The Auto Boys' Mystery

"Have you had anything to eat?" he demanded. "I'll bet you haven't!"

"Mighty little–either of us," was the answer. "We were lost,–just about."

"Here's something!" and Worth drew a basket out from beneath a blanket. "Guess we'll all feel better for a bite of breakfast," he added.

Crackers, cheese, bread and butter and bananas were in the "ship's stores," as Billy expressed it, and there was enough for all.

The simple matter of eating served not only to relieve hunger but gave all present a sense of better acquaintance and far greater freedom in talking with one another.

"'Tis an awful waste of wood, sure!" said Mr. O'Lear.

Obviously he referred to the fire. The flames now swept the shore line from the Point to the lake's eastern boundary. For miles upon miles the forest was a whirlwind of furiously roaring flames, or a desolate waste of blazing wreckage, smoldering stumps and blackened, leafless tree trunks.

"The clubhouse! The roof has caught!" cried Billy Worth suddenly. "And look! It's a man!–two men, on the porch roof!" he yelled.

"Great heavens! it's Lew Grandall!" cried the stranger on the raft. "And the other man! They're fighting!"

"It's Murky! The other one is Murky!" Paul's sharp voice fairly shrieked. "It's the suit-case! They have the suit-case! Murky's trying to get it away from him!"

"Oo–ho there!" shouted the golfing man with all his force. "Get to the ground! The fire's all around you! Get into the lake quick or you're dead men!"

For an instant the two who fiercely struggled on the small balcony seemed to answer to the voice. Grandall would have leaped, it was apparent, but the other seized him furiously, and drew him forcibly back. Then a thick burst of smoke concealed them both.

CHAPTER XI

SETTING WRONG THINGS RIGHT

Wearily had Lewis Grandall lain himself down to sleep in his hot, close room. It was his last night in the old clubhouse. He might have been quite comfortable, so far as his physical self was concerned, had he been willing to open the door-like window that led to the small balcony and admit the air; but this he feared to do.

Some sense of danger, a feeling of some dreadful peril impending, harassed him. He tried to reason it all out of his mind. He had not felt so before having actually in his possession the moldy, discolored leather suit-case, he reflected. Why should it make a difference?

There was no good cause for its doing so, he told himself, and resolved to think of other things. But always his thoughts came back to the one point–some great peril close before him. What was it? He could not fathom the distress of his own mind.

Often as Grandall tried wearily to forget, to turn and sleep, some lines of a tale he had somewhere heard or read,–a pirate's song you'll recognize as being in a book of Stevenson's–struck into his mind. It was as if someone sang or called aloud to him:–

"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest!
Yo-ho-ho! And a bottle of rum!"

In vain he told himself that it was nothing–nothing! That he must not let himself fall a prey to such silly dread, an unidentified fear, like a child afraid in the dark. But ever the sense of peril oppressed him. Ever there came to his haunted thoughts–

"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest!
Yo-ho-ho! And a bottle of rum!"

At last he rose and sat a long time on the edge of the bed. Then he dressed himself. For a great while, as the night crept slowly on, he sat thus fully clothed. He did not know why he did this. The fear of some unknown, threatening thing was not removed or altered. The ringing in his brain–

"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest!" was just as it had been before.

He lighted a match and looked at his watch. Four o'clock. Soon it would be daylight. Then he would go–leave this terrible place forever! Leave everything he hated–and that was all persons and all things. Leave the guilt he vowed he would never face–if he could. So thinking, he lay down once more and sheer exhaustion let the wretched man sink into heavy slumber.

Lynx-eyed, the scowling Murky waited. The black shadows of the thick shrubbery near the clubhouse door concealed him. A long, long time passed. It was quite evident, the tramp reflected, that the man with the suit-case had gone to bed.

Should he break in on him? Break in the house, slip up to his bed, strike one swift blow and end the whole search for that twenty thousand dollars quickly? End it all so quietly that the one who had played him false would never be conscious of the outcome?

No, that was not the plan Murky chose to follow. It might result in his obtaining the prize he sought, but he desired more. He wanted revenge. He wanted Grandall to know, too, that he was avenged,–would have him fully realize that it was Murky,–Murky whom he had tricked and deceived, that had found him out and vanquished him at last.

Daylight was necessary to the tramp's plan. He wanted Grandall to see and recognize him. He pictured in his mind how, when suddenly awakened, the trickster should find looking down into his face a pair of eyes that were sharper and just as unmerciful as his own. Then he would speak, make sure he was known–strike quickly and effectively, and be gone.

