Boy Scouts on the Trail

by John Garth

The match went out, but not before Cavvy had noticed the lengths of cord and realized their possibilities. Hastily picking them up, he turned the man over with some difficulty so that he lay upon his face. Five minutes later he had tied the fellow’s wrists firmly behind his back and made his ankles fast. Then he straightened up and wiped the perspiration from his forehead.

His mind was in turmoil of doubt and fear and uncertainty. Up to this moment he had acted almost entirely on impulse—an impulse born of nervous fright and the sense of self preservation. He felt certain that in another moment the man would have discovered him and so he had struck instinctively. But now that the tension had relaxed for a moment he did not know what to do.

More than anything else he wanted desperately to get away as quickly as he could and follow Ferris and Ritter back to town where the whole business could be turned over to the proper authorities. He had had more than enough of meddling with anything so fraught with risk and danger as this proved to be, and he blamed himself bitterly for not realizing at first how things were likely to turn out.

But there was Micky. His strange disappearance and the discovery of his stick beside the door made Cavanaugh feel almost certain that his friend was in the house. Remembering what Ferris had said about the motor car that slowed down, he wondered whether the occupant, who might easily have been one of the gang of spies, might not have come suddenly upon McBride and made him a prisoner. The wind and rain up there in the tree top would easily have drowned any sounds of a slight scuffle.

At all events Cavvy couldn’t make up his mind to run away and leave his friend. He didn’t want to venture into that spooky house at all, but he felt that he must at least make a reconnoiter and find out whether what he suspected was true or not.

He glanced again at the man on the grass. The fellow was breathing heavily, but showed no other signs of returning consciousness. With a long breath, Cavvy gripped the stick tightly in one hand and stepping over the sprawling body he cautiously crossed the threshold. Noiselessly, in those rubber-soles which had already served him well that night, he tip-toed down the hall to the foot of the stairs, where he paused to glance around. Even in the semi-darkness, the ruinous, uninhabited look of the place was unmistakable. There was not a stick of furniture to be seen—nothing but odds and ends of rubbish, a few empty packing cases and layers upon layers of dust and cobwebs. Blotches of mold and mildew streaked the walls; a damp chill penetrated to his very marrow. On either side of the hall, doors opened into various rooms, but these rooms were dark, and it was evidently not on this floor that the activities of the wireless gang were centered.

Cavanaugh lost little time in the survey. His teeth were chattering with nervousness and cold and he wanted to be moving. From above still came an intermittent sound of movement and that same clink of metallic objects which he had been unable before to place. Whoever was up there had evidently not yet taken alarm, and Cavvy quickly decided that it would be safe to venture further.

He took the stairs slowly, keeping close to the wall to avoid awkward creakings. Presently his eyes reached the level of the floor above and he saw that the light came through an open door not far from the head of the stairs. Dropping on hands and knees, he crept up the few remaining steps, gained the door and peered eagerly through the crack.

From this point of vantage his glance swept curiously around the room. It was a large one, the walls streaked and spotted, with rotting remnants of paper hanging down in strips. The meager attempts at furnishing dotted the floor sparsely, like an oases in a desert. A bed, a table holding a small oil lamp, a couple of old chairs and a small, round stove thrust into the wide, old fashioned fireplace, practically comprised these furnishings.

But against the outer wall was the most interesting feature of them all and one which instantly riveted the boy’s attention. A wide, rough bench stood there holding a complete wireless apparatus. That is, it had been complete at no very distant time. Just now it was being dismantled as rapidly as the nimble fingers of the fat man could accomplish the task. His back was toward the door, but wires, screws, switches, and various other wireless parts lay about in confusion, while the twitching elbows projecting from the rear of that grotesque, massive figure told something of the feverish haste with which the demolition was being carried on.