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Title: The mystery of the missing eyebrows

Author: Stephen Rudd

Release date: September 22, 2025 [eBook #76914]

Language: English

Original publication: Terre Haute, Indiana: R. H. Gore Publishing Co., 1921

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76914

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the Digital Library@Villanova University.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MYSTERY
OF THE MISSING EYEBROWS ***

Renfro’s hand trembled so that he could hardly pull the knife from his
trousers pocket. It was followed by a note book from which he tore two
sheets of paper. Quickly he opened one blade, the thinnest of the three
in his knife, warmed it with several breaths, then slipped it under one
of the frozen eyebrows on the window pane.

THE MYSTERY

OF THE

MISSING EYEBROWS

By STEPHEN RUDD

The Newspaper Boys’ Series

Illustrated

Published by the
R. H. Gore Publishing Co.

Copyright, 1921
R. H. Gore Publishing Company
All rights reserved

RENFRO HORN STORIES

TO FOLLOW SHORTLY
By
THE SAME AUTHOR
THE LUCK OF A RAINY NIGHT
THE RISE OF ROUTE 19
THE WHITE BAG’S SECRET
THE CLUE OF THE TWISTED PAPER
THE LONG LOW WHISTLE
THE MYSTERY OF THE BLUE MILK
THE LEAK AT COOGAN’S CHIMNEY
THE GROWL OF THE LOST DOG
THE COURAGE OF RENFRO HORN
THE FALL OF THE EAST SIDE BULLY
THE SCOOP OF THE CUB REPORTER

R. H. Gore Publishing Co.,
TERRE HAUTE, IND.

A WORD TO ALL NEWSPAPER BOYS
This volume, the “MYSTERY OF THE MISSING EYEBROWS,” is the
first of twelve books written about newspaper boys by an old newspaper
boy, and the picture of Renfro Horn is the likeness of a flesh and blood
newspaper carrier, the real Renfro Horn, who inspired these twelve books,
that the newspaper boys of these United States might understand the
responsibility they bear to the world.
The newspaper that you take each night to your subscriber’s door plays a
great part in the life of each subscriber. Thru rain and snow and cold you
go, and if you are a good carrier, as all newspaper boys should be, you will
overcome all problems to have your paper there at the exact time each day,
as early as you can get there, regardless of weather, unmindful of play,
striving all the time to be first to deliver papers in your territory.
And if you are to succeed later in life, you will constantly strive to make
route gains for your newspaper. A new subscriber each week, a gain of only
one new subscription each week, if you do it regularly, will mean that you
are a good carrier, as good as Renfro Horn and Renfro is one of the best, for
he carried papers on a route for the writer of this book who is a circulation
manager.
When your subscribers quit, make them give you a good reason. And
collect your bills. When folks do not pay, tell them about the six or seven
times you come to their door each week, and ask them if they can do you
just the one favor, and remind them you bring the biggest value in the world
for the money, the news of the whole world, plus your good service.
Newspaper boys are becoming the great men of the world. We have one of
them as president of these United States. Others are in high places. The
newspaper training is valuable, as much so as school, but you must look
about you and make mental notes and you must be a go-getter like Renfro
Horn. And here he is. Read about this newest and greatest Boy hero, who is
just a carrier of newspapers like yourself. And when you know him as well
as we do, you will like him quite as well, and you will want to follow his
many adventures in the other books to come.

By The Author

Stephen Rudd

The R. H. Gore Publishing Co.,
General Offices, Myers Building,
Terre Haute, Ind.

CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE

I. THE MYSTERIOUS HOUSE 7

II. RENFRO WANTS A NEWSPAPER ROUTE 18

III. A STRANGE MAN AT A WINDOW 27

IV. A NEW DOG AT THE OLD HOUSE 38

V. THE STRANGER COMES AGAIN 47

VI. HELEN WIER IS KIDNAPED 57

VII. RENFRO TAKES THE EYEBROWS 67

VIII. RENFRO GETS A SHOCK 76

IX. TRACKS AT THE CABIN 86

X. THE LIGHT ON THE INDIAN GRAVES 97

XI. RENFRO BECOMES A MENTOR 107

XII. THE SCRATCHES ON THE WINDOW 117

XIII. A TRIP TO THE CABIN 127

XIV. THE MAN IN THE HAUNTED HOUSE 137

XV. A DEAL IN TURKEYS 147

XVI. BOY SCOUTS TO THE RESCUE 156

XVII. RENFRO FINDS THE MYSTERY MAN 165

XVIII. THREE MEN IN THE PLOT 173

XIX. RENFRO IS KIDNAPED 182

XX. HIDDEN IN THE CAVE 191

XXI. HELEN WIER IS FOUND 199

XXII. THE LIGHTS ARE REVEALED 206

XXIII. HELEN TALKS TO RENFRO 215

XXIV. LANG TAMMY HELPS RENFRO ESCAPE 224

XXV. THE GLOBE GETS A SCOOP 233

THE MYSTERY OF THE MISSING
EYEBROWS.

CHAPTER I.
THE MYSTERIOUS HOUSE.
Renfro Horn was quite sure that Captain Pete would never have spoken had
he not dropped the rabbit. But the sound of its frozen body striking the hard
crust on the top of the snow made the old man turn around to discover the
reason for the sound. And at the same time he saw the rabbit he saw Renfro.
“Oh,” he snarled, “Spyin’ on me ag’in—sneakin’ on an old man’s own
grounds.”
The jerking of his shoulders broke the string which held the other rabbits to
his shoulder. A rattle like falling twigs. They were all on the top of the
snow. With a rush the old man was down on all fours trying to roll them
together.
Renfro stepped up to help him. And then he saw the three quails and
stopped. One minute he stared at them: the next he stooped and fumbled
with the tops of his shoes.
When he looked down at the ground again the quails were gone, and the
rabbits in a close heap. Renfro knew what was under the pile, but he
pretended not to have seen them. He remembered the notices the game
marshal had had posted about quail hunting the week before.
Imprisonment and fine for the first offense. Captain Pete had one of these
notices on his own big front gate.
“Pretty good luck?” Renfro twisted at the top button on his mackinaw.
“Fourteen rabbits I should guess.”
“Twenty-two,” Captain Pete was proud of his good fortune. “And all shot in
my own fields. You can go on, buddy. I’ll tote them down to my shack
myself.”
“Down to the shack?”
Renfro asked the question. Captain Pete answered it. “Yes, I’m a stayin’
down there this winter. An old man like me can’t chop wood enough to

keep the big house warm. I didn’t even try to. Moved down to the shack in
September.”
With a last look at the pile of frozen rabbits Renfro walked slowly away
down toward the road which led back to town. The three quails and the
threatened fine were instantly forgotten. But a big question was in his mind.
If Captain Pete had been living in the shack ever since September, then who
had been living in the big house? Four times recently, when he had been out
on late walks like this one, he had seen queer lights spring from its
windows.
They didn’t stay in one place but seemed to flash from one room to another.
The last time they had been in the right hand room in the upper story and
then suddenly had gone out and flashed in the lower left hand corner. He
had thought it queer then, but had regarded them as certain proofs of
Captain Pete’s queer mind.
Where the two paths, the short cut and the longer way round intersected,
Renfro paused uncertainly. The short one meant a saving of at least a
quarter of an hour and he would be on time for supper. The longer one
would make him late and bring upon his head the reproofs of both his
mother and father.
Yet he wouldn’t know about the lights if he chose the short cut. And he had
to know about them tonight. Better risk his family’s wrath than miss a
chance to solve this mystery.
And Renfro hurried down the long path which led past the big white house.
Just after he was out on the road he met Clint Moore, the boy who sold
chestnuts on the Horns’ home street in the early fall. “Who’s living in the
old Hall house?” Renfro asked him.
Clint whistled, “Just old dippy Captain Pete Hall,” he laughed. “An he’s
worse off his nut than ever this winter. Don’t have no fire nor nothin’. We’d
think he was dead if we didn’t see his lights of nights once in a while and
see him agoin’ huntin’ past the house.”
Renfro stared at him. The dusk was beginning to get heavy, but he could
still see Clint’s eyes and he knew he was telling the truth. He started to ask
him another question when Clint said, “I’m going your way so we might

just as well walk along together if you don’t mind. There’s a basket ball
game in town tonight and I’m going to go and stay at my aunt’s.”
He talked on about the ball game but Renfro wasn’t listening. He was
staring at the big Hall house which was less than a quarter of a mile ahead
of them. It set back off the road another quarter of a mile and in front of it
was a long row of pine trees.
They almost shut off all view of the old white shell whose original owners
had claimed that it was “a palace with fourteen rooms.” But in the upper
right hand corner of it a light was plainly visible to both boys and—
“There’s the old fellow now.” Clint pointed at the small window, thru the
ragged blind of which were gleams of light. “Don’t see it often but some
times—”
And then the light suddenly went out.
Renfro was silent. Captain Pete with his twenty-two rabbits and three quails
was back in the woods. He was sure of that. But who could have had that
light? And did Captain Pete really live in the shack now or had that been
merely a story he had told to take Renfro’s attention away from the quails?
Renfro was still wondering about that when they reached the end of the car
line and boarded the car which took them past his home. Clint would have
to transfer at Liberty Avenue.
They were the only passengers on the car until three paper carriers with
their big bulky paper bags got on a few blocks farther up the line. When
each had finished carrying his own route he had waited for the others.
Riding in together gave them a chance to talk over profits, new subscribers
and the adventures they encountered on their routes.
Renfro tried to listen to them and to Clint at the same time. His questions
about Captain Pete had reminded Clint of an old hired man they had once
had. He had known Captain Pete Hall before he got to be so queer. There
had been a brother who had been wild to get rich. He and some
confederates from another city had made counterfeit money in the little
shack on the Hall place.
“Captain Pete found their outfit but he didn’t know his brother was one of
the counterfeiters so he went to the sheriff about it and the whole gang was

arrested. His brother got the stiffest sentence of the whole lot.
“He hated Captain Pete then,” Clint went on with his story. “He said that
when he got out he was goin’ to kill him. Worryin’ about that upset Pete’s
mind.”
When Renfro asked him about the time at which the brother was to be free
again Clint shook his head. The hired man had never told him anything
about the length of the sentence Pete’s brother had gotten. He had told all of
the story he knew. His mother had once said that Captain Pete’s brother was
dead. “Better off that way than the way Pete is,” he laughed.
When he got off at the corner several other passengers entered the car.
Renfro studied them—the man with the beetling eyebrows and weak mouth,
the woman with the near seal coat and the genuine diamonds. There was
something queer about them. The papers recently told the story of a
jewelshop theft. Renfro began to wonder.
The carrier boys jostled against him as they went to leave the car. The little
one was bragging about a ride he had taken on the patrol wagon the night
before. There had been some trouble in the street on which his route lay and
the corner police had taken him along to help give directions about the
location of some houses.
And then Renfro’s own street was called. With an effort he left the
interesting couple, the lively wide awake carrier boys, and the two men in
uniform. His own avenue lay before him, placid and uninteresting. The
bright street lights made every corner on it as visible as if it were in the day
time.
He ran up the great stone steps to his own home. He opened the door,
entered the hall and knew he was late for supper. With a dash he was up
stairs and to the bath room to wash his face and hands.
And down stairs in the dining room his parents were discussing him. His
father, tall and thin and patrician looking, adjusted his horn rimmed
spectacles and said once more that he knew his son was queer. Otherwise
why would he walk alone as he did? If he didn’t go out to some queer spot
he walked around the home yard. Why, once he had counted one hundred
trips Renfro had made around the house, his head down and his feet moving
at a fairly rapid pace.

Other thirteen year old boys were playing ball or visiting in the drug stores.
It was uncanny—this way he had of walking alone.
Mrs. Horn, also tall and thin and socially graceful, rustled her stiff silk dress
and frowned. She too, thought Renfro was queer. But she was sure it was all
due to the detective stories he read continually. Mary had told her that
morning of seeing a light under his door at about three o’clock one night, at
half past one on another, and when she had slipped down there had found
that he was reading.
“They are about horrible crimes,” she shuddered. “It worries me so that I
cannot sleep. I am afraid he will cultivate criminal tendencies. What he
reads will influence him, I’m sure. Now I read of a boy—”
Mr. Horn shook his head. “Nonsense,” he said shortly. “There’s no
criminals in our families. Renfro is a little queer. None of us boys was the
least bit like him. But he’s clever with all his queer streaks. Why in that
continued story—that detective one he coaxed me to read, he had the
mystery all solved before the last chapter was published.”
Well, Mrs. Horn was determined of one thing. If Renfro had to read such
queer stories he should not do it in the middle of the night. “I’ll change his
room,” she said with emphasis. “There is that old music room right across
from—”
“From mine,” Renfro finished in the door way. “And I’d like to have it for
my own library,” he added and walked to the table.
His unsatisfactory explanation of his walk half angered his father. But he
did not know what to say about it. The report card Renfro had brought
home a few days before had been almost perfect. He couldn’t command
him to hurry from school to study. He was just ready to mention some
errand he had at his office when Mrs. Horn spoke.
“Renfro,” her voice was fretful and accusing. “I needed you this afternoon
to go out to Captain Pete Hall’s for me. It’s rabbit season now and I wanted
some for dinner tomorrow. I waited over an hour for you and then I drove
out there by myself.”
She shivered. “It’s an uncanny place—that big house is. The shrubbery has
grown everywhere and the weatherboards and shutters which have dropped
off the house lay just where they have fallen. It was like working my way

thru a maze to get to the door. And what made it worse it was just getting
dark and—”
“And Captain Pete wasn’t home,” Renfro finished for her remembering
again the three quails, the rabbits and the shack story the old man had told
back in the woods.
Mrs. Horn gave him a severe look. She allowed no one to interrupt her
without giving them a reproof.
“Yes, he was,” she snapped back, “but he didn’t have any rabbits for sale.
What was worse he said he wouldn’t have any at all. He mumbled
something about not going to hunt this season and shut the door in my
face.”
With a gasp Renfro half rose from his chair, stared at his mother, heard his
father’s gruff command to behave himself, and settled back in his seat
again, smoothing out his napkin with a great effort. But his eyes remained
round and his mouth opened and closed several times before he spoke.

