“Not that I know of.”
“It’s a very special case then, and a special case requires special methods. When I see a man at four fires I’m going to watch him. And, believe me, if I ever see one of those two again I’ll have him arrested. And that goes double for old limpie hooknose! When you see a man at fire after fire; when you chase him and he risks his life to escape from you; when someone very much like him, in a place where you suspect him of being, leaps out at you and all but does you in; when someone very like him twice hunts you in a marsh where you’re trying to enjoy yourself, you can’t help but feel that you’re on the right track.”
“Does sound like there was something in it,” argued the Chief. “But, after all, you have positively identified the man only twice, at the two fires, and on neither of these occasions was he doing anything he could be arrested for. If he were to walk into this room at this very moment you might take him to jail, but unless he happened to be carrying damaging evidence on his person you’d have to turn him loose. You really haven’t anything on him—and you can’t hold an innocent man.”
“He ran when we chased him.”
“Honest people often do that.”
“Well,” Johnny paused in thought, “you wait. Give me time. I’ll bring you something yet, see if I don’t!”
That evening as Johnny descended to the ground floor on his way to keep his appointment with Mazie, he was surprised to find an orange wrapper in the box behind the door. So Ben Zook had remembered the signal!
“Ben Zook,” he whispered, “he has something to tell me. That man has been back on Ben’s island. I must go out there. I wish—” he paused, irresolute, “no, I promised Mazie, and I won’t go back on my word. I’ll go out and see Ben Zook when I come back—if it’s not too late, and I imagine it’s never too late for him.”
CHAPTER XIV
JOHNNY’S DARK DREAMS
Forest City was a place of many marvels; at least so it had seemed to Mazie in the days when, dressed in rompers, she had come there to play. The moment you entered the gate you came in sight of two very merry giants, reposing upon a carpet of green and dressed in suits of red and white checkers, six inches to each checker, each with his head propped upon an elbow and putting out a red tongue at you.