CHAPTER V
The following Monday all the men working on the city street car lines walked out. Not a car was taken from the barns, and a strange quiet filled the city streets. Comparatively few persons walked as far as the shopping district, and by late afternoon a footsore and weary procession wended their way homeward.
The weather was much cooler and the boys, braced up by the breezes, spent hours over the wireless.
During the preceding week some peculiar messages had been picked up. The boys pored over them but could make nothing of them. On every porch after dinner everybody talked of the dynamiting that was taking place.
“It looks just like when a package of firecrackers commence to go off in the grass,” said Eddie, who had been reading and listening to the after-dinner discussions. “Dad says no one knows who is accountable for the outrages. Gosh, I would hate to be a mayor, or ’most anything except a boy! But one day pop! off will go a bomb in front of some big building in San Francisco, and next it will be in New York, and next in Dallas. Pop, pop, pop! all over, and not a single man arrested.”
“It is funny,” Bill agreed. “My dad says somewhere a master chemist is making oodles of bombs and infernal machines, and there must be a storehouse somewhere. But he don’t see how they communicate with each other. He says he don’t believe a letter is ever written.”
“Dad says he don’t believe they ever use anything but word of mouth.”
“Not quick enough,” answered Eddie.
Dee suddenly leaned close to the two boys and whispered a single word.
“Wireless!” he said. Then as the two turned and stared, their thoughts whirling,—“Wireless, and we have been getting some of their messages! They are right here in the city, I will be bound!”
Gently and softly Bill let himself down on the grass. Eddie sat transfixed. Slowly the pop bottle from which he had been drinking tilted over and the precious fluid trickled out.
“Those queer sort of kiddish ones,” said Eddie finally.
“It might be,” granted Dee.
The boys were silent, thinking, when a loud explosion rent the air. Dust rose behind the houses over by the Home, across the Park. Somewhere a woman screamed shrilly. Men yelled, and with a little yelp Eddie came to himself and streaked down the street after the long legged Bill and Dee.
A street car had ventured out of the barn and the track before it had been blown up.
“This thing has got to stop,” exclaimed Eddie as they walked slowly back home, “Do you know the telephone operators are going to walk out tomorrow?”
“No street cars and no telephones! Nice sort of things!” said Bill.
“Let’s go up to the club room, and see if we can pick up Ernest Beezley. He would like to hear about things if he is in camp tonight.”
“I know he is,” said Bill. “He is on duty all this week. They are making a lot of changes over there. Knox is a permanent camp now, you know.”
Dee went to the instrument and soon the invisible feelers were reaching, reaching far out into the darkness. Once in touch with Knox, they soon were talking with Ernest, who was indeed glad to hear all the news.
“Don’t tell what we suspect about the dynamiters,” whispered Eddie.
“Of course not!” answered Dee. Presently he turned to the boys. “He says for the whole Wireless Club to pile into Frank’s car tomorrow and come out to Knox for the day.”
“Good work,” said Bill. “I will see if I can get hold of Fat and Skinny. I will telephone so I can talk to Mrs. Bascom if Fatty is out.”
Together they trailed down to the telephone and found that Fatty was just finishing supper. Skinny was there, and both boys were delighted to go.
“What about lunch?” asked Fatty. “Hadn’t we better take along something to eat?”
“Yes, we will have to, because there is no hotel there. Better each one take his own lunch,” suggested Bill.
“That’s a good idea,” said Fatty in a relieved voice. “Then nobody needs to bother about anybody else. What time do we start?”
“Early,” said Bill. “You will have to stir yourself, and we will meet you on the corner of Burnett at six. Don’t be late.”
“All right, I’ll be there, and so will Skinny; and we will each bring our lunch.”
The following morning, Eddie and Dee were sitting on the running-board of Frank’s little flivver long before Bill poked a sleepy face out of the window and hailed them. Each boy had a bulging pocket, where his lunch reposed. But Fatty’s pockets did not bulge more than Fatty’s own self made them. Fatty was standing on the corner waiting for them. His back was nearly covered by a large, roomy knapsack that bulged.
“What cher got in there?” said Bill, punching the knapsack. “A coat? You won’t need it!”
“Be careful!” admonished Fatty, cringing away. “Don’t get so gay! That’s my lunch you’re punchin’!”
“Lunch!” cried Eddie. “Say, Fat, you are a peach! To think of your bringing enough for the whole bunch. I say that’s good of you! And your mother is the best cook!”
“Well, I didn’t bring lunch for anybody but me,” exclaimed Fatty, shifting the knapsack as far as possible away from Eddie. “I did just what you said; I had my mother fix enough for me.”