CHAPTER II.
RENFRO WANTS A NEWSPAPER ROUTE.
When Renfro did manage to speak he asked his mother another question.
“What time was that, mother?”
Mrs. Horn studied a minute. The question annoyed her but she was too well
bred not to answer it. “Oh, about five, I should imagine. I waited until four
thirty for you before I left the house, and I was back at half past five. Why
do you ask, Renfro?”
Instead of answering her, Renfro asked another question. “Are you sure it
was Captain Pete, mother? You know he is old now and changed and—” he
hesitated and finished lamely, “It might have been some one else.”
His mother’s high bred voice was impatient. She wanted to dismiss the
subject and discuss finances with her husband, showing him her need for a
larger allowance. “Of course, I am sure it was Captain Pete. Haven’t I
bought turkeys of him for five seasons? Of course, he looks old now. He
looked that way the first time I saw him. And, Renfro, please be still and let
your father and me talk about something much more important.”
The steel like edge to her words clipped off any further questions Renfro
wanted to ask. But tho he couldn’t ask them out loud they surged back and
forth in his mind while he ate. Could he have been mistaken about the time
he saw Captain Pete in the woods? Had it taken him and Clint a longer time
to walk to the car line than it did him when he was alone?
And if it did, then why was Captain Pete unwilling to sell any of the
twenty-two rabbits?
Now there had been the three quails. Renfro was sure that Captain Pete saw
him staring at them. Could he have recognized Mrs. Horn and been afraid
that Renfro might tell her about the quails? A denial of having hunted might
throw them off the track should they feel it their duty to report to the game
warden what Renfro had seen.

But Renfro smiled at his own last conclusion. Captain Pete Hall was too
wise a man to believe that. Also he was too greedy to miss the chance of
selling any of his game.
But Renfro’s thoughts were diverted from the old hunter and the inhabitant
of the big old house by his father who directed a question to him. The
discussion with his wife over finances reminded Mr. Horn that his son too
had an allowance. “Keeping your book so that it balances this month?” he
clipped out his words, “And did you save anything last?”
“Yes sir,” Renfro smiled. “I saved half of my allowance last month. I want
to buy—”
“Some new detective stories.” Mr. Horn laughed and turned the
conversation back to his wife again.
Renfro felt as if he could not stand it a minute longer. With a low apology
he rose from the table and then they noticed him. “Renfro,” his mother
spoke sharply, “You are not to go out of the house tonight—not even to
walk around the yard.”
His father curtly repeated her command. And with sinking heart Renfro left
the room, wandered thru the library and dragged his feet up the stair way to
his own room. It was only half past seven o’clock. And he did not want to
read.
He walked to the window and opened it. The cold air sharpened his brain.
He looked over to the south. Yes, that was the right direction. Just three
miles from the court house tower was Captain Pete’s tumbling ancestral
mansion and the little shack in which Renfro and the old man, before he had
gotten so grouchy, had once roasted potatoes and meat.
“I’m sure it was Captain Pete and I’m sure it was about five o’clock when I
saw him. Now mother must have been mistaken—” he began to think and
then stopped.
Slowly he closed the window. “Mother,” he spoke out loud deliberately,
“saw some one else. Pete has rented that big house or been scared out of it,
or some one who knows how secluded a life Pete lives, has discovered that
he is down in the shack for the winter and is making the big house his
headquarters.”

His hands went deep into his pockets. His mind began to make definite
plans for ways and means to solve the mystery of the stranger whom he was
sure his mother had seen. He himself would watch the house and also the
shack. There was still the possibility that Captain Pete might have hurried
home and he, Renfro, might have mistaken the time a few minutes.
In that case there was something mysterious about the shack and Captain
Pete did not want him to make any more trips or visits there, giving as an
excuse that it was his new home. “But I’m going out there tomorrow
afternoon,” he began, “and every other afternoon and evening I can, only
first I’ll have to find an excuse which will satisfy the folks.”
For half an hour he worked framing excuses for those trips. And then Mary,
the second maid, brought one directly to his room. Mary was a woman with
imagination and romance, she said, tho in her form she was fat and homely
and of Scotch descent. Cautiously she tapped at Renfro’s door.
“Here’s the Evening Globe, Mr. Renfro,” she whispered, thrusting the
folded paper into his hand. “Right on the front page there’s more about that
big jewel robbery. Them hired detectives don’t seem to get nowhere with
their clues and I thought mebbe me, with my imagination, and you so clever
in workin’ out mysteries, we could beat them once. It would show—”
But Renfro didn’t hear the rest of her hopes. The paper clasped in his hand
became the master key to the mysterious house. It had reminded him of the
carrier boys, who had ridden home on the car with him.
They knew their routes like he did his school books. He would buy a route
—this particular suburban route which lay closest to the old Hall home.
None of his trips past it would arouse suspicion then.
He clapped his hands. He would ask his father’s permission the first thing in
the morning. Experience had taught him that it was no time to make
requests directly after an argument between his father and mother. But his
father’s ill humor didn’t last long. By morning he would be his dignified,
businesslike and his exceedingly fair self again.
Renfro was right in that surmise. Smiling, almost affable, his father offered
his son half of the morning paper when he entered the dining room for
breakfast. But Renfro shook his head. “I want to talk about a job, Dad,” he

said. “I want your permission to buy a paper route, one of the Evening
Globe’s.”
His mother answered his request. Such an unheard of thing was out of the
question. None of the boys on their street, none of the sons of the people in
their set, ever thought of such undignified proceedings. And she would not
allow her son to do it either.
“Well,” his father’s eyes twinkled, “Don’t pay too much for it. Buy a cheap
one and see how well it wears.”
A direct look at his wife quieted her on the subject. After Renfro had left the
room he explained his stand. “The only way to stop that kid,” he shook his
head, “is to let him have enough of anything. I’ll see he gets enough of that
paper carrier business right in the start. I’ll stop on my way down and see
the circulation manager of The Globe. I’ll tell him to give Renfro the
toughest proposition of a route he has. A week from now our worries will be
over.”
In the circulation manager’s office an hour later he explained his errand.
“His mother doesn’t want him to carry a route,” said Mr. Horn. He couldn’t
tell his own stand to this shrewd business like young fellow, “and I
promised her I’d see he didn’t carry one long,” he added. “Give the boy the
first one you have which is a tough deal. And rough it up on him all you
can.”
“Mr. Horn,” George Bruce looked directly into the older man’s eyes, “we
have some routes which don’t need the least bit of roughing up to make
them tough propositions for men like me and even you. One is vacant right
now. The business manager wants me to drop that route, and I’ve almost
decided to do so since it has long been a dead loss on our hands.”
He thumped his fist on the table. “I’m going to put your son out there, and
because I still believe that that route can be made into a paying proposition
I’m going to expect him to make good. I’m doing what you ask me to do—
am I not?”
“And,” he continued after Mr. Horn had given him a hesitant nod, “If he
fails you will have your wish; if he succeeds I’m going to have mine.”
He didn’t speak again until Mr. Horn was out of the room and then he
swung around in his swivel chair and faced his alert stenographer. “Miss

Newell,” he said, and there was a gleam of interest in his keen blue eyes,
“I’m anxious to see that boy. Mr. Horn’s a king of finance. Mrs. Horn is a
society queen. The young prince—well, let’s see how he wears the family
coronets.”

CHAPTER III.
A STRANGE MAN AT A WINDOW.
Late that afternoon, at four o’clock to be exact, Renfro Horn entered the
circulation manager’s office. Behind him lay a line of offices thru which he
had passed, and a line of men with whom he had argued and urged his way
to this seeming potentate of The Globe.
“Mr. Bruce doesn’t see applicants for routes” he had been told exactly
seven times.
But now he was in Mr. Bruce’s office and looking directly at that man, who
was dictating a letter to Miss Newell, his stenographer. Renfro with his hat
in his hand stared around the big room, as simply and well furnished as his
own father’s private office. He liked the pictures on the walls—some of
which were the originals from which the Globe’s daily cartoons had been
made and others, photographs of men famous in the newspaper world, who
had started their careers as route carriers.
Renfro was studying a photograph of a full faced man with a high forehead
when Mr. Bruce finished his letter and looked at him. And he liked him
immediately for the boyish way he had of smiling, the cordial gleam in his
eyes and the sincere tone of his voice while he had dictated.
“I’m Renfro Horn,” he said, “and I want to buy a route if there is one
vacant.”
Mr. Bruce started. “Oh, yes,” he narrowed his eyes and Renfro realized that
he felt those same shrewd eyes grasping for his past, his present and future
ability all at once. “Any particular part of town, son?”
“Yes sir, out south whenever there’s a vacancy, Mr.—”
“Bruce” finished the other.
“I would like to have the Washington Avenue route—the one farthest out,”
Renfro finished.
“Who told you it was vacant?”

Renfro’s eyes flashed. “Is it right now?” he asked and added, “I was afraid I
would have to wait a while for it.”
“Some fellow has been stringing him on that route,” George Bruce thought
immediately. Out loud he began, “Now, son—”
Then he remembered the promise he had made Renfro’s father. This was a
worse route even than the one he had in mind when he had talked to Mr.
Horn that morning. It was a dead loss. Pride alone kept George Bruce from
stopping that route. The Globe’s rival paper claimed that they made money
on their paper in that part of town, and until he had discredited that claim
George Bruce was determined to keep that route alive.
Yet only that morning Andy Andrews had announced that after today he
would make no more trips on that route. Here before him was his salvation.
Mr. Horn had wanted his boy to make a failure. All day whenever George
Bruce remembered the interview that morning he had hoped the boy would
succeed. Now after he had seen Renfro he wanted him more than ever to
succeed. “And he hasn’t a chance there,” he admitted to himself.
“You won’t make much money out there at first, son,” he talked slowly. “In
fact the boy who has been out there has lost so much that he gave up the
route this morning.”
“I can build it up,” Renfro’s eyes held entreaty.
George Bruce nodded. “Slowly,” he returned.
“Do I get it?”
Robert Bruce looked up and down Renfro’s sturdy body, at his determined
dark blue eyes, at his boyish stern mouth. “Yes,” he answered, “and if you
make good out there you can have your choice of any route in town.” He
turned to Miss Newell. “Call Morrison, please.”
He was still studying Renfro when Morrison, the route manager, for the
south side of Lindendale entered the office. “This is Renfro Horn,
Morrison,” he told the younger man. “He is to have Old Grief route.
Andrews gave it up this morning.”
“Yes sir, he was telling me so,” Morrison looked keenly at Renfro. “He’s
waiting now to take some other boy out to teach him the route. Shall I take
him?” he nodded at Renfro.

“Renfro Horn” the circulation manager supplied the missing name. “Yes,
do, please.”
In the outer office Renfro asked permission to telephone his father. “I don’t
want them to worry if I’m late” he explained.
“Oh, you’ll be late all right.” Morrison laughed easily. “Andy’ll tell you
about that.”
When Renfro came back from the telephone Morrison had completed his
survey of him. “You’ve got good legs, Horn,” he admitted, “and can walk
that route. It’s all over everywhere. Now get good ears, listen to what Andy
tells you tonight and I tell you later. We’ve got lots of tough customers out
there, and I want you to watch them. See?”
“And say,” he went on before Renfro could answer, “I don’t like your name.
It sounds too much like a map name. Get something human to use for a
carrier name. Ever have a nickname?”
Another question without an answer—all due to the speed with which he
talked. “I’ll give you a good one—Hooch, if you please—Hooch Horn.
Sounds good—doesn’t it? It has a business like twang to it. So I’ll just let it
go.”
He hurried “Hooch” out to the hall in which Andy was waiting. He
introduced the two boys, gave them car fare to the station at which their
papers were delivered and hurried them away. “I’m giving you the east
route you asked for, Andy,” he said, “but it will cost you something rather
high. Old Grief is the only route the Globe has to give away.”
Andy chatted all the way out to the station. A steady stream of questions
followed his description of what he termed “the poorest paying and hardest
route in the city.”
Who had wished Old Grief on Renfro? How had Morrison gotten hold of
him? Would he ask for another route as he went broke on Old Grief? And
finally how much experience had he had with route work?
Renfro, recently christened “Hooch,” evaded all direct answers. It was
almost dusk when they reached the station. He helped Andy tear open the
two packages of papers waiting for them there, stuff them into the paper bag
and carry them down the street.

