The Arrow of Fire A Mystery Story for Boys

The morning light shone dimly through a narrow, darkly shadowed window when Johnny awoke. To the reader it may seem strange that he had slept so soundly. To the habitual wandere...

It was midnight. The waters of Lake Michigan were like glass, smooth glass, miles of it, blue-black. There was no moon. The stars burned queer bright holes in the blue-black gla...

Had it not been for the anxiety that filled their hearts, the airplane flight would have been an affair crowded with joy for Drew Lane and Joyce Mills. The day was perfect. A fa...

Johnny spent the remainder of the day sight-seeing. Old friends awaited him, the Museum, the Art Institute, the State Street stores. The work along the Outer Drive amazed and de...

Shortly after his discovery that the man who wrecked his broadcasting corner and beat him up was, in all probability, the robber who had murdered Rosy's father, Johnny visited S...

When Johnny returned to the shack that night his strange guest was still asleep. A third cot had been set up in the room. Understanding this, Johnny crept between the fresh, cle...

The newspapers, as is their custom, had exaggerated a little. Rosy had not been murdered. She was not dead. Yet, so slender was the thread that held her once abundant life to th...

This guess was correct. Having awakened before dawn, Newton Mills had removed the two guns from the bottom of his chest, had searched in a box for cartridges, then had crept qui...

"Not a bit," Johnny smiled. "Glad to have company. Little dull lately. Robbery, shooting, burglary, shooting, holdup; that's about the way it goes. Nothing really new." He laugh...

That particular Sunday was a happy one for Rosy, the bright-eyed Italian girl. Why not? It was her birthday. She was sixteen. What is more wonderful than being sixteen? Besides,...

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 comp...

Johnny will never know what that next brief trial was about. It had struck him all of a sudden that he was to play a part in the trial that was to follow. This thought set his b...

Johnny's return to the radio studio that night caused quite a sensation. He arrived somewhat ahead of time. The girl who presided over the switchboard, one floor lower than the...

Johnny Thompson was not at the telephone for more than the space of one minute. When he returned to the porch where Herman McCarthey sat placidly smoking, he was choked with emo...

An entire symphony orchestra might be crashing its way through some magnificent concerto. No matter. The squad operator spoke a few words in Johnny's ear. He jotted down those w...

It was twenty minutes past twelve o'clock, ten minutes before closing time. At this precise moment a thing happened that was destined to change Johnny's whole career. It was to...

Seated in his most comfortable chair was a slender girl of some eighteen summers. Her hair was dark; her eyes, of the eager sort, were brown. Drew had never seen her.

Jimmie McGowan was no ordinary cheap crook. That is to say, he did not deal in small change. He never picked a pocket nor snatched a purse. He did not jimmy a door to enter and...

So it happened that when Drew returned from work that evening he found a man in Johnny's bunk, and Johnny seated near him. The man was asleep, or in a drunken stupor.

The new bus boy at the Seventy Club was making progress. The boss liked him. He had eyes in his head and a tongue in his cheek. He also knew what they were for. He did his work...

"It's queer the way the thing works out." Sergeant McCarthey looked the two boys squarely in the eyes when Drew Lane asked him how he had progressed with the radio station case.

The person who leaped upon the back of the car as it went speeding out of Grand Avenue, who left it only as it arrived at the abandoned farmyard, and who now found himself in th...

They had taken to riding a squad car at night. A special car of great speed was assigned to them. This car was equipped with a loud gong. They worked only on radio squad calls....

It was night: ten o'clock. Johnny stood atop a ten story building, looking off and down. A thousand white lights shone along an endless way. Like great black bugs with gleaming...

As often happens when men have a good piece of work well off their hands, Drew Lane and Newton Mills went to bed almost at once, and were soon fast asleep.

That evening at nine o'clock Johnny was given a delightful surprise. At the same time some of the questions that had been revolving about in his mind like six squirrels in one c...

Johnny and Drew were up at eight o'clock next morning. At 8:30 the black-haired, dark-eyed girl with smiling lips and dimpled cheeks brought in steaming coffee and some unusual...

Johnny was puzzled. What should he say? He might tell them the whole truth, that he had dropped them with his letter into the mail box back there in the city. As far as the bull...

While Newton Mills was returning to the shack for certain articles in his kit, Johnny had been sent to a seed store. There he purchased two hundred small cloth sacks. In this ma...

Some twenty blocks from the shack, in a south-westerly direction, well out of the city's business section, and just off a broad boulevard, there was a club. This was a very unus...

For a long time nothing was said. Johnny's head hurt. It also ached in a most extraordinary manner. He felt sick at the stomach. Life for him had gone suddenly very strange.

In the shack on Grand Avenue, Drew Lane stirred uneasily in his sleep. He awoke at last. With that feeling which so often comes to us in the middle of the night, that something...

The car sped on and on into the night. Past low narrow cottages interspersed with apartment buildings, past long rows of modern apartments, across countless railway tracks, in a...