CHAPTER XXVII

THE BLACK CUBE

“There! That’s the place!”

D’Arcy Arden pointed away over a well-marked track to the distant shores of a small lake. On the shore of the lake grew a few scrub trees, poplars, willows and spruce. Nestling among these was a cabin. From the chimney a thin coil of smoke rose skyward.

“Yes.” Johnny Thompson pulled him back. “And there’s the gray plane. They must be there. We must be careful, or they will see us.”

Creeping back to a spot where a low ridge shut out their view of the lake, they gathered in a circle for a council of war. War it was to be, too. Sandy MacDonald had decreed that two hours before.

“They have forfeited their right to freedom, those wild aviators have, whoever they may be!” he had declared stoutly. “They have taken gas from stations when no emergency existed and have not reported it. They have robbed trappers of their supplies. They have kidnapped two of you and carried you away into a desolate land where, for all we know, they meant to let you starve. Why? Let them tell us.

“Our duty its plain. We must, if we can, capture them, bring them to justice and return the plane to its owner if it has been stolen, which I doubt not.”

So, fired by the veteran’s words, they had prepared to march upon those intruders in a silent land.

They were four: Johnny Thompson, D’Arcy Arden, Sandy MacDonald and the Hunchback Bowman. Three were armed with bows and arrows. These bows, as you have seen, were capable of killing a bear. Sandy was prepared, if need be, to do yeoman service with an axe.

You may wonder how it came about that they were together here, so close to the hiding place of the ones they sought. It is all quite simple. Without tarrying to discover the origin of the strange illumination in the mysterious cave of the hunchback, Johnny had set about the task of removing his fetters and those of D’Arcy. This, with the aid of the hunchback’s extraordinary strength, he was successful in doing.

Finding himself once more on his feet, he had crept from the cave, harnessed his dogs and hitched them with those of the hunchback to the sled.

After seeing that they were all well armed with stout bows, he headed the double dog team back over the trail of the night before.

They would, he explained, follow this trail until they found themselves approaching the small lake on which the mystery plane had alighted. They would then circle the lake until they came upon the hunchback’s trail leading to the camp. It was this last trail that old Ginger and the aged prospector would follow if, as he firmly believed, the old leader had escaped and Sandy MacDonald was on his way to the rescue.

“And if we are too late, if MacDonald has gone before us and been captured, we will storm their place and rescue him if it costs a life!” Johnny had said with fierce determination.

The hunchback, though he spoke scarcely a word of English, appeared to understand, for he grinned, showing all his white teeth, and brandished his bow in a threatening manner.

For once they had met with good fortune. They had not been camped half an hour on the trail made by the hunchback on the night of the rescue when Sandy MacDonald appeared at the top of a ridge. Then it was that the aged Scotchman completely lost control of his team. Old Ginger was in the lead. Once he sighted his young master, he led the team in a stampede that ended only when he leaped up to kiss Johnny’s cheek, a kiss of which Johnny had no cause to be ashamed.

So now here they were, gathered in a narrow run, planning an attack.

“We might wait until night,” suggested Johnny.

“And in the meantime they’d be away in the plane, like as not,” objected the sturdy Scotchman. “Looks like the Lord had delivered them into our hands. We must take them.”

“But they may be desperate characters!”

“Beyond doubt they are. We must take them by surprise. We’ll do it this way.” Sandy MacDonald’s old eyes shone with fresh fire. “You three that are armed, you’ll creep up through the brush and take your position ready to cover the door. Then I’ll drive up with the dog team as any trapper might do. I’ll get them out into the open, without arms. You will cover their escape. And so we’ll win a bloodless battle.”

“Sounds all right,” said Johnny. “But here’s hoping nothing goes wrong!”

Their method of attack agreed upon, there remained but to put it into effect.

Testing their bows, then nocking their arrows, the young archers, together with the hunchback, crept forward. Over one ridge they climbed, down a narrow gully, over a second ridge where for a second, quite breathless, they feared detection, then down the ridge followed by a break for cover in the bushes.

