CHAPTER XVIII

A CONFESSION AND THE CHARM

All that night they remained on guard. Taking turns, first Don in the helicopter and Garry on the shore, then the control chief replacing Garry and Chick taking Don's station, they watched.

Not a thing happened.

The Indian, sullen, refused to talk.

Threats did not seem to disturb him. Pleas failed to move him. He realized that they had no way to enforce the threats. None of them dared to leave the swamps by the paths, taking him as a prisoner, because it had been his own familiarity with swamp trails that had led them safely through, although he refused to say why or how he had become so well informed. Besides, as Don argued, they dared not leave the swamp unguarded.

However, they kept a close watch toward the airport. Don's surmise that his uncle would return from delivering the mail, find their note and institute a search, proved to be correct. Their flares being all used up in landings, however, they had no way to signal, and evidently the airport manager, deprived of Scott's services, had no pilot to send aloft as a scout.

Early, just after dawn, however, he arrived, in a rowboat, at the mouth of Crab Channel, where Garry had driven the electric launch on his way to summon aid.

"Hello!" shouted the older man, laying on his oars until the launch came up and took him in tow, "I've had the chief of police and his men busy all night, trying to get reports of any crack-up, and scouting; but they must not have come to the lower end of the swamp at all."

He caught a rope flung by Garry who towed his rowboat up to the scene of their all-night vigil.

Practical, a little sarcastic, Mr. McLeod took charge.

"I don't suppose it occurred to any of you that the fellow you tell about had to get here somehow, and to get away," he said. "Daylight makes it clear--see those stakes with the rope?--that the helicopter has been kept here a long time. It didn't occur to you that the fellow in disguise might have come here in a dory--and left by the same means!"

"No, it didn't!" admitted Don.

"Well, boys, that's what happened." The airport executive pointed to the grass, stamped and bent down, and when they asserted that their own searching had accomplished the tell-tale destruction he smiled, led them past the clusters near the boats, further inshore, showing that grass had been pushed aside, tangled by the passage of a body, and then indicated a smaller, shallower, but practical waterway, diverging toward the South.

"Here are marks of a dory's nose on the mud," he explained. "You have been watching for a man who calmly sculled or drifted away."

"But we couldn't see that at night," objected Chick, "any more than we could see the paths out of the swamps. Now, I can, though--and I'm for getting to a telephone, calling the chief of police, and letting him send a man here to see about putting this Indian in a cell."

The Indian, not much over nineteen, became more talkative when this purpose was mentioned.

"I haven't done anything really wrong!" he declared. His English, like his clothing, was good, showing education and refinement of a sort.

"A year ago," he said, revealing his identity as the son of Ti-O-Ga, and named simply John Tioga, "a year ago a film company came up to our place to make some films dealing with Indian witchcraft and dances, for the prologue of a picture. Father played the old 'medicine man' and I was a sort of magician-devil in the picture."

"I don't see what that has to do with this," began Chick.

"It has," the Indian youth assured him, sullenly, "because that picture has been released and shown around, and Father and I have made a good sum of money, doing what theatrical people call 'personal appearances,' and showing some magical tricks, as a prologue to the film showing at different theatres."

He explained the connection between that and the present situation.

"A man has a picture theatre here in your nearest town," he told them. "His name is Toby Tew, and he came up to our place about two months ago to engage us for a personal appearance when he shows the picture. We had been disgusted with the sort of people we met in the theatres, because they were rough and ready, not bad, but not especially refined----"

Don smiled, thinking of such a statement coming from the race which had tomahawked and scalped in pioneer days; but reconsideration made him realize that the pioneers had slain also, and had introduced not only "fire water" but had taken away lands the Indians felt were theirs. Again, he reflected, the Indian of culture, with a college education, was far away from his savage ancestors.

"We refused to come here to 'play' our special magical show," the Indian went on, "but it wasn't long after that before another man from these parts came up to the Catskills--but he wanted to consult my father about some hidden or lost object--or--er--things!"

"Who was he?" demanded Don.

"Called himself Morgan--let's see----"

"'Doc' Morgan?" inquired Mr. McLeod.

That was the name, the youth acknowledged. "What had he lost? What did he want to find? And how could your father help him locate anything?" asked Garry, quietly.

