The Gray Ghost

by Robert F. Schulkers

  “Now,” said Bleaker. “You boys stay here—”

  “Who’s afraid of your whip?” cried the Skinny Guy, making a rush for Simon. But he didn’t go far. No. Simon simply smiled and sidestepped the Skinny Guy, and there came from outside the loud and angry barking of a dog. We all fell back with Link on top of us as the ugly brute that we had seen up on the river path loped through the doorway.

  Bleaker’s whip cracked again. The dog turned and ran out. We jumped up, all of us, each one going to a window. The little, dirty kid was running full speed up the riverbank. Bleaker was running after him with the whip. The dog took his time and picked out a path through the trees. Bleaker was calling:

  “McJinty—wait for me, McJinty.”

  But McJinty wouldn’t wait. He kept on running. We watched ’em both—he and Bleaker had disappeared around the cliffs.

  I turned to Shadow.

  “You saw that dog with Androfski?”

  Shadow nodded. I turned to Perry Stokes.

  “And you saw Stoner’s Boy down here with the dog today?”

  “Yes sir, with the Gray Ghost You heard his horn, sir.”

  “Well, I wonder whose dog it is?”

  “We’ll find that out in a short while,” said Harold.

  Which we did.

  CHAPTER 21

  A Note of Warning

  BEFORE the Skinny Guy’s launch, Cazanova, had been at our wharf very long, all of the boys knew how to run the boat except me. I don’t know why, but I just didn’t have any kind of a wish to know how to run it. I liked to take rides in it, which I did very often, but I was always willing to sit by and let the other fellows do the work. Maybe it was because I am lazy. But no, I don’t think so. I’ll tell you what it was; the other boys seemed to like it so well, and I thought it was always best to keep them in good humor, so I held back and let them have their fun. What’s the difference? These summer days are beautiful. Doc Waters sent a man down to put screens in all of our windows, and our captain, Dick Ferris, went and bought some little awnings for the windows and the porch. When the bill for the awnings was brought up at our meeting, the boys kicked, most of them did, but Dick got up and gave them a talk, and Dick knows how. When he had finished talking all the boys were glad they had the awnings and were thanking Dick for buying them. They sure are pretty. You ought to see our clubhouse now. Like a regular country club, if we only had a place to play golf. But the bill for those awnings took all the money we saved up from dues for the last year and more. At that, I think Doc Waters paid part of it, because I don’t see how they could get all that work done for so little money.

  Anyway, we got a regular clubhouse, and every boy is proud of it. So much for that.

  When I came down the other morning—a beautiful, sunny morning it was, with the birds singing like the dickens all around and a lot of blackbirds walking around in front of the porch like they wanted us to adopt them—I found the Rolling Stone, John Loomis, all alone in the clubhouse. He was sitting with his chair tilted back and his feet on the organ bench, his hands folded, his thumbs going like windmills. He was daydreaming. Yeah. He didn’t even know I was near. He kept on turning his thumbs and looking through the treetops toward the cliffs.

  “Hey John,” I said.

  He was so startled he nearly fell out of his chair as his feet came down from the bench.

  “Well, dern if that ain’t funny,” he said, with a short laugh. “I just been thinkin’ about you, Seck, and here you come a’poppin’ in. Dern if that ain’t funny.”

  “Well, I got to come in sometime,” I said. “What made you think about me, John?”

  “I think about you lots o’ times, Hawkins,” he said. There was a serious look on his face. “Lately I been doin’ a heap o’ thinkin’ about you.”

  “What for?” I asked.

  “It’s been bothering me ever since the night over there,” said the Rolling Stone, jerking his thumb toward Burney’s Field. “That awful yell—”

  “Well,” I said. “You were with me that night.”

  “Yeah,” he said, nodding his head. “I know. But I know you, Hawkins, old fella. What makes me wonder is that you ain’t been over to find out what that awful yell was, where it came from, and why it came.”

  I laughed, as I walked into my writing room.

  “No use hunting trouble, John,” I sang out.