“Oh!” said Eddie. “Well, that’s what we said all right. I forgot that you like to eat quite a lot. What did you bring, Skinny?”
“Cake of sweet chocolate,” said Skinny. “Mother was tired last night, and I don’t eat much anyway, and so I just brought that.”
“Not very filling,” remarked Frank, turning his kind eyes on the thin boy beside him.
“Awful nourishing though,” said Fatty, eagerly. “I saw in a paper somewhere that there is more juice to a cake of chocolate than there is to a pound of beefsteak.”
“Well, I declare!” exclaimed Frank. “I tell you what let’s do. When it comes lunch time, everybody will swap lunches with some other fellow. It will be all sorts of sport. Sort of like grab bag, because we don’t any of us know what anyone else has. I don’t even know what Bill brought.”
“Good work!” said everybody, glancing sidewise at Fatty. He said nothing at all. Experience with the boys had taught him that silence was sometimes his best weapon. He was conscious of a sinking sensation. Already the crisp early morning air was making him feel a few preliminary pangs of hunger. He knew Frank Wolfe too well to think that he, Fatty, would draw anything besides that miserable cake of chocolate!
Ernest was strolling around the parade ground, waiting for them, and shook hands heartily all around. If it happened that his grasp of Fatty’s plump and dimpled paw was enough closer to make the owner give a faint squawk of surprise and pain, it did not seem that Ernest was conscious of it. He smiled blindly and pumped Bill’s skinny arm up and down. Bill did not seem to mind.
After showing the boys all around the camp proper, they walked to the highest part of the cantonment and Ernest pointed out in the distant hills where the caves were to be found.
Kentucky is full of caves, and every little while someone will discover new ones. These, Ernest stated, had been but slightly explored. They had found dangerous drops and passages in the ones that had been opened, and the others had been forbidden. A sign “No Trespassing” shut them off but Ernest thought that after lunch the boys ought to go over and see what they could.
“Why not go now?” asked Eddie. “Then this afternoon we can go swimmin’.”
“That’s all right, too,” said Ernest.
They strolled slowly across fields, down and up dusty roads, and over barbed wire fences that invariably took toll of blood from Fatty. After an abrupt scramble up a steep hillside and around a jagged curve that looked impassable a few feet away, they came into a region filled with overhanging, broken masses of rocks, with dark, forbidding holes yawning at them here and there. As they walked on they saw that a number of the openings were marked “Dangerous.” Finally they came to one that looked as though it had been well traveled.
“We had better not go in,” said Ernest. “It isn’t safe without a flashlight.”
Bill produced one. “Frank and I always carry one apiece for fear we will have night trouble with the flivver,” he explained.
“Good enough!” said Ernest. He took the flash and led the way into the cave. “I will lead,” he said. “I have been in here a dozen times!”
The cave, as caves in Kentucky go, was small but strictly up to specifications. The first space or chamber was scarcely head high and only about eight feet square. This was fairly well lighted from the opening and was littered with lunch papers and boxes, and in the center there was the blackened coals of a fire someone had built. From this they went single file through a narrow and twisted passage for fully twenty feet. They found that they were going down a gentle incline. Strange to say, the air was pure and clear; and a soft breeze fanned their faces. It was gloriously cool.
“Hope your flash is all right,” said Ernest. His voice sounded flat and small in the close passage.
“It is,” answered Bill. “I put a new battery in this morning.”
“I have a flash, too,” said Fatty unexpectedly, “but my battery is almost gone. I put it in my pocket to get a new one and forgot it.”
“We will stick by Bill’s, I reckon,” said Ernest. He turned a sharp corner and disappeared, light and all. Fatty surged forward and pressed close to Bill, but Bill in turn hurried ahead, shaking Fatty’s hand from his shoulder. Bill didn’t want anyone leaning on him in the dark. They felt their way around the jagged rock and found Ernest standing in a high chamber, turning his flashlight here and there on the walls and the vaulted ceiling.
Snow white pillars supported the roof, which was covered with icicles of sparkling stone. Some of these stalactites were five feet in length, but most of them were no larger than the icicles that hang on the eaves after a hard thaw and sudden freeze, and they were even more beautiful. In the light of the flash they sparkled as though covered with small, brilliant gems.
From a far, far distance came the sound of water dripping. Otherwise the silence was complete.
The boys were awed.
“Mamma!” exclaimed Eddie softly. “What a place for spies!”
Ernest walked slowly around the great chamber. It must have been thirty feet in diameter. In the center was a sort of hump or mound of the glistening white stones. Ernest went over to it and they all sat down.