“We’ll throw them tonight,” Andy was a virtual dictator this last trip of his.
“But when it’s windy or rainy you want to be sure to get them on the porch.
Nobody wants to come out here to run down complaints.”
“There’s the worst dead beat in town, Hooch,” he pointed toward a shot gun
house far back in a narrow yard. “He’ll try to get you—does every new boy.
Turn him down. He owes me $1.65.”
They turned the corner and Andy pointed down the street, “Out there—” his
finger went out directly in a line with his face—“there in that big old house
lives the queerest man in the country. No, not in the house” he corrected
himself, “it’s too rummy a shell for anybody to live in. But in a cabin out
there. I went out last night and bought six rabbits and every one of ’em was
shot clean thru the head—the prettiest shots I ever saw. Go out some time.”
“Was he in the shack you say?”
“Yep,” Andy rolled the paper for the next customer, “I went to the door but
I didn’t get in. It looked interesting but he shut the door while he hunted out
my rabbits. Queer old bird!”
Renfro wished that their route took them out to the white house so that he
could see whether or not there was a light there tonight. In the library at
noon he had walked past the case of old coins and was reminded of the
counterfeiting story Clint had told him.
If Captain Pete’s brother had returned he might be making that sort of coin
again. But his thoughts were cut short by an exclamation from Andy. A
heavy set old man leading a dog by a heavy strap, had jostled into them.
The dog barked sharply and tugged at the strap, but the man quieted him
without a jerk or command—just a simple Scotch name muttered in a tone
rich with a Scotch accent “Lang Tammy.”
And the dog had followed him obediently.
“That old Bird’s a new inhabitant out here,” Andy stared after the pair.
“Suppose he’ll be wanting to start the paper, Hooch. Look out for him, and
get his money first. Remember what they say about the perils of parting a
Scotchman and his money.”
Renfro tried to watch the old man with occasional glances over his shoulder
but Andy raced him along. The old man had not turned off the long street

when he disappeared in the dusk.
“I don’t believe I’ll remember all these places,” Renfro ventured to remark.
“Then forget the ones who owe accounts.” Andy laughed facetiously and
hurried still more. “This is a case where I’m not prolonging any fond
farewells,” he ended slyly. “Will you, Hooch, when you leave?”
“Oh, I’ll stay,” retorted Renfro and again Andy laughed.
Renfro thought of that laugh the next afternoon as he passed along the
route. And it was a long, slow trip. He had remembered very few houses at
which Andy had left the Evening Globe. After trying to make out landmarks
which he remembered from the night before and failing to do so Renfro had
adopted his own way of locating customers.
When in doubt he merely went to the front door and asked their names and
what paper they took.
The street lights were on when he reached Wayne Street—the street Andy
had termed the aristocratic portion of his route. “Everybody takes the paper
here and everybody pays for it,” he had given the information proudly,
“Even to Judge Wier, the old duffer.”
“Paying promptly is his policy,” Andy tried to be witty. “The fellows he
sentences in court can tell you that, and he gives generous tips besides
payment in full.”
At the corner Renfro slipped off his gloves and blew on his fingers to warm
them. The wind was losing its volume, but the temperature was dropping.
The ice in the gutter had a hard, unmelting look. Little flurries of snow
played around the light globe like myriads of tiny bugs in summer.
“I’ll fold my papers at the drug store tomorrow evening,” Renfro growled.
Andy might have told him that. He might have been a little more definite,
too, in showing him the route.
A big, wooly dog brushed past him and ran down the street. “Lang Tammy”
Renfro remembered the name the Scotchman had used the afternoon before,
“I wonder if that could be he. He was just about that size. He—”
And then he stopped abruptly in the middle of the block. Directly across the
street from him was Judge Wier’s old fashioned brick house. The front

room was dark, but the room back of it was lighted and the window blind
raised more than half way.
The light coming from it struck the shrubbery and showed a dark figure
lurking there. The house next door was dark. Walking slowly on so as not to
arouse the lurking figure’s suspicion, Renfro watched him stealthily.
Suddenly the light in the room was dimmed, and the front room became
brilliantly lighted. At the same minute the lurking figure slouched out of the
shrubbery, close to the window with the raised blind and stood there quietly
staring into the room for a few minutes. And then he slouched back into the
shrubbery again.

CHAPTER IV.
A NEW DOG AT THE OLD HOUSE.
For a few minutes Renfro Horn stood irresolute. Then he darted back down
the street a short distance, crossed it, slipped along the sidewalk until forty
feet from the shrubbery, dropped onto his hands and knees and crawled to
the spot where the peeper had disappeared. The mysterious man had
vanished.
A hurried but close search failed to reveal where he had gone. Renfro did
not knock at the door. He had no proof to offer that the man had been at the
window. Telling such a story as that to Judge Wier, reputed to be the town’s
most courageous citizen, would win him a laugh.
As soon as he had finished the street and incidentally his route, Renfro
walked back to Washington Avenue and down it toward the Hall house. It
was dark but his parents would not be worried if he were quite late in
getting home. They had predicted all sorts of difficulties for this evening.
After a little while Renfro slowed down his pace. The big white house, the
cabin a little farther on, Captain Pete and the stranger were only a short
distance away and he had as yet made no reason for coming to their
premises at night. A request for rabbits? He shook his head.
“I won’t go in. I’ll just peek,” Renfro vowed to himself. “At least that will
give me a beginning for a cue.”
Directly opposite the three big apple trees which remained of the Hall
orchard, a big airedale came sniffing toward him. Renfro stopped, gave him
a keen look and called softly, “Lang Tammy—here sir—Lang Tammy!”
The big dog sniffed his way to Renfro. After reaching him he gave a few
more investigating sniffs and then seized Andy’s discarded paper bag
playfully in his teeth. He tugged at it with all his might. Laughing Renfro
tugged back.
“You’re a peach of a dog, Lang Tammy,” he began, “I’d like—”

Then the strange voice did more than had the strange appearance. It
frightened the big dog. Turning sharply he ran back to the apple trees. He
wheeled around, gave Renfro a look, a sharp bark, and trotted into the
shrubbery out of sight.
Lang Tammy was a new possession on the Hall place. Captain Pete had not
had a dog since his collie had been poisoned a year ago. Renfro chuckled,
“I’ll see him and ask him where he got his new dog” he decided, “that will
help some. He’ll either have to claim or deny the dog. And I know
positively that Lang Tammy’s master is somewhere on this place.”
He turned off the road, skirted along a rail fence, jumped across a ditch and
stumbled against a rotting stump. Every window in the big house was dark.
He was making his way down to the cabin. The one opening there was on
the other side of the house and Renfro couldn’t be sure whether or not it
was lighted till he came opposite the cabin.
He scratched both of his hands on some briers. His paper bag—Andy’s
discarded one to be exact,—caught on a paling on the second fence and tore
loose with a ripping sound. The wind rattled the limbs on the old trees and
made queer spectral sounds on the tin roof of the big house directly
opposite the cabin.
Renfro looked sharply at it again. It was still dark. And then he stumbled
against the cabin, felt his way around it and stood close to the window.
Inside there was a small lamp burning. The chimney was smoke stained and
the wick, turned low, made still more smoke. But the light showed the rude
furniture of the room, the meal almost ready on the table.
Yet no one was in the cabin.
Up at the big house it was all dark. Captain Pete couldn’t be there. Renfro
shouldered his torn bag and made his way back to the road. It was
interesting here and he wanted to lurk a little longer, but he knew that if he
were too late in getting home his mother would be uneasy.
“If she worries too much Dad will make me give up the route,” he thought.
After which he hurried up the road to the side walk. The houses on either
side of the street were little and in the darkness stood sagging like the skin

of a moldy apple. Some of them were lighted; others were dark. Andy had
said the night before that only about half of them were tenanted.
But in them were probable subscribers for the Globe. Just as Renfro had
about decided to canvas here the next Saturday, the street car slowed to let
off a passenger. At the same time Renfro swung on to ride back to the end
of the line and help change the trolley.
And there sitting opposite him was Old Captain Pete clad in his best
overcoat and hat. A genial smile spread over his face at the sight of Renfro.
“Such rabbit luck,” he ejaculated, “as I’ve had today! Killed thirty-one and
sold ’em every one afore I left Main Street. Your hired gal bought two.”
When he expressed surprise about Renfro’s being on the car so late the
carrier showed him his empty paper bag. “I’m coming out to get you for a
new subscriber,” he promised.
Like a battered sail Captain Pete’s head shook a denial. “I aint got no use
for newspapers,” he was gruff, “Haint read one regular for more than
twenty years.”
“Not since his brother was sent up,” Renfro remembered the story Clint had
told him.
Still remembering it he rode into his home avenue. And from the corner he
walked home.
Mr. and Mrs. Horn were still in the dining room, Mr. Horn was looking thru
the afternoon papers and his wife was toying with some salted almonds. She
rang the bell when Renfro entered, and Mary brought in his supper.
Her broad face spread into a grin when she saw Renfro. “Rabbit for
supper,” she whispered sibilantly, “I bought it this afternoon of Captain Pete
Hall myself. Your maw was gone but I took it upon myself to do it. It’s
broiled too.”
“See Captain Pete, Mary?” he asked while he ate. “Dolled up, wasn’t he?”
Mary nodded and simpered. “But his buttons was off something fierce,
Renny,” she declared. “A man like him has no business growing up to be a
bachelor.”

Mr. Horn looked over the top of his paper, first at Renfro and then at Mary.
It wasn’t exactly a look of reproof he gave them but rather of surprise.
However, it was enough to stop their conversation.
“Get frightened alone?” Mrs. Horn’s voice was full of hope.
Renfro shook his head. He honestly had not. His interest had been aroused
however. He must talk to Mary alone about Captain Pete and the rabbits. He
must—
And then his father reached him an envelope. “This was in the mail,” he
told him, “postmarked The Evening Globe. I suppose it’s your contract.”
Together he and his wife arose and went into the library. Renfro tore open
the blue envelope, pulled out a card and read it thru before he fairly
understood it. Going back to the beginning he read it again.
“A full gown turkey to every route carrier who gets ten new subscribers
before Thanksgiving Eve”, he drawled. “Well, it’s up to me to get some
turkeys,” he mused.
He ate bananas without any cream to save time and slipped into the kitchen.
The cook was out and Mary was reading a novel and washing the dishes at
the same time. Renfro’s entrance startled her so that she let the soap drop
into the water and the shower which rose from the pan, following the
splash, went directly into both her own and Renfro’s faces. They sputtered
and gurgled.
Finally, Renfro could speak, “Mary,” he began, “do you think you could
cook six turkeys all at once?”
Mary stared at him, “Six turkeys,” she exclaimed. “Who are you wanting
me to cook for, Renny? Six turkeys, no, I’ll not be cooking turkeys for all
your fine friends! Now in this book here where I was reading, there is a
story about a turkey and a couple what lived on opposite farms from where
it was raised. It was real romantic. The turkey got lost as turkeys will, and
when the girl went to hunt it she found the young man and they fell in love
and were married. It’s just full of mystery and romance.”
“Well,” Renfro laughed, “none of my turkeys are going to get anyone in bad
like that, Mary. Sure you’ll cook them—won’t you?”
“Where’s the turkeys?” Mary was suspicious.

“Oh,” Renfro smiled a look of mystery in his smile which brought Mary to
her feet. “I’ll have them here all right in time for Thanksgiving day.”
“And, Mary,” he slipped close to her and gave her a comradely look,
“There’s something on my mind I have to work out. I may need you to help
me. I’m not telling exactly what it is yet, but it’s got mystery and maybe
some romance in it. And you will help if I need you—won’t you?”
Both of Mary’s hands came out of the pan of suds. “Mister Renfro,” she
said solemnly, “Aint I been wantin’ to give up this sort of work and go into
real detective work for years. Why, once I took a correspondence school
course in it. And I’ll—”
Renfro’s hand was raised in warning, “Just wait, Mary,” he cautioned, “Just
wait until I’m ready to tell you, and then you’ll have your chance.”
He sauntered back into the dining room. The telephone on the stand made
him decide to call Andy and tell him that he hadn’t missed a single
customer, that he liked the route and would stick. He wanted to know, too,
if Andy was satisfied with his new route.
And Renfro took down the receiver.

Chapter V.
THE STRANGER COMES AGAIN.
It became still colder during that night. Renfro Horn awoke near midnight
to feel a gale blowing around his ears. He got up, shut his east window and
crawled back into bed. “I’ll bet that tin roof is dancing a regular ghost dance
on the big house,” he muttered.
He turned over, pulled the blankets closer over his ears. The next minute it
was morning, and Mary was calling him. “The pipe’s froze something
fierce,” she began, “And you’ll have to eat in the kitchen close to the
range.”
“Suits me all right,” Renfro laughed and jumped out of bed.
At the breakfast table his mother began to worry about his route. She
predicted that he would freeze his feet, and perhaps his hands, contract
pneumonia and lumbago and then her list gave out. His father looked a
trifle uneasy while she talked but said nothing.
However, as he and Renfro walked down the street together, respectively
toward school and office, he gave his son some warnings. “Better mind
them all too, young man,” he seemed very impatient this morning, “if you
should happen to get sick, bang goes your paper route and no argument.”
A shrill yell drew their attention across the street. Two morning paper
carriers, who went to the Grant School, the same one Renfro attended, were
coming in from finishing their delivery. Their paper bags were drawn
around their shoulders, and their caps pulled low over their ears.
“Jim froze his right ear almost,” sang the taller boy, “and I gave him first
aid. One more merit badge.”
“You bet,” Jim agreed, “If you need any help tonight call on Bob, Hooch.”
“Hooch?” Mr. Horn was amazed.
“Oh, that’s my nickname,” Renfro affected carelessness. This was no time
he reflected to tell how it had been created, nor how popular it had become

in less than forty-eight hours. So he tried to change the subject. “Jim Noel’s
a first class Boy Scout and he’s trying to win enough merit badges to get the
eagle rank at the Court of Honor session.”
Mr. Horn nodded, “That’s all right for the other fellows,” he said, “but if
you freeze your ears you go to a doctor.”
At that instant Renfro wished he could tell his father—a few things—how
he had had not only his ears but his nose nipped during one of his hikes on
which he was trying to make some discoveries concerning quail tracks. He
himself had bound the snow onto them. And Mary had helped him with the
other applications the first aid book advised.
But he kept still.
The weather grew milder during the day. At noon the ice along the curbing
near the Grant School was melting a little, but when four o’clock came it
had frozen again. Renfro and Jim Noel, hurrying along together discussed a
hike and rabbit hunt for Saturday if it stayed cold. But just as they had their
arrangements about finished, Renfro remembered the turkey contest.
“Say, Jim,” he broke in suddenly, “I bet a turkey that if I can get off my
route work to go I’ll track down more rabbits than you do.”
Jim stared at him. “Great guns!” he ejaculated, “A turkey? How come?”
He stared again when he read the card Renfro showed him. “You’ll never
get sixty subscribers on Old Grief, Hooch,” he declared. “Not unless you
pay for their subscriptions yourself. Abie Lubin had it for a while and he
didn’t make anything, so that’s sure proof it’s no good.”
But Renfro only whistled. He and Jim separated at the next corner. Beyond
the edge of the big business districts and thru the residential part of town to
his route Renfro hurried. His papers were at the station. He swung the bag
on his back, wagered to himself that it would be heavier next week, and
started on his route.
He stopped at the most promising houses and asked for new subscriptions.
One woman threatened to have him arrested. Another told him that the last
boy had been crooked and failed to mark two of her payments, so that the
company had sent a collector there; and she added that if he wanted to be a

