“Can it,” said Shadow, with a look of contempt on his handsome face. “That stuff is only baby toys compared with Stoner—believe me, I know. You’ve got a tough customer on your hands, Hawkins.”
“Don’t tell me,” I said. “I knew that two years ago. But he ain’t had me to wipe his feet on yet, Shadow, and I ain’t planning to give him a chance. When he wants me, he’s got to have faster feet than I’ve got. That’s all.”
“What you want?” asked Rolling Stone John, appearing in the doorway again. “Now look here, Shadow, I don’t think you got a right to play me up a fool—what you calling me for if you don’t want me?”
Both Shadow and I looked at John with some surprise, as he stood between the door curtains trailing his old newspaper on the floor behind him.
“Of all the blockheads—” began Shadow, but I cut him short.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Did you think we called you, John?”
“Think nothin’,” said John, and he looked angry. “I sat behind the stove and heard you plain as day calling, ‘Come here, come here,’ and when I gits up and asks you what you want, you spit in my face and tell me go sit down. Dern if I call that a nice way to treat a fella.”
He turned and walked back to his chair. We both followed him out into the meeting room.
“We didn’t call you, John,” I said, “and you ought not blame Shadow, ’cause he didn’t know what you heard. See? Now, let’s sit here together, and see if we hear what you did?”
We didn’t have a second to wait. For out of the air above our heads, as it seemed, came the call of a thin voice:
“Come in. Come in.”
We three looked from one to another.
“That’s it,” whispered Rolling Stone John. “That’s what I heard, Seckatary. Twice I heard it, and this is the third time. Where’s it come from?”
“Stoner’s Boy,” I answered. Shadow’s face lit up with excitement.
“Now,” he said, “now we shall find it, Hawkins old boy. Let’s wait to hear it once more. Just so I can get a bearing on it. Just let me locate it—”
But not another sound came to our ears. We sat there so long that I got tired, and said I wouldn’t wait any longer.
“I’ve got to write the minutes, Shadow,” I said. “You can wait if you want.”
He did wait. But after I finished my writing, I still found him there, waiting, listening, Rolling Stone sitting beside him, quietly reading the old newspaper that was two weeks old.
“Shadow,” I said. “Suppose you boys stay down and eat supper at my house tonight. My maw will be glad to have you.”
“Sure,” spoke up the Rolling Stone. “We will stay. I like apple pie. I heard Robby Hood tell what fine apple pies your mother makes.”
“John!” cried Shadow. “If you say another word—”
I laughed. Soon the ball game in the hollow ended because it grew too dark to see the ball. The boys all went home. Robby Hood and Shadow and the Rolling Stone came along with me. Yeah, we had apple pie too.
Someday, I’m going to know more about this. But as I write it down in my book tonight, just after it happened, I’m still puzzled about it. I don’t quite understand just what it was all about. But I’ll tell you how it was.
We played a game of checkers after supper at my house. My pop thinks he is a great checkers player, and none of us boys ever tell him different. So he played three games with Shadow and beat him two, so you see how it was. Well after that, it was easy for me to get him to tell me I could go out for a while, so I went with Shadow and Robby and the Rolling Stone.
We started for the clubhouse in the hollow. When we went down the river path, we heard music coming from the clubhouse.
“Lew Hunter’s playing the organ already,” I said. “That kid is clean daffy about music, fellas. Listen to that, will you? Dern if I don’t think it’s opera he is playing tonight.”
We walked on and soon came in sight of our shack in the hollow.
“He must know it by heart, to play it in the dark that’a way,” said the Rolling Stone.
By jingo! He was right. The clubhouse was dark. Not a single window showed a light.
“Harkee—” It was the Rolling Stone again speaking; I could see that his wandering life had given him sharp ears. For none of us would have detected that far-away chug-chug-chug of a motorboat.
“Look out for Stoner!” I said.
The music ended; no further sound came from the clubhouse. We four stood there on the butt of that low embankment and waited to see the boat that was making the noise on the river. The last half of the moon threw a feeble light these nights upon the river, but enough to let us see, from the lower bend, a launch coming at full speed up the river. For a second I thought it would pass, but with a sudden curve, it turned toward our bank, and the motor stopped its chugging as the boat slid alongside our little wharf.