“We—we made it,” D’Arcy puffed in a whisper.

“Yes, we did,” Johnny agreed. “But the worst is yet to come. Look to your bow. Set your arrow squarely. If you must shoot, shoot to kill. More than one honest person’s life depends upon it.”

They crept through the bushes to a point where they might command a view of the doorway to the cabin and the open space before it. Then, sinking down in the snow behind the black bulk of a spruce tree, they awaited the zero hour.

Johnny drew his watch from his pocket. A minute ticked itself into eternity, then another and yet another.

“Sandy does not come,” Johnny whispered. “What’s keeping him?”

A chill gripped his heart. What if their valiant old leader had been ambushed and captured!

“We’d save him!” was his stout resolve. “We—”

He broke off. A chill, creeping up from his very toes, left him rooted to the spot. He had caught a sound of movement in the brush behind him. There could be no mistaking that.

“Sandy has been ambushed and captured. Now it is our turn. Will they fight?” Fresh courage flooded his being as, gripping his bow, he whirled about.

The next instant he all but dropped in his tracks. Framed in the green that was the spruce boughs, he beheld a face, the face of Drew Lane!

Starting back like one who sees a ghost, he stood there, rigid as marble.

The face smiled. He knew that smile. It was Drew Lane’s smile. No ghost this, but a living being.

“Drew Lane, as I live!”

“Right the first time.”

“And—and you did not fall from the parachute?”

Drew did not answer.

“Am I in time?”

“For the fight?”

“The fight.”

“Just in time. We—” Once again Johnny broke off. Had he caught the drone of an airplane motor?

He had. There was no questioning that. It grew louder.

“Are they gone?” he asked himself. “They can’t be.” One look around the tree assured him that the gray plane still rested on the ice by the cabin.

“A second plane.” His head whirled. Was there more than one mystery plane? A whole fleet of them perhaps?

“Or—” Hope rose high. “Or is this Curlie Carson coming to our rescue?”

Together the four of them stood at attention.

From his hiding place, not far from the cabin, Sandy MacDonald, too, had heard the drone of the plane. Truth was, his keen old ears had detected it first. This is why he had delayed appearing. He was, however, in a quandary. Like Johnny, he was in the dark regarding the person who flew this second plane. Was he a friend? Or foe? He could not know. And not knowing, he felt that their coup might be postponed. But his young comrades? Would they have the patience to wait? He could not tell. In the end, he decided to trust to their patience.

Johnny’s watch ticked away another minute. The second plane loomed larger and larger in the distance.

Suddenly from out the log cabin sprang two large, black-bearded men. One carried a curious package on his head. It seemed a dark leather case, a perfect cube some eighteen inches in diameter.

Having hurriedly placed this in the cabin of the plane, they leaped for the cockpit to set the motor in motion.

“Stop them!” Johnny sprang to his feet. “They are off!”

He was too late. The plane began to glide across the ice. Moving slowly at first, it gained in momentum.

At the same time the other plane was speeding toward them. Johnny was sure now that he made out the blue and yellow of Curlie Carson’s plane.

“So near!” he groaned. “And we lost them!”

He came out into the open. His companions followed him. Sandy MacDonald came up. Together they watched the gray plane rise from the ice and soar northward.

The other plane changed its course. It was to pass some distance from them.

“If that’s Curlie’s plane,” said Johnny, “he is not alone. His tank is well loaded with gas. He will chase them until they are ready to cry for quarter.”

It _was_ Curlie. And every guess Johnny had made was a good one.

Arrived at Resolution with the disabled trapper, Curlie had told his story to Sergeant Jock Gordon of the Royal Mounted Police. Jock had gone into action. He had summoned his assistant and ordered him to prepare to accompany him at once into the wilds.

“We must follow the scent before it is cold.” he said to Curlie. “As an officer of the law, I have power to commandeer your plane. That’s what I’m doing now. How soon can we be off?”

“We’ll be ready in an hour.”

