CHAPTER XXXIII

THE SHOW-DOWN

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 faint breeze wafted fleecy clouds about them. The fields, squares of gold and green, dotted here and there by white houses and red barns, were an ever changing picture.

Straight as a crow they flew for twenty miles. Then swooping down low, they began to circle. With never tiring eyes Joyce searched the earth beneath her for the object she sought.

Barns aplenty passed beneath them, but not _the_ one.

Joyce was beginning to despair when, upon entering their fourth great circle, she spied a barn with a gaping cupola.

Gripping the young detective's arm, she pointed away to the west. He understood. They circled back. The barn loomed within their view. He studied her face, read there the look of joy; then he understood again. He directed his plane at full speed back toward the city airport.

An hour later, the fastest squad car in the city's service sped westward toward the suburbs and into the open country. It carried six burly detectives, one machine gun, two riot guns and four rifles. Crowded between Drew Lane and Herman McCarthey, still clad in her much damaged brown suit, rode Joyce Mills.

* * * * * * * *

At the abandoned farmhouse the gangsters, drowsy from the poison they had taken into their systems the night before, slept late. When at last they awoke, they were in a quarrelsome mood.

Johnny, still sitting on the stairs, hungry, thirsty, longing for sleep, heard them, and trembled.

After half an hour of raving and tramping about the house, the men calmed down and appeared to hold a consultation.

They approached the cellar door. As one heavy bar was thrown back, Johnny dropped noiselessly to the cellar floor.

"The end has come!" he told himself. At the same time he resolved to sell himself as dearly as possible. These were wicked men who richly deserved to die.

The second bar was removed. The door was thrown open. Mike Volpi appeared on the threshold. In one hand, supported by a strap, he carried a three gallon glass jug. The jug was filled to the very top with some colorless liquid. Still carrying the jug, the man made his way unsteadily down the stairs.

"See here!" He spoke with the fierce growl of an angry dog as he looked at Johnny through bleared eyes. "You know where them slugs are. You are going to tell!"

"I do not know where they are," Johnny answered in a steady, even tone.

His tone angered the gangster.

"Har, har!" he laughed. "Did you hear him? He don't know where them slugs are. Well, that's good! He don't. Nobody does. Well then, they don't tell no stories.

"No--nor you don't neither!" He turned fierce, glistening eyes on the boy. "You'll tell no tales. Do you hear me?

"Know what's in this jug?" He laughed a fiendish laugh. "It's alki--alcohol you'd call it. Alki's hard to get these days. But we don't grudge the cost. We're going to give you a mighty sweet death, we are.

"Some cheap ones would use kerosene. Bah! Kerosene stinks!

"But this. How sweet it smells!" He removed the cork and put it to his nose. "Mm! How sweet! Pity to waste it!

"But there, we ain't tight. We ain't. We'll use it, every drop!

"Know what?" He dropped his voice to a whisper. "There's a patch of woods over yonder a mile. Forest Preserve. Campers make fires there. Nobody notices smoke. We're going to light a torch there, a flamin' torch. You and this alki. Do you understand?"

Johnny did understand. His heart paused. They meant to soak him in alcohol, then burn him alive. He had heard of such things, but had not believed them.

"It'll be a sweet death," the half drunk man raved on. "Such a sweet death. All alki, hundred per cent. A sweet--"

He broke off short, to stare at the wall. His face went white. His lips remained apart. His hands began to tremble. The glass jar dropped to the floor. It broke into a thousand pieces. The alcohol filled the air with a pungent odor as it flowed across the floor.

On the wall before Mike Volpi had appeared the arrow of fire.

"The arrow of justice!" he murmured thickly.

The next instant there came the sound of other breaking glass; a window was smashed from without. A voice said: "Don't move! Stick 'em up! Quick now! We've got you covered--machine gun!" It was Herman McCarthey's voice. The squad had arrived.

By way of emphasis a machine gun went _rat-tat-tat_, and three bullets spat against the wall. The gunmen acknowledged a master. Up went their hands.

Johnny was not long in securing their weapons. Then they were marched, single file, out of the cellar, and each one handcuffed to a police officer.

On searching the house, besides other articles they found a number of ladies' garments, all new and in original packages. These, beyond doubt, were part of the loot taken from some store. Joyce Mills was glad enough to accept the loan of some of these, and so embraced an opportunity to become once more a lady.

