Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 897 — page 11: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

ey - . - 7 . q. — . . . ry 4 » ; J — - 4 | ~-_ Na em oe oa tty = ew - - ot eh ‘ : > “ ® ‘ ; ” = 7 — song died out in astrange whoop. Then all was still. “If 1 could get beyond that wall I would have everything to my notion. In other words, it would be all O. K. and then I would reach liberty again. -Get out of this, T must!” With the energy of despair he now fell to | not to say a word about the escape. work on the almost smooth stones with noth- ing to aid him but his good knife-blade. The stone worked at so assiduously yield- ed at last and then the eager hands of the boy fell to work on the filling beyond it. Something fell inward all at once and the next moment he ran his arm into an opening from which came a puff of air! Davy uttered a cry of victory and fell back a moment. He entered the hole thus revealed and with the papers in his bosom crawled down a narrow passage until he was checked by the end of it. ‘‘One more glass, boys!” he heard a voice say, in maudlin tones. ‘‘ We will leave Billy to his slumbers in a little while, so one more toast over the dead!” ‘‘Is it a wake?” mentally asked the Boy Spotter as he listened. ‘‘ Have I come upon a watch over the dead? They seem right Overhead and a trap-door may exist here.” He heard the clinking of glasses in the final toast, and when the merry-makers ceased they seemed to go out, shutting a door behind them. All was as still as the grave now. Detective Davy tried to climb up so as to touch the ceiling overhead and after several ineffectual trials he accomplished his pur- pose and felt the rough ceiling, It did not take long for the active lad to rap on the ceiling and his raps were reward- ed by hearing a sound which told him that the room above was inhabited; and then, to his joy, a trap-door opened and he was blind- ed by a bright light. ‘¢ In the name of all that’s: good!” cried a man whose face seemed to fill the opening. ‘* Where did you come from? By Jupiter! mebbe you’re not flesh and blood, but come from the time we’ve been having here to-night.” ‘“Y’m all hunky!” assented Davy, as he tried. to scramble over the edge of the trap and yas lifted into the room by a hand that trembled while it performed the service. ‘“You are, eh? Well, you’re all covered with dirt and webs. Where have you been?” ‘*In the first place, tell me where I am?” ‘* You’re in Billy Blee’s place, but you’re all right. I’m a gentléman, I am, but I never thought of seeing aliving boy come to my shanty through the cellar— No, through that old passage, I mean.” Davy, the detective, had never heard of Billy Blee, but that made no difference, and he was satisfied with affairs as they were. The man bad been drinking, for his face was red though the young detective’s ap- pearance had whitened it somewhat and he was ready to thank Billy for his kindness. ‘*Won’t you have suthin’?”’ asked the fellow, leading the way to a table well lit- tered with the remains of the last bout. **The boys had a merry time of it and left something I guess.” ‘‘Tll take some water—that’s all,” - said Davy who was dry and flushed. ‘* Water?” eried Billy shrinking back and staring at himin amazement. ‘‘I can get the article for you, but we don’t use it much here. I guess you're a teetotaler; but, that’s all right. If I had been’ cooped up down there water’d be the last thing I’d think of.” Detective Davy didn’t doubt this, for the man’s face told him an unspeakable story, and Billy, after ten minutes’ absence, return- ed with water of which the boy drank erly. Phe boy was anxious to get out of the place * ——— TTI ee nen ld Davy Doon’s Bigy Bounce. and to go back to his own little den where he could look at the papers he had found in the skeleton hands. He had never been just so eager before, and, as soon as he could do so with pro- priety, he went away. But first, he had made Billy Blee promise This the man did with pleasure, for he was an easy-going fellow who thought the boy needed to be helped, and said he would aid him against the men who had cooped him up. Davy pulled his hat over his eyes when he struck the street and kept in the shadows of the great buildings, “Won’t some one have to pay for this?” he exclaimed as he hurried along. ‘* Won't I make them wish they had never heard of Davp Doon? They may hold the upper and best hand now, but the time is coming when their trumps wil] be worth nothing to m little joker, and when they will see their game played out against themselves. Iam on the war-path now, and if these papers don’t solve the fate of Hiram Honeybee I shall be mistaken. But I will know soon, for here I am near the old den.” He mounted the stairs to his door and quickly was at home once more, Drawing a chair to the table, but not until he had secured the door against intruders, the young shadow took from his bosom the old documents which, even in the darkness, he had discovered were covered with mold as if they had lain there for years. The first glance at them made the boy’s heart fall to immeasurable depths in his bosom. They almost fell to pieces as he laid them on the table; but nothing daunted, he