CHAPTER XVI

AN ISLE OF MYSTERIES

Grace Palmer arrived late. It was growing dark when her car pulled up before the hangar. She came alone. Curlie was surprised. He had expected her to bring the chauffeur.

“You’ll have to pardon me.” She smiled as she threw open the door. “Usually I arrive at the tick of the clock. But I had a blowout. The old bus described a parabola and nearly put me on the curb. But hop in. We’ll get there all right now.”

Curlie climbed in and they were away. He was beginning to have a comfortable feeling about this new friend. “Here,” he told himself, “is unexpected aid.” And aid was what he needed. In spite of the fact that his youthful employer had treated him in a magnanimous manner, he felt morally responsible for the return of that mysterious, and supposedly priceless, package.

“If that Secret Service man knew what he was talking about,” he said to Grace Palmer, “those fellows were not only beating the Government out of thousands of dollars in customs duties, but were planning to use the whole proceeds for the purpose of striking what blows they might at the land that feeds, clothes and protects them. And if they get away with it, I’ll be to blame.”

“They won’t get away with it,” Grace Palmer said stoutly. “We will see to that!”

* * * * * * * *

In the meantime, Johnny Thompson had not been idle. He meant to enter the tunnel where Curlie had, quite by accident, lost himself and nearly lost his life in the bargain.

It was, he found soon enough, quite an unusual thing for the entrance to be left unguarded. When he tried to go down, a watchman stopped him.

“Have to get a permit from Mr. Rusby,” he told the boy gruffly. “He’s the manager.”

“Where is he?”

“In the office.” The man jerked a thumb to the right. “No. Let’s see.” He consulted his watch.

“Nope. Gone home. You’ll have to come to-morrow.”

Johnny had no notion of waiting until to-morrow. The tunnel would, he reasoned, be used less at night. That would give him greater freedom in making his search.

“More than forty miles,” he grumbled. “Forty miles of tunnel. Like looking for a pearl in a gravel pit.”

For all that, he hurried to the office, caught a belated office girl, secured Mr. Rusby’s telephone number from her and then hurried to a drug store.

But there he came to a halt. Mr. Rusby, he was informed, was out and was not expected back before eleven o’clock. And no one at his home could tell where he was to be found.

“So there you are.” Johnny banged down the receiver. “May as well go back to the shack and listen to a few tunes on the radio.”

He did just that. But he heard more than tunes on the radio that night. What he heard started a fresh mystery. It made him sit up and think sober thoughts, too. You may be very sure of that.

* * * * * * * *

Curlie and the college girl were on the island. A curious sort of island it was. The early explorers had not discovered it. There was reason enough for that; it had not been there.

Men had made that island, men and trucks, pile-drivers, dredgers, and more men. The refuse from a great city: ashes, old cans, glass, and the clay from beneath many a skyscraper had gone into its making. And with these, sand, much sand from the bottom of the lake.

It is strange how nature hates ugliness. Men had left this island ugly. Nature had added a touch of beauty. Wind had sifted sand over all. Cans, glass, ashes were buried. Trees and bushes had grown up. And now it was a place where one might stroll with pleasure.

But Curlie and the girl, as you know, had not come here for a stroll.

Almost at once they stumbled upon something. What? They could not tell.

They had climbed over a great heap of rocks, used as a breakwater, and were about to descend an even higher pile when the girl gripped Curlie by the arm and pulled him back. At the same time she put a finger to his lips.

He listened. At first he heard nothing save the distant, indistinct murmur of the city. And then there came the sound of heavy footsteps. After that, silence.

And into that silence came a voice. Low but distinct, it said, “Shall we bury it here?”

The girl gripped Curlie’s arm till it hurt. Yet he made no sound.

His heart raced. Bury what? The package of jewels, to be sure. What luck! Or was it so lucky after all? They were not armed. These were likely to be desperate men—men who stop at nothing.

What was to be done? They were in the midst of a pile of giant, jagged rocks. Beyond the rocks on one side was water, on the other, sand. On the sand, not five yards away were men, strange men. And in the darkness they were burying something.

“Can it be?” whispered the girl.

“Who knows?” Curlie whispered back.

He touched the girl’s arm for silence. What was to be done? The men were between them and the bridge that led to the island from the city.

It was a lonely spot. True enough, the lights of a great city, ten thousand lights, gleamed in the distance. But that distance was too great. The sandy surface of a man-made island, a deep lagoon and broad park spaces lay between.

“If we stir they will hear us,” the boy whispered. “Don’t move. They may go away.”

They heard the sound of scraping in the sand and the puffs of exertion. Moments seemed hours. The girl felt a cramp taking possession of her right foot. She made a furtive attempt to relieve it. Then came catastrophe. A stone, dislodged by her foot, rolled down with a thud which in that silence seemed a crash.

A muttered exclamation was followed by heavy footsteps. Curlie seized the girl’s arm and fairly hurled her over the rocks. The next instant, with the men in hot pursuit, they were dashing away over the sand.