friend of hers he wouldn’t work for a paper which stood for such
crookedness.
But Renfro persisted, and before he left her door had her subscription and a
week’s payment in advance. He also secured four other subscriptions before
he turned into his last square.
“Pretty good, old boy, considering the time you spent in getting warm, and
that you’re a new recruit,” he said and then laughed. He had been talking
out loud and the woman who was hurrying past him turned round to stare
back.
The wind whipped the tops of the trees and made them crackle and roar.
The air was so cold that flurries of frost seemed to come out of nowhere but
swirl around everywhere. And it was dark except where the street lights or
those in the houses threw long hard gleams out into the street.
Suddenly, Renfro stopped. Lurking in the blackness ahead of him was a low
set figure, followed by a big dog—the airedale he had seen the night before
and the night before that. Renfro dropped onto his knees so that he could be
concealed behind the water plug and its shadow, and he watched.
A sudden light from an opened door fell on the big dog, and showed it to be
with the short, heavy set man. As soon as the door was closed Renfro was
sure he heard a low growl, saw a threatening movement and directly
afterward the dog rushed past him, running as if frightened to an unusual
degree.
The light was gone again. Renfro put his hands over his eyes a minute to
accustom them to the darkness again, and then rubbed them vigorously
together. The third and fourth fingers on his left hand felt dull. He slipped
off his glove and rubbed them with snow.
A half nervous laugh shook him. Suddenly he had remembered, no doubt on
account of the cold water plug against his body, of the time he had put his
tongue against a frozen pipe.
The shadow across the street lengthened. The heavy man was slouching
down the street again, up to Judge Wier’s shrubbery and then to the window
thru which he had gazed the night before. Renfro was sure that it was
because there was no light in that part of the house.

But the rest of the house was lighted and if the door were open the stranger
could see into the other room. And he lingered long enough and close
enough to the window to be studying the features of the whole family if
they were there.
Renfro, stiff from his posture and the cold, could not move. The big dog
had been afraid of the man. He would no doubt half kill Renfro if he
discovered that the boy was following him. Besides, Renfro reflected, if
you want to unravel a mystery you have to follow a clue to it and not burst
into open opposition.
The lights in Judge Wier’s house changed at that minute. The part which
had been lighted was darkened and the front rooms became bright instead.
And then the lurking stranger again retired to the shrubbery.
As he had done the night before when he neared the Judge’s house Renfro
dropped onto his hands and knees and crawled to the shrubbery but no one
was there. Still some one had been there and that some one had had
something in mind which would do harm to either the Wier home or family
he was sure.
Judge Wier has scores of enemies. He was noted as giving the stiffest
sentences of any judge in the city. Auto speeders met with as little mercy at
his hands as did the most dangerous criminals.
“I—really—ought—to—warn—him,” Renfro chattered, “but—still—he’ll
—laugh.” But he did call a number. A tired central informed him that she
could get no one on that line. It seemed to be out of order.
Then Renfro went back to the kitchen and Mary with a determination in his
mind. He would find some sort of an excuse to give his parents for being
very late the next evening. Then he would follow the short, heavy set
stranger. He would see if he took the same direction his dog did every night
—down toward the big house where the tin roof rattled and made such
warning noises.
An excuse. He frowned, when Mary started to speak but she talked anyway.
“Where’s them six turkeys you wanted me to cook, Renny?” she began, “If
it’s the cleanin’ of them I have to do then I better begin now and—”
“And,” Renfro interrupted her laughingly, “Mary, you’re a peach with the
fuzz still on most of the time. But I know the quality of your mind below.”

He could hardly keep from dancing. Mary had suggested the excuse he
wanted. The turkeys. Why he had to have them and what better excuse
could he offer his parents than that he was working for new subscribers. His
mother might object but his father would want him to win any contest he
entered.
But before he told them he wanted to talk to Mary a little longer. “Mary” he
began, “got any more rabbits?”
She shook her head. “He doesn’t bring them regular.”
“Then,” Renfro, suggested, “how would you like for me to stop out there—
Captain Pete’s place is just a little distance from the end of my route—well,
let’s say about every other day and buy a couple of rabbits from the old
fellow? Put in sort of a standing order?”
“Sure Renny, you’re that thoughtful,” Mary beamed, “And speaking of
turkeys, Renny, I read another turkey story today. It has the most beautiful
plot. And romance too. The man was a detective and—”
“And, Mary, we’re going to have one too,” Renfro added, “but please,
Mary, do be a dear, and don’t call me Renny any more. I’ve got a business
name and I want my real friends to use it. After this to you, Mary, I’m
Hooch—Hooch Horn,” he imitated the route manager’s tone exactly,
“Hooch Horn, if you please, Mary dear.”

CHAPTER VI.
HELEN WIER IS KIDNAPED.
Before Renfro Horn had been awake three minutes the next morning he
heard sounds of great confusion coming up from downstairs. His father was
talking in a loud excited voice, his mother after giving a half tone scream
began asking questions and even Mary was making her share of the
confusion.
“Another bursted pipe,” Renfro saw the heavy frost on the window, drew
his conclusion and turned over to sleep until they called him.
Mary’s heavy winter shoes clattered up the stairway, crossed the hall and
came straight to his door. She peeped cautiously into his bedroom, her head
encased in a pink breakfast cap thru which were run blue ribbons. Her
mouth was half open, her eyes big and her whole face a map of mingled
surprise, interest and horror.
“Renny—Renny,” she called softly and then changed, “Hooch—oh, Hooch
—your pa just brought in the morning paper and Helen Wier was kidnaped
last night right out of her pa’s own home and she aint been brought back or
they don’t know nothin’ about it and—”
Renfro was sitting bolt upright in bed. “What did you say, Mary?” he
demanded. “Helen Wier kidnaped. When? And how did they find out? Now
answer my questions first.”
Observing directions, Mary told him. Helen Wier, the judge’s twelve year
old daughter had been studying in the little east library, as was her custom
when the family and two guests went into the back of the house for coffee
and a late lunch. She had been sitting at the table when they left; when they
came back she was gone. That was all Mary knew.
The paper told Renfro a little more. There had been no outcry on Helen’s
part—no sound that anyone had heard. The room showed no evidence of a
struggle except that a vase of flowers on the table was upturned and the
books she had been studying, all were on the floor.

When the family had come back into the library Helen was not there. Her
mother, thinking that she had gone upstairs to bed, had commented on her
going without being told and began to talk of other things when she noticed
the books on the floor and became suspicious.
Helen Wier loved her books as she did her friends. She was very careful of
them. She never would have left them on the floor behind her, open with
their backs bent to the breaking point as were these. And the papers out of
her notebook were scattered around and under the table.
Mrs. Wier muttered something to the rest about being sure something was
wrong with Helen, rushed upstairs to her room and then had begun the
search. That she had been kidnaped was an assured fact. The problem
before the police who had been almost instantly summoned was to find out
who did it and where the child had been taken.
“Weren’t there no note wanting money?” Mary asked the question.
Mr. Horn who was reading the story shook his head. Mary in turn shook
hers tho more wisely. “Then they’ll be hearin’ from the kidnapers before
night”, she said with conviction. “They’ll be telling how much they want
for her return and where to put it and giving all the directions. The book I
studied in that home correspondence course said that was the way it always
went.”
She ended her speech triumphantly, but noticing about the same time that
no one was paying any attention to her backed thru the dining room into the
kitchen, where she talked to herself about the “ignorance of some people”.
Renfro, after reading the short, and to him, decidedly unsatisfactory story,
followed Mary out into the kitchen. “The paper didn’t say anything about
whether or not the telephone wires were cut,” he began.
Mary’s homely fat face beamed. She liked to be taken into some one’s
confidence. “Them detectives which are huntin’ for a clue know mighty
little,” she said hotly. “Now what course have any of them ever studied?
They just happened to be in on the side of the political party which won at
the last election, and when the city hall jobs gave out they just put them on
the detective force.”
Without any doubt Renfro was in a state of confusion. He didn’t know
whether or not to go around to Judge Wier’s house and tell the Judge what

he had seen on the two successive nights when he had been carrying his
papers past their house, or to take his story to the police. But he did know
enough to keep still until he decided what course to follow.
But he had come to the kitchen to ask a request of Mary, “For heaven’s
sake, Mary,” he begged, “don’t ever let mother know that place is on my
paper route or it would be goodbye to that route and my new turkey
customers. You won’t, will you?”
Mary shook her head. “But are you working on some clues, Ren—Hooch?”
she asked. “Now if you are, I could help you a lot with my book learning on
detective work.”
“Oh, I will need you all right,” Renfro laughed. “Just you wait, Mary, and
keep still a little while and then your chance will come.”
It was hard work for Renfro at the breakfast table just to ask enough
questions and talk enough about the kidnaping to avoid suspicion, without
telling his parents anything he knew, or ask any of the questions in his
mind. He went directly to the police station from the breakfast table. He
found the chief of detectives a very busy man.
But still he managed to take time to see Renfro and talked a little until
Renfro began to tell of the man he had seen lurking in the Wier
neighborhood and then he banged his hand on his desk. “You’re the fifth
boy who saw some suspicious looking person lurking in that
neighborhood,” he laughed but there was a note of impatience in his laugh.
“I’ve heard of everything from a colored wash woman to the judge
himself.”
After storming about how busy he was and how people who bothered busy
people should be given jail sentences, the chief pointed toward the door thru
which he intended Renfro to leave. “If you kids would read your school
books,” he said solemnly, “instead of a lot of detective stories written by old
maids afraid to go out at night, you would have more sense about clues and
everything else in general.”
Outside Renfro pursed his lips. “All right, Mr. Chief,” he thought to
himself, “I’ll work on my own clue. I’ve one and I hope your men don’t
find out a thing without it.”

He found the entire Grant School aroused by the kidnaping. Girls, who had
been brought to the building by their fathers under orders not to leave the
building until they came after them, stood in groups inside the hall and
would not have ventured outside the building for a fortune. Some of the
people seemed to think that Helen Wier was the first one to be taken in a
kidnaping plot which was to rob Lindendale of all its girls.
Miss Turpin, the English teacher, allowed the members of her classes to
discuss the affair. All sorts of reasons, were offered for the kidnaping, most
of them being that of a ransom. But Renfro kept still. Judge Wier didn’t
have a fortune nor did he have resources to raise one in a hurry. Unlike
Mary he didn’t believe that a note would come in a few days demanding
money, telling under what particular forest log to hide it and the conditions
governing its hiding.
Miss Turpin herself ventured a suggestion. She too knew that Judge Wier
was far from being a rich man. Now there was soon to come before the
judge for trial a number of men charged with a series of election frauds. She
wondered if they could have taken this course to frighten Judge Wier from
giving them stiff sentences.
“Well,” Abie Lubin remembered his fine for speeding his father’s car,
“Anybody can’t scare Judge Wier by nothing.”
That afternoon the chief of detectives, having heard of Miss Turpin’s
suggestion telephoned the Grant building for her to come to his office after
school. Renfro, too, received a telephone message. It was from Route
Manager Morrison of the Evening Globe. He offered to send an extra boy to
help Renfro carry his route in case he should feel uneasy.
Now that was the last thing Renfro wanted so he laughed at the suggestion
and by so doing rose several notches in Morrison’s mind. He went directly
to the Circulation Manager with his praise. Mr. Bruce in turn smiled, “I said
that boy would make good,” he smiled. “Of course he won’t make any
money on Old Grief, but as soon as we’re sure he’s what we think he is
we’ll give him a regular route. And I shall have the pleasure of telling his
father that he was wrong in his prediction, and I was right in mine.”
Renfro fairly rushed along his route that afternoon. Still he searched for
new subscribers. It would be foolish he knew to go out to the big Hall house

and the little shack adjoining it until it was dark. Yet he was going.
It was very quiet at Judge Wier’s house. The people who crowded there in
the morning had gone home. The house was darkened so that Mrs. Wier
could be kept quiet.
Renfro rolled his copy of the Evening Globe, started to throw it onto the
porch and then stopped. Why not take it around to the back door? That
would give him a chance to pass the shrubbery and the window thru which
the man had peeped on two successive nights. He decided to do so.
The shrubbery was intact. The inside of the window was covered with a
heavy coat of frost. Renfro looked thru it but could see only the green blind
which had been pulled to the very sill. And then he saw something on the
outside of the pane.
He stepped close to the window, and looked up at the two strange looking
things. They were about two inches apart, white and stiff and made up of
—?
And then Renfro almost shouted. They were part of a pair of a man’s
eyebrows. Memory of the frozen pipe with his boyish tongue stuck against
it, and the red skin left fast to the pipe, made him understand this situation.
The man who had stood close to the window pane had pressed his face
against the cold glass while he watched the scene inside the house, his
eyebrows had been frozen to the pane more firmly than he had thought and
when he, suddenly frightened, had pulled away from it he had left these
portions of his eyebrows behind him.
“My first clue” Renfro told himself and reached into his pocket.