  I heard him getting up from his chair and walking slowly out of the clubhouse. I busied myself at my desk. There was a letter from Will Standish, postmarked Havana, Cuba, and I tore it open quickly and read it with interest. Dear old Will! The fine little Englishman Link and I had met in Cuba. He wrote that his father had settled up all of his business in the little island that they call the Pearl of the Antilles and that he was coming to the good old United States to live. And what’s more, he had asked his daddy to stop at Cincinnati, which would make it possible for him to run down to our little riverbank to see us and spend a few days. Oh, boy! this was too good to keep. I just had to tell all the boys. They would be glad to hear the news. They all liked Will. I started out of the door.

  Harold, one of the twins, stood on the threshold.

  “Ah,” he said. “Glad to find the Seckatary in. Our dear old friend John Loomis has just been telling me about a strange cry that came one night from a field across the river—”

  “Will Standish’s comin’,” I yelled, waving the letter. “He’s comin’ to see us—”

  “Good enough. Will’s a fine boy,” said Harold. “But he won’t be here for a few days yet, I take it; so tell me about that strange scream—”

  I looked Harold in the eye.

  “Say,” I said. “If you knew what Will Standish did for Link and me down in Cuba, you would—”

  “I know,” broke in Harold impatiently. “I know Will Standish. Of course he is a humdinger and he gets a lot of credit for the hero stuff he pulled off on the island to the south, but—”

  Harold laughed and patted me on the back; you can’t get ahead of a fellow who does that.

  “Alright,” I said. “Come on back into my writing room. I’ll tell you about that awful yell on Burney’s Field.”

  So together we went back. I sat in my desk chair, and Harold settled himself in the easy armchair by the side of the desk. I told him of our experiences over on Burney’s Field, of the visit to the deserted dugout, of the finding of the canary birds and Harkinson’s owl, of the terrible scream about which the Pelham boys had warned us, and how we had been scared to death the night we took Dave Burns home.

  “And of all this,” said Harold. “What do you make? What do you figure, Seck?”

  “I’ll tell you what I figure,” I answered. “I figured it out that Stoner’s Boy has got some sort of a contraption over there that is intended to frighten away anybody who comes near the dugout.”

  “You think then,” said Harold, “that Stoner is holding his headquarters in the old dugout that was formerly used by the Red Runners, eh?”

  “What else?”

  “Oh,” said Harold. “There could be something else. You might be wrong, you know. But I don’t want to discourage you, old top. Understand me, clearly. I’ve been educated in a few things since I first joined your club, Hawkins, old boy. I’ve come to believe that there are more ways of killing a cat than one.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “What’s your idea, then, of this awful scream on Burney’s Field?”

  He laughed.

  “That’s another thing I’ve been wised up to,” he said. “Never to jump at hasty conclusions. In Boston, Hawkins—”

  “Forget Boston,” I said. “You’re on our old riverbank, Harold. Remember that. Forget the rest till you go back to school. Help me figure this dern thing out before you have to go back. I’ve got to get at the bottom of this mystery. I ain’t goin’ t’ rest till I do—it worries me. Not only that, but it’s dangerous. As long as that terrible screeching goes on over there on Burney’s Field, there’s danger near f
or all of us boys. Maybe it will come across the river some night. Who can tell? What if it should come while we are having our singing practice some night? Supposing it should bust in on us like that?”

  Harold didn’t reply. No. He sat there looking steadily at me, and his forehead was wrinkled.

  “That is true,” he said. “There is danger unknown, unforeseen danger. Hawkins, old fellow, it is up to you and me to solve this thing. We have got to put an end to it.”

  “Tell me what you think,” I said. “What you think it might be.”

  Harold shoved one shoulder up.

  “Might be a lot of things,” he said. “We don’t want to figure out what it might be, but what it is. That’s our work, Hawkins, yours and mine, and we’ll get busy at once.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Come on, I want to show this letter to the other boys.”

  So we walked on down to the hollow where the boys usually play ball, but they were not there.

  “Swimmin’,” said Harold.

