Jerry Todd and the Oak Island Treasure

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JERRY TODD AND THE OAK ISLAND TREASURE

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Jerry Todd and the Oak Island Treasure. Frontispiece—(Page 46)

“STOP IT!” SHE CRIED, HER FINGERS IN HER EARS.

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JERRY TODD
AND THE
OAK ISLAND TREASURE

BY
LEO EDWARDS
Author of
THE JERRY TODD BOOKS, ETC.
ILLUSTRATED BY
BERT SALG

GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS : : NEW YORK
Made in the United States of America

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Copyright, 1925, by
GROSSET & DUNLAP [[v]]

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JERRY TODD SAYS:

What you will particularly like about this book, I believe, is our money-making canal-boat show. We fixed up Dad’s old clay scow swell, with a stage and audience seats and everything. We even had a sort of “orchestra.” Oh, boy! The way that old merry-go-round hand organ gurgled out its tunes when we twisted its tail! And the fun we had!

Scoop was the magician, advertised in the Tutter newspaper as the Great Kermann. Red was the ticket agent. Peg and I were officers of the show company and stage hands.

It was plain to us that we were going to make a wad of money giving black art shows. A million dollars, Scoop said, in fun. Peg said steadily that he would be satisfied with the price of a new bicycle. He got the bicycle, all right. But when you have read this story of fun and money-making and hidden mystery to its exciting final climax, you will say that he earned what he got … all of us, for that matter.

There is a new kind of ghost in this story. The Stricker gang, our enemy, tried jealously to [[vi]]break up our show, but the “friendly ghost” helped us out. Was it a real ghost? Or was it some unknown man playing ghost? We didn’t know.

Buried treasure, a lonely island, alternately cloaked in the blackest darkness and the brightest moonlight, a mysterious piano leg, a crazy-acting, talkative piano tuner—these are a few of the unusual high lights in an adventure story more exciting, I think, than my two earlier books, JERRY TODD AND THE WHISPERING MUMMY (Book No. 1) and JERRY TODD AND THE ROSE-COLORED CAT (Book No. 2); and as mysteriously bewildering as my later books, JERRY TODD AND THE WALTZING HEN (Book No. 4) and [JERRY TODD AND THE TALKING FROG] (Book No. 5).

Having read this story, treat yourself to some more hilarious fun with the “Whispering Mummy” book, a detective story that probably a million boys have laughed over. Mummy itch! Ever have it? We did.

In my “Rose-colored Cat” book we have our trials with a “feline rest farm”—a sort of sanitarium for wealthy people’s cats. There is oodles of fun and a hundred and fifty crazy cats in this book, and a peculiar mystery of six vanished pink pearls.

In the “Waltzing Hen” book you’ll meet old [[vii]]Cap’n Tinkertop and his hilarious dancing leg. A funny old coot! Why does the hen waltz? What is the secret of the yellow man and the frisky white doorknob? Rip-roaring reading here.

In my “Talking Frog” book we help a boy pal save a peculiar invention of his father’s from thieving hands. What is the shabby old soap peddler searching for, night after night, in the vanished miser’s old mill? What does “ten and ten” mean? You’ll search breathlessly for the answers to these and other riddles if you once get this gripping fun-mystery-adventure book into your hands.

Your friend,
Jerry Todd. [[ix]]

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OUR CHATTER-BOX

The earlier editions of this book did not contain a “Chatter-Box.” But so popular has this department become (I started it with my sixteenth book) that my publisher asked me to prepare a brief “Chatter-Box” for all of my early books.

The boys and girls who read my books supply the material for this department. As the author of the books, all I have to do is to assemble the material. If you are one of the many hundreds of boys who have written to me, it may be that your letter was incorporated in the “Chatter-Box” in one of my other books. Writers of accepted poems receive, as a reward, a free autographed copy of the book in which their poem appears. The fine poems (all written by boys and girls who call themselves Jerry Todd fans) contained in the “Chatter-Boxes” in my recent books will interest you. But if you can’t write poetry, built around the characters in my books, be sure and write me a letter. If you make your letter interesting I’ll try hard to find a place for it in a future “Chatter-Box.” I doubt if I could fully express the pleasure that I derive from the many letters that I receive. My boy pals! That is the way I regard the writers of these dandy letters. So the more letters I receive the more pals I’ll have. And I sure like pals!

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LETTERS

“One day,” writes Oswell Patout, Jr., of Jeanerette, La., “our gang (I’m enclosing a picture showing the three of us reading Jerry Todd books) began receiving mysterious maps and letters informing us about missing pearls. Here was a fine chance, we thought, to solve a mystery like Jerry Todd and his gang. So we set to work in regular Juvenile Jupiter Detective style. But, alas, the pearls were a fake. The letters and maps were a trick of boy [[x]]friends of ours who know how ‘bugs’ we are about your peachy books.”

“I’ve made up my mind that I’m going to be a book writer like you,” writes Charles Jordan of Chicago, Ill., “or at least try to be. If all men were like you it sure would be a swell world for us kids. I sure do appreciate your books. Yes, sir, I do. My cousin and I have tried many times to do things like Jerry. But what can a fellow do here in this big city! Boy, Jerry and his gang sure have peachy times, if you ask me. Whenever I read a Jerry Todd book I have the feeling that I’m right there, going through all the adventures the same as the other boys.”

“I belong to a gang of Boy Scouts,” writes Billy Johnston of Little Rock, Ark. “We have bully good times. One time we had a cave, to get into which we first had to raise a trapdoor and then crawl through a dark tunnel.”

Boy, that sounds hot! And I’m reminded, too, of the cave that Trigger Berg and his pals built. Did you, Bill, like Trigger and his gang, catch a robber in your cave? This episode of Trigger’s, I believe, took place in the Treasure Tree book.

And as though in answer to Bill’s letter, Joe Griffith of Allegan, Mich., writes: “Our cave, built back of our barn, didn’t last long. For a boy walked across the top and two boards fell on the kid’s head who was inside. Ouch! I was glad it wasn’t me.”

Also from Allegan comes this interesting letter from Jack (Yam) Hale: “As the leader of our gang I am called Jerry Todd. Don Garlock is Peg. Zeb Jones is Scoop. And Si Herrington is Red. Having a raft with a big slingshot on it we frequently dress up like pirates, using wooden swords. Also we built a lean-to in the woods and made a totem pole—not so good, though, as the one in Poppy’s book. Nor must I forget the ‘Stricker gang’ that we have battles with. That’s the name we have for a rival gang near us. They’re hard, like Bid.”

Here’s a joke (I think it’s good, too) sent in by Emanuel Bernstein of Newark, N. J.:

Jerry: “It’s only six o’clock. I told you to come over after supper.”

Red: “That’s what I came after.”

Another boy—George Browne of Rye, N. Y.—submits this one:

Father, to little Tommie who had just started to school: “Well, son, what lesson do you like best?”

Tommie: “I like recess best.”

And what do you think—Alfred Burke of Cranford, N. J., states that he has read the Whispering Cave book twenty-four times! [[xi]]

Here’s another snappy one: “I tried to make a dinosaur egg,” writes Jack Hanson of Rockford, Ill. Jack doesn’t say how the egg turned out. Yet how glad we are that he didn’t try to lay it!

“My chums and I recently organized a Juvenile Jupiter Detective Association,” writes Wilfred Hinkel of Elmont, L. I., N. Y., “only we call ourselves the Jerry Todd Union of Detectives. Boy! You should see our peachy badges.”

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FRECKLED GOLDFISH

Out of my book, Poppy Ott and the Freckled Goldfish, has grown our great Freckled Goldfish lodge, membership in which is open to all boys and girls who are interested in my books. Thousands of readers have joined the club. We have peachy membership cards (designed by Bert Salg, the popular illustrator of my books) and fancy buttons. Also for members who want to organize branch clubs (hundreds are in successful operation, providing boys and girls with added fun) we have rituals.

To join (and to be a loyal Jerry Todd fan I think you ought to join), please observe these simple rules:

(1) Write (or print) your name plainly.

(2) Supply your complete printed address.

(3) Give your age.

(4) Enclose two two-cent postage stamps (for card and button).

(5) Address your letter to

Leo Edwards,
Cambridge,
Wisconsin.

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LOCAL CHAPTERS

To help young organizers we have produced a printed ritual, which any member who wants to start a Freckled Goldfish club in his own neighborhood can’t afford to be without. This booklet tells how to organize the club, how to conduct meetings, how to transact all club business, and, probably most important of all, how to initiate candidates.

The complete initiation is given word for word. Naturally, these booklets are more or less secret. So, if you send for one, please do not show it to anyone who isn’t a Freckled Goldfish. Three chief officers will be required to put on the initiation, which can be given in any member’s home, so, unless each officer is provided with a booklet, much memorizing will have to be done. The best plan is to have three booklets to a chapter. These may be secured (at cost) at six cents each (three two-cent stamps) or three for sixteen cents (eight two-cent stamps). Address all orders to

Leo Edwards,
Cambridge, Wisconsin. [[xii]]

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CLUB NEWS

“My chums and I,” writes Charles Lewis of Conneaut, Ohio, “are all Freckled Goldfish. Calling our chapter the Freckled Fantails, we have secret rules, initiations and mysterious departments, such as Juvenile Jupiter Detectives and Secret and Mysterious Order of Humpty-Dumpty. Our password is ——”.

You’ve heard about club members being in good standing. Well, Frank Boyd of Dunellen, N. J., claims to be a member of our Freckled Goldfish lodge in good “sitting.”

“I made some candy, like Andy Blake did in his book,” writes Frank, “but even our dog Towser sniffed at it. Also, my chum and I made a kite ten feet high. It cost us fifteen cents. A stick broke when the kite got as high as a telephone pole, and that was the end of our fifteen cents.”

Speaking of big kites, the new boys in Andy Blake and the Pot of Gold have a lot of fun with a huge kite. Andy himself is a young man; but the boys I refer to are quite young. Hence this story will be interesting to very small boys.

“Perhaps you’d be interested to know,” writes Freckled Goldfish George Lindsay, Jr., of Philadelphia, Pa., “that my father manufactures food for goldfish.”

Well, well! We’re sure glad, George, to have such an authority in our ranks. If any of our Goldfish get the “tummy-ache” we’ll turn them over to you for proper treatment.

“All of the boys around here are Freckled Goldfish,” writes Thomas Keogh of Brooklyn, N. Y. “So I want to join, too. And here’s a suggestion: You have Jerry Todd in the Poppy Ott books, so why don’t you put Poppy in the Todd books? Also, tell me how many members there are in the Freckled Goldfish lodge. The Bob-Tailed Elephant book is the funniest thing I ever read.”

By the time this “Chatter-Box” appears in print we will have not less than 8,000 members in our Goldfish lodge. As for your suggestion, both Scoop and Poppy are natural leaders. We don’t need two leaders in a book. Nor would it be fair to push Poppy in front of Scoop in the Todd books. A better plan is to let Scoop do the leading in one series and Poppy in the other.

“I would like to organize a local chapter,” writes Jim Gordon of Brooklyn, N. Y., “but there are not many boys around here. At the most I could get only five members. Please tell me if that would be enough. Also I would like to know if my dog can join. His name is Tramp.”

If boys, conducting local chapters, want to include their pets in the chapter membership [[xiii]]it certainly is all right with me. It takes three boys to organize a chapter. Many of our chapters have only five members; some have less.

“Ed Nilsson, a Freckled Goldfish, and I are going to organize a local chapter,” writes James Elphinstone of Ludlow, Mass. “We have used Ed’s barn at other times for clubs. But we feel sure our Freckled Goldfish club will be the best of all. The trapdoor in the barn will come in handy during initiations! We have a pole in the old grain chute, extending from the attic to the cellar. We go down it like real firemen. I hope we don’t share Red’s grief and have a baby elephant cave in one side of our barn.”

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LEO’S PICTURE

And now, gang, I have some news for you. An autographed picture of Leo Edwards—in person—may be obtained by writing to Leo Edwards’ secretary, Grosset & Dunlap, 1140 Broadway, New York, N. Y., and enclosing ten cents in stamps to cover cost of handling. Modesty prevents me from telling you, fellows, that this is a rare bargain. Only ten cents for such a wonderful picture. Ahem! [[xv]]

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CONTENTS

[[xvi]]

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LEO EDWARDS’ BOOKS

Here is a complete list of Leo Edwards’ published books:

THE JERRY TODD SERIES

• Jerry Todd and the Whispering Mummy
• Jerry Todd and the Rose-Colored Cat
• Jerry Todd and the Oak Island Treasure
• Jerry Todd and the Waltzing Hen
• [Jerry Todd and the Talking Frog]
• Jerry Todd and the Purring Egg
• Jerry Todd in the Whispering Cave
• Jerry Todd, Pirate
• Jerry Todd and the Bob-Tailed Elephant
• Jerry Todd, Editor-in-Grief
• Jerry Todd, Caveman

THE POPPY OTT SERIES

• Poppy Ott and the Stuttering Parrot
• Poppy Ott’s Seven-League Stilts
• Poppy Ott and the Galloping Snail
• Poppy Ott’s Pedigreed Pickles
• Poppy Ott and the Freckled Goldfish
• Poppy Ott and the Tittering Totem
• Poppy Ott and the Prancing Pancake

THE TRIGGER BERG SERIES

• Trigger Berg and the Treasure Tree
• Trigger Berg and His 700 Mouse Traps
• Trigger Berg and the Sacred Pig

THE ANDY BLAKE SERIES

• Andy Blake
• Andy Blake’s Comet Coaster
• Andy Blake’s Secret Service
• Andy Blake and the Pot of Gold

THE TUFFY BEAN SERIES

• Tuffy Bean’s Puppy Days
• Tuffy Bean’s One-Ring Circus
• Tuffy Bean at Funny-Bone Farm

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JERRY TODD AND THE
OAK ISLAND TREASURE

CHAPTER I

THE “SALLY ANN”

It was summer vacation when this happened. We had been swimming in the fourth quarry and had stopped at Dad’s brickyard canal dock on the way home.

Scoop Ellery, our leader, reached for a rock the size of his fist and sent it crash-bang! against the side of an old clay scow that was moored to the dock.

“If I had money enough,” he grinned, “I’d buy that old tub and have some fun with it.”

Red Meyers scratched his freckled nose.

“What kind of fun?” he wanted to know, wondering, I guess, what use one could make of the weather-beaten old scow.

“Well,” considered Scoop, cocking his eyes at [[2]]the scow, “it would make a swell houseboat, for one thing.”

“Let’s do it,” I promptly encouraged, picturing to myself the dandy fun that we could have in the Tutter canal with a houseboat. Hot dog! “Dad won’t care,” I hurried on. “Honest. For he told me that he was going to drag the scow out of the water and knock it to pieces.”

