CHAPTER IX
CREEPING SHADOWS
Pant’s wonderings about Johnny were not misplaced. To dismiss one’s good pal from his mind is impossible. Johnny did not wish to forget Pant. He had discovered his note and found himself deeply concerned about it.
After leaving Don del Valle in Guatemala City, he took a train to the coast. There he caught a fruit boat to Stann Creek, and armed with a note from Don del Valle to his plantation manager ordering him to deliver twenty thousand bunches of bananas to the bearer, he reached Stann Creek just one hour before the train was to start up the narrow gauge railway to the Kennedy grapefruit plantation.
His first task was that of getting off a wireless message to Captain Jorgensen offering him a combined cargo of bananas and grapefruit for his return trip to the United States. With what feelings of hopes and fears he then awaited the good skipper’s reply. Now he was elated by the hope that the North Star was still at his service, and now cast down by the fear that she was already loading mahogany, dyewood or cocoanuts.
He was not idle, however. Having gotten off his message, he hurried over to the office which Pant had left some hours before. It was with a deep feeling of unrest and disappointment that he found the place deserted. Colonel Longstreet had put the scattered papers to rights and repaired the damaged safe as best he could and he, too, had left. But on the table, weighted down by a polished square of ebony, was the curious note Pant had left. Scrawled across the top by the trembling hand of the old Colonel was Johnny’s name.
“That was evidently intended for me,” said Johnny, “but what in the name of all that’s sane does it mean?”
“Some of Pant’s doings,” he grumbled as with wrinkled brow he studied the miscellaneous jumble of figures, question marks and trade signs. “Oh well, there’s no time for working puzzles now. I must get up the railway to Kennedy’s fruit farm. Won’t they be joyous!” With that he thrust the paper in his pocket, but it was not entirely forgotten.
He was in the curious day coach with its seats along the sides and its broad open spaces in lieu of windows, waiting for the train to start, when he opened Captain Jorgensen’s wireless message.
His fingers trembled, his face grew sober as he unfolded the bit of yellow paper.
“What if—