"GET THAT MAN"
The trip from Cape Prince of Wales to Nome was fraught with many dangers. Already the spring thaw had begun. Had not the Eskimo whom Johnny employed to take him to the Arctic metropolis with his dog team been a marvel at skirting rotten ice and water holes in Port Clarence Bay, at swimming the floods on Tissure River, and at canoeing across the flooded Sinrock, Johnny might never have reached his journey's end.
As it was, two weeks from the time he left East Cape in Siberia, he stood on the sand spit at Nome, Alaska. By his side stood Hanada, who was still acting the part of an Eskimo and who had come down a few days ahead of him.
They were viewing a rare sight, the passing out to sea of the two miles of shore ice. The spring thaw had been followed by an off-shore wind which was carrying the loosened ice away. Johnny's interest was evenly divided between this rare spectacle and the recollection of the events that had recently transpired.
"Look!" said Hanada. "I believe the ice will carry the farther end of the cable tramway out to sea."
Johnny looked. It did seem that what the boy said was true. Already the cable appeared to be as tight as a fiddle string.
The tramway was a cable which stretched from a wooden tower set upon a stone pillar jutting from the sea to a similar tower built upon the land. This tramway, during the busy summer months of open sea, is used in lieu of a harbor and docks to bring freight and passengers ashore. This is done by drawing a swinging platform over the cable from tower to tower and back again. The platform at the present moment swung idly at the shore end of the cable. The beach had been fast locked in ice for eight months and more.
"Looks like it might go," said Johnny absentmindedly.
Neither he nor the Jap had seen or heard anything of the Russian. Two things would seem to indicate that that mysterious fugitive was in town; three times Johnny had found himself being closely watched by certain rough-looking Russian laborers, and once he had narrowly averted being attacked in a dark street at night by a gang of the same general character.
Hanada had not yet chosen to reveal his identity, and Johnny had not questioned him.
Only the day before a placard in the post office had given him a start. It was an advertisement offering a thousand dollars reward for knowledge which would lead to the arrest of a certain Russian Radical of much importance. This man was reported to have made his way through the Allied front near Vladivostok, and to have started north, apparently with the intention of crossing to America. To capture him, the placard declared, would be an act of practical patriotism.
Johnny had stared in wonder at the photograph attached. It was the likeness of a man much younger than the Russian they had followed so far, but there could be no mistaking that sharp chin and frowning brow. They had doubtless followed that very man for hundreds of miles only to lose him at this critical moment.
What had surprised him most of all had been the Jap's remark, as he read the notice:
"The blunderer! Wooden-headed blunderer!" Hanada had muttered as he read the printed words.
"Would you take him if you saw him?" Johnny had asked.
The Jap had turned a strangely inquiring glance at him, then answered:
"No!"
But they had not found him. And now the ice was going out. Soon ships would be coming and going. Little gasoline schooners would dash away to catch the cream of the coast-wise trading; great steamers would bring in coal, food, and men. In all this busy traffic, how easy it would be for the Russian to depart unseen.
Johnny sighed. He had grown exceedingly fond of dogging the track of that man. And besides, that thousand dollars would come in handy. He would dearly love to see the man behind prison bars. There would be no holding him for crimes he had attempted in Siberia, but probably the United States Government had something on him.
"Look!" exclaimed the Jap. "The tower has tipped a full five feet!" It was true. The ice crowding from the shore had blocked behind the tower, which stood several hundred feet from land. A dark line of water had opened between the two towers. Evidently the harbor committee would have some work on its hands.
"They're running down there," said Johnny, pointing to three men racing as if for their lives toward the shore tower. "Wonder what they think they can do?"
"Looks like the two behind were chasing the fellow in the lead," said Hanada.
"They are!" exclaimed Johnny. "Poor place for safety, I'd say, but he's got quite a lead."
At that instant the man in front disappeared behind the shore tower. As they watched, they saw a strange thing: the swinging platform began to move slowly along the rusty cable, and, just as it got under way, a man leaped out upon it.
"He's started the electric motor and is giving himself a ride," explained Johnny, "but if it's as bad as that, it must be pretty bad. He's desperate, that's all. The outer tower's likely to go over at any moment and dash him to death. Even if he makes it, where'll he be? Going out to sea on the floe, that's all."
Slowly the platform crept across the space over the black waters, then over the tumbling ice. The outer tower could be seen to dip in toward the shore. The cable sagged. The two other runners were nearing the inner tower.
"C'mon!" exclaimed Johnny, "The Golden West. A telescope!"
Closely followed by Hanada, he leaped away toward the hotel where, in a room especially prepared for it, was a huge brass telescope mounted on a tripod. Johnny, glancing out to sea, knew that the tower would be over in another thirty seconds. The platform was not twenty feet from its goal. His eye was now at the telescope. One second and he swung the instrument about. Then a gasp escaped his lips:
"The Russian!"
"The Russian?" Hanada snatched the telescope from him.
As Johnny watched he saw the man leap just as the platform lurched backward. The two men at the other tower had reversed the motor, but they were too late.
The next moment the outer tower toppled into the sea; the cable cut the water with a resounding swish. Johnny saw the Russian leap from ice cake to ice cake until at last he disappeared behind a giant pile, safe on a broad field of solid ice.
Hanada sat down. His face was white.
"Gone!" he muttered hoarsely.
"A boat?" suggested Johnny.
"No good. The ice floe's two miles wide, forty miles long and all piled up. Couldn't find him. He'd never give himself up. But he'll come back."
"How?"
"I don't know, but he'll come. You'll see. He's a devil, that one. But we'll get him yet."
"And the thousand," suggested Johnny.
Hanada looked at him in disgust. "A thousand dollars! What is that?"
"Is it as bad as that?" Johnny smiled in spite of himself.
"Yes, and worse, many times worse. I tell you, we must get that man! When the time comes, we must get him, or it will be worse for your country and mine."
"Ours is the same country," suggested Johnny.
"Huh!" Hanada shrugged his shoulders. "I am Hanada, your old schoolmate, now a member of the Japanese Secret Police, and you are Johnny Thompson. Whatever else you are, I don't know. The Russian has left us for a time. Let's talk about those old school days, and forget."
And they did.