Here Peg Shaw, our big chum, came into the conversation.

“If your pa’ll let us use it,” he said to me, with an ear-to-ear grin, “I know how we can earn some money with it.”

Well, that sounded darby. For boys like to earn money. And if we could have fun doing it, as seemed very probable, so much the better.

Then Peg told us that it was his scheme to get up a boat show, patterned after the boat shows that used to travel on the Mississippi River years ago, only, of course, our show was to be a small one as compared to the early river shows. We could easily make the audience seats, our chum explained in reciting his scheme, and build a stage at one end of the boat.

Red wanted to give a picture show.

“I’ve got a peachy moving picture machine,” he told us. [[3]]

“What’s the matter with our black art show?” Scoop suggested.

“The black art show,” Peg said, waggling, “is what I had in mind.”

“Oh, baby!” I cried. “Won’t we have fun?”

Scoop had been studying sleight of hand tricks and his book of instructions told how to stage an amateur black art show. Black art is a good magic trick. Anybody can do it, as I will explain later on in my story. In June we put on the show in Red’s barn. It was fun. We took in ninety-five cents, which was pretty good for the first time. If Peg, the big cow, hadn’t stumbled over a lantern, thereby setting fire to one of Mrs. Meyers’ sheets that we were using on the stage, we probably would have made a lot of money giving black art shows. But we had to go out of the show business when Mr. Meyers put a padlock on the barn door.

Now we were going to be showmen again! We were glad. The more we talked about the boat show scheme the better we liked it. In the first place it was different. People who had laughed at our barn show, calling it a kid affair, would be interested in our boat show. And we wouldn’t have any competition, because we would be the owners of the only flat-bottomed boat in town. [[4]]Other boys might envy us, but they wouldn’t be able to take any of our business away from us by starting a rival boat show. Certain of success, we were eager to begin. But first I had to gain Dad’s consent.

The old clay scow is a part of his brickyard outfit. I guess it was built years and years before I was born. Anyway, I remember it as one of the first things in the brickyard that drew my attention. I was sorry when they quit using it. For it was fun to ride up the shady canal to the clay pit and back again to the factory where the clay was made into bricks. It took two men to manage the scow when it was in use. One man drove the team of mules that did the towing and the other man handled the big rudder, thereby keeping the loaded scow in the canal’s channel. As you can imagine it was rather slow traveling, for the mules never moved faster than a walk; but, as I say, it was fun nevertheless.

Nowadays all of Dad’s clay comes into the brickyard on big motor trucks. And it was because he had no use for the scow that he had told me that he was going to knock it to pieces.

That evening at the supper table I told my folks about our swell show scheme. They laughed. [[5]]

“What won’t you and that Ellery boy think up next!” Mother said.

“It’s a dandy scheme,” I told her. “We’ll make a lot of money. It’ll be fun, too.”

“I only hope,” she said, when I had gotten permission to use the old scow, “that the boat won’t spring a leak and sink in the middle of the canal during one of your shows.”

“No danger of that,” laughed Dad, who knew how well built the scow was. He caught my eyes. “Did I understand you to say,” he quizzed across the table, “that it’s going to be a magic show?”

“The same as we put on in Red’s barn,” I nodded.

“Who’s the magician?—Scoop?”

I gave another nod.

“He’s also the general manager of our show company,” I informed.

Mother smiled.

“What are you,” she inquired in fun, “the traffic manager?”

I told her, with dignity, that I was the treasurer, which was a very important and trustworthy position, and handled the money.

“Peg’s the secretary,” I further informed, “and Red’s the ticket agent.”

Dad considered. [[6]]

“How would it be,” he suggested, starting his nonsense, “if you put on a trapeze act? Mother and I are crazy to get our names on the program; and trapeze stuff is our specialty.”

“The very idea!” sputtered Mother, who knew, of course, that Dad was trying to bother her. He likes to tease people. I’ll tell the world that I get my share of it!

After supper I picked up Red and the two of us went in search of Peg and Scoop to tell them the good news that the scow was ours. They were at Peg’s house, where Scoop was importantly lettering a fancy cloth sign. Here it is:

THE “SALLY ANN” SHOW COMPANY
Mystery and Magic
To-night at 8:30
Admission, Including War Tax, 15c.
Children 10c.

Red hates girls.

“Who’s ‘Sally Ann’?” he scowled, letting out his freckled neck at the sign.

Scoop quickly read the other’s thoughts.

“You’ll like Sal,” he grinned.

“If you’re going to have a gurl in it,” Red balked, “you can count me out,” and he hitched up his pants and started off. [[7]]

“Hey; come here!”

“Nothin’ doin’.”

“ ‘Sally Ann,’ ” laughed Scoop, “is the name of our show boat.”

Red gave a disgusted snort.

“Named after a gurl! Huh! Why don’t you name it after a boy?”

“A boat,” explained Scoop, “is usually a ‘she.’ Anyway,” he defended, “ ‘Sally Ann’ is a good name. I’ve got it printed that way and I’m not going to change it.”

Like Red, I didn’t think very much of our leader’s choice of a name for our show boat. But I kept shut. For you can’t argue Scoop down.

“I’m going to make two of these signs,” he explained to us. “One for each side of the boat. I can finish the job to-night. And to-morrow we’ll put up the stage and build the seats.”

“Hot dog!” I cried, thinking of the fun we were going to have.

“It will take a lot of coin to get started,” he went on, “so we better check up and find out how we stand on the money question. I can put in seven dollars.” He looked at me. “How much are you good for, Jerry?”

I knew that I could depend on Dad and Mother to help me out. It would be a loan, sort of. [[8]]Later on, when the show was earning money, I could pay them back out of my share of the profits.

“I’ll bring ten dollars to-morrow morning,” I told our leader.

“So will I,” promised Red, who has more truck than any other kid in Tutter. If he took a sudden notion to start a circus all he would have to do would be to whistle and his folks would stock him up with a baby elephant and a flock of camels.

Peg was silent.

“I don’t like to ask Pa for money,” he finally spoke up. “For he has to work hard for what he gets. If I could sell some of my rabbits.…”

“Don’t sell the white one,” grinned Scoop, “for we need it in our act. Remember?—I wave the magic wand over the empty teacup and out jumps a white rabbit.”

“Tommy Hegan wants to buy a pair of rabbits,” I told Peg, who promised to call on the Grove Street kid the first thing in the morning.

Scoop was adding in his mind.

“If you can get three dollars,” he told Peg, “we’ll have an even thirty. That ought to be enough to start with.”

“Thirty dollars,” repeated Red, thinking of his stomach. “That will buy—um—three hundred [[9]]ten-cent dishes of ice-cream; or six hundred ice-cream cones; or three thousand penny sticks of licorice; or——”

Scoop gave the hungry one a contemptuous up-and-down look.

“Good-night!” he groaned, throwing up his hands. “It’s a hopeless case.”

Red grinned. For he likes to get Scoop’s goat.

“I can’t work,” he strutted around, holding his freckled nose in the air, “if I can’t eat. And if you expect me to put in ten dollars——”

“Your ten dollars is an investment,” explained Scoop, who has learned a lot about business from his father. “It gives you a quarter interest in the company.” He paused, then added with a grin: “If we take in a million dollars, you get a quarter of it.”

“I’ll be satisfied,” Peg spoke up in his sensible way, “if we make a hundred dollars … twenty-five dollars apiece. I’ve been wanting a bicycle.”

“You and me both,” I put in.

“Well,” grinned Scoop, “it’s a bit unlikely that we’ll get to be millionaires. Still, you never can tell.” [[10]]

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CHAPTER II

THE ENEMY

Before I go any deeper into my story I will tell you about our canal, for you will need this information to thoroughly understand what follows.

We call it the Tutter canal, for the reason that it runs through our small town. Over in Ashton, a neighboring small town, the kids call it the Ashton canal. It is a hundred miles long, I guess. Maybe longer. It was built by the state to connect the great lakes with the Gulf of Mexico through the Illinois River and the Mississippi River.

It isn’t more than forty feet wide where it passes through Tutter. One bank forms a tow path, which was necessary when the canal was new because in those olden days all of the grain boats were drawn by horses and mules. To-day the few boats that come through Tutter are drawn by smoky tugs.

In the same way that a single-track railroad has [[11]]sidings that permit trains traveling in opposite directions to pass each other, our canal has “wide waters,” where the canal boats meet and pass. There is a wide waters below Tutter and another one between our town and Ashton. The biggest wide waters that I have seen is the one between Ashton and Steam Corners. Here the canal is more than a mile wide, a sort of lake, though the water for the most part is shallow, with a mud bottom. The channel is marked with parallel rows of piles painted white.

Dad says that before the canal was built the Oak Island wide waters was a swamp and the island that I am going to tell you about in my story was a rocky knoll. Of its many trees the largest one is an oak, which grows on the island’s highest point, and it is this noticeable oak that gained for the island its name.

Well, to get back to my story, we met at Scoop’s father’s grocery store the following morning, no less enthused over our scheme than we had been the preceding evening, each one supplied with his promised share of the new company’s working capital. As treasurer the money was turned over to me. I felt pretty big to have so much money in my pocket. And I sort of held my chest out as I hurried with the others to the [[12]]brickyard dock to begin work on our show boat.

Having been built purposely for clay hauling, the flat-bottomed scow was mostly pit, with a deck at each square end. These decks were small, not more than fourteen feet wide (the width of the scow) by four feet deep, but we figured that we could build our stage on the front deck and have plenty of room. The audience seats were to be built in the pit. Such were our plans. And anxious to get everything in readiness, so that we could give our first show and begin earning money, we set to work.

There was a lot of old lumber in the brickyard. Dad said we could sort it over and use what pieces we needed if we would promise to bring the lumber back when we retired, wealthy, from the show business. We promised. And lugging the necessary material to the dock we sawed and nailed until we had the pit filled with benches. It was tiresome work, but we didn’t mind that. For a boy doesn’t mind working hard and getting slivers in his fingers when he is working for himself.

It took us all of the morning to make the seats. Before we could build the stage, the next important job, we had to get our painted canvas, which was stored in Red’s barn. We had other [[13]]stuff, too, that we had used in our barn show; and, as it was too heavy to lug, Scoop borrowed one of his father’s delivery wagons.

We put in the best part of the afternoon working on the stage. It was a big job. First we built a framework for the lights, and back of that we fixed canvas wings, painted black, with a black canvas at the back and a black floor piece. Lacking the necessary material, we were unable to cover the stage and the seats. If it rained everything would get soaked. But we couldn’t help that.

“Now,” said Scoop, directing the work, “we’ll build a ticket stand, and when that job is done we’ll call it a day and quit.”

Peg straightened and looked around, sort of checking up on our work.

“Seats made—stage built—ticket stand won’t take more than an hour.” He looked at us in turn. “Fellows, we ought to be able to open up for business to-morrow night. What do you think?”

“Easy,” I said.

While we were working on the ticket stand a gang of five boys our age came into sight.

“What yo’ doin’?” Bid Stricker wanted to know from the dock. [[14]]

We don’t like the Strickers for two cents. They’re a bunch of roughnecks. All they ever want to do is to fight and play mean tricks on people. We don’t believe in that. And because we won’t gang with them, and do the mean things they do, they have it in for us.

“Beat it,” growled Scoop, motioning the unwelcome newcomers away.

But they didn’t budge.

“Must be some kind of a show,” Bid hung on, letting out his neck at the stage and seats.

“Tell them,” I nudged our leader. “Maybe we can get some money out of them.”

“Yes,” Scoop told the inquisitive ones, following my advice, “we’re going to give a show. Ten cents for kids. And it’s a peachy show, too. You fellows want to come and see it. You’ll be sorry if you miss it.”

“What kind of a show?” Bid inquired.

“Magic.”

“Who’s the magician?”

“Me,” Scoop informed modestly, putting out his chest.

Bid’s cousin gave a scornful laugh.

“A punk show, I bet.”

“Punk is right,” another member of the gang [[15]]chimed in. “Look at the punk seats,” the jealous one pointed. “Some carpenters!”

“Wood butchers,” jeered Jimmy Stricker.

“And look at the punk stage.”

That made us hot. For we were proud of our work, as we had a right to be. And, with Peg in the lead, we took after the smart alecks and chased them away.

“We’ll fix your old show,” Bid yelled back.

“Try it,” dared Peg, “and see what happens to you.”

We went back to the show boat.

“Now that they know what we’re doing,” Peg said, wiping his sweaty face on his shirt sleeve, “they won’t rest easy until they’ve smashed up something. For you know Bid Stricker! And you heard what he said. If he gets half a chance he’ll put us out of business, just as sure as shootin’. We’ve got to be prepared, fellows.”

“I wouldn’t put it past him,” growled Scoop, “to bore a hole in the bottom of our boat and sink it. He’d think it was smart to do a stunt like that.”

“It’ll pay us,” waggled Peg, “to keep a close eye on our truck after this.”

“Aw!…” rebelled Red, scowling, when it [[16]]was suggested that we guard the show boat day and night. “I don’t want to stay here all the time. I’ve got to eat.”

“We’ll work in pairs,” planned Peg, disregarding the smaller one’s objection. “Jerry and I will stand guard to-night and you two fellows can stand guard to-morrow night.”

Scoop laughed.

“What’s the matter, Red? You look sort of white under your freckles. Are you scared?”

“I have a hunch,” worried Red, looking ahead, “that I’m going to end up with a black eye or a punch in the jaw. For what chance has two fellows got against five?”

I had thought of that.

“Maybe we better stick together,” I suggested, getting Peg’s eyes.

But he wasn’t worried like me.

“Five o’clock,” he told us, looking at his watch.

“We’ll have to snap into it,” Scoop said, “if we expect to finish the ticket stand to-day.”

“You fellows can work on it,” Peg directed, “while Jerry and I go home for our bedding. For, if we’re going to stay here to-night, we’ve got to have something to sleep on. Come on, Jerry.”

Peg is big and strong and awfully gritty. He [[17]]isn’t afraid of anybody or anything. I’m pretty gritty myself. I don’t run when a bigger fellow starts picking on me.

But, truthfully, I didn’t like this “two-against-five” business. It was risky. And I told Peg so on the way home.

He patted me on the back, grinning.

“Cheer up, Jerry. I’ve got a scheme.” [[18]]

[[Contents]]

CHAPTER III

A WHISPERING GHOST

It was dark as pitch. The moon and stars were hidden behind a black wall. I couldn’t see a thing—not even my hand when I held it within an inch of my nose.

A breeze had sprung up as the day had died and the darkness had crept in. From where I lay on the stage of our show boat, wrapped in my blanket, the breeze fanning my face, I could hear the steady lap! lap! lap! of the canal’s waves as they hungrily licked the boat’s flat nose.