leaned forward and began to look through them. He found that the lot was composed of three papers and that these were so near dis- solution that none but an expert could make out their contents, Davy, therefore, fingered the papers with the greatest care. ‘It’s a bu’stin’ job,” he said aloud, as his hands ran ligaotly through the disordered fragments. ‘‘I don’t see how I am to get head or tail out of the mess, Wish I had an expert here.” Suddenly, however, he started, for on one of the fragments which lay at his hand he saw a name which secured his undivided at- tention. ‘* Here is the name of Hiram Honeybee! Nell saw it on the sheet in Bolivar Brass’s oftice,and now I findit here, This is strange and somewhat startling, but ié is true!” He took up the bit of paper and held it to the light. ‘* What is this other word?” he went on. ‘‘ The hand that wrote it seems to have done so in the dark, and with a pencil at that! Was it written in the underground place?” The boy’s eyes seemed to. start from his head and he read what he had found with more than single interest. ‘IT see! I begin to see through this mys- tery. The man who wrote what! read here did it in the dark. Was the writer Hiram Honeybee? and was it his skeleton I found down there? ‘Imay get out of this trap and I may die here—like a rat in a trap.’ The meaning of that line is not doubtful. I can tell what that means, And this other one: ‘I willleave this paper for those who come after me. It will be found by some one and vengeance may be long delayed.’ That's easy. know who wrote this. Hiram Honeybee wrote these lines and— Ho! here is something which tells me he may have es- eaped. ‘ Il amtrying to get out, but whether I do or not I will leave this paper behind, I have opened the wail. I have started a tun- nel, but, Heaven knows where it will lead to, Perhaps into another trap—I am going out to-night, Good-by!’” Davy Doon started up with a cry. 11 ‘He got out!” he exclaimed. ‘' Hiram: Honeybee surely escaped from the trap. I am going to believe with Mrs, Lane that he is still in the landof the living! But I have what he left in the trap. I have something to tell me that the missing witness knew that the will admitted by the courts was a fraud,” The boy looked up witha smile of victory on his face. ‘* But whose skeleton was that in the dark? Maybe they retrapped him!” he exclaimed. CHAPTER XII. QUICK WORK, ‘‘It must be quick work now so far as: plotters are concerned,” remarked the Boy Spotter as he looked at the papers on his. table and realized what their finding meant, ‘‘They will take flight perhaps if they dis- cover that I have escaped from the trap. Yes, if my flight is found out they will not stand on the order of their going, but may o at once and we will be left in the lurch, don’t see, however, how a man like Nat Natty who lives in clover with all the money he wants at his command can pull up stakes. and get out. enemy behind and, his position in society will trouble him somewhat. I wonder what Nickel Nell and Mrs. Lane are doing. 1 be- lieve 1 will go and see them first.” He turned from his den and made his wa to the little house occupied by Nickel Nell and her new found friend, The night was late and Davy, taking the shortest cut, found himself near the house in which in his presence the strange man known as Captain Paul bad taken his own life with the deadly poison. He had heard nothing of the matter since the tragic event and when he looked up and saw the tall old buildings of Gotham Court in front of him he went that way and rapped at Muzzles’s door. He was admitted by Muzzles himself, who looked at him as if he were one who had risen from the-dead, and when the boy ferret. requested to be led to the cellar, Muzzles heeded the request. In a short time Davy was running down the sewer to the hole from whence he could pull himself up into Captain Paul’s room. He found the scene of the sudden death vacant, but he had not forgotten his ad- ventures there, including the revolver which had been thrust into his face from the win- dow. Now there was no one to disturb him, and he stood for a few moments in the chamber where Captain Paul had slipped from his chair and fallen to the floor, a sui- cide. ‘*No one here! Captain Paul died sure enough, and the old trap hasn’t been inhab- ited since. But. there’s time enough yet. Some poor devil will be thankful for the den, and ere long the place will be occupied, but not by aman who had a strange life history like the one who lived here last. He was & man ef mystery, Captain Paul was. He was a criminal’ who had helped in a good many evil things, and he was always afraid that some day or other they would pull him up and lengthen his neck according” to law.” The boy detective took another look round. the room and then turned away. ‘“‘T'll go back now and find Nell and Mrs, Lane,” he decided, ‘I'll tell them that we: have a bitter foe and that the plotters will a show mercy while they are able to fight er.” He was at the door when another opened. in another part of the old house. ‘“‘P'm not the only person here,” thought the youthful Davy as he drew near the wall and waited, Presently some one entered the room He won’t like to leave his.