Read Ebook: The Arrow of Fire A Mystery Story for Boys by Snell Roy J Roy Judson

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Ebook has 1005 lines and 32954 words, and 21 pages

"Where?"

"There. Over there in the shadows."

Gripping his gun tight, Drew threw the light of his electric torch into those shadows. "No one there," he muttered. "You were dreaming. But no. I heard something.

"And look!" he cried, springing forward. "Here's the gun. He dropped it. Fled. Thought the Devil was after him. No wonder, when you hunted him with 'Silent Murder.'

"But I say, boy!" he exclaimed, gripping Johnny's hand till it hurt. "You saved my life. I'll not forget that!"

"We'll just take this along," he said a moment later as he picked up a steel blue sixshooter with a six inch barrel.

"A forty-five," he said, turning it over. "Not a bad gun. And full of slugs. Reminds me of one that nearly did for me once. Tell you about it sometime."

At that they turned and walked quietly away from the scene of the near tragedy.

Where was the intruder? Gone. What of Johnny's arrow? What damage had it done? Perhaps the light of day would answer some of these questions. At present it was time for Johnny to hasten away to his nightly vigil in the squad call corner.

Johnny's work at the studio never failed to fascinate him. The noon hours were pure routine. But at night, when squad calls came thick and fast--that was the time!

Each night brought to his ears a terse description of some new form of violence.

"You'd think," he said to Drew once, "that the whole city had turned criminal."

"But it hasn't," Drew replied thoughtfully. "Only one person in three hundred is a professional criminal. Don't forget that. If you want to know what that means, go somewhere and watch a turnstile. Count three hundred people as they pass through. Then say 'ONE.' Big, like that. That stands for one crook. Then begin all over again, and count three hundred." Johnny tried that, and derived a deal of assurance from the experiment. It gave him the comforting feeling that one might have who has three hundred friends arrayed solidly behind him, row on row, while a single enemy stands across the way.

But were these truly ready to stand back of law and justice? "If they are not," he told himself, "it is because of ignorance. If they do not know the truth they must be told." Johnny hurried back to the shack as soon as his work was done, on the night of his curious adventure down by the slip. He had no desire to go prowling about those abandoned sheds again that night. He did wish to be abroad the first thing in the morning. He wanted to discover, if possible, how the would-be assassin had made his escape. He was also curious to discover whether or not his arrow had gone with the stranger.

"I am surprised that anyone should attempt to kill me," Drew said, as they started for the slip early that morning.

"But isn't a police officer's life always in danger?"

"Why, no, I wouldn't say so. Depends, of course, on your record, and the type of crooks you are assigned to.

"Take the matter of arresting a crook. He doesn't usually resist, unless you've caught him red-handed in crime. Rather take a chance with the judge. Figures you've got nothing on him anyway. And I haven't been in on anything really big. They give those things to older men. Howe and I have been following pickpockets for months. That was my first and it's my last assignment as a detective so far.

"Pickpockets are seldom violent. Sneaking is their game. They seldom pack a gun. If they do, they don't know how to use it."

"That man knew his gun," said Johnny with a shudder.

"Fairly good gun." Drew had thrown the cartridges out of the revolver. He had hung it on a nail over the head of his bed. There it was destined to remain until a busy spider had spun a web about it and built him a gauzy home inside the trigger guard. For all that, neither the spider, the revolver, nor the former owner of the revolver were destined to rest long in peace.

"It's plain enough," said Johnny, as they reached the sheds, "why that assassin was unconscious of my presence. I had been standing silently in the shadows, a long time, looking for a rat."

"Well," chuckled Drew, "you got one, didn't you?"

"That's what I've been wondering," replied Johnny. "Probably I did; otherwise why did he drop the gun?"

"Quite so. You traded an arrow for a loaded gun. Not so bad."

"I still have hope of recovering my arrow. The flesh of a man's arm is a thin target. I put all I had into that shot."

They found some footprints ground into the cinders where the man had stood. They discovered several breaks in the rusting sides of the shed, where he might have escaped. And yes, true to Johnny's expectations, they found the arrow where it had spent its force and dropped a hundred or more feet from the spot from which it had been fired.