In preparing for a possible night attack, Peg and I had anchored the scow in the middle of the canal. This gave us an advantage over the enemy, even though we were fewer in numbers. If they tried to run a plank from the dock to the scow, we could easily knock the plank into the canal before they could make use of it. Or, if they came in a rowboat, we could force them back, using our clubs, if necessary.

It was pretty smart of Peg to think up this scheme, I thought. [[19]]

The agreement had been made between us that we were to watch in turns. This would enable each of us to get some needed sleep. I was to rest an hour while my companion watched, then he was to sleep while I watched. The trouble was that I couldn’t get to sleep when it was my turn to rest. The thought of our coming success as showman, the thought of a possible night attack by the enemy, kept me awake.

There was a sudden rumbling crash on the roof of the sky.

“Jerry,” Peg whispered out of the darkness, and I heard his quick, guarded footsteps.

“Yes?” I breathed, getting to my feet in the sudden tense thought that the Strickers had come.

“It’s going to rain.”

“Oh!…” I lost my sudden tenseness and started breathing again. “Put up your umbrella,” I joked.

“I wish I had one. Our bedding will get soaked.”

“You seem to overlook the fact,” I laughed, “that this is a regular boat.”

“Huh!”

“And every regular boat,” I went on, “has a cabin.” [[20]]

“What do you mean?”

“There’s a hatchway in the other deck.”

“Crickets! I never thought of that.”

Using a flashlight to light our way, we went quickly to the rear deck and raised the hinged hatch, which was fitted with a hasp and pin.

There wasn’t much space under the deck. But it was better to squeeze, I told Peg, than to get soaked. So we shoved our bedding into the hole, where tools such as shovels and picks had been kept under padlock when the scow had been used for clay hauling.

Peg crept into the hole, flashing the light ahead of him.

“What if the Strickers come?”

“They won’t come in the rain,” I predicted.

“I saw them just before dark.”

“In the brickyard?”

“Sure thing. They were watching us.”

“We’re safe from them now.”

“I hope so.” He laughed. “Well, here’s hoping that our cabin roof doesn’t leak.”

“If it does,” I joked, following him into the hole, “we’ll have it shingled to-morrow.”

“Ouch!” cried my big chum, bumping his head against a deck beam. “Bend your back, Jerry. This is worse than crawling under a barn.” [[21]]

Pretty soon we were settled in our blankets. It was pouring now. The wind was blowing a gale. I could feel the Sally Ann tugging at the anchor ropes.

Would our stage be blown down? I sort of counted the seconds, worried-like, expecting any moment to hear a crash. But none came. And after a bit the wind died down.

“Hum-m-m-m!” yawned Peg, stretching in the dark and swatting me on the nose. I told him to cut it out.

Patter! patter! patter! There was lulling music in the dancing raindrops. A sleepy feeling crept over me. I was glad in the moment that it was Peg’s turn to watch. I closed my eyes. And then.…

I must have slept for more than an hour. Anyway, when I awoke there was no sound of raindrops on the deck above my face. The storm had passed over. Through a crack I could see a shimmering star.

Something had awakened me. Suddenly. I had a frightened, jumpy feeling. I rubbed my eyes, trying to remember what I had dreamt. A ghost! That was it. I had dreamt of a whispering ghost.

What was that? I listened, breathless, raising [[22]]myself on my hands. My heart was thumping. Footsteps. Near by. Guarded and stealthy.

“Nobody here,” a low voice spoke up. “They must have gone home.”

It was the Strickers! The enemy had out-tricked us—had caught us napping and now were in possession of our boat. I went cold, sort of, in the knowledge of our humiliating predicament.

Peg was still asleep. I could hear him snoring. I shook him, telling him to wake up. In my sudden crazy excitement I completely forgot about the beams over my head. Raising quickly, I got an awful bump on the forehead. It sort of knocked me silly.

“Oh-h-h-h!” I groaned, falling back.

There was a sudden silence.

“I heard a voice,” breathed Jimmy Stricker.

“Me, too,” another boy spoke up.

“Under the stage.”

A slit of light, from a flashlight, appeared in the crack through which the star had been visible to me in the moment of my awakening.

“Look! Here’s a hatch.”

“Raise it,” commanded Bid. “I’ve got a club. And if a head comes up I’ll whack it.”

The hatch was raised cautiously … a light flashed into my blinking eyes. [[23]]

“It’s them!” cried Bid. “Close it—quick!”

Bang! went the hatch.

“Lock it!” cried Bid.

Peg stirred at the slamming of the hatch.

“What the dickens?…” he mumbled, awakening. “I must have been asleep.” He shook me. “Did you hear that loud thunder clap, Jerry? It woke me up.”

I was dizzy. My head ached. But I was able to think and to talk.

“It wasn’t thunder,” I told him. “It was the Strickers. They’ve captured our boat. We’re locked in.”

He gave a queer choking throat sound and started to get up.

“Ouch!” he cried, bumping his head.

“Two monkeys in a cage,” yipped Bid Stricker.

“Open that hatch,” roared Peg, furious.

“Listen!” screeched Bid. “One of the monkeys can talk. Just like a human bein’.”

“I’ll ‘human bein’’ you,” threatened Peg, “if you don’t let us out of here. You know me, Bid!”

“Beg some more,” jeered Bid. “We like it.”

Well, I can’t begin to tell you how awful we felt. We are pretty smart. We think that we are a lot smarter than the Strickers. It was galling [[24]]to us therefore to have them get the upper hand of us. And we were further sickened in the thought that they would throw our stage and seats into the canal. Our day’s work would be for nothing. But what could we do to defend our property? Not a thing. We were helpless—trapped like rats in a wire cage.

Suddenly a shrill scream pierced our ears.

“Oh!…” cried Bid, and there was unmistakable fear in his voice. “Oh!…”

There was a scurry of feet … the sound of diminishing gasping voices … silence.

And all this, mind you, when we had expected to hear the sound of ripping stage boards!

“They’re running away,” cried Peg, bewildered in the unexpected turn of affairs.

“Let us out,” I screeched, pounding on the hatch in the hope that the enemy would return and release us.

And now comes the weird part of my story—the beginning of the mystery.

“Where … are … you?”

The voice came from the other side of the hatch, a peculiar whispering voice.

“We’re under the deck,” cried Peg. “We’re locked in. Let us out. Please.”

I suddenly clutched my chum’s arm. [[25]]

“No!” I cried, in a panic of fear, “No!”

“What’s the matter, Jerry?”

“It’s a ghost,” I cried, crazy. “I saw it in my dream. I heard it. It’s a whispering ghost. Don’t let it in.”

“Ghost? You’re batty.”

With these grunted words my companion lifted the hatch, which had been unlatched by the unseen whisperer. And unwilling to be left alone, I followed him through the hole.

The moon was shining. We could see every part of the boat. A plank was laid from the dock to the scow. Here was the course that the invaders had taken in their tumbling, panicky flight.

But the Strickers were nowhere in sight. No one was in sight.

“Well, I’ll be jiggered!” gasped Peg, dumfounded. [[26]]

[[Contents]]

CHAPTER IV

THE MERRY-GO-ROUND ORGAN

Scoop was on hand the following morning at five o’clock. Peg and I were glad to see him. For our stomachs were empty and we wanted to go home to breakfast.

But before we left for home we told the industrious early-riser about our weird experience. At first he refused to take our story seriously. It was a crazy dream, he ridiculed.

Peg soberly shook his head.

“No, it wasn’t a dream. For we both were wide awake. Jerry declares it was a whispering ghost that visited us. And maybe he’s right. I can’t say that it wasn’t a ghost. Certainly it acted queer enough to be one.”

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” boasted Scoop.

“Neither did I,” I shot back at him, looking him straight in the eye, “until last night.”

“A ghost! You’re funny, Jerry.”

“All my life,” I followed up, waggling, “I’ve carried in my mind a sort of idea of what a ghost’s voice would be like, if there was such a [[27]]thing as a ghost. And twice last night I heard exactly that kind of a voice.”

“It was a queer voice,” Peg told Scoop, serious. “Sort of hollow, like a whisper in a dark tomb.”

“Jinks! If you fellows keep on talking about tombs, backing each other up in your crazy story, you’ll have me actually believing that your visitor was a ghost.”

“If it wasn’t a ghost,” I said, to a good point, “why did the Strickers scream and run away?”

“The Strickers are likely to do anything.”

“They wouldn’t have been afraid of a man.”

“Maybe,” Scoop grinned, keeping up the argument, “the man had a gun or a sword.”

“Bunk!” I grunted, disgusted with the arguer, who is never so happy as when he is trying, superior-like, to talk some one else down. “They saw a ghost,” I waggled, “and nothing else but.”

My stiff attitude seemed to amuse the other.

“All right,” he nodded. “Have it your own way. It was a ghost, as you say. And what is a ghost? A supernatural thing, if we are to believe the crazy stories that we have heard. And, being supernatural, a ghost, of course, knows everything. It doesn’t have to ask questions. It knows what it wants to know without asking. Isn’t that right?” [[28]]

I nodded.

“All right!” he came back quickly, a snappier sparkle in his eyes. “If this visitor of yours was a ghost, as you declare, why did it ask you where you were? Explain that, if you can.”

Peg scratched his head and squinted at me.

“That’s a good argument, Jerry.”

But I wasn’t going to back down and let the smart one have everything his own way.

“Huh!” I said, standing by my belief.

Scoop was still grinning, contented, I imagine, in the thought of how very smart he was!

“As I say,” he went on, “I don’t believe in ghosts, and consequently I don’t know very much about them. But from what I’ve heard, I have the impression that a ghost is sort of unfriendly. Of a mean disposition, it delights to sneak up on people. And the more people it scares into fits, the merrier for it. That is my idea of a ghost, Yet, if I am to believe your story, this ghost did you a good turn.”

“A friendly ghost,” grinned Peg, amused in the thought. “Haw! haw! haw!” he burst out, in his rough way. “It isn’t every company of showmen with a friendly ghost on their side. We’re lucky.”

At Scoop’s request I repeated my dream. [[29]]

“I was in a cave,” I told him. “It was dark. Like the inside of a cistern at midnight. I could feel something near me. A sort of invisible thing. Then I heard a low, whispering voice. ‘Where … are … you?’ I couldn’t see a thing, as I say. But somehow I knew that it was a ghost that was whispering to me. ‘Where … are … you?’ it breathed again. I wanted to run away. But I couldn’t move. I was scared stiff. A sort of paralysis. Every second I expected to feel the pressure of its cold hand on mine. Ough! I was full of shivers. Then, sudden-like, I was wide awake.”

“And the voice that you heard after the Strickers had gone was the same voice that you heard in your dream?”

I nodded.

“Not only the same voice,” I told him, “but the same words.”

He was puzzled.

“I’ve been told,” he said, thinking, “that dreams happen in a flash. And I guess it’s so. For one night when it was storming Mother came into my bedroom to close my window. The creaking of the window pulleys sort of registered in my sleeping mind. And I had a long, crazy dream about burglars. To have done what I did in the [[30]]dream would have taken an hour or more. Yet it all happened in an instant.”

“If that is the case,” I reasoned out, “I must have heard the whispering voice in my sleep.”

“It was the whispering voice,” the leader declared, coming to a quick conclusion, “that caused you to dream of the ghost.”

“What?” cried Peg, surprised. “Do you mean to say that Jerry heard the whispering voice before the Strickers came?”

Scoop nodded, sure of himself.

“I can’t understand it,” cried Peg, looking dizzy. “Why should a man mysteriously board our boat in the middle of the night? What object could he have had? Who was he? Why did he whisper to us, asking where we were? And where did he vanish to?”

“It was a ghost,” I hung on.

Scoop laughed.

“Let it be a ghost, if you insist. We should worry, as long as it’s a friendly ghost.”

Peg was struggling, in his slow, steady way, to get his thoughts straightened out.

“But if the man was here in advance of the Strickers, as you say, how did he get on the boat? There was no plank then.”

“You and Jerry ought to know more about that [[31]]than any one else,” shrugged Scoop, “for you were here when it happened.” Then he added, in a lighter voice: “But let’s forget about your mysterious whisperer for the present. If there’s a mystery here, we probably can solve it to-night.”

“You think the man will come back?”

“It isn’t unlikely.”

Peg’s black eyes snapped.

“Gosh! I wish it was my turn to watch.”

“I imagine,” laughed Scoop, “that Red will be tickled pink to let you have his place.”

“Where is Red?” I spoke up, thus reminded of our absent chum. “Why didn’t you bring him with you?”

“What? Get that sleepy-head out of bed before eight o’clock? You must think I know how to work miracles, Jerry.”

“I’ll stop for him on my way back,” I said, starting off abreast of Peg.

“Make it snappy,” Scoop told us. “For there’s a million things to do before we can open up our show.” Then he called after us, laughing: “Don’t forget to look on the front page of last night’s Daily Globe when you get home.”

Peg and I wondered at this remark. And to find out what the leader meant, we quickened our steps toward home. I grabbed the newspaper [[32]]as soon as I was in the house. And here is the heading that met my eager eyes on the front page:

CLAY SCOW TRANSFORMED BY LOCAL BOYS INTO FLOATING THEATER

Giving our names, the newspaper article stated that we had transformed the old brickyard clay scow into a fine floating theater, with a stage and seats, and were planning to give black art shows, an attraction that undoubtedly would prove popular with both old and young.

“So, why should we care,” the article concluded, in nonsense, “if Ashton has the new county jail? For we have the Sally Ann! And our only editorial regret is that our enterprising young showmen haven’t a motor on their unique craft, for we would delight to have them toot their show horn at Ashton’s canal door, to thus awaken that somnolent community to Tutter’s exceptional enterprise. In Tutter, the town that does things, we start young!”

Well, I stared at the concluding paragraph, reading it a second time. “And our only editorial regret is that our enterprising young showmen haven’t a motor.…” [[33]]

Jinks! Smart as we were, we hadn’t thought of that. But wouldn’t it be peachy, though? And think of the money we could make! For if we got as far as Ashton with our show, what was there to hinder us from going farther?

Gobbling down my breakfast, with Mother scolding me for eating so fast, I hoofed it to the brickyard dock, forgetting all about my promise to stop for Red.

“Did you put the article in the newspaper?” I asked Scoop.

He nodded.

“Pa suggested it. ‘Go over and tell Editor Stair about your new boat show,’ he told me yesterday noon. ‘Make him publish the story in his newspaper. He gets a lot of money out of me for store advertising. So, as a member of the family, you’re entitled to all the publicity that you can get.’ ”

“ ‘Publicity,’ ” I repeated. “What’s that?”