“That’s not Stoner’s Boy,” said Robby Hood. “I’d know him in a minute—”
“Back up here,” I said, shoving them all behind some bushes on the edge of the path. “No use taking chances, fellas. Let’s see who it is, first.”
We didn’t have long to wait. The motorboat seemed to slide into an open berth, and the dark figure of a boy sprang upon the wharf and came toward us. We did not move. We watched him as he came up the path, and his steps sounded flippety-flop on the solid mud. He had a flashlight and threw its spreading ray upon the bushes and trees and finally upon the clubhouse. Upon the porch the light fell; then it rose and touched the top of the roof, and then it sailed across the roof to the trees directly behind it. And then we heard him say:
“Ah!”
So I stepped out, and said “Ah!” too.
He turned his flashlight full upon my face, so that its light blinded me for a second. It made me mad, a little, and I whipped out my flashlight and turned it upon him. Believe me, it was one of the finest boy’s faces I have ever seen. Yeah, never in my life saw I a handsomer face than I did when I turned my light upon him.
“Who are you?” he asked in a steady, musical voice. “First I’ll ask you that question,” I said, “since you have come sneaking around our headquarters. What do you want here?”
He lowered his electric light and shoved both hands into his coat pockets. In the light of my flashlight, I saw a smile—a friendly smile—upon his face.
“My name,” he said, “is Simon Bleaker. I hope you know me.”
“Never heard of you,” I said. “Now talk quick. What’s your business here this hour of night?”
He didn’t get a chance to speak. No. For no sooner had I asked that question, when a sound came from the clubhouse. It was a beautiful sound. Yeah. It was the sound of music. Music as no Lew Hunter could play it. No. But music. Real music.
“You hear?” he asks. “Are you all liars and thieves? Have you stolen from me—from Simon Bleaker, the inventor? Yes, yes, you are guilty—I can see it in your face. Listen to that sweet music and try to tell me—”
“Cut that out,” broke in the Rolling Stone, stepping up. “There ain’t nobody ever called me liar and thief, much less my friends, so speak up, you Simon—”
“Simon Bleaker, I says,” broke in the stranger, “and Simon Bleaker I am, whoever you be, and I invented that very instrument—listen, how sweet—how sweet—”
By golly! I don’t care what you say about me, but Simon Bleaker and the music his invention was making at that moment caught hold of me. Yeah. I dropped my flashlight and shoved it in my pocket. There we all stood and listened—
“Toreador-dah-dah-da-dah-da-dah-”
I don’t know those opera hymns. That’s the trouble with me. I just know a few words, maybe the start or so. When I hear that kinda music, I just got to forget everything else around me and raise my eyes up to the sky and listen. But even then they wouldn’t let me
“Ah, see!” Simon Bleaker’s flashlight was out again. It searched the treetops and found a thin line—a wire running thr
ough the treetops—
“That is the proof,” exclaimed Bleaker. “Come on with me, all of you, and I will prove to you that Simon Bleaker is the inventor—”
You can bet your grandpa’s boots we ran with Simon Bleaker. He led us up to the clubhouse door. But there he had to wait till I unlocked it. I pulled out the key and shoved the door open for him. He leaped inside. We flashed our lights, and Shadow quickly struck a match and lit one of the lamps. Simon Bleaker looked about the place, as though he would make himself acquainted with it. By that time Shadow had the three lamps lighted. Now the music came louder and clearer—ah, boy! How I remember that night.
“Ah!”
Again Simon Bleaker made use of that “Ah,” which seemed to be to him the only way he could express just how he felt. I saw him run his hands over the walls. Then I saw him dart to the stove, behind which the Rolling Stone used to sit.
“Right here,” he said. “Here it is.”
He stooped. From under the stove he drew a mahogany box. As he pulled it, several wires caught and held it. I saw him reach up and grasp the tin stovepipe—and at once the music stopped.
