Johnny Thompson, before he joined the army, had been considered one of the speediest men of the boxing ring. His brain worked like lightning, and every muscle in his body responded instantly to its call. Johnny had not lost any of his speed. It was well that he had not, for, like a spinning car-wheel, he rolled over twice before the hook buried itself to the end of its barb in the pungent plank on which he had reclined an instant before.
Nor did Johnny stop rolling then. He continued until he b.u.mped against the skin wall of his abode. This was fortunate also, for he had not half regained his senses when two almost instantaneous explosions shook the igloo, tore the plank floor into shreds, shooting splinters about, and even through the double skin wall, and filling Johnny"s eyes with powder smoke and dust.
Johnny sat up with one hand on his automatic. He was fully awake.
"Is that all?" he drawled. "Thanks! It"s enough, I should say. Johnny Thompson exit." A wry grin was on his face. "Johnny Thompson killed by a falling whale harpoon; shot to death by a whale gun; blown to atoms by a whale bomb. Exit Johnny. They do it in the movies, I say!"
But that was not quite all. The blazing seal oil lamps had overturned.
Splinters from the floor were catching fire. Johnny busied himself at beating these out. As soon as this had been accomplished, he stepped outside.
From an awe-struck ring of native women and children, who had been attracted by the explosion, the little j.a.p girl darted.
"Oh, Meester Thompsie!" she exclaimed, wringing her hands, "so terrible, awful a catastrophe! Are you not killed? So terrible!"
Johnny grinned.
"Nope," he said, putting out a hand to console her. "I"m not killed, nor even blown to pieces. What I"d like to know is, who dropped that harpoon."
He looked from face to face of the silent circle. Not one showed a sign of any knowledge of the affair. They had heard the explosion and had run from their homes to see what had happened.
Turning toward the cliff, from which the harpoon had been dropped, Johnny studied it carefully. No trace of living creature was to be discovered there. Then he looked again at the circle of brown faces, seeking any recent arrival. There was none.
"Come!" he said to the j.a.p girl.
Taking her hand, he led her from house to house of the village. Beyond two to three old women, too badly crippled to walk, the houses were found to contain no one.
"Well, one thing is sure," Johnny observed, "the Chukche reindeer herders have not come. It was not they who did it."
"No," answered the j.a.p girl.
"Say!" exclaimed Johnny, in a tone more severe than he had ever used with his companion, "why in thunder can"t we get out of this hole? What are we sticking here for?"
"Can"t tell." The girl wrung her hands again. "Can"t tell. Can"t go, that"s all. You go; all right, mebby. Can"t go my. That"s all. Mebby go to-morrow; mebby next day. Can"t tell."
Johnny was half inclined to believe that she was in league with the treachery which hung over the place, and had shown itself in the form of loaded harpoons, but when he realized that she did not urge him to stay, he found it impossible to suspect her.
"Well, anyway, darn it!"
"What?" she smiled.
"Oh, nothing," he growled, and turned away.
Two hours later Johnny was lying on the flat ledge of the rocky cliff from which the harpoon had been dropped. He was, however, a hundred feet or more down toward the bay. He was watching a certain igloo, and at the same time keeping an eye on the sh.o.r.e ice. Iyok-ok had gone seal hunting. When he returned over the ice, Johnny meant to have a final confab with him in regard to starting north.
As to the vigil he kept on the igloo, that was the result of certain suspicions regarding the occupants of that particular shelter. There was a dog team which hung about the place. These dogs were larger and sleeker than the other animals of the village. Their fights with other dogs were more frequent and severe. That would naturally mark them as strangers. Johnny had made several journeys of a mile or two up and down the beach trail, and, as far as he could tell, the man of mystery whose trail they had followed to this village had not left the place.
"Of course," he had told himself, "he might have been one of the villagers returning to his home. But that doesn"t seem probable."
From all this, Johnny had arrived at the conclusion that the watching of this house would yield interesting results.
It did. He had not been lying on the cliff half an hour, when the figure of a man came backing out of the igloo"s entrance. Johnny whistled. He was sure he had seen that pair of shoulders before. And the parka the man wore; it was not of the very far north. There was a smoothness about the tan and something about the cut of it that marked it at once as coming from a Russian shop, such as Wo Cheng kept.
"And squirrel skin!" Johnny breathed.
