CHAPTER XIX
A DEN OF THE UNDERWORLD
After dragging the Zoo telephone from its box and taking the scrap of black cardboard from a shelf, Johnny sat down to tell his story. He told it, too, from beginning to end; from the school fire to the discovery of Ben Zook, dead upon his island.
When the story had ended Pant sat for a long time slumped down in his chair. From his motionless attitude and his staring eyes, one might have thought him in a trance.
He came out of this with a start and at once began to reel off to Johnny the story he had just been told; only now there was association, connection, and a proper sequence to it all. He had put the puzzle together, piece by piece. No, it was more than that. The fires were one puzzle; Johnny’s affairs at the island another; and those at the marsh still another. After solving each of these separately and putting each small part in its place, Pant had joined them all in one three-fold puzzle board that was complete to the last letter.
“Sounds great!” said Johnny breathlessly as Pant concluded. “If all that is true we have only to find the man.”
“Find that man!” said Pant in a tone that carried conviction.
Twelve o’clock the following night found Johnny and Pant in a strange place. Standing with their backs against the unpainted and decaying side of a frame building, they were watching a door.
The frame building formed one wall to an alley which was in reality more path than an alley; a path of hard-beaten mud that ran between two buildings. Although the path ran through from street to street, the hard beaten part of the path ended before the door which the two boys were watching.
“Here comes another,” Pant whispered, drawing Johnny back into the shadows.
“And another,” Johnny whispered back.