The gangsters were taken to the city in the squad car. Two police officers commandeered the gangster's car. There was room for Johnny, Drew and Joyce in the back seat. So they rode happily back to town.

"Do you know," said Drew, "I heard good news this morning. Rosy is past danger."

"Good!" In one word Johnny uttered a prayer of thanksgiving.

"Say!" he exclaimed. "We will get the reward, won't we? Two thousand!"

"Between us," said Drew.

"My share goes toward sending Rosy and her mother back to Italy."

"Between us," Drew answered again.

For a time they rode on in silence. Joyce Mills was fumbling with something beneath her jacket.

All at once there appeared on the back of the seat before them a faint red arrow. It flamed up in a peculiar manner.

Drew and Johnny stared. Joyce laughed a low laugh.

"It's a trick," she explained. "I've used it before. Sometimes you can do with a trick what you can't do with a cannon. You can frighten gunmen. They are very superstitious.

"It is really very simple." She displayed a long black tube. "One flashlight, plus a reading glass, makes a small stereopticon. Over the glass of the flashlight I pasted a black paper in which the figure of an arrow had been cut. Before this I set a strip of glass. The glass is red, but is darker in some spots than others. The reading glass focuses the light so that the arrow becomes definite in form and intensely red. By moving the strip of red glass back and forth I am able to make the arrow appear to be on fire. Very simple, isn't it? But it worked!"

"Yes," said Johnny. "It worked. Once it worked too well; came near causing us to crash into a wall."

"So you know I rode the back of the gangster's car all the way out?"

"I guessed it."

Joyce told Johnny the rest of the story.

"I think," said Drew when she had finished, "that it is time we had some real women on our detective force."

"Give me a job," laughed Joyce.

* * * * * * * *

Two days later the Seventy Club was raided. This time the detective squad did not stop at the main floor. There was room for three men in each of those curious telephone booths. Three times six is eighteen. Each officer carried two guns. Two times eighteen is thirty-six. That was too many for the gunmen and the ladies down below. They surrendered without a fight. The place was padlocked. Five of the men and three of the ladies taken had been wanted for some time by the police. Joyce attempted to give credit for this discovery to her father. He would have none of it. He told on her.

Johnny had no trouble in retrieving the package of bullets which he had entrusted to the care of Uncle Sam in such a strange manner. The cases against Jimmie McGowan, Mike Volpi and their confederates were complete. For once a well selected jury and an unimpeachable judge gave a gang of gunmen their just deserts.

The reward was paid.

A month later, a scene half cheerful, half sad, was enacted at the Ramacciotti cottage. Rosy and her mother, smiling their best to keep back the tears, walked out of the cottage for the last time. A taxicab was waiting. They were on their way to the depot, bound for Italy. They were just an Italian mother and daughter; simple, kindly folks, just such people as we almost all are. Yet they mattered much to some; to Johnny and Drew, to Herman McCarthey and Newton Mills.

Johnny and Drew helped them into the cab, gripped their hands in a last farewell; then they turned to walk back to the shack.

Drew paused to lock the cottage which had been Mother Ramacciotti's. He had bought the furnishings.

"What will you do with the cottage now?" Johnny asked.

"Listen." Drew's look was serious, sad. "We are going on a vacation, you and I, Herman, Newton Mills, and Joyce. Before that vacation is over, unless conditions change, the gunmen will have provided us another widow and more orphans to fill that cottage. I mean to keep it till there are no more. God grant that the time may soon come!"

A week later Johnny, Drew and Joyce were seated in a clinker-built rowboat over a deep, dark hole that lies close to shore on the north side of Lake Huron. On the shore was a cabin. In a sunny spot before the cabin Herman McCarthey and Newton Mills sat spinning yarns. For life must not be all work. Man's nature demands a change. They were enjoying the change along with those who were younger.

Drew Lane's experiences as a detective were not over. They were but well begun. The problems of enforcing the law and maintaining order in a great republic are never fully solved. They go on from year to year and from generation to generation. Drew Lane was destined to do his full part. And Johnny Thompson, as his understudy, was not to lag far behind. If you are to realize this to the full, you must read our next book entitled _The Gray Shadow_.

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Transcriber's note:

--Copyright notice provided as in the original printed text--this e-text is public domain in the country of publication.

--Apparent typgraphical errors were corrected without note.

--Non-standard spellings and dialect were not changed.