CHAPTER VII.
RENFRO TAKES THE EYEBROWS.
Renfro’s hand trembled so that he could hardly pull his knife from his
trousers pocket. It was followed by a notebook, from which he tore two
sheets of paper. Quickly he opened the blade, the thinnest of the three in his
knife, warmed it with several breaths and then slipped it under one of the
frozen eyebrows on the window pane.
Zip! It came off—frozen, intact, as solid as it had been when left on the
frozen pane. Carefully Renfro wrapped it in one of the pieces of paper. By
the same process the other portion of an eyebrow was likewise treated. With
both precious packages of what he considered a magnificent clue stored
safely in his most secure inner pocket Renfro shouldered his now empty
paper bag and started toward home.
The desire to journey out to the big Hall house was almost overpowering
him. But wisdom warned him against making the trip. It was late—it would
be eight o’clock before he could get home. If he arrived later than that there
would surely be a family conclave held, the decision of which might mean
that tho he continued to carry his paper route he would be given no time to
either get new subscribers or to follow the clue which fate had thrust into
his hand.
Renfro was almost stunned with his good fortune. In his pocket was the
only clue which, according to the latest reports he had heard, had yet been
found. And he was going to keep it and work it out himself. The chief of
detectives had laughed once, the next laugh would be at his expense, Renfro
vowed, and because he had discovered a clue to the identity of the person or
persons who had kidnaped Helen Wier.
All the way home on the car he kept his hand pressed over the pocket in
which was the clue. Off the car, walking down the home avenue he watched
surreptitiously for a possible bandit. No lady of rank ever guarded her
jewels any more closely than Renfro Horn did the two mysterious
eyebrows.

All around him the bitter wind stung and lashed and hurt like a keen edged
knife. It drove white hard clouds across the sky and at times hid the moon.
But still it was a much lighter night than the one preceding it had been.
Neither Helen Wier nor any other girl could be successfully kidnaped on a
night like this.
“But detectives could follow a clue mighty well,” Renfro turned in at his
own walk, and patted his chest, “only right now they haven’t any clue.”
His father who had just come past the police headquarters on his way home
from the office, gave testimony that his conclusion was right. The clue
suggested by Miss Turpin about the men implicated in the election frauds
was being traced down but no one hoped for any results.
While they were at dinner Mrs. Horn who had been doubly uneasy over
Renfro’s lateness and also his father’s, voiced her complaints in fretful
language. Mr. Horn, provoked as always by his wife’s fussing moods issued
sharp orders to Renfro, “No trips out at night onto that route,” he said, “and
hereafter you be home at six thirty. Do you understand?”
Renfro nodded, and reaching into his pocket pulled out the rules Morrison
had given him the first day. “Dad,” he said soberly, “Every business has its
own rules, and the Globe’s carrier system has its own. You expect your
employees to follow yours if they expect to rise in your business. If I’m to
rise to success with the Globe I’ll have to follow these.”
His mother’s eyes were distinctly hostile but Renfro looked away from
them straight into his father’s interested ones, then back to his paper and
read his rules in a clear, determined boyish voice—
“Never fail to deliver a subscriber.
“A good carrier will get two new subscribers and increase his route two
each week.
“Bills must be paid when due. Only lame ducks pay part of their bills.”
Mrs. Horn sniffed scornfully, caught a gleam of authority in her husband’s
eyes, rose with a rather indifferent apology and strolled into the library. At a
nod from his father Renfro read on—
“Collect your route thoroughly once a week. The meanest man in the world
is the man who would beat a newspaper carrier.

“Tell your customers you come thru the snow and rain and cold six times a
week to their door, for their accommodation, and ask them if they can’t
arrange once a week to have your money for you.
“Get your delivery thru as quickly as possible. The mothers want to read the
Globe before the fathers come home for supper.
“And remember the quitters fail while the boys who respond to
responsibility always succeed as boys and as men.”
When he finished his reading Renfro carefully folded the paper and put it
back into his pocket. He heard his father cough, looked up, caught his wink
and rather low declaration, “I recall my command. These rules are about the
best things I ever heard. Obey them—that’s all.”
Renfro ventured audible thanks. But he cautiously remained in the dining
room when his father left for the library. He knew that his father would
have it out with his mother and that it would be much better if he were not a
listener to their argument. Besides he wanted to see Mary.
With his hands in his pockets he strolled into the kitchen, watched Mary stir
something into a batter and then carelessly asked, “Did you see Captain
Pete today, Mary?”
To his surprise Mary nodded, “You did, Mary,” he ejaculated, “How did he
look?”
“Cross—fierce like to be sure,” Mary returned. “I didn’t buy none of his
rabbits. They weren’t fresh like. And he had the nerve to argue with me that
frozen rabbits is allus good even if they wuz froze the week before last.”
A straight look at Mary, and a little delay on Renfro’s part. Then he smiled
scornfully at himself. Experience had taught him that no one could be
trusted better than Mary. Slowly he pulled the two pieces of paper out of his
pocket, laid them on the table, unfolded them so as not to disturb the
arrangement of their contents and called Mary.
In a low, guarded tone he told Mary of the man who had crouched at Judge
Wier’s window, of his trying to follow him and of the finding of the
eyebrows. “They’re my clue, Mary,” he ended proudly, “You’re going to
help me find the man who has these missing eyebrows and who kidnaped or

who helped kidnap Helen Wier—aren’t you?” And he breathed deeply.
“Without the help or knowledge of any member of the detective force.”
“Yes, yes,” Mary whispered, her sibilant tones high with excitement. “I’ll
help you and just us two will do it. I know how to follow that clue. Them
detective lessons will come in handy now. I was just beginning to think that
mebbe I had wasted my money but now I know and—”
“Mary,” Renfro’s hand clasped over her arm, “Did you notice this
afternoon? Were Captain Pete’s eyebrows—”
“Why I couldn’t see them,” she whispered back. “He had a long scarf over
his head and Hooch, it came clean down to his very eyes. You don’t think it
was him—do you, Hooch?”
Renfro shook his head. “But we’re going to watch everybody who is old
and who might be a criminal or a maniac or who could have had some
reason for kidnaping Helen Wier. In other words we’ve got to find the man
with the missing eyebrows.”
Mary nodded vigorously.
“And, Mary,” Renfro was folding the paper again, “We’ve got to be very
careful of these same missing eyebrows which are our only definite clue.
I’ll hide them away carefully.”
His mother called him just then to hunt her a book he had been reading a
few days before. She was still decidedly cool in her treatment toward him.
But Renfro was more courteous than usual and before he left the room to go
to bed, she was quite motherly to him.
In bed Renfro reviewed the day’s happenings and tried to map out a plan for
the rest of the week. He must do his route work first. That was his job. Then
when each day’s work was over he could follow the clue. If only the
detectives failed to find Helen Wier he was sure he could.
“And I must get my new subscribers,” he was ready to close his eyes. “The
paper says two new subscribers a week, but my record must be five a day
for a time if I get those turkeys. And I must have them. I’ve promised
Mary.”
Before he left for school the next morning he slipped into the kitchen and
bantered with Mary a minute or two. “I’ve earned two of your turkeys,

Mary,” he told her, “So be finding out ways to dress and cook them.”
Then he explained to her the system he was following in order to win them.
At the back door he gave her a last word of advice. “Mary, if Captain Pete
or any mean looking stranger comes to our door, look at his eyebrows if
you have to sit on him to do it,” he smiled.
“All right, Hooch,” Mary promised in return.

CHAPTER VIII.
RENFRO GETS A SHOCK.
Not until he was in Miss Turpin’s class did Renfro have an opportunity to
hear anything about the kidnaping of Helen Wier, otherwise than that which
had been in the morning newspaper. And in them had been the statement
that all clues offered by members of the detective force and members of the
Wier family had been followed down and led to nothing.
But in Miss Turpin’s class a late comer to school brought more news. Judge
Wier had received a letter that morning in the first mail. It was just a note
written by Helen herself, in her girlish scrawl. She was well she said and
comfortable. That was all.
But the note had been mailed in a city mail box directly across the street
from where Judge Wier lived. That gave the detectives a new clue. They
were—
And then Renfro remembered his clue—the missing eyebrows. With great
deliberation last night he had chosen his hiding place—between the case
and the pillow itself. But his father had called him late and he had forgotten
all about his valuable possessions.
At the close of the recitations he went to the dean, obtained permission to
use her private phone and slipped alone into her inner office. He talked in a
very low tone. First he called his home number. And then he almost shouted
over his own good fortune. Mary had answered the call.
“Don’t talk, Mary,” he cautioned, “don’t say anything which would give me
away. It’s Hooch. Has anybody made up my bed yet?”
Mary herself had—just a little while before.
“Then you didn’t bother them—my clues,” he almost implored. “You know
what I mean Mary—those eye—eye—you know.”
Mary knew.

Then Renfro told her where he had put them. No, Mary hadn’t seen them,
but if he would wait she would run up stairs and see if she could find them.
A long wait followed during which Renfro counted several hundred digits
to make the time hurry and then he heard Mary’s voice once more.
It was terrible—full of tears, of fear and of grief. They were gone—
Renfro’s leading clues. She had shook his pillows, quite as was her usual
custom, had swept his floor and then and—
The rest of her speech was lost. Renfro had dashed the receiver back onto
the hook, slipped as fast as he could to his cloak room, donned his cap and
gloves and was down at the principal’s office. His white face, his dark
staring horror stricken eyes gave proof to his statement that he was sick and
he was excused for the rest of the morning.
Darting across streets in front of automobiles, down alleys thru which he
had not been in months, panting, puffing, and never stopping, Renfro
rushed into his own back gate, up the walk and into the kitchen where Mary
was weeping copiously. A few questions from him, a few answers from her
and they were both down in the basement, right into the furnace room.
No, Mary didn’t remember where she had emptied the sweeper that
morning. She usually did but this morning she had been busy thinking out
excuses she could find for going out to Captain Pete’s and discovering the
condition of the old hunter’s eyebrows. She sobbed audibly while she
talked. Mrs. Horn had gone up town to a sale she informed Renfro and she
could cry loud and get all the comfort she wanted out of so doing.
Together they searched thru the trash pile, then all over the basement floor,
and all the way up and down the dark stairway. And then Mary remembered
the garden plot. The ash man had asked her to empty her sweepings on the
ash pile. He often found pins and needles and interesting knick knacks for
his little girl in people’s ash piles.
And out there Renfro found one folded piece of paper and Mary the other.
They flew into each others arms. Back in the kitchen Mary found her family
Bible and made room in it for Renfro to place the precious possessions
along with the bit of her baby hair and one bridesmaid’s dress and her long
ago admirer’s picture. Mary informed him that she was going to buy some

black paper, some white paint and make a reproduction of the eyebrows for
their everyday use in hunting down clues.
“The detective book said to make copies of everything you find in regard to
a crime,” she offered the proof of the wisdom of her suggestion.
“Well you guard your Bible, Mary dear, and wait a little while,” Hooch
begged her, now restored to health again and ready to return to school.
It was Jimmie Noel who at noon suggested to Renfro that he go see his
route manager for suggestions about securing his new subscribers. “He’s an
old hand,” he advised, “and he can give you pointers which will save you
half of your energy.”
Renfro hesitated. That might mean a loss of time and he had determined to
go out to both Captain Pete’s and the big house that night. Still “The Globe”
was his business and a fellow’s own business came first. Besides his father
had given him permission to stay out late.
Renfro found Morrison rushing and fuming. Warren, route manager of the
north side, had boasted that his boys were going to win the most turkeys. “I
can’t have that,” Morrison was urging two of his best carriers whom he had
summoned in to act in an emergency. “Fellows, this is just like a big basket
ball game. Are you going to let your enemy’s team beat you without a
struggle?”
Then he saw Renfro, “Hello, Hooch Horn,” he said genially, “How can I
help you, old man?”
Renfro’s list of twenty new subscribers went onto the counter in front of
Morrison. “Two turkeys won already,” he smiled. “And I thought perhaps
you could give me some suggestions on how to win four more.”
A smile spread over Morrison’s face and then it stopped suddenly as he
examined the list of names. “Ward’s no good,” he ejaculated. “Didn’t Andy
tell you? He beat him out of a bill. And Newkirk did the same and that
Patterson woman—”
“But they all paid in advance,” Renfro interrupted.
Morrison stared at him. “They did!” he half shouted and drew his hand
across his forehead. “They did! Well how in the thunder did you get money

out of them before they got the paper? Boy, you must have a wonderful line
of talk.”
Arm in arm he and Renfro walked to the door. “Go to it, Hooch,” was
Morrison’s last advice, “win these turkeys and I’ll put up the best feed in
any hotel you choose. The south side always does take the prizes. But for
Old Grief to win first honors, Hooch, that would be the surprise of the
Globe during the sixty years it has been a paper.”
“Say,” he called Renfro back, “Bruce said you had guts, when he hired
you.”
Renfro remembered that statement of Bruce’s as he worked against great
obstacles for subscribers that afternoon. But he stuck, tho there seemed
nothing but obstacles in front of him and finally counted out his five new
names. “Turkey number three,” he laughed and pulled out his watch.
Seven-thirty o’clock and a heavy darkness everywhere. The street lights
were dim tonight and there was almost no one out on East Washington.
Judge Wier’s house had been guarded by a detective, not because of the
discovery of a new clue but Mrs. Wier’s nerves from the morning’s note had
demanded one.
At the little corner grocery Renfro bought a hot dog sandwich and some
weak tea and ate and drank standing close to the door. No one passed except
a colored woman carrying home her “wash.” Out on the street he hurried
down toward the big house and the shack beyond.
He stumbled thru the underbrush at the side of the road, over the rail fence
and into the lane between the two orchards. A dark form loomed before
him. He held his breath and stood still. A low sniff came to him, a joyous
bark and Lang Tammy was against him, his big shaggy body almost
overturning Renfro. He grabbed one end of the bag and the usual game of
pulling followed.
“Like to play, old fellow?” Renfro patted his head. “Next time, old boy, I’ll
bring you a hot dog if I have to go without one myself.”
While he talked to the dog he caught a glimmer of light in the big house, up
on the second floor at the right side in the dormer window where there were
still shutters. It didn’t linger there long and when it went out the whole
house was left in darkness. Nor was it lighted again.