“Some building over there,” Curlie panted. “Have to try for that.”

They did try. But Curlie could fly better than he could run. He was short of breath. The men gained on them, a yard, two, three, five yards. They almost felt the breaths of their pursuers.

Curlie tried to think what it would mean if they should stumble.

They rounded a second breakwater and there stood the building. But such a building as it was! A low structure of many sides and a large dome. It seemed a tomb.

“And not a light!” The boy’s heart sank.

There was nothing to be done but to race on. Heavy footsteps, labored breathing were behind them; the city was far away. They reached the wall of dark marble. No doors there. They began circling this astonishing edifice.

Their pursuers were all but upon them when they came at last to a door.

“It is not locked!” the girl said aloud. “It _must_ not be!” She put out a hand and turned the knob. The door swung open. They tumbled in. Then, as if by magic, the door closed and locked itself.

Curlie knew it was locked, for a heavy hand on the outside knob failed to budge it.

The knob was all but wrenched away to no purpose. After that came silence, deep and ominous.

“Well,” the boy whispered with a nervous laugh, “here we are. But where are we?”

And where, indeed, were they? Aside from a tiny gleam of red light that seemed far away, the place was utterly dark. This feeble light, casting not the faintest shadow, appeared to make the darkness more intense.

“Ah!” the girl exclaimed in an audible whisper.

“Ah—ah—ah,” came echoing back.

“Like some terrible cellar!” she whispered. “Let’s—let’s go back.”

Futile suggestion. This unusual door had locked itself automatically both within and without.

“We will go to the light,” Curlie said. “This way. We’ll find our way out.”

Straight toward the staring red eye they marched. Twice they bumped into stone pillars and were obliged to detour. But at last they reached the spot directly beneath the light.

“A door!” the boy exclaimed tensely.

“And not locked!” Grace Palmer had tried it.

The door opened and they passed beyond. Once more darkness confronted them, darkness and a stairway.

Up the stairway they went on hands and knees.

A third door, more darkness.

But no, not complete darkness. Off to the right was an oblong of pale light.

Toward this they moved with caution.

The oblong of light formed an open doorway. The space beyond that door was more mysterious than anything they had yet seen. There were no lamps anywhere, but pale light was about them everywhere. A vast pale dome, like the sky, hung above them.

“Why! It _is_ the sky!” whispered the girl. “See! There is the moon! And there the stars, pale stars!”

This seemed true. Surely there was the moon, and there the stars; yet Curlie was puzzled. The moon seemed too high, the stars too bright. What could it all mean? His head was in a whirl.

More was yet to come. As they stood there motionless, gazing upward, the entire firmament, the moon, the planets and the stars began to move.

“Oh!” breathed the girl.

They did not move rapidly, this moon, these stars. There was something dignified and terrible about the slow and leisurely manner in which they traversed the great dome above.

For fully three minutes not a sound was uttered. But when the moon vanished beneath the horizon and a million stars shone with added brightness, the girl seized Curlie’s hand to drag him into the outer darkness.

She led on blindly until a second red light appeared. Followed by her companion, she passed through a door and mounted a long, winding stairway, to find herself at last out in the clear, cool air of night, with a very different sky above, a sky full of stars, all set with a gorgeous, golden moon that did not move, at least not so you could see it.

“Oh,” she breathed, “this is better!”

As Curlie, feeling the cool lake breeze on his cheek, gazed away at the island that lay before him and at the dark waters far and away beyond, he wondered what had really happened, after all.

When they had regained their composure they began an investigation which told them they were on a narrow circular promenade some thirty feet above the surface of the island.

Fortunate for them was the fact that workmen engaged in mounting statues on the ledge had left their scaffold standing.

After a careful survey of the ground below, to make sure that their pursuers had left, they nimbly made their way down to earth and bounded away in a silent race for the car.

To their vast relief they found it unmolested.

“Well,” said Curlie, as they sat once more in the car, with the motor purring, ready for a dash at a moment’s notice, “what about that?”

“That,” said the girl, “is one of the strangest things I ever experienced. But of course,” she laughed softly, “you know what it was.”

“No,” said Curlie, slowly, “I don’t.”

“It’s a planetarium.”

“A what?”

“A planetarium. You may come here any day and see the stars, the moon, the sun and all the rest do their stuff. The old man who runs it must have been practicing up a bit.”

Curlie was nonplussed. He was obliged to admit that the place had had him guessing.

“Anyway,” he said, “it was a refuge. Question is, what are we to do next?”

“We might let the police in on this.”

“I don’t want to. Guess the thing is safe enough till morning. Either it is an important discovery, or it isn’t. Either they buried it, or they didn’t. If they did they’re not going to dig it up the same night.”

This was the way they left it. The girl was to pick Curlie up at seven o’clock. Curlie was to arm himself, and they were to return to the island to make a more thorough investigation.

“I’ll bring a garden spade,” the girl said in parting.

“And I a gun,” Curlie chuckled. “Spades and guns. Regular pirates.”