There was no light.
"Did you turn it?"
"Sure."
"Pull it out, maybe it works that way."
There was no light, Norton paused in suspense while Nick shook the bra.s.s case and jarred the wiring to overcome a slight short circuit if there was any there.
"All right, turn it again."
There was no light, and the two scouts stood baffled and heavy hearted in the lonely darkness.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE MESSAGE
"I"m a dumb-bell!" said Nick in a quick inspiration. "Go down and turn on the main switch; it"s in a box on the wall in the vestibule; just pull the handle down and push it in below. We"ll never get any juice up here with that turned off. Hurry up."
Norton descended the ladder and with lighted matches found his way to the vestibule where the switch-box was. Here was the big switch on which all other switches in the building depended. As he pulled it down one lonely bulb in the meeting-room brightened and cast a dim light in the musty, empty place. It was evidently the only bulb in which the individual switch was turned on. Norton went through the meeting-room and turned this off. The place smelled for all the world like a school-room.
When he reached the ladder it was bathed in light. Nick was pointing a shaft of dazzling brightness downward. It revealed spiders and split rungs on the ladder and all the litter at its foot. All the rotting framework of the place and all the disorder were drawn into the light of day. A pile of old law books became radiant, dry and dull as they were.
"We"ve got it," called Nick, "hurry up, this blamed thing will reach to the isle of Yap. What"s S? Wait, I"ll give "em the high sign first."
A long, dusty column swept across the dark sky.
"Attention everybody," said Nick. "What"s S?"
"Three dots," said Norton.
"Three flashes it is. How"s that? I"m forgetting my A, B, C"s. What"s T?"
"One dash."
"Is three seconds long enough?"
"Three for dashes and one for dots."
"O."
The long column swung slowly to right, then slowly back to left again, then slowly back to right.
"P"s a hard one; here goes." "Good for you, _some_ handwriting."
In five minutes or less, Nick had sprawled across the open page of the heavens the words, "STOP BLUE CAR 50792 EAGLE ON FRONT." He paused about half a minute then repeated the message.
That long, accusing arm crossed stars as it swayed and flashed. It filled the limitless sky like a rainbow. A giant spectre it was, swaying in the unknown depths, crossing clouds, and piercing realms of darkness, and speaking to those who could understand. A sick child, somewhere or other, saw it, and the watchful mother carried the little one to a window the better to see this strange visitant.
"It"s a search-light," she said. But to them it had no meaning. A merry party returning home in the wee hours paused and watched it curiously but it spoke to them not. At Knapp"s Crossroads they saw it, just as the harvest festival was breaking up, and Hank Sparker and Sophia Coyson lingered on their way home to watch it. But it spoke not their language.
Did it speak to any one, this voice calling in the dark? Did any one understand it? Were there no telegraph operators in any of the stations along the line? They would understand. Was there no one?
No one?...
CHAPTER XIX
PAGE TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-FOUR
If Pee-wee had stolen a glimpse from the buffalo robe at about the time that he was writing under difficulties his momentous message to the world, he might have noticed a little old-fashioned house nestling among the trees along the roadside.
At that time the house was dark save for a lamp-light in a little window up under the eaves. Little the speeding hero knew that up in that tiny room there sat a boy engrossed with the only scout companion that he knew, and that was the scout handbook. It had come to him by mail a few days before.
This boy lived with his widowed mother, Mrs. Mehetable Piper. His name was Peter, but whether he was descended from the renowned Peter Piper who picked a peck of pickled peppers, the present chronicler does not know. At the time in question he was eating the handbook alive. The speeding auto pa.s.sed, the mighty Bridgeboro scout pinned his missive to his remnant of sandwich and hurled it out into the dark world, the boy up in the little room went on reading with hungry eyes, and that is all there was to that.
Peter belonged to no troop, for in that lonely country there was no troop to belong to. He had no scoutmaster, no one to track and stalk and go camping with, no one to jolly him as Pee-wee had. Away off in National Headquarters he was registered as a pioneer scout. He had his certificate, he had his handbook, that is all. It is said in that book that a scout is a brother to every other scout, but this scout"s brothers were very far away and he had never seen any of them. He wondered what they looked like in their trim khaki attire. He could hardly hope to see them, but he did dare to hope that somehow or other he might strike up a correspondence with one of them. He had heard of pioneer scouts doing that.
In his loneliness he pictured scouts seated around a camp-fire telling yarns. He knew that sometimes these wonderful and fortunate beings with badges up and down their arms went tracking in pairs, that there was chumming in the patrols. He might sometime or other induce Abner Corning to become a pioneer scout and chum with him. But this seemed a Utopian vision for Abner lived seven miles away and had hip disease and lived in a wheel-chair.
Peter had a rich uncle who lived in New York and took care of a building and got, oh as much as thirty dollars a week. The next time this rich uncle came to visit he was going to ask him if he had seen any real scouts with khaki suits and jack-knives dangling from their belts and axes hanging on their hips.
Peter experimented with the axe in the woodshed but it was so long that the handle dragged on the ground and he could sit on it. He had likewise pinned a Harding and Coolidge b.u.t.ton on his sleeve and pretended it was a signalling badge. _A signalling badge!_ He did not tell his mother what he was pretending for she would not understand. Out in the small barn he had presented himself with this, with much scout ceremony, and he had actually trembled when he told himself (in a man"s voice) to "step forward and receive this token...."
The car in which Scout Harris was being carried reached the lake and still Peter Piper poured over his scout handbook by the dim, oily smelling lamp, up in that little room. The two scoutmasters rowed across and were greeted by their noisy troops and still Peter Piper read his book. The scout of scouts, W. Harris of the nifty Bridgeboro outfit, was nearly suffocated, then escaped and stood triumphant over the ruins of the West Ketchem school, and still Peter Piper"s smarting eyes were fixed upon that book. They were riveted to page two hundred and eighty-four and he was reading the words "Scouts should thoroughly master these two standard...."
He read it again and again for his strained eyes were blinking and the page seemed all hazy. He paused to rest his eyes, then read on. But he did not turn the page. For an hour his gaze was fixed upon it. Just on that one page....
CHAPTER XX
STOP
Suddenly something, it seemed like a shadow, crossed the window outside.
If Peter"s little room had been downstairs he might have thought that a spectre of the night was pa.s.sing. He looked up, startled, dumbfounded.
And while he gazed the tall dusky apparition pa.s.sed back across the window again.
Half frightened and very curious he raised the little sash and looked out. The night was dark but the sky was filled with stars. Not a light of man"s making was there in all the country roundabout. He concentrated his gaze along the back road and tried to pick out the spot where Peace-justice Fee"s house was, thinking that perhaps some sign thereabout would furnish the key to this ghostly mystery. But there was not the faintest twinkle there, nor any sound of life. Only solemn, unanswering darkness. Somewhere in the woods a solitary screech owl was hooting its discordant song.