“Absolutely,” Jerry echoed.

So here they were hot on the tail of the gray plane which had spread consternation through the North.

The chase was not a long one. While Johnny Thompson and his companions listened and watched, they heard the motor of the mystery plane cough and rattle, then lapse into an appalling silence. Instantly the heavy plane went into a tailspin and plunged earthward.

From an altitude of some two thousand feet, it fell faster and faster. Johnny closed his eyes, but could not shut out the mental vision of that which must happen. This was a little world of rocky ridges. There could be but one outcome to such a landing.

In silence they watched the pursuing plane circle back, then slow down for a landing. In silence still, they gripped the hands of Curlie and Jerry as they alighted from the plane.

The look on Curlie’s face as his eyes fell upon the close knit features and sturdy form of the young detective, Drew Lane, was a wonderful thing to see.

“By all the signs that any man can know,” he said slowly, “you should be dead. With my own eyes I saw you pass into a cloud. You were dropping earthward in a parachute. I saw the parachute flutter out of the cloud. You were gone. A fall of two thousand feet in such a spot must kill any mortal man; yet here you are! I—I am glad! But how does one do it?” He stared hard at the detective.

“Simple enough.” Drew gave forth a low laugh. “When one knows how, there’s really nothing to it. Been done several times. Two parachutes, that’s the answer. When you release one, you open the other. The second one takes you safely to earth.

“It seems, however,” he spoke slowly, “that it got me nothing, that trick. Thought I’d be able to slip up on them and take them single-handed.

“Trouble was I didn’t know the land. Got myself lost right at the start. Had a mighty tough time of it, I have. Lost all trace of them. This is the first I’ve seen of them for days. And now I find them only to see them crack up.

“Well,” he added philosophically, “that’s the end of the ‘Gray Streak.’ Not a chance that they came down alive. Only thing that’s left is to search the wreckage for clues, then give them an aviator’s funeral, light a match and touch off their gas. What say we go?”

Eight hours later, gathered about the fire in the cabin that had but a few hours before been the base of strange outlaws, they were preparing to go through with an unusual ceremony—the opening of the black cube, which had been thrown from the wrecked plane and, strangely enough, had received not the slightest injury.

“Heavy!” said Jock Gordon, lifting it to the table. “Wonder what’s in it. We’ll see.”

The next instant as one man they started back. They were met by a blaze of such varied light as they had never before beheld. They were looking upon a crown, the crown of a one-time powerful ruler. And not a jewel was missing.

“The crown of the Tzar of Russia, as I live!” exclaimed Sandy MacDonald.

“Do—do you think so?” Jock asked.

“Can’t be a doubt of it. I’ve seen it pictured many times, even in colors. The radicals got it, when the Revolution came. And now, here it is!”

“Why?” It was Johnny who asked. He asked for all. He may as well have asked for the whole world. The question will perhaps never be answered. The two men who might have answered it were dead. Their funeral pyre had but a few hours before loomed toward the sky. A thousand questions might be asked about this strange pair, but none answered. The priceless crown alone remained. And that, since it had been smuggled into the country, must be turned over to the Canadian Government.

“Do you know, Sandy,” Johnny said as they sat by the fire an hour later, “I slept in the strangest place last night. It was a cave; perhaps you might only call it a rocky cavern.”

“What’s strange about that?” Sandy rumbled sleepily.

“It was all alight and yet there was no lamp. And it was night.”

“Light?” Sandy sprang to his feet.

“The walls appeared to be phosphorescent.”

“And was it warm, too?” The old man’s tone was eager.

“Yes. I believe it was.”

“Man!” cried Sandy, seizing his hand and gripping it till it hurt. “You’ve made the find of a lifetime!”

“A—a find?”

“Those walls are radio-active. It’s pitchblende, full of radium. It gives off light and heat. And man! How rich it must be! It’s such a find as the world has never known!”

Could this be true? Johnny’s head whirled. Had God in His strange ways of providence led him over a mysterious route to the goal he sought?