“The article that you just read in the newspaper is publicity. It tells the Tutter people about our show in a news way. That’s publicity, Pa says.”

“It’s advertising,” I said.

“Publicity and advertising are much the same thing. Only, as I understand it, you get publicity [[34]]for nothing and you pay for advertising. By the way, Jerry, I told Mr. Stair that we would put an advertisement in his newspaper when we got ready to open up our show. Don’t let me forget about it. We’ve got to order tickets, too.”

“Why not get some more publicity,” I suggested, eager to hang on to our thirty dollars, “and let the advertising go. It’ll be cheaper for us.”

“We need advertising and publicity both,” Scoop waggled. “What we want to do, to make a success of our show,” he added, businesslike, “is to get everybody in town to talking about us. And to do that we’ve got to advertise, and we’ve got to have the newspaper further recognize us and print more news about us. Publicity news. A lot of people will laugh at the idea of four boys starting a boat show, and maybe they won’t pay any attention to us at the start. But after a day or two, knowing that we are still in business, they’ll begin to wonder if our show isn’t of some account after all. They’ll get curious to see it. And then, when they come to the boat to satisfy their curiosity, we’ll get their money. See?”

I had to admit to myself that Scoop was pretty smart.

“Wouldn’t it be darby,” I said, “if we could [[35]]hitch an engine to our boat, as the newspaper says. We could ride our audience up the canal, instead of giving our show here at the dock.”

Scoop scratched his head.

“That would be a slick stunt.”

“Let’s do it,” I urged.

“Where are we going to get the necessary engine?”

“The junk yard,” I told him, “is full of old auto engines. For the biggest part of Mr. Solbeam’s business is junking cars. Tommy Hegan bought an engine from him for ten dollars. It runs, too.”

Determined, on more lengthy conversation, in which our other two chums took part, to see what we could do in the way of supplying our show boat with an engine, Scoop and I and Red went to the junk yard, leaving Peg on guard at the dock. As I had told Scoop, there were dozens of old auto engines in the yard. We looked them over, picking out the one that we wanted. Then we had a talk with the proprietor.

“Ya,” he said, working his shoulders and screwing up his hairy face, “I sell heem vor a ten dollah. O, ya, ya,” he flourished, “heem vork. Fine, fine. An’ a beeg bargain, boys; a beeg bargain.” [[36]]

Scoop looked around the cluttered junk yard.

“What’ll you give us,” he asked, to a point, “if we straighten up this mess for you?”

“Vot’s dat?”

“We’ll work for you for the rest of the day, the three of us, if you’ll sell us the engine for three dollars. Is it a deal?”

The junk man scowled. I thought at first that he was going to order us out of the yard. But I was to learn that scowling was just a trick of his. He had to scowl and work his shoulders and flourish his hands in order to talk business.

“I tell you vot, boys, you vork it two days an’ not vun day an’ I sell you heem vor dree dollahs.”

“No,” waggled Scoop, who realized that the other was trying to get the big end of the bargain.

The junk man next offered the engine to us for one day’s work and five dollars.

“No,” Scoop said again. “We made you our offer. You can take it or leave it.”

“Vell,” shrugged the junk man, with a trace of a grin on his face, “you gif me da dree dollahs, an’ with da day’s vork ve vill call it a deal.”

Cleaning up that junk yard was the hardest work I ever did. And as I tugged and lugged I told myself that when I grew up the one thing [[37]]that I wasn’t going to be was a junk wrestler. By ten o’clock my arms were so lame that it pained me to lift them. I couldn’t step around half as briskly as I had done at the start. I suggested to the other fellows, who were equally as tired as I was, that we better stop and rest. And with Mr. Solbeam’s consent we sent Red home for some sandwiches and doughnuts.

I was glad when the noon whistles blew. As I hurried into the street Dad drove by in our auto, stopping at my signal.

“I never saw you look any dirtier,” he grinned, “so you ought to be happy.”

I told him what I had been doing.

“Hard work, hey?” and he looked at me sort of warm-like.

“I’ll tell the world it’s hard work,” Red piped up from the back of the car, where he was stretched full length on the seat.

“Well,” grinned Dad, “anything worth having is worth working for.” After which little sermon he inquired how the show business was coming along, asking particularly if we had received any congratulatory professional telegrams from P. T. Barnum or Al Ringling.

We would soon open up for business, I told him, paying no attention to his nonsense about the [[38]]telegrams. Our big job now, I explained, was to get the engine to working and rig up some kind of a propeller.

“I suppose you’re incorporated,” he said, further joshing me.

“Ask Scoop,” I grinned. “He’s the manager.”

“Well, I hope that he proves to be a better manager than he did the night that he had the fire department squirting water on the Meyers’ barn.”

“Scoop’s all right,” I waggled.

That afternoon the thermometer went up to something like one hundred degrees in the shade, only we didn’t know much about what it was like in the shade for the junk that we were working on was piled in the middle of the yard where there were no trees. We lugged castings and steel bars and other stuff around until it seemed to me as though the muscles of my arms would crack and curl up. I never was so dog-gone tired in all my life. But we made progress. The pile of stuff in the middle of the yard began to look more orderly. We put the cast iron in one pile and the steel pieces in another pile. The brass stuff went into a box. Mr. Solbeam explained to us that the brass was worth more than the iron and steel, and at his orders we dragged the box to a [[39]]shed, the door of which was fitted with a padlock.

The shed, we found, was cluttered with all kinds of odd and interesting things that the junk man had bought, in the probable thought that he would be able to resell the stuff and make a profit.

“What the dickens?…” yipped Scoop. “Here’s some pieces of a merry-go-round. Look at the wooden horses! Some with three legs and some with two legs and some with only one leg. Here’s one without a head.”

“And here’s the merry-go-round organ,” yipped Red, from his side of the shed.

“Wind it up,” I laughed, “and see if it’ll play a tune.”

Scoop came on the run.

“Hot dog!” he cried, sort of draping himself over the dusty organ. “It’s just what we need for our show.”

Mr. Solbeam was out in front talking loudly to a deaf old man who had just brought a load of rags into the yard.

“I’m going to tackle him,” cried Scoop, “and see what he wants for the organ.”

Excited over our find, Red and I quite forgot about our tired arms and legs. We dragged the organ clear of the stuff that had been piled on top of it and dusted it off. It sure was a hard-looker. [[40]]As the saying is, it had seen better days. But we didn’t care how rickety it was if it would make music. There was a little image on top that was supposed to beat a metal jigger. But it didn’t work. When Red turned the crank the image just jiggled its arm, as though it had a bad case of frazzled nerves.

“Lookit!” I cried, pointing to the organ’s name. “O-r-c-h-e-s-t-r-e-l-l-e,” I spelt.

“I thought it was a hand organ,” Red said, disappointed.

“It is a hand organ,” I grinned. “A plain old hand organ with a fancy name. But that’s all the better,” I waggled. “For we can print the name in our advertising. It’ll sound big. Turn the crank some more,” I instructed. “Let’s see if it’s got any tunes hid away in its ribs.”

The organ, under Red’s spirited winding, let out some awful groans and squeaks. It wheezed and puffed, acting for all the world as though it was gagging on a fish bone or had a hot potato in its musical mouth.

“It needs oiling,” panted Red, straightening and rubbing his back.

Here Scoop came on the run.

“It took two dollars to buy it,” he told us, “but it’s worth it. He asked twenty dollars at the [[41]]start. But I talked him down. He probably was glad to get the two cart wheels. For he wouldn’t have many chances to sell a thing like this.”

“We may be throwing our money away,” I said. “For Red has been twisting its tail for five minutes, trying to tame it, and it hasn’t done anything except stutter.”

“Oh,” cried Scoop, pleased with his purchase, “we can make it play. I’m not worried about that.”

It was our plan to haul the heavy engine to the scow the following morning in Scoop’s delivery wagon. But in our eagerness to explore the inside of our organ, we took it away with us at the close of our day’s work, carting it down the street on one of Mr. Solbeam’s wabbly wheelbarrows.

It was agreed among us that we were to meet at Red’s house, directly after supper, to find out what was inside of the hand organ and sort of get on the good side of it. Not knowing how many tunes it had, or what they were like, filled us with excitement.

At Red’s suggestion we went up the alley as we approached his house. This was to avoid attention. Putting the organ in the barn, we separated. [[42]]

[[Contents]]

CHAPTER V

TAMING THE HAND ORGAN

I had a cold supper. For Mother was away from home.

“It must be the regular afternoon meeting of the Stitch and Chatter Club,” joked Dad, grinning at me across the table.

Having dirtied only a few dishes, we put these in a pan in the kitchen sink; then I hurried over to Red’s barn with a screw driver and a handful of wrenches.

Scoop didn’t show up for ten or fifteen minutes, having been to the dock where Peg was still on guard.

“Too bad,” I said to Scoop, “that Peg can’t be here.”

“I don’t think it’s worrying him,” the leader grinned. “For I found him with his nose in your ‘Waltzing Hen’ book when I took his supper over to him. He seemed to be perfectly contented.”

“He’s had the soft part of it to-day,” spoke up Red, thinking of our hard work in the junk yard. [[43]]

“Did I tell you,” Scoop inquired of the freckled one, “that he’s going to take your place to-night?”

“What’s the idea?”

“He thinks he can solve the mystery of the whispering ghost.”

Red shivered.

“I’ll think twice before I ever put in a night on that spooky old boat.”

We pulled the hand organ into the middle of the barn floor and removed its wooden top.

Red squinted inside.

“Phew!” he sniffed. “It smells like an old mouse trap.”

There was a burst of laughter from the house and the clatter of dishes.

“What’s going on in there?” I inquired of Red.

“Oh, Ma’s entertaining the stitchers and chatterers. Hand me the oil can.”

There was a lot of wheels and queer-shaped jiggers inside of the organ. We didn’t know what they were for. But, as they looked kind of rusty, we cleaned them with an old shirt of Red’s and gave them a liberal oiling. There was no squeaking now when we turned the crank. Nor was there, to our disappointment, any music.

Red was in his glory. For he loves to tinker with machinery. About every so often he takes [[44]]the family clock to pieces. One time he whittled out a repeating rig-a-jig for his mother’s talking machine and ruined ten dollars’ worth of choice records.

His freckled nose deep in the organ’s chamber, he suddenly let out a yip.

“Here’s a clutch, fellows! That’s why it wouldn’t play. It wasn’t in gear. Try it now.”

Scoop grabbed the crank and started winding. There was a lot of wheezes and groans inside of the organ. Then it gave a sudden loud blat.

“Turn faster,” danced Red, the oil can in one hand and the screw driver in the other. “It’s getting ready to play a tune.”

Scoop turned for dear life. And after a bad coughing spell, the organ settled down to business.

“What’d I tell you?” cried Red. “It’s playing a tune.”

“What tune is it?” I grinned.

“Sounds like ‘The Old Oaken Bucket.’ Maybe, though, it’s something else. Anyway, it’s a tune. So why should we worry what it is?”

“I know what tune it is,” I joked. “It’s the one the old cat died on.”

Scoop continued to twist the organ’s tail until [[45]]he was blue in the face. Red then took a hand at it. The organ waded through the “bucket” tune, or whatever piece it was, and gurgled out the chorus of “A Hot Time in the Old Town To-night.”

“It’s getting more up-to-date every minute,” laughed Scoop. “Step on it, Red. Atta-boy! Here comes ‘After the Ball.’ ”

Red was out of wind.

“It’s your turn,” he panted, beckoning to me.

Under my spirited turning, the organ developed a hemorrhage in its left lung. “B-r-r-r-E-r-r-r-B-r-r-r!” it gurgled.

“It’s dying,” shrieked Red.

As though to prove to us that the freckled one didn’t know what he was talking about, the organ took the bit in its teeth, so to speak, and came out strong with “Sweet Rosie O’Grady.” Our leader knew the words to the old song. But he had to yell, let me tell you, to make himself heard. For that old organ was bellowing like a mad bull.

Red and I joined in, going “Da-da-da,” for we didn’t know the words. We kept getting louder and louder, only I couldn’t yell as loud as the others. The cranking job took a lot of my wind.

All of a sudden Red’s mother bounded into the barn. [[46]]

“Stop it!” she cried, her fingers in her ears. “Stop it!”

“What’s the matter?” grinned Scoop, when the organ had expired. “Don’t you like music, Mrs. Meyers?”

“Yes, I like music. I thought it was Donald screaming for help.” She pressed a hand to her heart and drew a deep breath. “Such a scare as I had.” She came closer and gave the organ a puzzled glance. “What in the world is it?—a hand organ?”

“It’s an orchestrelle,” I grinned, remembering the organ’s fancy name.

“It’s a part of our show,” Red spoke up, glowing with pride. Then he told his mother about the merry-go-round in Mr. Solbeam’s shed.

“It’s a wonder to me,” she said stiffly, “that you didn’t lug the whole merry-go-round home, while you were about it.”

Mother came into sight in the barn door.

“See what our sons and heirs have dragged home from somebody’s ash pile,” pointed Mrs. Meyers. “A hand organ,” she added, and from the way she said it you could have imagined that our fine organ was a cross-eyed flea on a shunned alley cat.

I didn’t blame Red for stiffening. [[47]]

“How do you get that way?” he cried, scowling. “We paid two dollars for it. It’s a good organ, too. I like it better than our old piano.”

Some more curious-eyed members of the Stitch and Chatter Club came into sight.

“Was Donald hurt, Mrs. Meyers?”

“Aw!…” scowled Red. “We aren’t giving a party.”

“I am,” his mother said quickly. “And I want you to stop this horrible racket. We can’t hear ourselves think. And people are stopping in the street and staring at the house.”

Red angrily jerked Mr. Solbeam’s bow-legged wheelbarrow into sight.

“A fellow can’t have any fun around here at all. No, he can’t. Take hold of it,” he growled at Scoop, “and help me put it on the wheelbarrow. We’ll take it down to our boat, where we can play it without being jawed at. Huh!” [[48]]

[[Contents]]

CHAPTER VI

UNDER POWER

The next morning I was so stiff that I hated the thought of getting up. But I managed to drag myself out of bed in time to have breakfast with Dad and Mother. They were laughing and talking as I limped down the stairs, rubbing my eyes and carefully stretching. I heard Mother say something about an organ. She quit talking when I came into the room. Dad was grinning. When breakfast was over I rode with him to the brickyard, hurrying to the boat to relieve Scoop and Peg.

“Well,” I grinned at the hungry ones, “did you entertain the whispering ghost last night with some choice hand organ selections?”

Peg shook his head.

“Nothing happened all night long,” he told me, disappointed.