"See!" exclaimed Johnny as he picked it up. "I got him. Blood on the feathers."

"I never doubted that for a moment," Drew said impressively. "As you suggested, the arrow must have gone through the fleshy part of his arm.

"He's a marked man!" he exclaimed. "You must keep that arrow. Some day, perhaps to-morrow, perhaps ten years from now, it may be needed as evidence."

"Why, I--"

"That arrow mark will leave a scar that matches the width of your arrow blade. It will have other peculiarities that will tell straight and plain that the wound was made, not only by an arrow, but by one arrow--this one. I've seen things far more technical than that, far more difficult to prove, sway a jury and win a hanging verdict."

So, in the end, the arrow was laid across two nails close to the revolver above Drew's bed.

And, just by way of providing an easy means of escape if escape were necessary, the spider ran a line from the thug's revolver to Johnny's blood-dyed arrow.

"You said something about boxing once," Drew was at the door of the shack, ready to depart for his day of scouting. "How'd you like to meet me at the club this evening for a few rounds?"

"Be great!" Johnny exclaimed enthusiastically. "You'll find me rusty, though. Haven't had gloves on for a long time."

"Here's the address." Drew wrote on a bit of paper, and handed it to Johnny. "I'll meet you in the lobby at nine o'clock."

"Fine!"

With Drew gone, and only the distant rumble of the city to keep him company, Johnny sat down in Drew's rocking chair to think. From time to time his gaze strayed to the wall where the revolver and the arrow hung.

"Life," he thought, "has grown more complicated and--and more terrible. And yet, what a privilege it is to live!"

For the first time since he arrived on that freighter at midnight, he felt a desire to be far, far away from this great city and all that it stood for.

"Power," he murmured, "great power, that is what a city stands for. Great power, great weakness, great success, gigantic failure, men of magnificent character, men of no character at all; that's what you find in a city of three million people."

At once his mind was far away. In his imagination he stood upon a small and shabby dock. A small and shabby village lay at the back of the dock. At his feet a dilapidated clinker-built rowboat bumped the dock. Oars were there, minnows for bait, and fishing tackle. Two miles up the bay was a dark hole where great muskies waved the water with their fins, where bass black as coal darted from place to place, while spotted perch, seeming part of the water itself, hung motionless, watching.

"Ah, to be there!" he breathed. "The peace, the simple joy of it all. To drop a minnow down there; to cast one far out, then to watch for the move that means a strike!

"And yet--" He sighed, but did not finish his sentence. On the youth of to-day a great city exerts an indescribable charm. Johnny would not leave this city of his boyhood days until he had conquered or had been conquered.

"It's strange, all this," he mused. "Wonder why that man beat me up there in the studio? Wonder if Sergeant McCarthey knows any more than he did. Let me see. Pickpockets, boy robbers, theatre holdup men, safe blowers. Wonder whose accomplice that man with a hole in his hand is. Who can tell?"

Johnny experienced no difficulty in locating Drew's club. It was a fine place, that club; small, but very useful. Not much space for loafing there; a lobby, that was all. A completely equipped gymnasium, showers, a swimming pool, bowling alleys in the basement, a floor for boxing and fencing. A young men's club this was, with a purpose. That purpose was set up in large letters above the desk in the lobby: KEEP FIT.

In a surprisingly short time they had undressed, passed under the showers, gone through a quick rub-down, drawn on shorts and gloves, and there they were.

Drew was five years Johnny's senior. He was taller almost by a head, and thirty pounds heavier. It seemed an uneven match. But Johnny was well built. Then, too, he had a passion for boxing that dated back to his sixth year. When at that early date a boy three years his senior had taken it upon himself to put Johnny in his place, Johnny had emerged from the engagement bloody, tattered and victorious.

For a space of five minutes these two, Johnny and Drew, sparred, getting up their wind and landing comfortable body blows now and then. When they sat down for a brief blowing spell, Drew looked Johnny over with increased admiration. He had expected to amuse this boy and get a little workout for himself. He had found that Johnny was quick on his feet, that his eyes were good, and that his left carried a punch that came with the speed of chain lightning.

"I was going to give you a little sermon on keeping fit," Drew said after a moment of silence. "Guess you don't need it."

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