, and I knew they could sing it a lot better without me, I went outside again to try to get Link to come in. But there he stood, leaning up against a porch post, looking down upon the moonlit riverbank where there used to be an old houseboat, and in that houseboat he used to live, him and his pop.
“No place like,” he said, nodding his head toward the riverbank.
“No,” I said. “Not anywhere, Link.”
And the boys inside the clubhouse sang:
“Home, home, home, sweet home—”
“Old Kentucky Home,” said Link.
“Yeah,” I said. “Sun still shines bright there, Link.”
“Listen,” he said, with a grin. “Listen to them fellas, Hawkins, they’re doin’ that for me.”
“Yeah,” I said. “For you, Link. They’re glad you’re back.”
From the clubhouse came the harmonizing voices—
“Weep no more, my lady, oh, weep
no more for me
We will sing one song of my old
Kentucky home—”
“Aw, come in, Link,” I said. “The fellas will feel more—”
“It’s time you boys went for your supper,” said my old Skinny Guy. “You ain’t been home since afternoon, I know. You all better git.”
“We don’t need supper,” I said. “We’re just tickled to death to see you back here, Link. Tell you what, you come up to my house for supper, will you? My maw and pop will be glad to see you, I bet you.”
Before he could answer me, the boys, their song ended, had come crowding out upon the porch. I never knew them to be so jolly and happy as they were this night. And not a single one of ’em had been home to supper. But they didn’t seem to be hungry.
“Link,” spoke up Dick Ferris. “As captain of this clubhouse, I got to ask you all to come inside. You forget Stoner’s Boy is around here. ’Tain’t no good to stand here on the porch like this, in the light of the lamp from the door and all that.”
“Ah!” said Link. “Stoner’s Boy; I hope you are right. I want to meet him. I’ve an old score to settle with him. You boys don’t know how I feel.”
“I think I do, Link,” spoke up Shadow Loomis. “I’ve got a little story to tell you about a fella—Androfski the Silent, we call him.”
That’s what got Link inside. Yeah. Shadow promising to tell him about Androfski the Silent. And so we all went in and took our places around the table, all but the Rolling Stone who took his old seat behind the fireplace. I watched him as he sat down; for a minute, I thought this was once when he wouldn’t put his feet up on the fender, but bless your sweet life, he looked around the whole room once and then settled back and up came the big feet upon the fender, and he leaned back in his chair and was ready to watch what we would do. Perry Stokes—dear old Perry, always thoughtful—went to the cupboard where he had a couple of boxes of crackers. He brought them out and tore open the tops and set them before us on the table. As Dick reached for a couple crackers, he nodded to Perry and smiled—the first smile I ever saw our captain give to Perry the caretaker. Link and Shadow sat at one end of the table, their heads together; Link was listening for the first time to the story of Androfski the Silent.
“Do you think he might come here again?” asked the Skinny Guy.
“Do you think he won’t?” Shadow asked in return. “I told you what kind of a fella he is. They been telling me about their Gray Ghost, him they call Stoner’s Boy. I ain’t met him yet. But I want you to know that from what these boys been telling me, Stoner’s Boy reminds me of Androfski the Silent.”
“You don’t think they are the same fella, do you?” asked Link.
Shadow didn’t quite get him.
“Link means,” I said, “you don’t think that Androfski the Silent might be the same one we call Stoner’s Boy.”
“Hardly,” answered Shadow, smiling. “Yet, I wouldn’t want to say. It might be so, but I hardly think so.”
“Naw,” broke in Jerry Moore. “Nothing to it. Stoner is Stoner and Andy is Andy; there ain’t nothing else to it. Don’t you fellas git that notion in your head that Androfski is got the smartness that Stoner’s Boy has.”
“Not so fast, Jerry,” spoke up Bill Darby. “Come to think of, this Androfski did show the same smartness that the Gray Ghost did. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if he was him.”