Renfro turned his back on the big house and stumbled across the field
toward the shack. The orchard was desolate and rocky with a few remnants
of trees which never bore but in the darkness they were formidable looking
and their roots stumbling blocks.
After the orchard came the lane again and then the open space around the
shack. A gleam of light from the window told Renfro that Captain Pete was
at home. Before he crossed to the door Renfro ordered Lang Tammy “to go
home” and after a little the big dog slouched away.
“He’s been taught to mind all right,” Renfro watched the big creature now
an abject object of fear, slinking down the lane, “and he’s been taught thru
terrible cruelty.”
Captain Pete answered the knock. His shaggy head was uncovered and he
knitted his heavy white eyebrows all of which were intact. No, he did not
have any rabbits. The Elks had come out that afternoon and gotten all he
had for a big supper they were having. But he would have some the next
day for Renfro.
Then Renfro grew a bit bold. “Sometimes, Captain Pete,” he said quietly, “I
know your old house is haunted or something, for I’ve seen lights in it.
Now tonight—”
Captain Pete’s head shook a vigorous denial. “There wasn’t anybody there,”
he said. Why it was so full of wide open cracks that nobody couldn’t stay
there. And most of the tin roof was off by this time.
“Captain Pete may be innocent,” Renfro drawled, back on the road again,
“but he’s sure not ignorant.”

CHAPTER IX.
TRACKS AT THE CABIN.
At the corner of Washington Avenue and Twenty-fifth street Renfro waited
for a car. He shuffled his feet to keep them warm and rolled and unrolled his
paper bag while he watched the next corner for the first glimpse of a
headlight. The street light quivered and went out, came on again and once
more began to grow dim.
When out of Plum Street sprang a boy in uniform who rushed into the
middle of the street, caught at the long wire hanging from the flickering
light, gave it several jerks and was rewarded by the strong white light which
replaced the flickering one.
In its light Renfro recognized Jimmie Noel, dressed for a hike, his provision
bag swung over his shoulder, a stout stick in one hand and a bulky bundle in
the other. He gave a shrill whistle. The one which came in return told that
he was recognized.
The two boys met near the middle of the block. But before they exchanged
spoken greetings Renfro saw the squad of khaki clad boys who were
following Jimmie more than a half square away. They halted under the
street light to view the accomplishment of Jimmie. Two of them in turn
shook the same wire he had. The street light grew even brighter.
“Bill Larrison’s patrol,—the Black Bears,” Jimmie nodded at the boys
behind him. “They’re going out to Twin Cedar Cabin for the night. Some of
them are getting ready for their second class tests. Pete Northrup’s going to
cook.”
Renfro’s laugh was eloquent. Pete was the most awkward boy he knew.
Visions of Pete in a kitchen were too much for him.
“Gee, I’d like to see him,” he began.
“Come along then,” Jimmie invited. “I’m a sort of a visitor myself. Going
to give some of the tests for Bill. It’ll be exciting too, I tell you. Queer

things happening out at the camp recently, according to what the scouts tell,
who have gone out there on over night hikes. It’ll—”
But the presence of the eight other scouts, who had caught up with them,
put an end to Jimmie’s flow of confidence. Instead he turned to the boy who
seemed to be leader of the expedition. “Bill,” he began, “this is Hooch Horn
—a pal of mine. I’d like for him to go along.”
“Sure!” Bill was inclined to want all the company he could get. He had
heard much more about the queer happenings out at the camp than had
Jimmie. Another recruit to his crowd would strengthen its fighting powers
should they be called into use.
Renfro hesitated. Under ordinary circumstances he could have explained
the situation to his father so that he would have been willing for him to go.
But his mother’s mood, due to his carrying the Washington Globe route,
made him uneasy about his ability to do so now. However, Jimmie, the
quick witted, came to the rescue.
“Let Ted Bright explain things to your father,” he began. “He often does
that for me when I want to get out. He’s just like his dad—can talk folks
into doing anything he wants them to do.”
Renfro grinned. “All right,” he agreed, remembering his father’s opinion of
the elder Bright and how anxious he now was to stand in that man’s good
graces. “Dad’s still home I’m sure. He can call him up from the corner
grocery.”
While Ted was gone the boys told Renfro about the overnight hike they had
made the week before. The one before them tonight was a short one,—out
East Washington to the second road leading down to the river road. Just
beyond the land owned by Captain Pete Hall was that which the city scouts
had bought for a permanent camp site.
“You know the old cabin out there,” Ward Lane was the speaker now, “the
one with the two big cedar trees in front of it—just above the spring where
the Indian chiefs fought,” he talked rapidly, “we fellows went out a few
weeks ago and repaired it so we could use it for overnight hikes. Now two
patrols have used it but neither one of them will go out again. They saw—”
“Oh, Hooch,” Ted’s voice several yards away, was happy, “It’s all right. I
had to talk like sixty tho. And I didn’t tell them we are going to stay all

night in the cabin.” He had reached the group now and was laughing, “I
think your mother believes we’re going to stay all night in some sort of a
hotel or other.”
“No doubt,” Jimmie laughed too. “With your explanations, Ted, and your
blarney, she might think anything.”
The patrol fell into regular order and took up its march. Jimmie and Renfro
followed the others. Back over the last part of Renfro’s paper route they
journeyed. Near Judge Wier’s house Jimmie remembered the kidnaping and
wanted to talk about it. Renfro listened, answering the questions Jimmie
asked but taking great care not to show unusual interest sufficient to arouse
Jimmie’s suspicions.
However, the lack of evident interest on the subject on Renfro’s part
disgusted Jimmie. And soon he began to talk about other subjects. The
deserted house on the Hall place, tall and dark and ghostly, reminded him of
Captain Pete’s skill as a hunter. Jimmie had gone with the old hunter, whose
boast was that he never shot his rabbits thru the body “ef they had the least
part of a head.”
The patrol slowed its pace and fell back to Jimmie and Renfro. They were
soon singing some lusty marching songs which put an end to the
conversation between the two boys. And Renfro was glad that it did. He
wanted to watch the landmarks along the road they were taking.
Just beyond the cabin they turned into a road leading to the river. Six years
before it had been kept in good repair for the people who journeyed down
to the fishing camp which was its terminus. But the camp had been moved,
the road was little used and had been allowed to fall into a bad state.
Renfro stumbled over huge boulders in one place; in another he went shoe
top deep into a rut of snow. The scouts were having like difficulties. Bill
Larrison dropped his provisions and had quite a scramble in getting them
back into his bag again.
At the foot of the bluffs they climbed a fence, made of rails and wire,
crossed a field, hurried down a lane at the end of which loomed two tall
cedar trees. The dark blur back of them Renfro knew was the cabin. Visions
of a roaring fire in the big fire place the scouts had told about building,
began to cheer him when the patrol stopped.

“They’re going to pay their respects to Chief Wampum and Big Eagle,”
Jimmie gave the information.
He pushed Renfro close to a structure built after the fashion of a pig pen.
“The fellow built it around the graves so that the cattle and horses couldn’t
harm them,” Jimmie continued. “They’re real Indian chiefs. Tell you about
them tonight. The scouts who come out here always have to pay their
respects to them.”
A long wailing sound came from one of the boys, followed by Bill’s heavy,
gutteral, “Oh, chief, have you anything to say to your braves tonight?”
Absolute silence answered his question. A few minutes’ wait and Bill
ordered his patrol to march on to the cabin. The march was uninterrupted
except for a large dog which moved near the boys. One of them started to
drive it away but Renfro intercepted him. “It’s a dog I know,” he said, and
called softy, “Lang Tammie.”
One minute the dog stopped, hesitated, sniffed, turned and ran back up the
hill. Renfro watched him out of sight. Then he went on to the cabin, into
which most of the boys had already gone.
Two coal oil wall lamps had been lighted when Renfro entered the room.
From their light he saw that the partitions had been removed and the cabin
thrown into one big room, a mammoth fire place was in the center of the
north wall. Bunks had been built along the south one.
Several times during the last two years when Renfro had gone on hikes he
had stopped at Twin Cedar Cabin to get a drink from the spring, its water
was noted as being the coldest and clearest in the vicinity.
Too, Renfro had been interested in the landmarks around the site. He had
heard, years before, the history of the spot and had seen the old woman
about whom they told the weird story which had made the site famous.
When she had been but fifteen years old two Indian chiefs had seen her,
both had wanted her for his squaw and they had fought a duel at the spring,
where both had been wounded.
Their braves had carried them away. Years afterward they had returned and
paid respects to the white girl for whom they had fought. She was an old
woman then, but had enjoyed the visit and recounted it ever afterwards with
much pleasure.

“And when they were dead,” Jimmie, as if reading Renfro’s thought,
suddenly said, “their braves brought them back and buried them near the
spring. Those were the graves you passed tonight.”
Renfro was inclined to be incredulous. “Queer I never heard about those
graves before,” he said.
“Yes, it is queer,” Jimmie grinned.
Bill was grumbling over near the fireplace. “Somebody’s been at the
provisions again,” he said. “The soap’s all gone. Why,” he shook an empty
bucket, “so’s the lard—” farther investigation—“and the eggs you brought
out yesterday, Hank, and—” he looked at some prints on the floor
—“whoever it was had a dog.”
Big prints on the floor made him decide it was a large dog. Except for
grumbling over the loss of the provisions, the other scouts paid little
attention to the prints, but to Renfro they held intense interest. While they
built a roaring fire in the fireplace he took his flashlight to add to the light
furnished by the coal oil lamps and examined the prints closely.
Yes, they had evidently been made by an airedale dog. But close to them
were the muddy prints of a large shoe, the sort worn by a man who was
accustomed to hunting. Smaller tracks were confusing. They might have
been made by a small scout, but still they were narrow enough to have been
made by a girl’s sport oxford.
Renfro put some newspapers over one and on top of them put his paper bag
and mackinaw. The other boys had piled their mackinaws and provision kits
on the floor. In his heart was one hope—namely that they would not remove
his things. He had laid them down so carefully that he was sure the
footprints would remain intact and he could study them more closely in the
morning.
Yes, it was possible. Helen Wier’s kidnapers might have brought her to this
cabin the night they took her. They might have kept her there until morning
and then gone on down the river. They might—
“Out with the lights.” Bill Larrison’s voice became a low growl. “Out with
your lights, fellows and in a body move to the window.”

CHAPTER X.
THE LIGHT ON THE INDIAN GRAVES.
Renfro grasped one of the wall lamps, lifted it from its socket and with all
the power of his lungs blew down the chimney. The blaze was instantly
extinguished and left one smoking wick. At the same moment Scout Brown
had extinguished the other. Outside there sounded faint footsteps. But when
the boys reached the window no one was outside. The door was opened, the
scouts circled the cabin, and even journeyed to the spring but no one was
there.
“Bill’s excited,” Jimmie confided to Renfro, “He’s watching for the lights at
the grave.”
“What?” Renfro was amazed.
“Oh, last summer when we were out here, one of the scoutmasters, who
knew all the old men and women around here, told the boys that once every
ten years the two chiefs would come back to again fight by the spring. And
they believed it. The other two troops which were out here said that at
midnight queer lights played around the graves and word has gone out that
this is nearing the time for the two braves to appear.”
Renfro laughed and moved close to the fire. “Of course,” he smiled, “you
don’t believe it.”
Jimmie in turn asked a question. “You heard those steps—didn’t you?”
Renfro nodded and smiled. “But you didn’t see anything nor anyone,”
Jimmie continued.
Another nod from Renfro. “And Hooch,” Jimmie moved closer to him.
“You saw those footprints.”
This time he excited Renfro’s interest. He was intensely concerned in those
footprints. He could hardly wait for morning to come to give him an
opportunity to study them. He felt that an answer was due Jimmie, “Yes, I
saw them,” he said, “And they are sure big ones.”

“Now I tell you—”
But Jimmie didn’t get to tell Renfro anything more. The patrol was back in
the room. Some of the boys had made weather observations while out of the
cabin and they were anxious to mark them on their charts. A discussion on
cooking meat followed their work and then the ceremonials for the evening
began.
They had just gotten to the most interesting part when Jimmie announced
that it was bedtime. One of the rules of the cabin committee, in order to
keep a strong friendship with the parents of the scouts, required the hikers
to go to bed at a certain hour. And like good scouts they observed that rule.
The boys rolled up in blankets on the bunks. Several of them whispered.
Jack Burton next to Renfro, insisted upon telling both Jimmie and Renfro of
how his high school brother got angry every time he came out to the cabin.
The fraternity to which he belonged had wanted to buy the cabin; but the
scouts had offered a larger sum for it than did the fraternity. “We beat them
to it,” the little fellow finished, “and every boy in that frat hates me ’cause I
told the committee they was wantin’ it and—”
He trailed on and on but Jimmie’s snores told that he was asleep and
Renfro’s mind was bent on other things. He saw again Captain Pete—the
big cabin—the dog—Lang Tammie, and then the many foot prints on Twin
Cedars’ floor. In the morning—
But in the morning he didn’t make his investigation. For hardly had Renfro
gotten to sleep when he was awakened by a low, warning voice. Sibilant
whispers went from one bunk to the other. “The light, the light!” the boys
whispered. “It’s on the graves now.”
Renfro raised on his elbow and saw that he was directly in range of the
window and of the enclosure on the graves. And the boys were right. A
weird unearthly blue light was playing over some of the boards of the fence
and over the two mounds inside the enclosure.
With quick breaths the boys watched it. Jimmie and Renfro went to the
window. For several minutes the lights, alternating from purple to blue,
played along the graves and then suddenly they went out.
“I’m in favor of investigating them,” Renfro began, turned away from the
window, struck the bench with his foot and fell headlong to the floor.