  Sure enough, we found ’em, at the old swimmin’ hole, all diving and trying to beat Oliver, the other twin. But they couldn’t get on to the new kinds of diving Oliver had learned at the fancy school in Massachusetts. Jerry Moore was so sore at Oliver that he was putting on his pants already, refusing to try any more. The diving that these twins could do was remarkable, as I found out later. But I made them all come out of the water quickly when I began to read Will Standish’s letter. Maybe you never heard of Will Standish before. Well, he was the English boy Link and I met down in Cuba. He saved our lives down there when we were locked in a torture chamber, and he did a lot of other fine things. Will Standish was a hero in our eyes. He came back with us from Cuba and spent a few weeks with us last summer, and all the boys got to like him very much, till one day his pop sent for him to come back and he had to go. Well, now he wrote me he was coming back, sometime soon.

  I gave the letter to Dick, and then I snuck away all by my lonesome.

  There is something funny about me. There are times when I don’t want to be near anyone. Just now after reading a letter from Will Standish, I felt that very way. I wanted to get away from everybody. Because I was thinking once more of the dangerous days I had spent in Cuba and of all the worries I had. And it brought to my mind again the dangers that were this very minute threatening our boys on our own riverbank. Ever since the night I had heard the cry on Burney’s Field and that thing that Shadow Loomis had called a “great shadow” had passed by me in the dark, I had not been feeling very safe. No. I knew there was some meaning to it. And I knew it didn’t mean good for us boys.

  I started on slowly through the woods. Golly! how I do love the green grass and the trees and the solitude, the sound of singing birds. Boys who live in the hot, stuffy, old city streets don’t know how good it is to be in the woods in the summertime. I started through the trees, I say, and I had not gone ten yards before I was given a scare by a slight sound behind me.

  “Perry,” I said. It was him. Perry Stokes, him and his rifle.

  “Beggin’ yer pardon, sir,” he said softly. “Where y’ goin’, Hawkins?”

  I walked back and put my hand on his shoulder.

  “Perry,” I said, “can’t I go anywhere without you tracking me like a coon-huntin’ dog?”

  Perry shook his head.

  “No sir,” he replied. “Not now, you can’t, Hawkins. It’s fer your best, sir. I know what to look for. That boy Jude—”

  “The dickens with Jude,” I cried. “I don’t care about Jude—”

  “Ah, but there are others who do, sir,” broke in Perry. “I do, Hawkins; I happen to know that the Jude boy is looking for you and he has a grudge, sir, a grudge against you, Hawkins—”

  I turned quickly and said no more. I didn’t want to fuss with Perry. He was a good little shaver. Always a bodyguard to me. The little freckle face always thought he had to keep an eye on me so I wouldn’t get hurt. Never did I have a friend who felt that way about me. So I thought to myself, I haven’t any kick against Perry. Even though he did make me feel cross about it, once in a while.

  Suddenly from out the trees sprang a nimble figure. He startled me at first, and I had a hard time making my heart slow down, but I recognized him at the second look.

  “Three-Finger Fred!” I exclaimed. “What you doing?”

  “Not so loud,” whispered Three-Finger Fred; for it was he. Yeah, the old side partner of Stoner’s Boy stood before me, crouching, as if to hide himself in the path between the bushes. “Not so loud, Seckatary Hawkins; I come to do you a favor, and you don’t know it. Big Ike is lookin’ for you, Big Ike—”

  He turned his head sharply. Before I knew it, he had dived into the bushes and was gone. Only the shaking leaves told where he had disappeared. Perry Stokes had come running up to me, but there was no need for him. Three-Finger Fred had come to give me a warning. Three-Finger Fred! Poor, little fellow! I had saved him once from Stoner’s Boy. I had thought that he was safe in New Orleans, away from the evil influence of the Gray Ghost. And now he was back again, working again with the same boy who had brought him to trouble years ago.

  “He gave me a warning, Perry,” I said. “It was Three-Finger Fred. Do you happen to know of anyone called Big Ike?”

  “No,” said Perry, shaking his head. “Never heard of such a person, sir.”

  The words had hardly come from Perry’s tongue before a shadow fell across our path. I looked up quickly. A tall boy, the tallest I ever saw since the Yella Kid and Long Tom, tall in legs and long in body, stood before us. He wore no shoes or hat; his only clothes seemed to be a shirt and overalls. He held out his hand.