“Well, boys,” said Robby Hood. “I knew Stoner’s Boy before he had his great fall, and I’ve known Androfski too, the same time I’ve known Stoner. I don’t remember that I ever saw ’em both together. No, I don’t believe I ever saw them both together in my life. But I don’t think that Androfski is really Stoner’s Boy.”
“You never saw Stoner’s face, did you?” asked Bill Darby.
“No, I never did,” replied Robby Hood, “because he always has it covered up to the eyes with a gray handkerchief.”
“Well then, Stoner’s Boy might’ve been Androfski with his face half covered. Dern if I don’t think Androfski is the fella who plays Stoner’s Boy.” And saying this much, Bill Darby leaned back in his chair, as if he had said all he had to say.
“No,” said Jerry Moore. “Stoner is Stoner. No gettin’ away from that. Don’t care what any of you guys say. I know enough to know that.”
“Who can tell?” asked our captain. “Hawkins, what do you think?”
“I think,” I said, “that there are two fellas, Stoner and Androfski. Remember, I said I think. I don’t know for sure. Nothing would surprise me. Androfski the Silent might have been pretending that he couldn’t talk above a whisper. He could easily have done that. He might be Stoner’s Boy, for all I know, but I say I think he ain’t.”
“I wish I had known Stoner’s Boy,” said Shadow Loomis. “There might have been something that I would remember about him, enough to let me know whether or not this Androfski had been playing the part.”
“Beggin’ yer pardon, sir,” said Perry Stokes, stepping up to our captain’s seat. “I just want to remind you, sir, that Stoner’s Boy is around here, sir, while we are all a’talkin’. He might come, sir, any moment—”
“Perry’s right,” said our captain. “Boys, we all saw him on the cliff tonight—be careful, and keep your eyes open. Goodnight Link, I just come to think of it—how are you gon’a git down the river to your hidden houseboat tonight?”
Link laughed.
“Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I ain’t goin’ till the Gray Ghost clears out. He won’t stay here all night. Go ahead Dick, get a meeting started—one of the old timers—like we used to have.”
And so we stopped our talk about the Gray Ghost and the Silent Androfski, and Dick hit the tabl
e with his wooden hammer and called, “Meeting come to order.”
But such a meeting! No pep. No. The shadow of the Gray Ghost had fallen upon us. Its gray gloom had wrapped us up in it like you wrap up a pair of shoes in a gray cloak. Now I could see, all through the meeting, that every boy in the clubhouse was on pins and needles, nervous, expecting every minute to see something happen. To see the Gray Ghost, maybe, rush in and—
Thumpety-thump-thump-thump.
Someone pounded on our door and called, “Hawkins! Hawkins! Hawkins!”
I knew nobody else would, so I ran and opened the door. Briggen, Ham Gardner, and another Pelham fella leaped into the room, and Briggen slammed the door behind him. He turned to me, a face as white as a sheet.
“I got news,” he said, between his heavy breathing. “I got news, Hawkins—news.”
“Good or bad?” I asked. “If they’re good, take your time, but if it’s bad news, spit it out and be quick about it, or—”
“Bad news it is, Hawkins, and I’ll give it to you quick. We saw him—his shadow—hanging against the cliffs, just as it used to—”
His voice had fallen to a whisper.
“Who?” I asked. “Whose shadow hanging to the cliffs—” Briggen looked at me with eyes that seemed to stick out of his head. His hands kept shaking like a leaf, and once in a while, he brushed back his stubby hair.
“We saw—it’s him—no lying, Hawkins—Stoner’s come back.”
I smiled at him. Yet I didn’t feel like smiling. But I wanted to get some of that scare out of him.
“Is this the first you’ve known of it?” I asked. “Why, Stoner’s Boy has been back some time. We saw him tonight too, but he hasn’t come here—”
“Send them guys out here right now if you know what’s good for you.”
A loud voice seemed to speak right in front of our very faces. “Who said that?”