Something on which he landed slipped, he felt a soft wooly, mass and
realized with a start that he had fallen on his own coat.
“And on the foot prints,” he thought with a start.
“Light the lamp, Jim,” he called. “I want to see what I’ve done.”
“Hurt?” Jimmie Noel’s voice was full of hope. A chance for first aid was
not to be despised.
He carried the lamp to where Renfro lay. The other boys followed him. And
with a sinking heart Renfro feared that if he had not destroyed the contour
of the footprints the boys had.
Slowly and carefully he raised himself from the floor. He lifted the coat, his
paper bag and then the paper. Below, it was just an indistinguishable lot of
soil which had once been mud brought in on shoes—the shape of which
Renfro would have given a small fortune to have been able to have told.
But now he knew that it was impossible.

The next morning Jimmie, Bill and Renfro made a trip to the two graves
while the other boys cooked breakfast in camp style. There were no marks
around the grave, no sign of destruction nor any kind of invasion. Jimmie
crawled over both mounds feeling his way carefully.
“It’s mighty queer,” was the only remark he made when his investigation
was finished.
And Renfro and Bill nodded.
Back in the cabin the other boys were discussing the same happening.
Before they left the cabin they made a vow to tell none of their experiences
to the rest of the scouts but to have weekly overnight hikes out to the cabin.
“Investigation hikes,” Bill dubbed them.
On the way back to town the boys overtook a solitary driver in a low spring
wagon. It was Captain Pete and he gave them a genial invitation to ride
back with him. “Good hunting weather,” he told them and laughed, “but I
don’t notice you fellows brought in anything.”

“We were making a hike,” Bill answered for the crowd. “We camped out at
Twin Cedar cabin last night.”
Captain Pete chuckled. “Where did you git them Indian mounds?” he
insisted.
The boys looked at Jimmie but that worthy did not even offer to answer.
Instead he changed the conversation back to rabbit hunting and got Captain
Pete into a monologue again. While he talked, Renfro studied him—his face
across which there were long scratches and his shifting eyes. Sometimes
they were as gentle as a woman’s and again when he was angry they were
cruel.
As the boys clambered out of the wagon, he gave a shrewd chuckle, “Didn’t
see anything queer out there last night—did you?” he asked. “Some of the
scouts did last week, ’cordin’ to what one of their mothers told me. Didn’t
see nothin’—you fellows—did you?”
And they disdained to even answer.
From the little restaurant where he went to supplement his camp breakfast,
Renfro telephoned home before he went on to school. His father answered
the telephone and he was in a very agreeable mood. He asked Renfro if he
had enjoyed his trip and then gave him a telephone number which had been
left for him the night before.
Renfro recognized the number as that of Morrison’s telephone. The clock
on the restaurant wall told him that he had time to go past the office on his
way to school. Better talk face to face with Morrison than over the
telephone, he decided.
The morning paper on the table had big headlines about the Wier kidnaping.
The story it contained was almost a repetition of the one the Globe had had
the evening before. No new clues had been discovered, according to the
detectives. He also admitted that if any were uncovered they would be kept
secret.
Then followed detailed interviews from all of the Wier servants, none of
whom could or would add a bit of information to the stories already told.
Renfro read them thoroughly. And while he ate his buck-wheat cakes, he
wondered whether or not the cabin at Twin Cedars had harbored any of the
kidnapers.

The lights outside the cabin had interested but not disturbed him. Now he
was inclined to give them more attention. Of course, it was ridiculous to
think that they were made by returning spirits, as some of the younger
scouts seemed to think. But still these lights did not just happen to come to
the grave.
Back of their coming was some weird purpose, Renfro was sure. “I’ll keep
them in mind the next time I go out that way,” he decided. “Jim’s so
interested in them that he’ll ask me to go with him again I’m sure. They
may—”
With a rush of cold air the front door opened and Jimmie Noel entered the
room. He had stopped at the office to see if his brother had carried his route
on time. “No complaints,” he said cheerfully to Renfro. “Going past
home?”
Renfro shook his head. “Have to see Morrison,” he returned.
“I’m not going that way,” Jimmie warmed his hands at the radiator. “Have
to go by home. But I want you to go back to the cabin soon, Hooch, with
me. There’s something back of those lights—something mysterious. You’re
a bear at working out mysteries. And for the good of Twin Cedar camp I
want that one solved. If something isn’t found out to prove those lights
aren’t ghostly things, that camp will be about as popular as a water snaked
swimming hole for the scouts. You’ll go with me—won’t you, Hooch?”
“You bet!” Renfro smiled. He was surely glad Jimmie had not connected
the cabin with the kidnaping. He didn’t want to share honors with Jimmie
even in working out his kidnaping clues. And besides he wasn’t sure that
the Twin Cedar cabin held any part in the episode. Yet he wished he had not
fallen and himself destroyed the footprints.

CHAPTER XI.
RENFRO BECOMES A MENTOR.
Morrison was at his desk. He jerked out a surly answer to Renfro’s pleasant,
“Good morning.”
In the same mood he turned in his chair and saw Renfro. The frown by
some mysterious manner was jerked into a smile. “Hello Horn,” he beamed.
“Got my message—didn’t you?” In rapid jerks he continued, “Needn’t have
bothered to come in. Could have told you over the wire. Want you to take a
pupil on Old Grief.”
A look of dismay on Renfro’s face answered him. “Oh, no—haven’t the
least idea of taking it away from you,” he hastened to reassure Renfro. “I
want you to take Merle Riker out there with you this afternoon and teach
him how you get new customers.”
He pointed to a chair and Renfro dropped into it. But there was no break in
Morrison’s conversation. “Good kid, but lacks pep—Mother’s a widow—
needs the money—gave him one of our best routes. He’s good to collect,
because the people are all good pay. He doesn’t lose a subscriber. Doesn’t
get any new ones either. Just keeps the route the way it is. And he’s got the
best route for new customers in town—all except Old Grief,” he winked.
“Now the Riker family will need a Christmas turkey and the Globe needs
new subscribers out there. See?”
“Yes sir,” Renfro got in an answer this time.
“I’ll send a sub out in Merle’s place this afternoon and you take him with
you,” Morrison continued. “Keep still about it. Don’t want to make a
precedent out of this—unusual case—feel sorry for the family. All the kid
needs is some pep. Inspire it. Get me, Horn?”
Renfro nodded. “I’ll do my best,” he promised.
And he kept his word. When he reached the station that night, a slender boy
with a face which was molded along feminine lines, and whose clothes
were well worn met him. Renfro studied him a minute before he began

talking. As he studied he decided that like Morrison, he was going to like
this boy. He lacked enterprise. But Renfro believed that this was on account
of shyness due to his poverty.
For when the boy lifted his eye lashes there was a quality of steel in his
gray eyes. His mouth too had a firmness at the corners that promised much.
He walked along the street in quick long steps, which matched those taken
by Renfro and he was ever in an alert, ready to listen attitude.
“We’ll try some new subscribers first,” Renfro volunteered. “Then you can
help me throw my papers and if we have time we’ll get a few more.”
“All right,” the steel quality was also in the boy’s voice.
Renfro consulted his book, found a number three doors away and led the
way to a little L shaped cottage. A big, burly man came to the door. “Do you
read the Globe?” Renfro began in a pleasant way.
The man started to shut the door with a gruff, “No,” when Renfro’s foot
slipped just inside enough to prevent that. “I am the new carrier on this
route,” he began. “I have taken it for several years’ service, so I wanted all
the people to know me.”
The man stared at him more kindly and opened the door a bit farther
himself. “I don’t like the Globe,” he said, the surliness still in his voice. “It
comes too late in the evening and—”
“It came too late in the evening,” Renfro smiled. “I bring it before any other
carrier on this route brings the other evening papers. And I can prove it. You
ask any of the people on my route.”
The man hesitated. Renfro reached into his bag and brought out a paper.
“I’ll leave one now and stop on my way home to get your order,” he smiled.
The man took the paper and laughed. “I’ll see,” he promised. “I’m going to
call up the grocer on the corner and see if you are the first boy out with your
papers,” he added. “My wife wants an early paper, so she can read it before
she starts getting the supper.”
Renfro turned to Merle as they walked toward the street. “After that I have
to be prompt,” he said. “We’ll carry my papers now. From now on—I’ll
carry my route before I try to get a single new subscriber.”

Merle nodded. “Yes, Hooch,” he agreed. “I’ll remember that, too.”
He reached out his arm for the papers and Renfro gave him half the bundle.
Together they traversed Old Grief, with its pawn shops, second hand stores,
lunch wagons, cheap butcher stores, army supply store and dozens of other
“imitation places of business”. Then they came into the poorer residence
district, where the children fought for the honor of carrying the paper to the
door. From this they passed into the street on which lived the old residents
of Lindendale, who would not leave their ancestral homes.
“There,” Renfro nodded toward the big house surrounded with shrubbery
which needed trimming, “is where Judge Wier lives—Helen Wier’s father.”
Merle Riker stared. “Judge Wier helped my mother,” he said simply, “I
hope some one finds his daughter. He’s a kind man.”
Renfro laughed. “Most people don’t know it,” he added.
At one house Renfro stopped to collect. The woman had not had her money
Saturday and was inclined to show an ugly disposition because Renfro had
stopped for it in the middle of the week instead of waiting until the next
Saturday.
“It isn’t convenient for me to pay every time,” she said in a cross voice,
“and if you’re afraid to trust me, I’ll get another paper.”
Renfro looked straight at her. “I have to pay for my papers every week,” he
said. “And I come every evening thru the rain and snow and cold, right on
time, because it’s my job. And you—”
“I suppose you were going to say mine is to pay you on time too,” the
woman was still surly though she saw Renfro’s logic before he had time to
utter it all. “Wait.”
She went into the house and returned with twenty cents.
“She’ll pay next Saturday,” Merle spoke before Renfro could. “She saw
what you meant and knew you were right, too.”
The route finished, Renfro again consulted his red book, in which all his
prospective subscribers were listed. “Want to try a place of business?” he
asked, “Or, are all the people on your route families.”

Merle shook his head and explained that he had three blocks of the east side
stores in his route, though few of the merchants who kept them were regular
subscribers. “They buy the papers on the street,” he explained, “so I don’t
think it’s much difference whether or not I have them.”
“Means more money for you,” Renfro gave the best reason first, the one
which he knew would appeal to a boy needing money. “Then, too, when
they want a paper they buy most any one. If the boy they meet doesn’t have
the Globe they may ask another boy for one, but if the second one doesn’t
happen to have one then the chances are even that they will buy another
paper. Get me?”
Merle nodded.
So back to the pawn shop, and second hand clothing store district they
went. It was a butcher shop, however, into which Renfro led the way. He
smiled at the man behind the block and waited until the customer had been
served and departed with his bundle. “Read the paper I left yesterday?” he
asked, “and how did you like the market report?”
The butcher came around from behind the block to discuss the market
report. He admitted that he had liked the report in the Globe. “But I can buy
it off the street boy who comes in every evening,” he volunteered. “I don’t
need to bother to subscribe. It wastes my time.”
“Oh, no,” Renfro shook his head but was very courteous, “It won’t take you
nearly so much time to pay me once a week as it does to pay the boys on
the street every day. And sometimes they forget to come in or you have a
customer and they can’t wait, then you have to go to the door and hunt one
up.”
The man grinned. “Oh, beat it,” he laughed good naturedly, “you want my
subscription. Is it a prize?”
“I want to save you time,” Renfro was still serious, “and money. Sometimes
you can’t get the Globe when you go out after it, because the boys may be
sold out. Then you have to take another paper and you have a different
market report. And you may lose money because the other will not be so
thorough.”
“Yes,” the butcher was serious now. “You are a good talker, and I will
subscribe to save time. It is just as you say, though I never thought of it

before. You make out a card and I’ll pay now and you bring it tomorrow.
Early!”
“Yes, sir,” Renfro began making out the card.
The next prospective subscriber was a woman, one of the have-to-be-
convinced of everything sort. Renfro had left her a paper the evening before
and she had read it but yet she couldn’t see much difference between it and
the evening paper she had taken for five years. Renfro opened one of his
papers, carried it to the library table, showed her the Woman’s page,
explained the information which it contained, talked about the features, the
editorials, and knowing the nature of most women, ended with its strong
society column.
“I’ll try it,” she agreed. “I’ll take it a week and then if every copy is as good
as your two samples, I’ll subscribe regularly.”
“Every copy is just like the sample.” Renfro was sober then.
But outside he and Merle chuckled. “She thinks we get out extra good
papers for samples,” they laughed and laughed.
“I’d like to go back to the first man you gave the sample paper,” Merle said
at the sidewalk. “I think I understand now how to get customers but I’d like
to see what he does.”
Back to the little L shaped house they went. The man was ready for them.
“The man at the corner says you are all right. What I want is an early
evening paper, so I’ll sign your subscription card.”
“That is the secret of getting subscriptions,” Renfro confided to Merle when
they were alone again. “Find out what your prospective subscribers want
and then show them that your paper is the one which gives them exactly
that—from early papers to those which are carefully folded and put in a
convenient place on the front porch.”

