The Firebug

by Roy J. Snell

  CHAPTER XXI A TRIP TO FOREST CITY

  As the elevated train rattled noisily along over the low roofs ofcottages and between endless rows of apartment houses, Johnny Thompsonsat staring dreamily at the lattice-like covering of the floor of hiscar.

  He was allowing the events of the past few days to move before his mind'seye. It seemed much like a moving picture. There was a scene showing thecentral fire station with its leaping yellow lights. A click, a flash,and there was a fire, a city school building burning, a pink-eyed man, achild in the school loft, a tall ladder, he ascended, descended, thensearched for the pink-eyed man.

  A second flash of light, a second fire; this time the great SimonsBuilding, and Mazie in a tenth-story window. There was the fireman'smonkey, and again the pink-eyed man, also for the first time the man ofthe hooked nose, the stoop and limp.

  Once more a flash of white film: a boat in a marsh, black birds and amysterious rifle shot.

  A third fire, the Zoo. A wild chase ending at the breakwater, and afterthat a fight on the island and little old Ben Zook.

  Then again the marsh, a boat and Mazie, and after that the mysteriousassailant. Then came that tragic scene, the death of poor, old Ben Zook.

  The den of the underworld, the dancing girl, Jensie; the attack, Pant'slife saved by the girl, the mysterious light, mystifying darkness, thenthe outer air.

  The building on Randolph Street, the mysterious load of chemicals, thefight with Knobs Whittaker. Flight. The fire that seemed hotter than theflames of a volcano.

  "And here we are," he whispered to himself. "How does it all connect up?Or does it? Sometimes it seems to; at others it appears not to. How is itall to end?"

  Pant suddenly interrupted his reveries.

  "Johnny," he said, "men don't know much about light, do they?"

  "I suppose not, Pant."

  "Of course they don't. It's all sort of relative, isn't it? If I have atorch in a dark room it seems a brilliant light. Take it into thesunlight and it dwindles to nothing. Now if an extraordinarily brightlight struck your eyes for a second and the next second vanished, thelights of a room might seem no light at all, just plain darkness?"

  "Possibly," said Johnny, without really thinking much about it.

  Since this was the last great night of the greatest carnival ever held inthe city's most popular pleasure resort, though the hour was late, thecares were here and there given bits of color by the costumes ofpleasure-seeking revelers.

  The journey was scarcely more than half completed when the car filled,and Pant felt compelled to give his seat to a slender girl who, likehimself, was headed for the scene of gaiety. Dressed as a Gypsy, with redshoes, red stockings, a bright colored striped dress and a crimson shawl,with a mask completely covering her face, she would have been difficultto recognize even by her most intimate acquaintances. But the keen eye ofthis unusual boy, Pant, detected something vaguely familiar. Mayhap itwas the slender, red stockinged ankles, or the constantly bobbing feetthat suggested a dance, or the long, artistic fingers that constantlyplaited her dress.

  He studied her until they left the car. As he turned to leave at Mazie'sstation, he felt a sudden tickle above his collar. Turning quickly, hesurprised the Gypsy girl concealing the colored end of a feathery reedbeneath her cloak.

  "Ah there," he breathed, "I thought I knew you. Here's hoping I see youat Forest City."

  Quick as thought the girl's fingers went to her belt, then to the bosomof her dress. She snipped a small red rose from a bouquet at her belt andpinned it to her dress.

  The next instant Johnny gave Pant such a pull as drew him half down thecar. Two seconds later they were on the platform and the car was speedingaway.

  "What was holding you?" demanded Johnny.

  "That Gypsy girl."

  "What of her?"

  "I recognized her."

  "Oh! You did?" said Johnny. "Well, come on, we go down here. It's late.Mazie and the little girl may not wait. Let's hurry."

  Mazie and Tillie McFadden had waited. Since the amusement park was onlysix blocks from Mazie's home, they walked. In a short time they weremingling with the fun-mad throng that flowed like a many colored streamdown the board walks of Forest City, a city which Johnny had once saidwas doomed. As he entered it now he asked himself whether this were true.The answer was: Who knows?

  The mingled sounds that strike one's ears on a night like this arestunning in their variety and intensity. The dull tom-tom of some Gypsyfortune teller inviting trade by pounding a flat-headed drum; the steadychallenge of men who invite you to risk your small change on the turn ofa spindle wheel; the inviting shout of hawkers; the high-pitched screamsdescending from the roller coaster as a car pitches down through space;the minor shouts of revelers on the board walks; all this, blended withthe dull rumble of wheels, the clank of machinery, the splash of boats,the murmur of ten thousand voices, produces a sound which in theaggregate blends into a mad jumble that leaves one with no consciousthought of sound. No one sound seems to register above the others. It isall just one great _noise_.

  The sights that strike your eye are scarcely less impressive. Greatstreamers of confetti, red, white, blue, yellow and green tissue ribbonshanging from wires, from plaster-of-paris domes, from windows, fromelectric lights, from every spot where a sparrow might rest his wings;bushels of bits of paper flying through the air like a highly tinted snowstorm; and the amusements--here a car rushing through space, there thewhirling invitation of an airplane, and there again the slow and statelyFerris wheel. Beneath all this the colorful throng that, like some giantreptile, moves ever forward but never comes to an end. These were thesights that thrilled the four young pleasure seekers.

  The sensations of touch, too, added to the frenzy that appeared to enterone's very veins and to send his blood racing. A wild group of revelers,playing a game that is little less than crack-the-whip, wrap themselvesabout you, to at last break up like a wave of the sea and go surgingaway. A single frenzied reveler seizes you sharply by the arm, to screamat you and vanish. A tickler touches your ear; a handful of fine confettisifts down your neck; you are caught in a swelling current of the crowdto be at last deposited with a final crush into a little eddy close bysome game of chance, or booth where root beer and hot dogs are sold.

  They had been cast aside by the throng into such an eddy as this when,finding herself without other occupation, Mazie focused her operaglasses, which hung by a strap at her side, on a wooden tower two hundredfeet high. This tower, lighted as it was by ten thousand electric lamps,seemed at the distance a white hot obelisk of steel. The tower stood inthe center of the place and there were six bronze eagles at the very topof it.

  "How plainly I can see them," Mazie murmured to herself. "I can even seethe copper wire that binds them to the pillars."

  Little did she dream of the awe-inspiring and awful sights she wouldwitness on that tower, with those glasses, on this very night.

  It was at this moment that Pant noticed little Tillie McFadden's eyes,full of longing, fixed upon the roller coaster.

  "Ever ride on that?" he asked.

  The girl shook her head.

  "Want to?"

  "You bet I do."

  "You're on!" exclaimed Pant. "When shall we four meet again, and where?"

  "In just an hour," said Johnny. "Meet us beneath the statue of the twofools." This immense statue, made of cement, stood near the exit.

  "All right, we'll be there," smiled Pant. "Come on, Tillie. We'll do thecity right, roller coaster, City of Venice, ferris wheel and all." Thenthey were swallowed up by the crowd.