“You see?” said Simon Bleaker. “Here it is. I don’t say you have stolen it, boys. But here it is. It is my invention. Look, see, somebody connected it with your stovepipe. Made the music come through that tin pipe. Look!”
Without thinking how much it was going to cost us to have that pipe put back in place, he yanked the whole thing down, and showed us a round piece cut out near the joint in the roof, and in this round hole a little funnel horn was fastened.
“Through this you got your music—” said Simon Bleaker.
“And the loud voice,” broke in Shadow Loomis.
“Wonderful invention,” said Simon Bleaker. “Someone stole this from me—see my initials on it ‘S. B.’ I’m so glad to get it back. I hope I see you again—goodnight.”
And with that he was gone.
“Well,” said I, “I guess he had a right to take it, fellas. It has ‘S. B.’ on the box. That’s stands for Simon Bleaker all right.”
“And for Stoner’s Boy, too,” said Shadow Loomis.
Which it did.
CHAPTER 9
The Boy Who Vanished
THE Skinny Guy did not come to our meeting next day. All of us boys were disappointed, for we thought sure he would be there. But I said maybe Link thought we were coming down to his hidden houseboat to hold our meetings from now on, and we better go down there and find out. We made the trip down to the island, but Link was not around. We held a little meeting and decided to leave a note for him, which we did.
The following day after school we went down again. The note we had written for him was just where we had put it. So I knew that Link had not seen it. He had not come back. Shadow said maybe the Skinny Guy was out hunting coons, but I knew better. He was tracking down Stoner’s Boy. I knew my old Skinny Guy. My trip to Cuba with him gave me a chance to know him better than any of the other boys knew him. They didn’t understand Link, and I did. He was so bent on beating Stoner at his own game that he would go the limit if he thought he could do it.
Well, we held our little meeting there in the hidden houseboat and left another note telling Link to come up to the clubhouse and let us know what he found out. So we went back to our clubhouse, and the boys started a game of ball in the hollow. I played for a while, but I had to go in and write the minutes of the last two meetings, as I did not get a chance yesterday to write, and then I had received a letter from the twins, who are up at their fancy school in Massachusetts, and I wanted to answer that letter too.
While I was writing, the Skinny Guy came up the river path. I could see him from the window, and I went to meet him.
“You’re getting to be a big bum, Link,” I said. “Where in the world have you been all this time?”
He grinned and shook his head. He was dressed just as he used to be, in his old-time raggedy clothes and no hat upon his head.
“You’re right, Hawkins,” he said. “I been bumming, alright. And I am a bum hunter at that. Seen Stoner?”
“No, thank goodness,” I said. “Not since the night you and Shadow chased him.”
“Neither have I,” he said. He walked over to the cupboard where Perry Stokes, who was caretaker of the clubhouse, kept crackers and such things, and Link took a handful of crackers and sat down beside my desk.
“You won’t mind if I write while you talk?” I said. “I’ve got to finish this, and I’ve done it so many meetings that I know it by heart. What’s new?”
“Heard about the Smokey City?”
“Left high and dry on the bank near Hobbs’s Ferry. Ice caught her last winter and broke her up. She couldn’t get back in the water when the ice went out.”
“Shaw!” I said. “Shaw Link, and she was such a fine boat.”
“Yeah, it’s too bad, but they all have to go sooner or later. Makes no difference, Hawkins, how purty they are—some fine day—yeah, even Stoner will have his day—say, what do you know that’s news?”
“Ever hear of a fella named Simon Bleaker?” I asked.
“No never did. What’s he done?”
So I told him how Simon Bleaker had come to our houseboat, and had shown us the mahogany box through which Stoner had been able to send his voice into our clubhouse and how Simon Bleaker had taken the box away with him, saying it had been stolen from him.
“Why did you let him take it?” asked the Skinny Guy. “How did you fellas know—”
“He showed us his ’nitials on it,” I said. “It had ‘S. B.’ on the box, cut in with a knife.”
Skinny Link did not say anything for a while. He just looked steadily in my eyes. Then he said:
“That was Stoner’s Boy himself who came for that box—I don’t believe there is a boy by the name of Simon Bleaker. ‘S. B.’ means Stoner’s Boy, too.”
