“Sayee!” he stopped and stared. “This is the very spot! The ball went into the bleachers right here.”
At that moment Johnny Thompson came up to them. Jensie and Ballard had gone off the field. Ballard was happy, he had played in a successful football game. True, he had been given no very important part in it, this he knew, was more or less a matter of chance. Next time,—well, anyway, he had on this day made no serious breaks. The future might take care of itself.
Johnny, however, was not thinking of Ballard at that moment. He was turning that strange air pump over and over in his hands. It was, he saw, a very ordinary pump, over which had been soldered an outer casing. The space between the pump and the casing was padded with asbestos. “As if the pump might get too hot,” he said to Dave as, assisted by Rabbit, Dave told what they knew of the strange occurrence.
“Keep still about this,” Johnny counseled at last. “The crowd thought the ball just naturally blew up; that happens, you know. Let them think it. We’ll get at the bottom of this mystery yet.”
Strangely enough, as often happens, this mystery was closely related to another and, had Johnny but known it, the solution of one would go far toward untangling the other.
CHAPTER IX
THE “GHOST” WALKS AGAIN
That night the “ghost” walked again—that is, Panther Eye returned. It was late, how late Johnny did not quite know. He was seated beside the great, wood-burning stove in the great front room of the Blue Moon.
The crowd was gone. And what a crowd it had been, a merry mob of college folks celebrating a football game. Yells, songs, wild, fantastic dances and eats, lots of eats, and good, hot drinks, that was what the long evening had been. The Blue Moon was a success, a howling success. As he sat there in the half-darkness—one dim light shone in a far corner—Johnny was in a mellow mood.
And then, without a sound, the door opened. There came the shuffling of feet. Johnny caught the pale gleam of two balls of fire. “Pant’s eyes,” he whispered with an involuntary shudder.
“Hello, Johnny, I’m back,” came in a hoarse whisper.