Nobody in the clubhouse answered my question. Every head was turned, looking for the one who had spoken those loud words.
“It’s him,” whispered Briggen, trembling. “That’s his voice, Hawkins—you remember—”
“Right now if you know what’s good—”
There it came again. Part of the same sentence. Right before our very faces, and yet we saw no one.
“Don’t let him git me, Hawkins,” screamed Briggen, running around the other end of the table. “He’s at the door—he’s come for me and Ham—”
But I had jumped to the door and thrown it open wide. Bill Darby had snatched one of the lamps and was holding it out the door so that its light fell full upon the porch. But nobody was there; none of the boys spoke. They seemed to be too puzzled to make a sound.
“There’s no one there, Briggen,” I said. “Don’t act a fool. Brace up. Stoner ain’t going to get you while we are all here.”
“One minute, Hawkins,” said Shadow Loomis, jumping up from his place. “Suppose we all go out with these Pelham boys and see if anybody really wants them—”
“Send them out right now—if you know—what’s good—”
“Good-night!” exclaimed Shadow. “Listen to it again. What’s—”
Ham Gardner, Briggen’s old side partner, stepped out from behind the table.
“ ’Tain’t no use, Hawkins,” he said. “We got to go. He’s calling of us, and we better git lest he take it out on you all too. Come on, Briggen. It’s me and you he wants. We done him dirty, and we gotta pay up. Come on.”
Ham waited for no more to be said, but sped through the door and leaped down the porch steps. Beyond that, the light from Bill Darby’s lamp fell no further, and we lost sight of Ham in the gloom. But Briggen, coward that he was, crouched behind Dick’s chair at the upper end of the table.
“I’ll not see him go out into that danger in the dark,” said Shadow Loomis. “I’m going, too, fella—”
But Link was ahead of him. Yeah, the old Skinny Guy. For just as Shadow was speaking, there came from down on the riverbank the melancholy sound of the old brass horn. That old horn woke up in the Skinny Guy all the old scenes when, years ago, he chased the Gray Ghost whose presence on our banks the old brass horn made known. With three leaps, he cleared the porch and was down into the gloom and gone. And Shadow at his heels.
Now, I am telling you all this as it really happened. I don’t pretend to know what it means, for I don’t know. How that loud calling voice came to us, I cannot tell you. All that I can do is to write it down as it happened; that’s what a secretary is for. I’ve got to write it down, no matter what it is. And that’s how I’m telling it to you now.
“Come on, Briggen,” spoke up Robby Hood. “We will see you home. Let’s go out after Link and Shadow.”
And so we started down the riverbank. But even then, we were too late. Do you think we should ever have been able to get a start on Stoner’s Boy? No. And we never did. Tonight he gave us the ha-ha before we even reached the water. I saw a flying figure in the bright moonlight, a figure that I had seen a long time ago with flying coattails and a cape winging from his shoulders, a shadowy face half covered by a handkerchief tied behind the head and a hat with brim flapping about it in the wind. Behind it, pretty close but not close enough, was the lank figure of the Skinny Guy, and a few steps behind Link sped the graceful figure of Shadow Loomis. But there is a portion of the bank there that the moonlight never falls upon; it’s right at the left turn to the little wharf where we land our boats. I saw Link stop there. And so did Shadow. And I didn’t see the Gray Ghost anymore. Neither did Link nor Shadow. That’s why they had stopped. They had been fooled again by some simple trick of Stoner’s Boy, and there they stood, till all of a sudden came the brassy notes of the horn and the chug-chug-chug of a motor as a gray launch shot out from under our wharf into the moonlight on the river. Stoner was alone in it, and he risked upsetting it by jumping to his feet after the engine started and sending back to us one of those mocking hee-haw laughs of his. Then he fell back to his engine, and she sped swiftly into the stream and was soon past the bend.
“Well,” said Link. “Briggen isn’t hurt anyhow. Where’s Ham?”