He was not kept long in doubt as to the ident.i.ty of the wearer. As the man turned to look behind him, Johnny saw the sharp chin of the Russian, the man of the street fight and the many diamonds. He had acquired something of a beard, but there was no mistaking those frowning brows, square shoulders and that chin.
"So," Johnny thought, "he is the fellow we have been trailing. The j.a.p girl wanted to follow him and so, perhaps, did Iyok-ok. I wonder why?
And say, old dear," he whispered, "I wonder if it could have been you who dropped that harpoon. It"s plain enough from the looks of you that you"d do it, once you fancied you"d half a reason. I"ve a good mind--"
His hand reached for his automatic.
"No," he decided, "I won"t do it. I don"t really know that you deserve it; besides I hate corpses, and things like that. But I say!"
A new and wonderful thought had come to him. He felt that, at any rate, he owed this person something, and he should have it. Beside Johnny on the ledge, where some native had left it, out of reach of the dog"s, was a sewed up seal skin full of seal oil. To the native of the north seal oil is what Limburger cheese is to a Dutchman. He puts it away in skin sacks to bask in the sun for a year or more and ripen. This particular sackful was "ripe"; it was over ripe and had been for some time. Johnny could tell that by the smooth, balloon-like rotundity of the thing. In fact, he guessed it was about due to burst. Once Johnny had taken a cup of this liquid for tea. He had it close enough to his face to catch a whiff of it. He could still recall the smell of it.
Now his right hand smoothed the bloated skin tenderly. He twisted it about, and balanced it in his hand. Yes, he could do it! The Russian was not looking up. There was a convenient ledge, some three feet above his head. There the sack would strike and burst. The boy smiled, in contemplation of that bursting.
"This for what you may have done," Johnny whispered, and balancing the sack in his hand, as if it had been a football, he gave it a little toss. Over the cliff it went to a sheer fall of fifteen feet. There followed a m.u.f.fled explosion. It had burst! Johnny saw the Russian completely deluged with the vile smelling liquid. Then he ducked.
As he lay flat on the ledge, he caught a silvery laugh. Looking quickly about, he found himself staring into the eyes of the little j.a.p girl.
She had been watching him.
"You--you--know him?" he stammered.
The girl shrugged her shoulders.
"Your friend?"
She shook her head vigorously.
"Enemy? Kill?" Johnny"s hand sought his automatic.
"No! No! No!" she fairly screamed. "Not kill!" Her hand was on his arm with a frantic grip.
"Why?"
"No can tell. Only, not kill; not kill now. No! No! No! Mebby never!"
"Well, I"ll be--" Johnny took his hand from his gun and peered over the ledge. The man was gone. It was a dirty trick he had played. He half wished he had not done it. And yet, the j.a.p girl had laughed. She knew what the man was. She had been close enough to have stopped him, had she thought it right. She had not done so. His conscience was clear.
They crept away in the gathering darkness, these two; and Johnny suddenly felt for this little j.a.p girl a comradeship that he had not known before. It was such a feeling as he had experienced in school days, when he was prowling about with boy pals.
Shortly after darkness had fallen, Johnny was seated cross-legged on a deer skin, staring gloomily at the ragged hole left by the whale harpoon bomb. He had not yet seen Iyok-ok. He was trying now to unravel some of the mysteries which the happenings of the day had served only to tangle more terribly. He had not meant to kill the Russian, even though the j.a.p girl had told him to; Johnny did not kill people, unless it was in defense of his country or his life. He had been merely trying the j.a.p girl out. He was obliged to admit now that he had got nowhere. She had laughed when he had played that abominable trick on the Russian; had denied that the stranger was her friend, yet had at once become greatly excited when Johnny proposed to kill him. What could a fellow make of all this? Who was this j.a.p girl anyway, and why had she followed this Russian so far? Somehow, Johnny could not help but feel that the Russian was a deep dyed plotter of some sort. He was inclined to believe that he had had much to do with that harpoon episode as well as the murder attempted by the reindeer Chukches.
"By Jove!" the American boy suddenly slapped his knee. "The knife, the two knives exactly alike. One he tried to use in the street fight at Vladivostok; the other he must have given to the reindeer Chukche to use on anyone who might follow him."
For a time he sat in deep thought. As he weighed the probabilities for and against this theory, he found himself doubting. There might be many knives of this pattern. The knife might have been stolen from him by the Chukche, or the Russian might have given it to the native as a reward for service, having no idea to what deadly purposes it would be put.
And, again, if he were that type of plotter, would not the j.a.p girl know of it, and desire him killed?