Roy J. Snell

“ Drew said quietly. “Rattlesnake’d do that, too; but not a gangster.
“Johnny,” he said, suddenly wheeling about, “you’ve been believing in that old saw, ‘honor among thieves.’ Forget it. There isn’t any. Not a bit.
“I’ve known them to run over a little family car, smash it in bits with a powerful truck they were using to carry illicit goods. Did they stop? Not much. Fired shots in the air, and left little children to perish in the wreckage. Honor! Not a bit. I tell you it’s war! Pitiless war waged by monsters. And this land will not be free until they are all safely lodged in jail.” ”

“ Johnny thought that a strange expression. He was to learn more of it as the days passed.
“First thing we’ve got to do to-morrow,” said Drew, “is to work out the probabilities?”
“The probabilities?”
“Sure. You’ve read detective stories?”
“Sometimes.”
“Know how most of ’em go? A murder. One of six men may have done the killing. This one might have, or that one. This one probably did. And this one, well, you hardly consider him at all. But in the end, it’s always the one you did not suspect. It’s the bunk. Real life is not like that at all. ”

“ THE ARROW OF FIRE
CHAPTER I
THE SQUAD CALL
It was midnight. The waters of Lake Michigan were like glass, smooth glass, miles of it, blue-black. There was no moon. The stars burned queer bright holes in the blue-black glass. The long, low craft that glided through the water caused scarce a ripple.
At the prow of this Great Lakes’ freighter stood Johnny Thompson. He was gazing at the skyline of his own beloved city. Three years had passed since last he had caught the rumble of that great metropolis and had seen her lights gleaming out into the night. ”

“ He had never in his life carried a revolver, yet in the corner where he had placed it, close at hand, was such a sturdy yew bow as might have gladdened the eye of Robin Hood. And beside it were six ashen arrows with points of steel keen as a razor blade.
“But this,” he told himself, “is Chicago. My native city. My home.”
“You’ll be feeling need of sleep,” said his companion of the hour. “That’s your bunk. Turn in when you wish. Don’t mind a little music to lull you to the land of dreams?” He snapped on a radio which stood, until now quite unnoticed by Johnny, in the corner. ”

“ His white-haired guest, Newton Mills, the man he had found, was seated on his bunk, chin cupped in hands, staring at the floor.
Johnny lay in his bunk watching him for a full quarter of an hour. In all that time he did not move so much as a finger.
[156]
This man fascinated Johnny. Does this seem strange? Who has not dreamed of coming upon a derelict at sea; of seeing her masts broken, bridge and gunwale gone, decks awash, yet carrying on, the wreck of a one-time magnificent craft? Could such a sight fail to bring to the lips an awe-inspired cry? How much more the wreck of a great man? ”

“ So, sight-seeing, reminiscing, dreaming, he wandered through the day to find himself, toward eventide, wandering back to the low shack that lay at the foot of many great piles of brick, and wondered more and more that such a fellow as Drew Lane should choose so humble, not to say disreputable appearing, habitation. ”

“ Man has made them. Man is evil. God made the country. God is good.
“But no!” he cried. “I will not leave. I will never, never go from this city until those monsters are trapped like the beasts they are, and punished!”
Calmed by the firm resolve, he returned to the shack. There he listened quietly to the council of seasoned warriors as they mapped out a campaign in which he was to have a definite part.
When at last they all tumbled down upon bunks or in great chairs for a few winks of sleep, Johnny’s eyes did not close at once. He was still thinking of the man with the hole in his hand. ”

“ Suppose a bullet has been fired from a revolver. It has killed a man. You think you have the gun. You wish to say to judge and jury, ‘I have the gun that killed the man. This is the gun. I will prove it to you by a study of bullets fired from it.’ In view of the fact that there are thousands of such guns in existence, of the same caliber and manufactured by the identical machinery, are you able to prove that one particular gun fired the fatal shot?”
“Don’t seem possible,” said Johnny. ”

“ On the youth of to-day a great city exerts an indescribable charm. Johnny would not leave this city of his boyhood days until he had conquered or had been conquered.
“It’s strange, all this,” he mused. “Wonder why that man beat me up there in the studio? Wonder if Sergeant McCarthey knows any more than he did. Let me see. Pickpockets, boy robbers, theatre holdup men, safe blowers. Wonder whose accomplice that man with a hole in his hand is. ”