At eight-thirty Scoop drove to the dock with the engine. We had a time unloading it. And when we finally got it into the boat we despaired [[49]]for a time of ever being able to use it. We moved it this way and that way, trying various schemes. But we didn’t get anywhere.

The trouble was we had no way of getting our power into the water. It was no particular trick to set up the engine—that part of the task gave us no concern; but it was a trick, let me tell you, to figure out a practical propeller.

We finally decided that we would have to buy a drive shaft from Mr. Solbeam. This cost us another fifty cents. Our thirty dollars, I told Scoop, was going fast. We had spent five dollars and fifty cents.

“That’s all right,” he said easily. “We should expect to pay out our working capital. That’s what it’s for.”

“I’ll be glad,” I said, “when the money starts coming in.”

“The engine scheme,” he said, “is going to put us back a day or two. But it’s better, I think, to be a day or so behind, and do the thing right, than to start up in a hurry and make a halfway job of it.”

After a lot of puzzling work we finally got our engine bolted in position on the rear deck, to one side of the big rudder. Of course, it would have been better if we could have positioned the engine [[50]]in the center of the deck where the rudder was. But that was out of the question.

We let our freckled chum do the most of the planning. For he seemed to have better ideas than any of the rest of us. He was already calling himself the “engineer.”

We made a two-blade propeller out of wood, clamping it on the lower end of the drive shaft, which had been given a braced bearing just above the water.

It took us a full half hour to get the engine started. I cranked and Scoop cranked and Peg cranked. When it did start it smoked worse than old Paddy Gorbett’s kitchen chimney. But Red said that was a good thing—it proved that the engine was getting plenty of oil.

“I can hear a knock,” Scoop said, listening.

“What do you expect for three dollars?” grunted Red, sticking up for his pet. “That knock won’t hurt anything. Forget it.”

We loosened the Sally Ann and the engineer shoved the gear-box lever into “low,” thus putting the propeller shaft into slow motion.

“Hurray!” yipped Scoop, throwing his cap into the air. “We’re moving!”

Red slipped the propeller into high gear. [[51]]

“She’s working as slick as a button,” he shrieked above the engine’s roar.

“Some class to us,” yipped Peg, cocking his cap on one ear and posing, skipper-like, against the tiller.

“Watch your job,” I laughed, giving the tiller a jerk. “You almost ran us into the bank.”

“Let’s try backing up,” suggested Scoop.

Red pushed the lever into “reverse.” Slowly the Sally Ann came to a stop, then began to back up.

“Shove her into ‘forward,’ ” Scoop directed, “and we’ll take a trip down the canal.”

We went about a mile. Several times the engine stuttered and gagged, but that was nothing to worry about, Red said. Coming home we had to back up, for there wasn’t enough room in the canal for us to turn around. But to us the backing up was just as much fun as going ahead. We told ourselves that we were pretty smart. Not many boys our age could have done a job like this. And what did we care if it took us an hour to go a couple of miles? The Sally Ann was moving under her own power, and that was the main thing. We would have no trouble getting over to Ashton and back. The county seat was separated [[52]]from Tutter by only a few miles. We could make an all-day trip of it, if necessary. A thing we weren’t short of was time.

To save ourselves the tiresome work of cranking the hand organ, we made a wooden pulley, to take the place of the crank, and ran a belt from the pulley to the engine. By speeding the engine we could make “The Old Oaken Bucket” sound like a jazzy fox trot.

It was now well along toward suppertime. So Scoop remained at the boat while the rest of us went home to eat. That night Peg and I stood guard, sleeping turn about. But there was no disturbance throughout the night. We saw nothing of either the whispering ghost or the tricky Stricker gang.

Scoop relieved us at six o’clock. And after breakfast the leader and I went to the Daily Globe office to order our tickets.

These would be ready for us at noon, we were told, and would cost us a dollar.

“Maybe,” Scoop said to the editor, giving me a nudge, “you’d like to have some more news about our show.”

The man laughed and brought out his pencil.

“We’re going to open up to-night.” [[53]]

“Fine!”

“Our show is going to be a humdinger. Music and everything.”

“Music? Some one going to play a mouth organ?”

“No. We’ve bought an orchestrelle.”

“A which?”

“An orchestrelle,” Scoop repeated, grinning.

“How do you spell it?”

“Evidently,” Scoop joked, “you aren’t very well posted on the better class of musical instruments.”

“That,” sighed Mr. Stair, in pretended depression, “is one of the tragedies of my life. I’m on speaking terms with a jew’s-harp; but that’s the extent of my musical education, so to speak. Does this rig-a-ma-jig of yours start with an ‘a’ or an ‘o’?”

“O-r-c-h-e-s-t-r-e-l-l-e,” spelt Scoop. It surprised me that he didn’t get some of the letters twisted around. For he’s the poorest speller in our class. I’m one of the best.

“Who plays it?” the editor wanted to know.

“It plays itself—it’s automatic.”

Mr. Stair laughed when we told him about our engine.

“We wouldn’t have thought of it,” admitted [[54]]Scoop, “if you hadn’t mentioned it in your newspaper.”

“Are you going to go over to Ashton with your show?”

“Maybe.”

An inquiry was then made of the editor regarding the cost of advertising in his newspaper.

“Our regular rate,” he informed, “is twenty cents a column inch. For two dollars, which will give you five inches, double column, you can make quite a showing. Is your copy ready?”

“It will be,” Scoop grinned, “in ten jerks of a lamb’s tail.”

Here is the advertisement that he wrote, after considerable changing and erasing:

WORLD’S GREATEST BLACK ART SHOW OPENS TO-NIGHT

To-night we will give our first show on our magnificent floating theater, the Sally Ann, which will leave the central bridge dock, for a moonlight trip down the canal, at 8:30.

We’ve got the best show of its kind on earth, and you don’t want to miss it.

Something doing every minute. [[55]]

Kermann, the master magician of the age, will make his first appearance in Tutter.

He makes tables disappear right before your very eyes.

See the amazing “Living Head.”

A show for big people as well as kids.

Enjoy this moonlight excursion on our beautiful canal; hear the orchestrelle, the only musical instrument of its kind in town.

Admission, 15c.

Children, 10c.

THE “SALLY ANN” SHOW COMPANY

Pretty soon we were in the street, headed for the show boat.

“This afternoon,” Scoop planned, “we’ll have a rehearsal; then we’ll start the engine and run the Sally Ann to the central bridge dock. If we play the organ we’ll attract a lot of attention. People will come running to find out what’s going on. Then they’ll see our ad in to-night’s paper. That’ll bring them out.” [[56]]

[[Contents]]

CHAPTER VII

OUR FIRST SHOW

In line with our leader’s plans, we had a rehearsal that afternoon, running the show boat a short distance out of town, so that we could do our rehearsing undisturbed.

Of course, we couldn’t put on the regular show, as it had to be dark to do that. But Scoop dressed in his magician’s suit of white cloth and Peg and I, who worked on the stage as unseen assistants, put on our black suits.

The reason why we were invisible to the audience was because everything back of us on the stage was black. Scoop could be seen because he was dressed in white, with his face and hair powdered white. Lights arranged up and down the sides of the stage, reflected into the audience, dazzled the spectators. Looking into these lights, they could see nothing on the stage that wasn’t white. Dressed in black, a black veil over our faces, Peg and I could move here and there without detection. [[57]]

The trick consisted of making tables, pitchers, cups and white things like that appear and disappear in a most surprising way. It was an easy trick to perform when one had the necessary stuff. We would have a white table behind a black screen and when we wanted the table to “appear,” Scoop, as the magician, would wave his wand and Peg or I, whoever had hold of the screen, would jerk it away, thus bringing the table, in a flash, into sight of the audience.

Scoop would make pitchers and cups appear and disappear on the white table. To do this, Peg or I would bring the necessary pitcher on the stage, keeping the white article out of sight behind a small black screen. Then we would rest the screen on the table top, with the white pitcher behind it, jerking the screen away at Scoop’s signal, thus making the pitcher “appear.” In the same way we could make cups and saucers appear and disappear—any number of times. We could make white flowers grow out of white flower pots; produce white rabbits from small white cups. By dangling a white ball on the end of a black string, we could make it do many surprising things.

Probably the best trick of all was what we called the “Living Head.” We had a wooden [[58]]platter, painted white, made so that I could slide my chin over the back edge. To the audience it appeared that my head was resting on the platter. Scoop would carry the platter across the stage, and, of course, I would walk under the platter, for I had to go wherever my head went. To do this trick I had to powder my face white, like Scoop’s, and in the trick, to get a laugh, I was supposed to wink and yawn, sort of droll-like. By keeping my black suit on from my neck down, the audience couldn’t see anything of me except my white head.

Following our rehearsal we ran the Sally Ann to the dock at the central bridge. A lot of kids gathered on the bridge, among them the Striker gang. When we started our hand organ, practically all of Main Street came running to see what was going on.

Red’s big sister came along with some stylish girl friends. But she didn’t stay very long. I guess the sight of Red hurt her pride. Seated on the edge of the ticket stand, megaphone in hand, he was having the time of his life.

“La-adies and gents,” he yipped, “don’t forget the bi-ig show to-night. See Kermann, the great hoodoo magician, who has appeared before all of the crowned heads of Europe. Remember the [[59]]bi-ig show to-night at eight-thirty. O-only fifteen cents admission. Ten cents for kids.”

“That’s the kind of stuff to hand them,” grinned Scoop, “only don’t call me a ‘hoodoo’ magician. It’s ‘Hindu’ and not ‘hoodoo.’ ”

We could see that the Strickers were jealous of us. They had their heads together, whispering and pointing. I could imagine how cheap they felt. They had tried to bust up our show, but we had been too smart for them.

That evening at the supper table I inquired of Dad if he and Mother were planning to attend our show.

“I should snicker,” he winked. “We wouldn’t miss it for a panful of pickled pretzels.”

“Thirty cents,” I checked off in my mind. A hundred families at thirty cents apiece would be thirty dollars. Hot dog! I could see where we were going to make a barrel of money, all right.

Hurrying back to the boat, where Peg was on guard, I met Scoop, whose arms were full of packages and paper bags.

“Stuff to eat,” he told me.

“Are you going to serve refreshments during the show?” I grinned.

“Hardly. But if we expect to go to Ashton with our show, we might as well start living on [[60]]the boat first as last. It’ll be fun. To-morrow Pa is going to send down a boiled ham and a bag of potatoes. This is stuff I got at the store for breakfast.”

It began to get dark shortly after eight o’clock, so we lit the big lamp near the ticket stand and the dazzle lamps on the sides of the stage. Red had five dollars’ worth of change handy. He was impatient to begin selling tickets. We were impatient to have him begin—we wanted to see the money pile up in the change box. But, of course, we had to wait with our ticket selling until it was dark enough to go ahead with our show.

People began to gather on the dock, talking and laughing. Scoop’s father and mother were there and so was Peg’s folks. I could see a number of our neighbors in Dad’s party. There was a lot of jolly talk. Dad was cutting up. He was a whole show in himself. Golly Ned! The older I grow the bigger my love gets for my swell dad.

Well, about eight-fifteen Red opened the gate and the waiting kids and the grown people filed past the ticket stand, handing the ticket seller their money. In no time at all the seats were all filled. Dad and Mother were up in front with Red’s mother. Mr. Meyers couldn’t come, because, [[61]]as owner of the Lyric theater, he had to work.

Selling his last ticket, Red shut the gate, setting the boat free of its tie ropes. Pretty soon the scow was moving slowly down the canal.

Scoop was behind the big black screen, and at his signal we jerked the screen away, making him “appear.” He bowed and everybody clapped their hands.

Having carefully rehearsed our parts we knew just what to do and when to do it. Everything went off fine. We made two tables appear, one on each side of the stage. Then we made a pitcher appear on one table and a flower pot on the other. In the course of the performance I went back of the curtain to prepare myself for the “Living Head” trick.

Scoop told the audience that he would now perform his greatest feat. That was my cue. Putting a black screen in front of my powdered head, so that I wouldn’t be seen, I slipped my chin over the edge of the white wooden platter. Scoop waved his wand and Peg jerked away the screen.

There was a ripple of laughter.

“Hi, Jerry!” some kid in the audience called out. [[62]]

“Who cut your head off, Jerry?” another yelled.

“It can’t be Jerry,” I heard Dad say, “because it looks too clean.”

I grinned.

“Cut it out,” Scoop hissed. “You aren’t supposed to be alive yet.”

So I shut my eyes and drew down my face, sober-like, which set everybody to laughing again. You can see I was good.

Scoop went on with his performance. And at the proper time, at his command, I slowly opened my eyes. As I did so I felt something touring around on the back of my neck. I hadn’t any doubt what it was, for the air was full of pinch bugs. Not small ones, but the big kind, that sort of swoop down on a fellow and grab a hunk of skin and start gnawing. I tried to wriggle my neck, to make the bug fly away. But it hung on like a plaster.

“Ouch!” I screeched, when the hungry skin eater had started in on his supper.

The audience roared. It probably did look funny to them; but, let me tell you, it wasn’t funny to me.

Scoop stepped to the front of the stage.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he grinned, “our ‘Living [[63]]Head’ has been punctured by a pinch bug, so we will have to end the show and send for a plumber.”

We had carefully instructed Red that he was to reverse the propeller at a certain point in the show, timing our excursion so that we would get back to the dock at nine o’clock, a few minutes after the show came to an end.

So, as I left the stage, rubbing the back of my neck, I had no other thought than that we were within sight of the dock. Consider my surprise, therefore, to learn that we were still a half mile in the country.

Getting out of my suit I hurried to the rear deck to see if Red needed help.

“Something’s wrong,” he told me, turning a pair of anxious eyes on me.

“What do you mean?”

“We don’t move. See?” and he pointed to the trees that grew along the canal bank.

He was right. The engine was working; the propeller was churning; but the boat wasn’t moving a hair.

“Everything was working slick,” he said. “Then, all of a sudden, the boat stopped dead still. That was five—ten minutes ago. Since then we haven’t moved an inch.” [[64]]

“Maybe we’re on a sand bar.”

“It acts to me as though the blamed boat is bewitched.”

He was thinking of the whispering ghost.

“When do we go home?” a voice in the audience called out good-naturedly.

“Pretty quick,” I called back.

“What’s the matter?” Scoop inquired, appearing at my elbow.

I told him that we weren’t moving.

“The propeller’s turning,” he said, looking into the water.

“Sure thing. But the boat is standing still.”

“Something’s got hold of it,” spoke up Red.

“What do you mean?” Scoop inquired sharply.

“He thinks it’s the ghost,” I put in.

“Bunk! I’d sooner think it’s a trick of the Strickers.”

“But how——” I began.

My words broke off sharply as something struck me on the leg and rattled to the deck. Stooping, I picked up a small metal washer. There was a rolled-up note in the disc’s bore.