He would not commit murder–unless obliged to do so; it might make trouble. But he would leave Grandall so hopelessly senseless that there would be no possibility of early pursuit from that quarter, as there would probably be none from any other.

Oh, they were black, black thoughts that coursed in Murky's mind!–hardly the thoughts that should come to a man in his last night on earth. But they were very pleasing to the tramp. With a kind of wild, wolfish relish, he pondered over the details of his plan.

Satisfied that Grandall would not leave the clubhouse before morning, confident of his own ability to awaken at the slightest sound of footsteps near, and resolving to be astir before daybreak, anyway, if he were not disturbed earlier, which he regarded as quite improbable, the scowling wretch allowed his eyes to close.

Even in sleep Murky's face bore an expression little short of fiendish. He was lying quite under the thick foliage of the bushes. They screened him from view and from the breeze that had sprung up out of the west. But also they screened from his eyes the glow that now lit up the heavens, in the distance, for miles around.

It was the smoke, strong in his nostrils, that at last startled the fellow into sudden wakefulness. He had been too long a woodsman, had had too thorough a knowledge of the great forests in his earlier, better days, not to know instantly what it meant. He sprang up and looked about. The course of the wind was such, he reasoned, that the fire would not reach this particular vicinity. But what if it should? Why, so much the better, he reflected. The clubhouse would burn. If Grandall, dead or unconscious, burned with it–Murky's smile was hideous.

For some time he watched the progress of the fire, yet in the distance. But presently he became aware that the daylight was near. It was time for him to act.

Stealthily Murky crept to the broken window at the west side of the clubhouse and entered. He knew the first floor doors were locked, but he did not know that Grandall had secured his bedroom door. This he discovered in due time. Just outside the room he listened. Sounds of heavy breathing assured him his victim slept.

It took a good while for Murky's heavy knife to cut in a panel of the pine door a hole large enough to permit him to reach in and turn the key; for he worked very slowly, very quietly. The daylight was coming in at the window of the narrow hallway when his task was done–the daylight, the dull glare of the advancing flames and the sound of their roar and fury.

The door creaked slightly as ever so slowly its hinges were moved, but in another second Murky stood inside.

The man on the bed awoke–leaped to his feet–saw–recognized–gave forth a yell the like of which even the wildest places have seldom heard.

Instantly Grandall knew his danger. Seizing the leather case, for whose stolen contents he had risked so much, he threw open the balcony window. In another moment he would have leaped to the ground below but Murky caught him and they grappled.

It was in the midst of this first fierce struggle that the two were seen by those on the raft. Murky's greater strength was fast overpowering the other's soft muscles. Grandall breathed in choking gasps.

Then came the shouted warning from the lake. For an instant the surprise of it caused the tramp to relax his hold, but only for an instant.

"Blame me!" like some wild beast he growled, though there was savage delight in his tones as well, "Blame me! but I'd as soon leave my bones here as anywhere, to see you get what's comin' to ye, you lyin' skunk!" He fairly hissed the epithet in Grandall's ear.

It was at this juncture that Murky first drew his panting adversary back into the flaming clubhouse. Grandall knew he was no match for his enemy in strength.

"Wait, you fool!" he gasped. "There's a fortune for you–ease–luxury! Take it! I'll add as much more to it!"

As the lying wretch hoped, Murky's wild thoughts were for the moment attracted by the words. His grip upon Grandall's great, fat neck was weakened. Like lightning and with a vicious curse the latter threw him off, put forth all his strength and hurled the tramp to the floor.

For himself there was aid in sight, was Grandall's thought. If he could escape to the water below, he could make some explanation to those on the raft, whoever they might be. They would save him from the fire and from Murky, whom he feared still more.

Far more quickly than you read the words, the idea flashed in the mind of the frightened scoundrel. The instant he freed himself he leaped again through the window. With the yell of an enraged maniac Murky followed.

The Auto Boys and their companions on the great raft, floating but a few hundred feet from shore, saw Grandall reappear. With horrified faces they saw about him the smoke and flame that now raged in the roof above, and throughout the whole lower floor of the clubhouse, below the balcony,–saw him seize the leather case and pitch it far forward to the water's edge–saw him glance down as if, in desperation, to leap.

Again a blood-thirsty savage scream sounded above the fury of the fire and wind, and Murky also appeared on the flame-shrouded balcony.