“ A month later, a scene half cheerful, half sad, was enacted at the Ramacciotti cottage. Rosy and her mother, smiling their best to keep back the tears, walked out of the cottage for the last time. A taxicab was waiting. They were on their way to the depot, bound for Italy. They were just an Italian mother and daughter; simple, kindly folks, just such people as we almost all are. Yet they mattered much to some; to Johnny and Drew, to Herman McCarthey and Newton Mills.
Johnny and Drew helped them into the cab, gripped their hands in a last farewell; then they turned to walk back to the shack. ”

“ That night as he went to work, walking by preference down the Avenue, then over the Drive that fronted the lake, as one will at times, Johnny received the impression that he was being watched, perhaps followed.
An uncomfortable feeling this, at any time. A late hour, a deserted street, do not lessen one’s mental disturbance.
Long ago Johnny had formed two habits. While walking alone at night he kept well toward the outer edge of the sidewalk. Under such conditions it is hard for a would-be assailant to spring at one unobserved. Then, too, he carried one hand in his coat pocket. ”

“ Half an hour later Johnny and Drew were back at the shack. The squad car with its load of burly policemen was gone.
For a long time nothing was said. Johnny’s head hurt. It also ached in a most extraordinary manner. He felt sick at the stomach. Life for him had gone suddenly very strange.
“Drew,” he said at last, “that man, whoever he was, didn’t give me a chance, not a single fighting chance.”
“Of course not. They never do, those gangsters.”
“Drew,” said Johnny, “I was hunting in the Arctic once, stalking a polar bear all alone; following his track. ”

“ Beyond this, through glass partitions, he could see a young man. Sitting before an elaborate array of lights, plugs and switches, this man put out a hand here, another there, regulating the controls, directing the current that carried messages of joy, hope, peace and good will to the vast invisible audiences out in the night. He was the station operator.
In the studio beyond, only half visible to Johnny, the men of a jazz orchestra performed on saxophones, trap drums and who can say what other instruments? ”

“ To the habitual wanderer a cot, a hammock, or only a hard floor is made for sleep. The places, a jungle, an Arctic tundra, a shack in a city’s slums are all the same to him. He sleeps where he may and leaves trouble to the morrow. So it was with Johnny. ”

“ Their minds were concentrated upon the telltale bullets.
“Now, young man.” It was Volpi, he of the hole in his hand, who spoke. “Where are them slugs?”
“Slugs?” said Johnny.
“Bullets then. Them bullets?”
“I have no bullets. I use no gun. I shoot only with bow and arrow.”
“Ah, yes! With those you are skillful!” Volpi’s words carried infinite hate. He knew what had happened to Jimmie McGowan. Jimmie had been useful to him in many ways. And now, who knows? Ah yes, he must have those bullets at any cost. ”

“ Each man has some little tell-tale action which brands each job he pulls. One man never speaks; he writes out his orders. Another whispers. A third shouts excitedly. One is polite to his victims, especially the ladies. Another is brutal; he binds them, gags them, even beats them. Some prefer silence; some, noise.
“It would seem,” he sat up to drum on the desk, “that our friend with the hole in his hand likes the sound of his gun. He fired an unnecessary shot in the Ramacciotti case, and one when he raided your studio. ”

“ A week later Johnny, Drew and Joyce were seated in a clinker-built rowboat over a deep, dark hole that lies close to shore on the north side of Lake Huron. On the shore was a cabin. In a sunny spot before the cabin Herman McCarthey and Newton Mills sat spinning yarns. For life must not be all work. Man’s nature demands a change. ”

“ As the operator’s startled senses directed his attention to Johnny’s cubby-hole, and his eyes took in at a glance the full horror of the situation, he stood paralyzed with fear.
His chair overturned, Johnny Thompson lay crumpled on the floor. A shadowy figure reached up and crushed his light as a child might a bird’s egg. The same figure seized the police gong and hurled it through a window. Broken glass flew in every direction. A telephone followed the gong. ”

“ Drew Lane’s experiences as a detective were not over. They were but well begun. The problems of enforcing the law and maintaining order in a great republic are never fully solved. They go on from year to year and from generation to generation. Drew Lane was destined to do his full part. And Johnny Thompson, as his understudy, was not to lag far behind. ”

“ Judgment comes only with years of experience. Gone; and the bullets gone with him! They have him. They have the bullets. The case is lost!”
“I wouldn’t say that exactly.” Drew Lane spoke in a quiet, even voice. “He must have left the shack for something. They must have got him. That is unfortunate. Will they get the bullets? I doubt it. Johnny is an unusual boy. I haven’t lived with him all this time without knowing that.
“And if the bullets are gone, we have a witness, Rosy.”
“If she lives.”
“She must live. Life is too beautiful for such a girl to part with it so soon.” ”