“That’s the way Shadow Loomis figured it out too,” I said. “Actually, S. B. would probably not be the right initials for Stoner to use since I don’t think he calls himself Stoner’s Boy—that is what the police chief of Watertown dubbed him, and everyone else repeated it since nobody ever knew his first name. Do you know? But, smart as Stoner is, he might easily have picked up on what everyone was calling him and adopted the SB initials just for convenience—it’s too late now. Anyway, we ain’t out nothin’—the old mahogany sound box wasn’t worth anything to us.”
“Did you notice anything in the dark outside the night we heard that loud voice?” asked Link.
“No,” I said. “Did you?”
“Yes. The second time the voice came, I noticed that as long as the voice was talking a little light flashed on and off down on the riverbank. I saw it through the window. I saw it flash on and off, on and off, until the loud voice stopped. The next time I saw it through the door, when you held it open. I didn’t think much of it till after I went back. Now what do you figure that light had to do with the loud voice?”
I shook my head. “Not now, Link,” I said. “I can’t answer that now, but believe me, I’ll know what everything meant—you ain’t forgot how I figured out that the lame man stole our diamond down in Cuba?”
“Don’t remind me of Cuba, Hawkins,” he said in a low voice. “I’m trying to forget—”
“But I’m just telling you—”
“Hello, Link,” came a voice, the voice of the old Rolling Stone, as he trudged slowly up the porch steps. “How you been? Ain’t seen you for a long time. Shadow and Robby Hood’s comin’—they’re tyin’ up the boat. We just come down in Robby’s homemade launch. Here they are, now.”
Robby and Shadow came, followed by all of the boys, who, seeing our Watertown boys arriving, had stopped their ball playing to come and hear what they had to say. So we had another little meeting there. Link told us how he had gone up and down the river in search of a sign of Stoner’s Boy, but he had not seen him, nor had he found a trace of any place where Stoner might be holding his headquart
ers. He said he stayed with a boy named Monk Bridges last night, as he had not seen Monk since the old days on our cliffs, and he knew Monk used to know Stoner’s Boy pretty well and thought maybe Monk would be able to tell him about the Gray Ghost. But Monk was even surprised to hear that Stoner’s Boy was back.
Then he told the boys about the wreck of the Smokey City, and right away they all wanted to go up and have a look at the old broken steamboat. But Dick hit the table with his hammer and made them all keep still.
“It’s early enough to get to Hobbs’s Ferry,” he said. “So what do you say if we go, Hawkins?”
“I’m ready,” I said. “But maybe some of these fellas’ daddies wouldn’t want them to go climbing on an old wrecked steamboat. They might fall and get hurt.”
“I’ll take care of ’em,” said Dick, and he laid down rules right away, and the fellas promised they would mind the orders of our captain and not do anything he told them they must not do. Jerry Moore and Perry Stokes had the canoes out in a jiffy, and Jerry and Link and Dick and I got in the Skinny Guy’s long boat to lead the way.
But oh boy! the sight of that poor old steamboat lying on her side up there on the bank all out of shape almost made some of us fellas cry—some of us who had seen her these many years sailing up and down the river, as pretty a looking steamboat as ever floated—yeah, there she lay, a poor old Smokey City. The first time we ever saw the Smokey City on our river, she stopped at our bank long enough to hand us a letter that the Skinny Guy had sent us when he was in Paducah with his pop. We saw her many times after that, and we knew her whistle by the sound. Now, she lay here a poor old wreck, but a fine-looking wreck she was, as if she knew she was a proud-looking old steamboat, and even now, while she was lying helpless and done for, she held her old head up as high as ever. Her smokestacks were rusty, and most of her paint was gone, and she leaned a little on one side. Her hull was crushed and full of holes; some of the railing around her decks had been torn away, but her upper deck and pilothouse were alright. She lay upon the sloping bank, fully one hundred feet from the water. Grass was beginning to come up on the bank all around her, and some of the bushes on the upper side of the bank had begun to poke their branches with new leaves through the cabin windows.
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