“Here he is,” spoke up Jerry Moore. “He was hiding under the porch steps.”
“Well,” said our captain. “We better chase these fellas over to their own side and then git home and git some supper.”
Which we did.
CHAPTER 8
One Who Came in the Night
WHAT I want to know, Hawkins,” said Shadow Loomis to me after the meeting one day, “is how Stoner’s Boy worked the loud voice.”
I was sitting at my desk to write down the minutes of the meeting, and Shadow was standing by the window, watching the boys as they walked out to the hollow to begin a game of ball. The two of us were alone in my little writing room. In the meeting room, the Rolling Stone was sitting by the stove reading a paper. We hadn’t any fire in it for the last two weeks, but Rolling Stone John was so used to his place behind the stove that he always sat there.
“It was a trick, Shadow,” I said. “Stoner’s Boy knows a lot of tricks. He could throw his voice from the river up to here and make it sound that loud—like we heard it the other night.”
“Tricks,” repeated Shadow. “Yes, that loud voice was a trick. But I used to think I knew a few tricks myself. I’ve looked all over this clubhouse, but dern if I can find any trick that he fixed up in here.”
“He didn’t fix up nothin’,” I said. “Stoner’s Boy don’t have to fix up his tricks, Shadow. That just shows you never had any dealings with this Gray Ghost before. I’m tellin’ you he can throw his voice—”
“He’s a ventriloquist, you mean?” broke in Shadow.
“Maybe so,” I said. “But that don’t make any difference. He can throw his voice just the same. I heard him stand outside the old houseboat one time while we were waiting for him and made us fellas think he was talking inside it. We were sitting in the dark that night, waiting for him to come so we could grab him. None of the
boys knew how he did it.”
Shadow shook his head. “No,” he said. “Tricks is tricks. He worked it with something. I know. We will find out—”
“What you want?” asked the Rolling Stone, coming to the door of the waiting room holding his newspaper in one hand.
“What’s a matter with you?” asked his brother sharply.
“You called me,” said the Rolling Stone.
“Called you me eye,” retorted Shadow. “Can’t you let me be for a few minutes? I’m trying to figure out something, and here you come buttin’ in while I’m thinkin’ deep. Nobody called you. Git back to your place, and don’t bother us, please.”
“Excuse me,” mumbled Rolling Stone John, and he went back to his chair in the meeting room.
“I wish you wouldn’t talk too sharp to him, Shadow,” I said. “He didn’t mean to butt in.”
“He’s a pest sometimes,” said Shadow. “Where’s Link?”
I didn’t answer him. The way he talked to his Rolling Stone brother made me kinda sore at him. But he repeated his question.
“Where’s Link? Hasn’t he showed up today?”
“No,” I said. “He’s the same old Link. Used to be that we never could tell when he would show up. He takes spells, the Skinny Guy does, and wanders off in the woods, hunting coons and possums and foxes. I kinda think he’s on the trail of a fox right now.”
“You mean he’s after Stoner’s Boy?”
I nodded my head.
“The very same,” I said. “Shadow, I’ll tell you this: there ain’t a fella in the whole world who could give Link more sport than Stoner’s Boy. Link’s been after him ever since we saw him, and he never caught him once. That’s what makes the Skinny Guy so keen on it, Shadow. He thinks he will get the Gray Ghost, sooner or later.”
Shadow shook his head.
“Not if he is smart enough to play such tricks as that loud voice,” he said. “I got to admit he’s got me beat, Hawkins. I wish I knew how he did it.”
I smiled at him.
“Same old story,” I said. “Stoner got you, too—you and Link. Link thinks he’ll get his hands on Stoner some day, and you kinda think you’ll be able to beat him at his own tricks. Oh well, it’s a great life, Shadow. And I don’t think Stoner can put many tricks over on you. I remember when you used to bring down the old suitcase full of tricks—magic stuff.”
The Gray Ghost Page 6