“ By this time both Johnny and Drew were listening with all their ears.
“This study,” said Mills, “is sure to be of great service to the forces that make for justice. Every crook has his weakness. A weakness common to many is love for a particular gun. A man has carried a gun and used it many times. It has saved his life by taking the life of another. The gun becomes his pal, his defender. He does not willingly part with it. And in this he reveals a great weakness. That gun has left its trademark, its bullets, behind. By these, man and gun may be traced. ”

“ If I didn’t have a conscience that keeps me hunting men, I’d take up commercial aviation. There’s a job for you! I can fly. Have a hundred and ten hours to my credit, and never a crack-up.”
“Think they’ll ever use airplanes in hunting criminals?” asked Johnny, sitting up.
“Might. Couldn’t do much right in the city. But if a gang was supposed to be leaving town; if the car they used was well marked, you could do a lot with a plane; soar about, watching a hundred roads at once.”
“Had anything to eat?” Drew asked, as Johnny rose and busied himself with his toilet. ”

“ Johnny nodded.
“To me that remark was significant. He hates stool pigeons. Everyone does. A stool pigeon is a person who, for pay or for immunity from arrest for some crime he has committed, tells on some other person.
“There are men on every police force, good men too, who believe that criminals cannot be captured without the aid of stool pigeons.
“But how one must come to hate them when he is obliged to deal with them constantly. Perhaps you think of stool pigeons as poor, weak-eyed, slinking creatures who can earn a living in no other way. ”

“ Shortly after his discovery that the man who wrecked his broadcasting corner and beat him up was, in all probability, the robber who had murdered Rosy’s father, Johnny visited Sergeant McCarthey at the police station. As the days passed, this station was to become a place of increasing fascination for this boy who was interested in everything that had to do with life, and who had a gnawing desire to know all that is worth knowing. ”

“ And yet it’s fascinating, this detective business. There are boys, lots of them, who think crime is fascinating. They read those rotten stories about Jimmy Dale and the rest, and believe them. I tell you, Johnny!” He struck the table. “There never was the least touch of romance in any crime. It’s mean and brutal, cowardly and small. But hunting down these human monsters. ”

“ Darkness had fallen when they returned to the shack, yet Drew Lane did not throw on the lights at once. Instead, he guided Johnny to a comfortable chair.
“Let’s just sit and talk,” he said. “I like it best this way, in the dark. You tell me of the wild woods where the North begins, and I’ll tell you of a city where trouble is always just around the corner!”
“Tell me first,” said Johnny quickly, “how you came to be at the pier last night and why you picked me up.”
“Nothing easier,” Drew laughed. “An officer of the law is never fully off duty. ”

“ One might well be surprised. He was thinking of dark, shadowy forests, where the ferns grow rank and the pheasant rears her young. He was seeing a deep, blue-green fishing hole where black bass lurk and great muskies fan the water as an eagle fans the air. Who can say what relief one may find, from surroundings that are terrible, by contemplating that which is beautiful, though very far away?
* * * * * * * *
Drew Lane had just returned to the shack from a disheartening search for some clue that would lead to a knowledge of Johnny’s whereabouts, when an apparition burst in upon him ”

“ There are few more interesting places than the studio of a great radio station. Besides the never ending stream of famous ones, great authors, moving-picture actors, statesmen, musicians of high rank, opera singers, and many more, there are the regulars, those who come night after night with their carefully prepared programs planned to entertain and amuse a tired world.
That he might cultivate the society of those more skilled, more famous than he, Johnny arrived night after night an hour or two ahead of his schedule. ”

“ Newton Mills made that old familiar gesture seeming to brush cobwebs from his face. “My eyes are gone for to-night. To-morrow will do.”
Drew started to hang the gun on a nail beside the one that had hung there so long. Newton Mills took it from him and buried it deep in the bottom of a chest. He then locked the chest and hid the key.
“You can never be too careful,” he said quietly. “Things happen when we least expect them.
“By the way!” He changed the subject. “Where did you get that gun?” He pointed to the one hanging close to Johnny’s blood-stained arrow. ”

“ Not all the skilled musicians were transients. The Anthony Trio, piano, violin and cello, might have graced the program on many a notable occasion, yet here they were, night after night, sending out over the ether their skillful renditions of the best that other times have produced in the realm of music.
Dorothy Anthony, the violinist, a short, vivacious girl with a well rounded figure and dancing blue eyes, seemed no older than Johnny himself. ”