  “I know yuh,” he said suddenly. “Take this; it’s for you, Seckatary Hawkins.”

  I said nothing but reached out my hand and took the folded paper he held out to me. It was a single sheet, torn from a notebook, folded once. I spread it out and read the following, written by somebody who could write a beautiful penmanship:

  To Seckatary Hawkins—If you should come across McJinty again, you will remember to keep your hands off him. Nobody is to punish him but me. He will do you no harm as long as you let him alone, but you will have no hair in your head if you make him mad. That is his one bad habit, pulling other fellows’ hair. And if you ever do lick him or punish him in any way, you will hear from me. This is a friendly warning, so please heed it. Better do as I say.

  No name was signed. As I finished reading it, I looked and saw the tall boy with arms folded, as if waiting for me to give him a reply. Perry Stokes stepped up and I handed him the note. “It’s from Simon Bleaker,” I said.

  But then, I wasn’t so sure. No. For, no sooner had I spoken, when there came from the cliffs the sound of the old brass horn. Stoner’s Boy was blowing, calling, or warning somebody. Maybe it meant us. But I didn’t think so. No. And I’ll tell you why I didn’t think so. For, as soon as the sound of the horn came to us, the tall boy turned, and, diving into the bushes as Three-Finger Fred had done, was gone in an instant.

  “Shall I track him, sir?” asked Perry, jumping forward with the rifle.

  I shook my head.

  “No,” I said. “Better go slow, Perry, old top; we don’t know what we’re up against. I guess we ought to show this note to the other boys—or Harold, anyway.”

  Which we did.

  CHAPTER 22

  The Challenge

  HAROLD laughed when I showed him the note Simon Bleaker had sent to me by Big Ike, but Shadow Loomis did not laugh. The Skinny Guy, too, thought it was something to think about instead of laughing at.

  “This sounds,” said Harold, “like a message from our old friend Stoner’s Boy. It is unsigned, too, did you get that? Stoner never used to sign his notes.”

  “That part is all right,” I said. “But if you remember, Stoner never could write so fine as this. Look at the handwriting. Tell me, did you ever see a note like that from Stoner’s Boy?”

  Harold laughed again.

&nb
sp; “You must remember, Seckatary,” he said, “that it has been two years since Stoner used to write us notes. He may have gone to school in that time. May have learned to write better.”

  I went to my desk and took out the cardboard on which Stoner’s Boy had first written that he had come back. I handed it to Harold.

  “Look at that,” I said. “Stoner tacked it on our door when he came back a few weeks ago. Look at the handwriting.”

  “Yes,” said Harold, studying the note. “It’s Stoner’s same old handwriting. Well, then, this second note, the one you say Big Ike gave you, whoever he is, was written by someone else.”

  “By Simon Bleaker,” I said. “There was a time when I thought Simon Bleaker was Stoner’s Boy, but I don’t think so now. This handwriting proves it.”

  “Well, I’m going to tell you this,” said Harold. “If that little McJinty fellow comes fooling around me and trying to pull my hair, I’m going to handle him, whether Simon Bleaker likes it or not.”

  “That’s just how I feel, too,” spoke up Shadow Loomis. “Simon Bleaker can keep his pals away from here, if he wants to keep ’em out of trouble. That little hair-pulling McJinty is a pest.”

  “He won’t do any harm,” broke in the Skinny Guy, grinning at Shadow Loomis. “He’s funny, I think. I like to watch him go—zippity, and he’s gone. Did you ever see him climb a tree? Just like a monkey. He’s funny, McJinty is.”

  “Well,” I said. “After all, it’s better not to do anything that would get Simon Bleaker on our track. I think I know Bleaker pretty well. I believe he is one of the best fighters we have ever seen. I think he will make us sorry if we ever do anything against him.”

  “Forget him,” said Harold. “What I want is to meet Stoner once more. It’s a long time since we tried our wits, Stoner and me. He never did forget the time I caught him and tied him up. He was a slick customer in the old days, I tell you. And hard! oh, boy, I never saw a kid so tough as Stoner in my life.”