Here is what I read:

There is a rope stretched across the canal.

The Friendly Ghost.

[[65]]

Well, when we got back to town, after having cut the Strickers’ rope, we tried to figure out among ourselves who the friendly ghost was. That it was a man, we could not doubt. The note had been tossed to us out of the darkness. Obviously the “ghost” had been close to our boat, probably in a boat of his own. Yet we had seen no small boat in the canal.

Who was he? Why was he taking sides with us against the Strickers? Was he constantly keeping near us? It would seem so. Even as we discussed the mystery, he probably was within hearing of our voices.

But why had he, a man, signed himself “The Friendly Ghost”? Did he intend that we should believe that he was a ghost?

In a vague way we had the feeling that there was a hidden connection between our show and the unknown man’s visit to the boat the night the Strickers had sought to destroy our stuff. It was because of our show that he was keeping near us … watching us.

What we didn’t suspect was the startling adventure that lay ahead of us as showmen. We realized that we were involved in a mystery; but, for the most part, it seemed to be a rather commonplace affair. It puzzled us but didn’t excite [[66]]us. We little dreamed, as I say, of what was coming.

After a while we gave our attention to other things of importance to us, for we seemed to make no progress in our discussion of the “ghost.”

Red had sold thirty fifteen-cent tickets and twenty-five ten-cent tickets. As a result, we were richer by seven dollars. I had expected to make more. But I wasn’t dissatisfied. For I realized now that I had been too enthusiastic. As a matter of fact, seven dollars was good pay for our work.

“If we can do this well all through vacation,” Red said, looking ahead, “we’ll take in four or five hundred dollars. Whoopee!”

“Let’s send up town and get some ice cream and celebrate,” suggested Peg.

“I second the motion,” laughed Scoop. “Hey, Jerry, ol’ money bag, separate yourself from fifty cents. We’re going to have a party.”

The ice cream put away inside of our stomachs, we went to bed, between ten and eleven o’clock, three of us sleeping and the fourth standing guard. I was a long time getting to sleep. I kept thinking of the money that we were going to earn and the good time that we were going to have. When I finally got to sleep I dreamt that [[67]]I was sitting on an ice cream cone a mile high. Five-dollar bills were flying around my head like birds.

“Cut it out!” Scoop growled, giving me a dig in the ribs.

In grabbing at the flying greenbacks, I had pinched his nose! [[68]]

[[Contents]]

CHAPTER VIII

THE GIRL IN THE BLUE TAM

The next morning when we were eating breakfast, after an uneventful night, Dad came whistling to the brickyard dock to learn how we were getting along.

This was a good time, I thought, to sort of feel him out on our proposed Ashton trip.

“We’ll soon be going camping,” I told him, getting at my subject in a roundabout way.

“I wish I could go with you,” he grinned, helping himself to one of our doughnuts.

“We’ll let you,” Scoop put in quickly.

“No chance,” Dad sighed. “I’ve got to keep my nose to the grindstone.”

“We won’t have to bother you this year,” I went on, “to haul our truck up the canal in the car. For we’re going to use our boat.”

“This boat?”

“Sure thing. We probably can earn some money, too.”

“Taking passengers?” [[69]]

“If we camp on Oak Island,” I said, “we can stop at Ashton on the way to the wide waters and give our show. And once we get to the island, it isn’t so very far to Steam Corners.”

“You better hire a mule,” Dad laughed.

“What for?”

“This engine of yours will never carry you that far.”

“Hey!” yipped Red, grinning. “Don’t you run down our swell engine.”

“It’s an old engine and liable to go blooey at any minute. I wouldn’t trust it two miles, myself.”

“If it breaks down,” boasted Red, “I can fix it.”

In our further talk, Dad made it plain to us that he wasn’t keen about letting us start out in the scow. He couldn’t bring himself to believe, he said, serious, that we would be able to go very many miles without a serious breakdown.

But he had promised to let me go camping when the other fellows went. And, as they had gained their parents’ consent to the trip, he couldn’t very well say “no” to me without backing down on his word.

So I finally got his reluctant consent.

That day we put a bigger advertisement in the [[70]]Daily Globe, for the coming show was to be our last one in Tutter until we had returned from our out-of-town trip. When the advertising bill had been paid, I sort of balanced my accounts, if that is the way to express it. Here is the way my figures looked on paper:

That afternoon we started the engine and turned on the organ to let the townsfolk know that we were still on the job. Red told us that the engine was burning a lot of gasoline. We didn’t let that worry us, for Scoop was getting the gasoline for nothing at his father’s store. In preparing for our trip, the leader filled three five-gallon cans. There was another fifteen gallons [[71]]in the engine tank, so we figured that we wouldn’t have to spend any of our working capital for gasoline for several days. By that time we probably would be rolling in money.

There wasn’t such a big crowd at our show that night. The older people, for the most part, didn’t seem to be greatly interested in our performance. But we took in four dollars, the most of it in ten-cent admissions. Mother and Dad were there. I talked with them just before the show started.

“Have a good time,” Mother told me, referring to our camping trip, “but be careful and don’t run any foolish risks.”

I promised.

“I hope you haven’t any guns on board.”

“None that I know of.”

“I’m afraid of guns.” She slipped something into my hand. “It’s a ten-dollar bill, Jerry. Keep it for an emergency.”

“There aren’t going to be any emergencies,” I boasted.

“I hope not. But it has been my experience that not infrequently the unexpected happens. Drop me a card when you get to Ashton. And be sure and brush your teeth and don’t go dirty.”

It was our intention to start on our trip as soon [[72]]as the show was over. So our folks, having been advised of our plan, were there to say good-by to us. There was a lot of waving back and forth as the Sally Ann got under way. Then we passed under the bridge and the others were lost to our sight.

“Well,” said Scoop, dropping into a seat on a box, “we’re off.”

“The only thing I regret,” grunted Peg, “is that we didn’t even scores with the Strickers before leaving town. For we owe them something for that rope trick.”

“Let’s send the ‘friendly ghost’ back to clean up on ’em,” grinned Scoop.

“We’re fast leaving the ghost behind us,” I laughed.

“I hope so,” Red spoke up quickly, squinting uneasily down the canal.

Grinning, Scoop got to his feet and cupped his hands to his mouth.

“Hey, mister friendly ghost,” he called, “give Bid Stricker a black eye for me.” He sat down, still grinning. “It’s all right now,” he waggled. “We’re revenged.”

In a short time we had left Tutter behind us. The moon was shining, making it easy for us to keep the Sally Ann in the middle of the canal. [[73]]Peg was handling the tiller. Red had the engine in charge. Scoop and I had nothing to do except to enjoy the ride and thrill in the thought of the probable adventures that lay ahead of us.

“Let’s have some refreshments,” Peg sang out.

Feeling around under the deck, where our provisions were stored, Scoop brought out a loaf of bread and the boiled ham that his father had generously donated. He made two sandwiches apiece.

Coming to the small wide waters, halfway between Tutter and Ashton, we anchored the scow close to the right-hand wooded shore, putting out the required lights. Then we turned in.

Just before I dozed off I heard a fish flop close to the boat. It must have been a big carp. Then a screech owl settled on a limb directly over the boat and told us, in mournful, plaintive hoots, what it thought of us. There were thousands of fireflies in the air. The night was wonderfully still. I filled my lungs with the cool air. Wouldn’t it be fine, I thought, if I could always live like this, and never again had to sleep in a bed in a stuffy bedroom?

Peg was the first one up the following morning. We heard him give a yell, which was followed by a loud splash. [[74]]

“Come on in, you sleepy-eyed bums,” he shrieked, splashing around in the water.

“Next!” I shouted, skinning out of my underwear. Losing my balance, I bumped against Red. We both went rolling.

“Let’s get Scoop,” he whispered. So, in this scheme, we kept rolling until we bumped against the leader. Jumping up, we threw a blanket over the tricked one’s head. While he was fighting the blanket, to free himself, we ran and jumped into the canal, giving him the horselaugh.

“I’ll get even with you fellows to-morrow morning,” he told us from the deck.

“Jump in,” we cried. “If you don’t, we’ll come there and throw you in.”

“I’m after the red-headed engineer,” the leader cried, and leaping, he struck the water a few feet from where the chased one was frantically scrambling up the bank. Red managed to get out of the canal before his pursuer could touch him, and racing along the tow path he made a flying dive. Scoop was close behind him. Pretty soon the two of them came to the surface, sputtering and splashing.

“Here he is, fellows,” Scoop panted, hanging to the prisoner by the hair. “I’ve captured the engineer.” [[75]]

“Make him dress and cook breakfast,” laughed Peg.

It was a dandy warm summer’s morning. We had slept later than we had intended. But we figured that there was still plenty of time for us to get to Ashton before noon.

“We probably won’t be able to get an ad in to-night’s paper,” said Scoop. “But we can have some handbills printed, telling about the show. Three-four hundred won’t cost much. We can distribute them this afternoon, a light job. For Ashton’s a small town.”

Breakfast over, Scoop and I and Peg gave the dishes a hurried bath in the canal while Red greased the engine, getting it ready for the day’s pull.

But when we came to crank the engine it wouldn’t respond. Ready to give up, after twenty minutes of steady winding, we finally got a faint explosion, then another and another. Once in motion the motor quickly gained speed. But, oh, boy, how it smoked!

Just before we came within sight of Ashton, two men appeared in the tow path, at a lonely spot in the canal, signaling to us to stop and put them on the opposite shore.

Red promptly stopped the propeller. As soon [[76]]as the scow brushed the bank the men jumped aboard. The leader was white-haired, a man of probably sixty years of age, with a thin hard face and peculiar beady black eyes. As I looked at him I was instinctively turned against him. He was the direct opposite to the kind of a man that I liked. His face held hidden stories; even his guarded movements suggested hidden unworthy things.

The most noticeable thing about the other man, outside of his thin tallness and his preacher-like coat, which came to his knees, was his nose. It was a big nose. And what tended to make it seem still bigger was a wart on the end of it. I had to smile as I looked at him. He made me think of pictures I had seen of the schoolmaster in the Sleepy Hollow story.

“Well, well,” he said, stepping around sort of jaunty-like and taking in everything with a lit-up face. “What have we here? A stage! Upon my word, a genuine stage. And seats! Ah-ha! I have, I believe, penetrated the secret. I am aboard a theatrical craft. A theatrical craft, I should add, in charge of four young showmen. A juvenile venture into the realms of the dramatic art. How interesting. How very, very interesting. In this familiar atmosphere of the—aw—[[77]]spoken play, I am stirred to memories of past golden days.” He got on the stage and sort of posed like an actor. I guess he would have given us an exhibition of his acting if his blazing-eyed companion hadn’t turned on him in a sudden fury.

“You fool!” the beady-eyed one cried. And at the cutting words, which were a sort of indirect command, the actor stopped stone-like, a look of fear rushing into his face.

They were a peculiar pair. And when they left the boat I followed them with curious eyes. There was a small dock here, to which two green rowboats were tied. Back from the canal was a big house, built after the plan of an old-time log cabin, with a wide summer porch in front and big fireplace chimneys.

“Huh!” grunted Scoop, as the two queer men disappeared up the path that led to the house. “They might at least have thanked us.”

Red was excited.

“Did you notice what the gabby one had in his coat pockets?”

“What?”

“Tools. Screw drivers and wrenches. I noticed that the pockets bulged. And when the man came near me I took a good squint.… What [[78]]do you bet,” freckles made the guess, “that he isn’t a safe breaker?”

“The one with the beady eyes,” Peg spoke up, “looked to me like the type of fellow who would knife his best friend in the back for a bottle of horse-raddish.”

“He’s got the other one scared of him,” I put in.

Scoop was studying the lonely surroundings.

“Do you suppose,” he inquired of us, in a sort of reflective way, “that the log house is a counterfeiters’ den? That would explain the tools in the man’s pockets. And this is the kind of a secluded place that counterfeiters would like.”

“Lookit!” I pointed. “Here comes a girl around the corner of the house. She’s heading this way. Let’s pump her.”

Scoop saw a chance to have some fun.

“We’ll let Red talk to her. For he’s the best lady-killer in the gang.”

His engine having stopped for some reason or other, the engineer had gone to work on it.

“What’s that?” he inquired, lifting a greasy face.

“Wipe off your chin and pull down your vest,” grinned Scoop. “For we’re going to have company.” [[79]]

Red let out his neck at the approaching girl.

“Aw!… You think you’re smart,” he scowled.

The girl came to the dock and regarded us with amused eyes. She wasn’t quite as old as we were, probably not more than twelve. She wore a blue tam, which, as you may know, is a sort of cloth hat with a tassel on top. Her dress was blue, too, the color of her eyes.

In his interest in the engine, Red had forgotten all about the approaching girl.

“Blame it!” he cried, straightening and giving the balky engine a kick. “I can’t get it started, fellows.” When he saw who was watching him from the dock, only a few feet away, his face got two shades redder than his hair.

“Maybe you’re giving it too much gas,” the girl spoke up. “We have an engine like that in my grandfather’s automobile; and we’re always having trouble with it. Let me show you what to do.”

She jumped aboard and joined the worker. This tickled Scoop. And he got behind the flushed engineer, nudging the latter in the ribs.

“Huh!” Red grunted, scowling at the newcomer. “What do you know about machinery?”

The girl looked at him and laughed. [[80]]

“What will you give me,” she asked, “if I start your engine for you?”

“Huh!” Red grunted again, giving her a sort of contemptuous up-and-down look. This thing of a small girl telling him how to run his own engine was more than he could stand.

The newcomer turned to Scoop.

“Is ‘Huh!’ the only English word he knows?” she smiled.

“At mealtime,” the leader laughed, “he can say ‘pie’ and ‘cake.’ And he can say ‘Pretty Polly’ when he wants a cracker.”

“Shut up!” scowled Red.

Here the girl forgot about the engine in a sudden interest in our show stuff.

“You have a regular theater, haven’t you? What kind of a show is it?”

“Magic.”

“Who is the magician?”

“Me. This fellow,” the boaster further informed, pulling me forward, “is the ‘Living Head.’ Ham-and-gravy over there,” he added, pointing to Peg, “is my chief stage assistant. Little fuss-budget here sells tickets and takes in the mon.”

“I’ll ‘fuss-budget’ you with a monkey wrench,” screamed Red, “if you don’t dry up.” [[81]]

The girl pretended fright.

“Does he eat people alive?” she inquired of Scoop.

“Not as a general rule,” the leader returned seriously. “As a matter of fact, after you once get acquainted with him, if you can stand his freckles and red hair, he’s a pretty likeable sort of a kid.… Do you live here?”

The girl nodded, with a quick glance toward the house.