"You ought to remember what my father did with you," the youth challenged. "Father knows a great deal about hidden forces of the mind and of Nature. Sometimes, if his mood is right, he can do what fortune tellers would call 'divining'--read the future, or locate articles that have been hidden or mislaid. Whether he puts two-and-two together or really can see deeper than others, I won't argue with you; but he does get results. Doc Morgan wanted him to help him locate a lost ship, said to have been buried in mud in this swamp----"

"Oh--I see how everything begins to fit in!" cried Garry. "Somebody had a map, or chart, or plan of some ship supposed to be in this swamp. Well, then, Doc heard about the skeleton being found--or saw it found! He read the news hints about the possible treasure buried here."

"Yes--and he either found the tracing or saw it!" agreed Don. "Then he went to the 'medicine man,' because he told us that your father had taught him all he knew about herb medicines, John."

Nodding, the Indian added:

"But he wanted us to divine where the ship was buried, and we did our best. Then--when the two young gentlemen here--" he indicated Don and Garry--"came there, with their injured pilot, and Father learned by putting two-and-two together--or however you choose to say he did--that there was a stolen tracing of a ship, we took the contract your theatre man had offered, and I came on ahead a week ago to look over the ground and see what was what."

"And what was 'what?'" demanded Chick.

"I can't give you that answer," the youth declared. "I've trailed the tracing, but some one took it before I could get a chance to see it. I was hiding, listening and watching, in the airport, this evening--or last night, to be correct. I heard it said that the map was gone, and I ran and hid, but the young man you call Chick discovered me. I was so afraid I'd be accused of theft of the tracing I'd never seen that I lost my head and ran--and when I was chased, and saw something in a disguise going to start into the air in a helicopter, I swam to it and went up--and you know the rest."

"All but this!" Don said. "You were close to that fellow in the disguise. You were in the helicopter with him----"

"Only for a minute!" interrupted the Indian youth, then he checked himself, as though a sudden idea had occurred to him.

"What has struck you?" demanded the control chief.

"I--" the youth hesitated, while Don, Chick and Garry listened with a feeling that they were about to hear a revelation.

"Go on," Don prompted.

"The--er--Thing was tall."

"Yes!" Chick broke in as Garry opened his lips to speak.

"Well, he can fly. It made me think of another tall man who could fly--and who came to consult my father when he happened to be away from home. He said he was a mail pilot, and he gave the name----"

"What?" cried Chick.

"Smith!"

"Oh!" Garry recognized the flyer mentioned. "He flies the mail in from Philadelphia. But----"

"It couldn't have been Smith who tried to run us down, tonight," Chick remonstrated. "He's due later on, coming in from Philly. He goes down Friday and comes back Saturday--and last night was Friday night."

"He comes in tonight--so he can be left out--unless he had a substitute fly for him last night," said Don, suddenly wondering.

They discussed it but made no progress beyond deciding to investigate the whereabouts of the mail flyer.

"Anyway," the Indian said, "you should remember that my father gave you a charm that would prevent any harm coming to you."

"That's so!" said Chick. "Garry has been wearing it, all week."

He stared at the chum he had spoken about.

Garry's face was wreathed in a queer expression, half surprised, half eager.

"Golly-glory-gracious!" he exclaimed, "I--had forgotten."

He had.

"Do you know?--" he turned to Don.

"What morning is this?" he inquired, with a grin.

"Saturday," Chick responded for Don.

"Yes--and what was last night?"

"Friday night, of course, silly!"

But Garry grinned more widely. The others wondered, but waited.

"What has happened on four successive Friday nights, around Mystery Airport?" he demanded.

"The spook has appeared," Chick volunteered.

Garry nodded.

"And what did I get to guard us against spooks?"

They remembered the small bag John's Indian father had called a "charm" to clip ghost wings.

"What was I to do with it?" asked Garry, excitedly.

"You were to wear it all the time--let's see--for seven days!"

As he spoke, Don caught his breath.

"Wear it for seven days--and then open it!" he cried. "And this is the seventh day--or last night was the seventh night after our flight!"

Nodding, Garry produced the bag from his shirt, breaking the small cord it was attached around his neck by.

"Now, let's see--" he began, and tore loose the wax-sealed neck.

They craned closer as he peered inside. His face dropped, then he discovered something. Eagerly he extracted from the bag three yellow oblongs of thin, printed paper.

"What in the world?" he cried.

"I'll say!" Chick stared. "A charm to clip ghost wings. Three--free--passes--for--the--Palace--Theatre!"

The Indian youth smiled slightly.

"My father is a clever man!" he remarked.