Eddie tried making unusual sounds. His voice sounded very queer.
“There is an echo chamber in one of the caves,” said Ernest. “I don’t know whether it is in this one or one of the others. You shout, and all the walls shout back at you for about ten minutes. It is fierce. Some other day, if you come out, we will spend the whole day exploring. But I have to fly this afternoon. I wish I had thought to bring my lunch; we could have eaten in here.”
Fatty felt chilled. He swallowed hard. “No-n-no place to get a drink,” he hastened to say.
“Well, if you don’t want a drink, Ernest, Fat has enough lunch for both of you, and he sure wants to divide,” said Bill.
Ernest looked at Fatty’s anguished face.
“I could tell it at a glance!” said Ernest cheerfully.
“You can have some of my sweet chocolate, too,” offered Skinny Tweeters.
Ernest clapped him on the back. “Good old scout!” he said. “Fact is, I would rather have half or three-quarters of Fatty’s lunch than anything I know, but I have got to go back to camp. There’s a fellow I have to see at twelve.”
They retraced their way out of the cave with many exclamations over the somber, silent beauty of the place, and on coming out into the air were almost blinded by the dazzling sunshine.
Bill drew in a long breath. “Gosh, I am glad I am not a bat or a mole! I sure would hate to stay down in a place like that!”
“Suppose you had to stay in a dungeon for forty years or so?” asked Eddie.
“Yes, suppose you were one of those old ducks in Venice centuries ago who were sent across the Bridge of Sighs and who disappeared in dungeons deep below the level of the water. No light, no fresh air, nothing to see, nothing to do, no one to speak to, and rats running all around your cell. Stale water and mouldy bread to eat, and not very much of that. That was the life!”
“Nuthin’ but bread and water,” Fatty gasped.
“Brought to you once a day,” said Ernest.
“I’d uv died,” said Fatty with conviction.
Ernest looked him over with an appraising eye. “Not right away,” he said encouragingly. “You would have been able to stick it out a good while. But what you want to do, my little friend Fatty, is to keep away from the Cannibal Isles. My, my, how popular you would be!”
Fatty wriggled apprehensively.
The boys sauntered along toward camp, sometimes single file, sometimes in a close group around Ernest. Fatty lagged. His thoughts were unpleasant. He thought of the exchange of lunches that Ernest had suggested. He pictured in his mind’s eye the goodies he had seen his mother pack away in the knapsack given away; divided. Certainly he had never started out for a hard day with so many delicious parcels, all wrapped in paraffine paper. It was unspeakable; unbearable! Fatty lagged far behind as though he could hold back the moment. He knew Frank too well to think that he would forget his diabolical plan. He lagged and lagged, and all at once the whole bunch disappeared around a bend. Fatty had an inspiration.
Hurrying back, panting, listening for a whoop that would tell him that someone had returned to warn him to hurry up and join the crowd, stumbling over the loose rocks that filled the uneven path that led up the mountains, he gained the mouths of the caves. But he pressed on. The path dwindled to a narrow tread, scarcely noticeable. He rounded one turn, and then another. Here the dark cave mouths were less frequent. Fatty looked for a good hiding place in the brush. Just ahead of him he saw a long, narrow slit like a crack in the wall of rock.
A very thin and narrow slit it looked, but Fatty could see that there was an open space beyond, and he painfully squeezed through. Three shirt buttons scraped off, and Fatty barked his plump self here and there, but he made it and getting out his waning electric flash, he turned it around the chamber in which he stood. Someone had been there before him at some time, because two narrow flat boxes stood at one side. They would be nice to sit on.
They could hunt and hunt for him now! He was hungry—starved,—and slipping the knapsack off, he spread its contents on the box and gloated. Sweet chocolate indeed! Fatty smiled. Then he commenced to eat. He went from the left to right deliberately, blissfully. Chicken sandwiches, ham ditto, lettuce and egg and mayonnaise sandwiches. Two cream puffs, sweet pickles, jelly roll, nut cake, a large dill pickle, a thermos bottle of iced cocoa.
Fatty ate it all.
Strengthened and refreshed and flushed with triumph, he looked at the empty board, strapped his knapsack on his back and, rather oppressed by the silence, started through the opening.
Then did Henry Bascom, familiarly known to his intimates as Fatty, receive a shock. The narrow opening which had admitted him refused to give him up! It had cost three buttons to come in. It would have cost a goodly slice of Fatty to get out. Sandwiches, cream puffs, pickles, jelly roll and nut cake made a difference, a fatal difference.
Fatty was a prisoner!