“It is my grandfather’s home,” she informed.

“Does your father live here, too?”

“No. My parents are both dead.”

“Maybe,” said Scoop, “it was your white-haired grandfather that we just helped across the canal.”

“It couldn’t have been him. For he has been working in his flower garden all morning. I just left him there.”

“We put two men across the canal,” Scoop informed, “and they went into your house.”

The girl looked at him, puzzled.

“Two men?” she repeated.

“Yes,” Red spoke up, giving the girl a spiteful look, “and they were a couple of bums.”

The granddaughter’s eyes flashed angrily.

“My grandfather doesn’t associate with bums.” [[82]]

Red gave a tantalizing laugh, glad of the chance to anger the other.

“You look like a bum yourself,” the girl cried, in a burst of passion. “And so do you and you and you,” she jabbed with her finger. “I hope you never get your old engine started. There!” and stomping her foot she turned and ran up the path to the house. [[83]]

[[Contents]]

CHAPTER IX

UNDER ARREST

It was a few minutes short of twelve o’clock when we drew up at the Ashton dock. Red wanted to turn the organ on immediately, to sort of hilariously announce our arrival in town. But Scoop shook his head on the freckled one’s suggestion. The better plan, the leader said, would be to call on the mayor, first of all, and learn what the town’s attitude was toward traveling shows.

Several kids came running in the time that we were securing the Sally Ann to the dock.

“Look at the funny boat!” one of the newcomers yipped.

“It’s a show boat,” another cried, taking in our stage and seats with a pair of busy eyes.

“The greatest show of its kind an earth,” Scoop told the curious ones. “Kermann, the master magician of the age. Makes tables appear and disappear right before your very eyes. Carries a human head on a platter. Don’t miss it, [[84]]fellows. It’s a humdinger of a show. Cheap, too: only ten cents for kids.”

It was good business for us, the leader said, to treat the kids right and answer their questions about the show.

“For they’ll go home,” he explained, “and tell their folks everything we’ve said. Then, of course, the whole family will want to see what the show’s like.”

When the Sally Ann was securely tied to the dock, Scoop and I started down the main street in search of the mayor. His office, we were told upon inquiry, was in the town hall.

A short, fat man with a friendly face, we took a liking to the executive as soon as we set eyes on him. There was something about him that gave us confidence in him.

“Well, boys,” he smiled, “what can I do for you this morning?”

Scoop, as spokesman, explained about our show.

“Um.… You say it’s a boys’ show?”

“There’s four of us in it.”

“Four boys?”

“Yes, sir.”

“There aren’t any grown people back of the proposition, or in any way connected with it?” [[85]]

“No, sir.”

The mayor laughed in a sudden thought.

“You must be the ‘enterprising young showmen’ that I read about in the Tutter newspaper.”

“That’s us,” grinned Scoop.

“Did Stair send you over here to ‘toot your show horn at our canal door,’ as he put it in his newspaper article?”

“Mr. Stair has nothing to do with our show,” Scoop assured quickly.

There was a moment’s silence.

“Well, we usually charge a license fee for traveling shows, but I guess we’ll forget about the fee in this case. Yes, boys, you have my permission to go ahead with your show. Only don’t try any skin-game. If you do, you’ll get into trouble.”

We thanked him warmly, assuring him that our show was clean, and no skin-game, as he called it.

“Let me give you some free tickets,” Scoop offered.

But the executive firmly brushed the tickets aside.

“No, boys. I don’t accept presents for granting favors. To not do that is one of the rules of my office. I thank you, though. And it isn’t [[86]]improbable that I will be around this evening to see what kind of magicians you are.”

When we were almost to the door, Scoop turned back.

“I wonder,” he said, “if you can tell us the name of the people who live in the log house on the canal bank coming into town.”

“You must mean the Garber place.”

“There’s a girl about my size in the family.”

“Yes; that is old Mr. Garber’s granddaughter. What about it?”

“We saw a pair of suspicious-acting strangers hanging around there.”

“Well?”

“Maybe the place is a counterfeiters’ den.”

The mayor gave a hearty laugh.

“I don’t know who your ‘suspicious-acting strangers’ were; but I can assure you that Mr. Garber himself is a most trustworthy citizen.”

“The men went into the house,” Scoop hung on.

“They may have been tramps begging a meal.”

“Tramps,” was the quick reply, “don’t go to people’s front doors.”

I could see from the mayor’s actions that he was impatient to get rid of us.

“I hope,” he laughed, taking up a legal-looking [[87]]paper and giving it his attention, “that you boys prove to be better showmen than you have detectives. Good day.”

We quickly located the newspaper office. Entering the building, we found an elderly man back of the counter writing in a big book. We tried to get his attention, but he was too busy to notice us. Scoop got huffy.

“Is this a printing plant?” he inquired in a sharp voice.

The bookkeeper lifted his head and scowled at us over his glasses.

“I thought it was a printing plant when I first came in,” Scoop went on, squinting around curious-like, “but it seems to be a sort of waiting room … for customers.”

The man’s face went red under the thrust.

“What do you want?” he snapped.

“Could you print four hundred handbills in a hurry?”

“That all depends. Who’s orderin’ ’em?”

“We are.”

“And who are ‘we’?”

Scoop chestily informed the other that we were in town with our floating theater and proposed to give an evening performance.

“To advertise our show,” he went on, “we’ll [[88]]need some printed handbills—small ones, about four inches by six inches. How soon can you print them?”

“Printin’,” the man said pointedly, “costs money.”

“How much money?”

“Um.… Four hundred four-by-six handbills will cost you three dollars.”

At the leader’s directions I brought out my roll of greenbacks and peeled off three one-dollar bills.

“Well, well,” said the man, sort of thawing out at sight of our wealth.

“If we give you the job,” Scoop said, “you’ve got to promise to have the handbills ready for us by three o’clock. For it’ll take us a couple of hours to distribute them, and we’ll want to complete the job before supper.”

“Got much copy?”

“Not more than a hundred and fifty words.”

“That bein’ the case, I ought to git the job out by two-thirty easy.”

Here is the advertisement that Scoop wrote:

SEE KERMANN, THE MASTER MAGICIAN

The Great Kermann is in town!—the master magician of the age. [[89]]

See him! See him! See him!

He makes tables disappear right before your very eyes.

The “Living Head,” the most baffling trick of modern magic—Kermann does it; actually carries the “Living Head” about the stage on a platter.

You will shiver; you will be mystified; you will laugh at the droll antics of the amazing “Living Head.”

A show for old and young.

We will give our first performance in Ashton to-night, on our magnificent floating theater, the Sally Ann, which will leave the central dock for a moonlight excursion down the canal at 8:30.

Enjoy the moonlight ride; hear the orchestrelle.

Admission, 15c.

Children, 10c.

THE “SALLY ANN” SHOW COMPANY

We stopped at a bakery and bought a pie and two loaves of bread, after which we hurried to [[90]]the dock, hoping that dinner would be ready for us when we got there.

Peg came running to meet us.

“Did you see ’em?” he inquired, excited.

“See who?”

“The Strickers.”

“What?” cried Scoop, staring.

“They’re in town,” Peg waggled. “We saw them on the canal bridge about ten minutes ago. Bid and Jimmy and the Watson kid. They were with a strange man.”

A cloud came into the leader’s face.

“If they try any of their tricks to-night,” he waggled, his jaw squared, “something is going to drop.”

When dinner was over we put everything in order on the boat, so that there would be no hitch when it came time to give our evening show. Red had oiled the organ that forenoon, so shortly after two o’clock we put the music-maker into snappy operation. This drew the kids.

“I’m putting a line or two in to-night’s issue about your show,” the newspaper man told us, when we called at his office for our handbills. “I hope you have a good crowd.” He listened sharply for a second or two, “Is that your orchestrelle that I hear?” [[91]]

“Sure thing,” grinned Scoop. “Isn’t it a darb?”

“Is it playing a tune?”

“ ‘The Old Oaken Bucket.’ ”

The man grunted.

“If that’s ‘The Old Oaken Bucket’ I’m ‘The Last Rose of Summer.’ Well, good luck, boys. And thanks for the three dollars and for coming over and waking us up.”

When we were in the street Scoop gave me half of the handbills.

“You take the east side of town,” he instructed, “and I’ll take the west side. Leave a handbill at each house; and where you see a woman on her porch, or standing in her doorway, take off your cap and be very polite, so that she will have a good opinion of us. If she asks you any questions about our show, give her a nice little spiel.”

I had been at work for possibly thirty minutes when suddenly I heard my name called. Turning quickly, and looking into the street, I saw Scoop in the back seat of an automobile. A uniformed policeman was seated beside him. Jimmy Stricker and the Watson kid shared the front seat with the driver. Bid was hanging to the car’s side, riding on the running-board.

“You’re goin’ to catch it!” he yipped at me, screwing up his face in a mean way. [[92]]

My heart sank. For I realized that my chum was under arrest. And, plainly, it was the policeman’s intention to arrest me, too.

For an instant I thought of taking to my heels and running away. But I didn’t do that. I had done nothing to justify arrest. So why should I play the coward and run away, to be reminded of it ever afterwards by the hated Strickers? Besides, it wasn’t right to desert my chum.

Jumping out of the car, the policeman clapped a heavy hand on my shoulder.

“You’re under arrest, young feller,” he growled. [[93]]

[[Contents]]

CHAPTER X

THE GREASED PIG

I was put into the car with Scoop, the policeman taking a seat between us, after which the driver turned the car around and started back down the street.

I was scared. I can’t deny it. However undeserving I was of arrest, the fact remained that I had been picked up by the law. And innocent though I was, it might not be easy for me to prove my innocence and thereby gain my freedom.

The automobile stopped in front of the mayor’s office and the policeman gruffly ordered us to pile out.

“If you try to run away,” he scowled, “I’ll catch you an’ give you ten years at hard labor.”

That, of course, was a bluff, and I knew it. For I was well enough acquainted with the processes of the law to know that it was a policeman’s job to capture law breakers and not to sentence them. [[94]]

Still, I didn’t like to have him talk that way. It gave me a sort of trapped, helpless feeling.

We all went into the mayor’s office, the policeman and my chum and I in one group and the car’s other four occupants in another group.

The Strickers were in their glory. Walking on my heels, sort of, Bid kept saying under his breath: “How do you like it, Jerry? Whose turn is it now? You will scare us with your old ghost trick, hey?”

I didn’t say anything back. For what was the use? However, I did a lot of thinking. And, in mentally comparing myself with my tormentor, I told myself that I would rather be a jailbird all the rest of my life than to have his mean disposition. Much as I dislike the Zulutown gang, of which Bid is the leader (and I have good occasion to dislike them, let me tell you), I don’t go out of my way to pester them. Nor do any of my chums, for that matter. But when we do something that gains for us added fun or special public attention, it seems to gall Bid and his gang to the point where all they care to think about is how they can torment us.

The mayor wasn’t behind his desk, so the policeman told the driver, a lanky, hungry-looking fellow, to go out and find him. [[95]]

“Put your handbills over there,” the officer told us, pointing to a table beside the room’s big desk. His scowl deepened as we obeyed him. “It’s plain,” he added, “that you kids don’t know much about the ordinances of this here town.”

I was less frightened now. For I had come to realize all in an instant how easily I could get in touch with Dad if necessary. He would come in a hurry if I telephoned to him that I was in trouble. And he’d know just what to do to gain my release.

“What’s the idea of arresting us?” Scoop spoke up. “We haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Is that so?” Bid put in, letting out his neck. “My Uncle Ike, I want to tell you, is the town bill poster—”

“Shut up!” thundered the policeman. “I’ll do the talkin’.”

Scoop and I exchanged glances.

“Is it against the law,” my chum inquired, getting a clue to the cause of our arrest from what Bid had blurted out, “to peddle bills in this town?”

“You bet your boots it is,” Bid waggled. “For the council gave my Uncle Ike the right——”

“Shut up!” bellowed the policeman a second time. “If I have to tell you ag’in,” he threatened, [[96]]acting as though he was talking across the continent to some one in New York City, “I’ll throw you out.” He turned to us. “We don’t ’low every Tom, Dick an’ Harry to throw bills ’round our town to litter up our streets. Not by a jugful! We’ve got a town bill poster an’ it’s his job to ’tend to distributin’ handbills an’ puttin’ up posters. That was him I just sent after the mayor.”

Well, it was a relief to us to know that we weren’t charged with anything more unlawful than peddling handbills without a permit.

“Gee!” grinned Scoop, shedding his depression. “We thought you had us spotted for a pair of escaped bank robbers.”

“Here comes the mayor,” the policeman growled. “He’ll ’tend to your young hides.”

The summoned executive came briskly into the room, followed closely by the hungry-looker.

“What’s the trouble, boys?” our friend inquired.

“The trouble is,” spoke up the policeman in his long-distance voice, “that they’ve bin peddlin’ bills without a permit. Ike here caught ’em at it an’ called on me to make the arrest.”

“They hain’t got no right to go peddlin’ handbills in this here teown,” Ike put in, wagging and [[97]]working his mouth as though he wanted to spit and didn’t have a place. We learned afterwards that he was an uncle of the Strickers’. “The council made me official bill poster,” he added, with more wagging, “an’ if they’s any bills to be put out in this here teown, I’m a-goin’ to do it, by heck!”

The mayor gravely inquired if we had been handing out bills. In his admission, Scoop pointed to the handbills on the table. The executive picked up one of the bills and read it.

“I’m sorry, boys, but Ike has a case against you. We have an ordinance that prohibits the distribution of circulars such as this except through our authorized bill poster. I’ll have to register a complaint against you for disturbing the peace and fine you. The fine will be one dollar each and costs. I have the right to withdraw the costs, and I’m going to do that.”

I had told Scoop about my “emergency” ten-dollar bill. We had laughed about it at the time, saying to each other that we would have no occasion to use it. Now, as I fished the greenback out of my pocket, I gave my companion a sort of sheepish grin.

I was given eight dollars in change.

“Remember,” the executive enjoined, holding [[98]]my eyes, “you’re to do no more bill peddling. If you want the rest of your bills peddled, you’ll have to make arrangements with Ike.”

The hungry one put out his neck, an eager look in his eyes.

“I’ll peddle ’em fur a dollar,” he offered, working his mouth.

“No, you won’t,” Scoop snapped, scowling. “We wouldn’t give you a penny if we never had a bill peddled.”

“Haw! haw! haw!” hooted Bid Stricker, acting big in his triumph over us. “Listen to him blow.”

“You’re going to get your pay for this,” cried Scoop, shaking his fist at the enemy.

“Tut! tut!” the mayor put in quickly. “I won’t allow you boys to quarrel in here.”

“Can we go now?” Scoop inquired shortly.

“Certainly.”

“Hey!” screeched Ike, as we started for the door. “They’re takin’ the handbills with ’em.”

The mayor gave the screecher a sort of disgusted look.

“Why shouldn’t they? The handbills are theirs.”

“Yes,” whined Ike, more hungry-looking than ever, “an’ they’ll go peddlin’ ’em out on the sly.” [[99]]

The mayor followed us to the door, his hands on our shoulders.

“Forget about it, boys. As I say, I’m sorry that it happened; but, of course, as long as we have this ordinance I must stand by it.”

When we came to the dock we had to pick our way through a knot of kids. Red was yelling through the megaphone, telling the curious ones what a wonderful show awaited them. But the spieler quickly put away his megaphone at sight of our angry faces.

“Tee! hee!” he snickered, when he had been told about our arrest. “I wish I could have seen you in the coop. I bet you made a swell pair of jailbirds.”

“Laugh all you want to,” growled Scoop, “but the Strickers are going to get their pay for this. We didn’t do anything to them when they tried to destroy our stuff. And we didn’t go after them when they stretched the rope across the canal. But this time they’re going to catch it.”

We kept the organ grinding away all of the afternoon. The kids enjoyed it. We kept telling them that they would miss the treat of their lives if they passed up seeing the Great Kermann.

Stopping the organ at five-thirty to get supper, [[100]]we started it again at seven o’clock. Quite a crowd turned out by eight-thirty. When we gave our show, every seat was taken. The mayor was there with three kids. The fellow with the hungry face separated himself from fifteen cents and decorated one of the seats. Red told us afterwards that the policeman tried to get in for nothing, but was told to “go chase himself.”

Scoop went through with his tricks without a hitch. Peg and I had a lot of fun helping him. I didn’t spoil the “Living Head” trick by yelling, as I had done at our first show in Tutter.

Red sold sixteen fifteen-cent tickets and thirty-six ten-cent tickets, a matter of six dollars.

We were happy in our success; and in talking about it back and forth it was quickly decided that we should go directly to Steam Corners, instead of camping on Oak Island. If everything was well with our boat at the conclusion of our next show, we would long-distance our folks, begging permission to go farther from home with our show, into the territory beyond Steam Corners. It would be vastly more fun giving shows and earning money than camping. And if we did want to camp for a few days, we could stop at Oak Island on our triumphant return home.

It was our plan to pull out as soon as the show [[101]]was over; but before leaving Ashton Scoop and Peg got their heads together and started off into the darkness. They said they were going shopping, to buy some bread and butter. But from their actions I knew that they had another purpose in mind in leaving the boat.

Were they intending to corner the enemy in some dark alley and pass out a few effective black-eye punches? I went worried in the thought of it. Not that I was afraid of the Strickers—far from it. It was the thought of being jailed again, for fighting, that troubled me. We had the mayor’s friendship. And I didn’t want to lose that friendship by appearing a second time before him as a law breaker.

So it was a big relief to me when I caught the sound of my returning companions’ laughing voices. There was another sound, too, that I couldn’t place. A sort of gurgling, grunting sound.

I almost fell over in my surprise when the avengers appeared dragging a half-grown pig.

“What the dickens?…” I cried, staring.

“It’s a present for the Strickers and Uncle Ike,” grinned Scoop, panting from his hard work of lugging the big pig.

“What do you mean?” I cried. [[102]]

The newcomers looked at each other and laughed.

“We’ve got a peachy scheme, Jerry. We found the pig snooping about in an alley and we’re going to take it to the town hall, where our friend Ike and the policeman are gambling with a deck of cards and a box of matches.”

“Scoop and I happened to be passing the town hall,” Peg picked up the story, “when a familiar laugh punctured our ears. Creeping to a window, we peeped in. And there was dear old Ike and the copper gambling their heads off.”

“He’ll be ‘dear old Ike,’ ” grinned Scoop, “when we get through with him.”

“They’ve got the door locked,” Peg went on, “so that no one can come into the room and surprise them at their game, for the policeman, of course, is supposed to be in the street. The Strickers are there, too. That’s the best part of all.”

“Oh, boy!” yipped Scoop, hugging his stomach in his crazy laughter, “won’t there be a scramble, though, when we drop the pig in the window? It’ll be worth the two dollars that we paid, Jerry.”

Well, we got the boat ready for a hasty get-away, then we gave the pig a thick coat of machine grease. Dumping the greased porker into [[103]]a bag, we followed Scoop down a couple of dark alleys to the building where the policeman and the bill poster were gambling with matches. The alleys were dark and we had to move slowly, feeling our way around big boxes and other obstructions. To keep the pig from squealing, we had fastened an old shirt of Peg’s over its snout.

When we came to the town hall Scoop pointed out the open window. We crept up and peeped in. The policeman and Ike were seated on opposite sides of a small table. The air was heavy with the stale smoke from a couple of hard-working corncob pipes.

“I’ll open it,” said Ike, putting in a match.

“I’ll stick,” said blue jacket, pushing in a match on his side of the table. He studied his hand. “Gimme three cards.”

“I’ll bet a couple,” said Ike, pushing some more matches into the center of the table.

“I’ll see you,” said blue jacket, “an’ raise you one.”

Scoop snickered.

“Here’s where we raise one. Get hold of the bag, fellows. Atta-boy! When I say ‘three,’ drop the pig into the window. I’ll loosen the gag so that he’ll be able to give them some nice sweet music.” [[104]]

“I wish we could drop the pig on top of Bid Stricker,” giggled Peg.

“Maybe we can,” laughed Scoop. “For smarty’s sitting almost directly under the window.”

Well, we hoisted the porker into the air, dumping it into the room at Scoop’s signal. It gave an awful squeal as it landed on the floor. I guess the poker players were almost scared out of their wits.

“Holy cow!” roared blue jacket. “It’s a pig.”

There was a sound of tumbling chairs and the scurry of feet.

“Some one dumped it in the window,” yipped Bid Stricker.

“He’s comin’ your way, Ike,” roared blue jacket. “Grab him.”

There was a crash as another chair went down.

“You durn ol’ fool!” thundered blue jacket. “Why didn’t you hang onto him?”

“I tried to,” screeched Ike, “but he got away from me.”

“I’ll git him.”

There was another crash.

“Ouch! Jumpin’ Jupiter! He’s greased.”

Jerry Todd and the Oak Island Treasure. Page 104

WE DUMPED THE PORKER INTO THE ROOM AT SCOOP’S SIGNAL.

“I’m plastered with it. Jest look at me!” There was a whine in the high-pitched voice. [[105]]“It’s all your fault, Ham Bickel. I wouldn’t ‘a’ grabbed him if you hadn’t made me.”

We took a guarded squint into the room. The chairs and table were upset. The matches and cards were scattered every which way on the floor. Scared out of its wits, the pig was dashing first in one direction, then in another. The policeman and the Strickers, with smeared hands and faces, were trying to grab it. But the four-legged scooter, with its coating of grease, had no trouble keeping its freedom.

“We better beat it,” Scoop advised. So we streaked it down the alley to the dock. In a jiffy we had the Sally Ann untied and the engine churning.

How slowly we moved! Would the policeman hear us making our escape? Would he start after us?

My heart remained in my throat, sort of, until the lights of Ashton disappeared from our sight. [[106]]

[[Contents]]

CHAPTER XI

THE MYSTERY THAT CAME WITH THE NIGHT

Into the night, in the direction of the Oak Island wide waters, four miles ahead, the Sally Ann slowly and steadily made its way, the engine throbbing under its load, the rudder squeaking on its rusted hinge pins as Peg moved the tiller first one way then another.

It was our plan to put up for the night within a mile of the big wide waters. Then in the morning, in continuing our passage to Steam Corners, we could conveniently stop at the island and fill our water cask at the spring in the rocks on the island’s north side. We really didn’t have a cask; what we had for a water container was a pail, but Scoop spoke of it as a cask in shaping our plans. Ships, he told us, always filled their “casks” with water—he never had read in a story of a ship filling its “pail.”

We liked to have him talk that way. For it lent an added touch of adventure to our cruise. We could almost imagine, in our talk, that we [[107]]were hardened south sea buccaneers bending a course to strike a rendezvous, as they tell about in pirate stories, where needed food and drink awaited us.

Having covered at least three miles in our moonlight passage, we stopped the engine and tied the Sally Ann to the stubbed bushes that grew along the water’s edge.

It was now close to twelve o’clock. And as we got ready to turn in, removing our shoes and outer clothing for sleeping comfort, we joked back and forth, telling each other that the “friendly ghost” was probably pacing the tow path, impatient for us to settle down for the night so that it could board our boat at the customary midnight hour.

And the funny part is that in our crazy talk we actually got Red scared. When we lay down on the stage, wrapped in our blankets, the frightened one sort of snuggled up to me, hanging to my arm. I didn’t shove him away. As a matter of fact I kind of liked his evident dependence in me. It gave me a sort of steady, capable feeling.

There was some final scattered talk about the greased pig and the Strickers. Certainly, we boasted, laughing, we had turned a neat trick. We had outclassed the Strickers in our smartness. [[108]]They’d think twice hereafter before electing to pester us.

“If I can find a pig post card in Steam Corners,” Scoop laughed, “I’m going to mail it to Bid Stricker. For I don’t want him to be in any doubt as to who dropped the greased porker on top of him.”

I often think of that night. It seemed to me as I lay in the moonlight, lulled by the gentle night sounds, that the exciting and hazardous things in life were a million miles away. Yet I was to learn, within a very few hours, that perils, grim and deadly, were fast swooping down upon us.

As Scoop said afterwards in recalling our evening’s light-hearted fun, those were the last really care-free hours that we enjoyed throughout the remainder of our cruise. After that night things moved swiftly—and the things that happened to us were not pleasant things, as you will learn.

But, as I have pictured in my story in the preceding paragraphs, we went to sleep with untroubled, contented minds. It was a great lark, we told ourselves. Days of hilarious fun lay ahead of us. Even Christopher Columbus’ voyage across an uncharted ocean was scarcely less thrilling than this voyage of ours into the canal’s hidden haunts. [[109]]

I must have been asleep for an hour or two. I was having a dream about the engine. I was trying to start it, and couldn’t. The other fellows weren’t in the dream. I was alone.

After a lot of back-breaking work I managed, to get the engine started. As I straightened I could hear the singing put! put! put! of the exhaust. Bending to its task, the engine quickly picked up speed. I could feel the Sally Ann quiver as the propeller blades bit into the water. Another such dream, so real and so vivid, I never had had.

Suddenly I sat up, rubbing my eyes. Was I awake? I pinched myself. No, I wasn’t dreaming. My mind wasn’t sleeping. And what I had dreamt to a result had actually taken place—the Sally Ann was under way, was moving slowly down the canal, its motor singing in full speed.

I jumped up. The others were still asleep. So I knew it wasn’t one of my chums who had started the engine.

“Wake up,” I breathed in Scoop’s ear, trembling in my excitement.

“What the dickens?…” he gasped, sitting up. He blinked his eyes. “We’re moving!”

“Some one’s stealing our boat.”

He leaped to his feet. [[110]]

“Where’s Red and Peg? They may be playing a joke on us.”

I pointed to the two sleepers.

“Get up,” Scoop shook them. “We’ve got a fight on our hands.”

“Who—who started the engine?” Red mumbled sleepily.

“That,” Scoop gritted, “is what we’re going to find out.”

The freckled one, now wide awake, went into a frightened panic.

“Oh!…” he gurgled. “Maybe it’s the—the ghost.”

Scoop grunted.

“The Strickers probably. Git a club, fellows. Here’s an extra one. Come on.”

Peg was directly behind the courageous leader, I came next, then Red. He was hanging to me and gurgling. In other adventures of ours I had seen him scared, but never anything like this. I could feel the thumping of his heart in his grip on my arm. Maybe, though, it was my own heart that I detected.

We tiptoed single file across the scow’s pit. It was still moonlight, but the silver light was of no aid to us in identifying the engineer who was running off with our boat, for the motor and tiller [[111]]were hidden from our sight by a hanging canvas that we had put up to keep the engine’s flying oil from spattering the clothing of our back-row customers.

That a steady hand was holding the tiller we could not doubt. For the scow was keeping its proper course. Yet, as we bent our ears we could detect no human sounds from behind the screen—there were no whispering voices or the scraping of feet on the wooden deck.

Gosh! I began to share Red’s panicky fear. For I suddenly realized that there was something ghostly in our experience.

As I say, in my stealthy approach on the curtained engine, I was directly behind Peg, He was close on Scoop’s heels. So, when the leader slowly lifted the hanging canvas, I had a clear view of the engine deck over my chums’ shoulders.

There was a lantern beside the engine. I saw that it was a lantern that didn’t belong to us. From the attracting spot of light I lifted my eyes to the helmsman. And then.…

We went back in a heap, Red groaning at the bottom of the human pile.

“Did—did you see who it was?” gasped Scoop, gaining his feet. [[112]]

“The girl in the blue tam,” I breathed, dizzy.

Here was an amazing mystery. Our boat was being stolen by a girl. Beyond all doubt she was acting to a purpose. But what that purpose was I could not conceive.

Yet in my dizziness I had a crazy grinning thought. Here we were, four big boys, armed with clubs, creeping up on one lone girl. Four boys, I might add, who were only half dressed.

“Go-osh!” shimmied Red, weak-kneed in his tumbling embarrassment, “where’s m-my p-pants?” [[113]]

[[Contents]]

CHAPTER XII

THE BURIED TREASURE

We made short work of getting into our clothes—all except Red. Having stepped out of his pants without any recollection of where he had dropped them, he was having a sweating time in their loss. His teeth chattering, a hunted look in his bulging eyes, all he seemed able to say in his embarrassing predicament was: “Where’s m-my p-pants? My g-gosh, fellows! Who’s got m-my p-pants?”

We finally located the misplaced pants for him and shoved them at him.

“Snap into it,” Peg said sharply. “We aren’t going to wait for you all night.”

“It isn’t night,” Scoop corrected, squinting at his watch’s illuminated dial. “It’s two o’clock in the morning.”

We had taken note as we dressed that the scow was heading for the big wide waters. And in this discovery our puzzlement deepened. There would have been some excuse for the girl’s presence [[114]]on the boat if it had been traveling in the direction of her home. But it wasn’t. Every minute the boat was taking her farther away from her home. We couldn’t understand it.

Was she trying to act smart with us? Was this a trick of hers to show us how much she knew about engines? We were angered in the thought. But we quickly sobered in the earnest conclusion that it was no skylarking whim that had brought her here.

“I began to think,” she spoke up, when we had appeared on the engine deck, “that you never were going to wake up.”

“How did you get here?” Scoop inquired, staring.