CHAPTER XII.
THE SCRATCHES ON THE WINDOW.
Mary was in the kitchen when Renfro stormed in the back entrance at his
home that evening. He heard her begin to rattle pans and he knew that she
was going to see to it that he got an extra good supper. “Another turkey,
Mary,” he sang out while he hung his paper bag and cap on the hooks she
had given to him.
Cautiously she came to the door. “There’s company in the living room with
your paw and maw,” she whispered sibilantly. “They’re talking about the
kidnaping. I’ve been lying down close to the door—face and stomach to the
floor,” she confided. “I crawled backwards when I heard you comin’ and
Glory be, I got clean thru the dining room without knockin’ anything over.”
Renfro followed her into the kitchen. “Gee, but I’m hungry,” he sniffed.
“Mary, love, what have you to feed me?”
Mary became stern. “A pretty detective you are, Mr. Renny,” she refused to
use his manly nickname at the hour of his failure in her eyes. “Aint I been
throwin’ clues in the shapes of hints at you ever since I begin talkin’? Aint I
done got down off my own dignity and told you how downcast I was on
that floor? And what’s to prevent you but a empty stomach from followin’
my example and learnin’ things your paw and maw never would tell you?”
“Aw, Mary, don’t be so hard on a fellow,” Renfro’s voice was pleading. “I
was so hungry and I couldn’t grasp any kind of a hint. Course I’m going to
go in there. Only, for goodness sake, have my supper ready when the talk
changes to other subjects!”
But Mary seized his shoulders. “You’re goin’ to do no such thing!” she
commanded. “Your supper is in the warming closet. Take it out and eat it
with the other things on the kitchen table. It’s meself who’s goin’ back. If
anybody starts into the room, distract them, Hooch.”
The next minute she was down on the floor and wriggling her way across
the dark dining room. A big red and green snake could not have made any

more twists and turns than she did in getting across the room. Renfro knew
that she was so bulky that she was afraid to try to lie down in the dining
room, so she had instead taken this way of getting to the door.
He held his hands to his sides to keep from laughing so that she could hear
him. “Bulky but ambitious,” he laughed, “and a good pal,” he finished
soberly.
Back he went to the supper, rattling the pans and dishes unnecessarily so
that his parents knowing that he was home would be more comfortable.
Straight thru oyster soup, roast mutton and peach pie he waded. He was just
ready to venture on a second cup of coffee when he heard Mary nearing the
kitchen door.
Just outside the door she straightened. Disgustedly she spoke, “If them
Wiers aint goin’ to have some detectives from Chicago, and us with such a
good clue.”
Renfro’s face fell. This then would probably be the end of his hopes to
solve the mystery. Still there was a chance for him. No one except himself
and Mary knew of the missing eyebrows.
Then he told Mary about his visit to Captain Pete’s cabin and the
conversation. “Mary!” Renfro stood up in his excitement, “Pete’s face was a
dead give away when I mentioned the lights in the big house. His eyes were
as scared as a kid’s. He knows that somebody is there, and I’m going to find
out who that somebody is and just where the rest of those missing eyebrows
are.”
Mary nodded her head. “Our part of them, Renfro, are still in my Bible,”
she assured him. “I’ve looked at them every hour to see they don’t fade
away. And I bought me a blackboard to reproduce them as your pa says, for
our observation—so as to keep ’em in our mind night and day.”
In the library Mr. Horn was telling the visiting lawyer about Renfro’s
experience with a paper route when the youngster entered the room. He
boasted of his new subscribers to his mother’s chagrin. “If she knew I was
working for Thanksgiving turkeys she would die,” Renfro laughed to
himself. “I’ve half a notion to spring it on her now.”
But he didn’t. He lingered long enough to be sure that they were not going
to talk about the kidnaping any more, and then he went up to his own room.

For a half hour he worked checking up on his new subscribers and
collections. This done he took up the new magazine on his desk and tore off
the cover. It had been on his desk three days unopened—a happening which
had never before occurred. And all because of his interest in the turkey
contest and the Missing Eyebrow Mystery.
He read the last chapter of the serial. And then he sought Mary again. “It
ended just the way I said it would,” he told her waving the magazine in
front of her. “The two fellows who took the jewels were Fred and Manuel
and they hid them—”
Mary’s hand was raised imperatively. “Listen Hooch,” she said. “I’ve been
making plans myself. Tomorrow night is my regular choir practice. Before I
go to it I’ll come out on Washington and we’ll both go to them different
places—one of us to the shack and the other to the big house. Then we’ll
see who is in both places at the same time. That way they’ll have no chance
to send signals or communicate to each other.”
“Fine, fine, Mary!” Renfro’s enthusiasm was all that Mary could ask. She
murmured something about the pity being that Renfro too had not taken a
correspondence course in detective work and her bosom heaved with pride.
“But, Mary,” Renfro hesitated, “are you sure you won’t mind missing choir
practice?”
Missing choir practice was one of Mary’s greatest horrors. In all the fifteen
years that she had sung alto in the mission church, she had not missed one
practice. And now she was planning to deliberately miss one.
But she wasn’t. The next minute she set Renfro to rights on that. “I said I
might be late,” she said severely, “I’m countin’ on us workin’ fast. I’m not
going to miss nothin’ I tell you.”
But she did miss something. Then next morning at exactly five o’clock the
Horn telephone rang. Mary, calling down maledictions on the head of
whoever would call at that hour, listened to the conversation at the other
end of the wire and with a changed mien proceeded to Renfro’s door.
It was Jimmie who called. The carrier boy whose Morning Post route was
adjoining his had badly frozen his foot the night before. His first aid work
had relieved him somewhat the night before but this morning he could not
walk. And Jimmie wanted Renfro to help him carry the other boy’s route.

“I told him you would,” Mary was hunting Renfro’s heaviest coat. “It’s not
so cold as it was last night, Renny. And I knew you would want to be a
good scout and help a carrier out. Now that’s the way I am. When the
soprano soloist was sick and out of church for a whole week once, I sang
high soprano when it was the most important part in the songs and then
dropped right back to alto when the low parts were most important. There’s
nothin’—”
But Renfro was motioning her to the door. “I’ve got to dress in a hurry,” he
told her. “You explain to father and let him make it right with mother. Now,
Mary, for heaven’s sake keep still before mother and don’t get her started.
Let dad—”
A few minutes later he was off, buttoning his coat collar as he ran toward
the station at which Jimmie got his papers. And there he found Jimmie
waiting for him. “Hooch Horn,” he said impressively, “you’re a good scout.
I called up six fellows’ houses before I did yours and every place I got Hail
Columbia, Happy Land for waking up the family. And you—”
“And I, Jimmie,” Renfro said impressively, “I tell you the reason you didn’t
get the same dope at the seventh house was because Mary Dugan, good old
scout, answered the phone.”
And so flustered was Mary that morning with extra breakfasts and avoiding
any mix-ups with her mistress that she forgot to read the morning paper.
Renfro in turn did not have time to even think of such a feast. As he folded
the papers he had glanced at the headlines, which told of Judge Wier’s
summoning the Chicago detectives and Mrs. Wier’s getting another note
from Helen, it also asserting that she was safe.
So she was frightened half “into fits” as she expressed it when Renfro
rushed into the kitchen in the middle of the morning. “Mary, where is
mother?” he demanded in a loud whisper.
Mary answered that she was out.
“Then I can talk,” he added, “Mary, we are lost; or our clue is—no, I mean
discovered by some one else. I borrowed a morning paper last hour and
there what do you think? Yesterday Mrs. Wier, while walking up and down
the library happened to look at the window from which most of the ice had

melted and discovered some little scratches I made with my knife when I
scraped off those eyebrows.”
He caught his breath. “Of course she doesn’t know they’re mine,” he added.
“But she showed them to the detectives and vowed they were not there
before—that the windows were put in new this fall and were perfect and—”
His teeth chattering. Mary’s big, strong, red hand went over his trembling
ones. “Hooch Horn,” she said sternly, “You aint worrying half so much over
them finding a clue like ourn as you are because you’re skeert they’ll think
you had something to do with that kidnaping! Now aint you?”
Before Renfro could answer she stormed on, “Well, they won’t. You and me
is too small fry to even be considered. They know you aint got sense
enough to plan such a thing. If they thought we was workin’ on a clue they
would give us the horse collar. And that’s why we got to work this plot out.
See?”
She shook him soundly. “We’ll go out there tonight as we planned. And you
git back to school. Pretty soon you’ll have that sick excuse worn clean out.
Git back, I say, in a hurry so that I can read the newspaper and see for
myself just what they do know about them winder scratches.”

CHAPTER XIII.
A TRIP TO THE CABIN.
It was exactly a quarter of seven o’clock that night and Renfro with his
paper bag almost empty had just turned the corner into South Washington
Street when he ran plump—into Mary Dugan. She was puffing as one who
had been undergoing great exertion.
“Hello, Hooch!” she managed a casual greeting and then burst straight into
a monologue on the difficulties of her journey. She had hired her sister to
come over to the Horn house to serve the dinner, and the sister had been
late. Mary had boarded the wrong car and had had to transfer on her way
out and—
“But Mary,” Renfro exclaimed, “You’re too early! Something broke down
with the press, we got our papers late. I haven’t got a single new subscriber
and I have two more blocks to deliver.”
“On both sides of the street?” Mary’s question was direct.
“Sure!” Renfro was impatient.
“Then gimme me half of them,” Mary held out her hands on which were
gray cotton gloves and which looked like veritable apparitions in the
darkness. “Now don’t say I won’t know where to leave ’em. I know I won’t.
But we kin work skilful—can’t we? I’ll start right across the street from you
and you whistle at every house where I’m to stop.”
“Some girl, Mary Dugan,” Renfro began to count out papers into her hands,
“Now where did you learn—”
“Hooch Horn,” Mary interrupted him almost dropping her papers in her
eagerness to explain. “You aint learned yet half the clues I learned in that
detective course.”
The papers tumbled again, and would have fallen had not Hooch caught
them. “It’s them gloves,” Mary was quick to realize the impediments the

bulky cotton gloves were in the paper carrying art. Her right one came off
with a dash and was thrust into her coat pocket.
“Now gimme the part of the street you know best,” she commanded. “Your
whistler will be saved some that way.”
A wave of Renfro’s hand and Mary darted across the street. Without any
sign, or any communication except the keen whistles from Renfro, they
finished the two blocks in record breaking time. And then they met at the
end of the block.
“But I haven’t got any new subscribers, Mary,” Renfro hesitated, “I made
my daily quota out several days ago and I can’t break it, you know.”
“And I made my rule agin’ bein’ late at choir practice several years ago,”
Mary’s alto voice was very dry, “but I’m thinkin’ this here business is worth
breakin’ anything. This here affair of our goin’ down there tonight means
either you miss your subscribers or I miss my choir practice and—”
“Mary,” Hooch’s hand went on her arm. “Since you are so good a sport, I
can make up my subscribers Saturday and Monday.”
“You ought to be gettin’ them other subscribers from our own part of town,
Hooch,” Mary offered advice, “They’d be easier landed and—”
“But it doesn’t seem fair to get into some other fellow’s territory,” Hooch
began. “Now—”
Mary interrupted him in a determined voice. “Foolishness! Them circulars
you had at home said for you to go anywhere. If you had a good route them
other boys would be a comin’ to it mighty fast. And if you have any
business sense like the Horns all have, you’ll follow my plan.”
“All right,” Renfro was very meek. Experience had taught him that it was
folly to argue with Mary. “We go down this road, Mary, down the middle.
It’s as slick as glass and I expect we’d better hold on to each other. We don’t
want any broken arms.”
Mary clutched Renfro’s arm with her mittened hand. Together they slipped,
they slid, then fumbled, and nearly fell on their way toward the lane which
marked the turning off place for the big house, and the little shack.

The sky was clear, there were few trees along the road, and there was a half
moon. So Mary and Hooch had no trouble finding the best place to scale the
log fence. Mary refused all offers of help. She had climbed rail fences when
she was a girl and knew the exact art with which such a crossing was
effected. Moreover she added with emphasis that she “was not an old lady
yet by any manner of means.”
Still she had not counted on the rails being coated with ice. And no sooner
was she at the top of the fence than she was at the bottom on the other side.
Fortunately it was on the opposite side of the fence she had landed and
when Renfro scrambled over and stood beside her she was on her feet
again.
She held herself with dignity and Renfro realizing that there are some
things which it would cause a calamity to discuss was silent. She was the
first one to speak. “You go to the shack and I’ll go to the big house,” she
was the general again though great had been her fall. “It would be
suspicious looking to Captain Pete for me, a single maiden lady to come
knockin’ at his door this time of night.”
“Yes,” Renfro’s voice was meek. Mary never suspected that he was literally
holding his sides to keep from bursting into gales of laughter.
“And,” Mary was all dignity again. “I don’t want any man to be buildin’ up
false hopes on me. It is not Mary Dugan who has yet brought ruin to a man
from raisin’ their expectations and she don’t begin now with an old time
soldier.”
“No, Mary,” Renfro managed another sober response.
Just then there was a crackling and half roaring sound over in the shrubbery
of the orchard. Just as Mary and Renfro stopped and clutched at each other
a dark form came out with a rush and threw itself against Renfro’s legs.
Mary stumbled, almost fell and then ejaculated a word which she had not
used since she had become a choir singer, but Renfro patted the big dog and
soothed him. “Lang Tammy, Lang Tammy,” he crooned, and then he felt a
broken strap on the dog’s neck, “they’ve had you tied up tonight and you
wanted to see me—didn’t you?”
“Whose dog is he?” Mary demanded with asperity, thinking that Renfro had
kept something from her.

But Renfro reminded her of the dog which had been with the old man
whom he suspected of being Captain Pete’s brother, and who he was sure
knew a great deal about the affair. “Yes, I remember,” Mary was the general
once again. “You’d better get rid of him if you can. Havin’ him with us
would be suspicious.”
Lang Tammy was tugging at Renfro’s bag. For a few seconds Renfro played
with him, and while he did Mary fumbled in her pocket. She dropped
something on the ice. “Some of my peppermints,” she explained. “My
Brother Sam—he allus says if you wants to be friends with a dog just give
him some candy.”
And then Renfro uttered a short, sharp command and Lang Tammy was
back in the orchard again. Renfro was aware that the big dog would not
show up again that night. The afternoon’s tying had offended him. And he
would stay away from the big house to get even with his master.
He watched the dark form in the orchard while they went up the lane, and
he took the opposite direction from the one in which the big house lay. A
few more rods of slipping and sliding and he and Mary arrived at their place
of parting. He gave her some instructions about making her way around the
big house.
“The main thing, Mary dear,” Renfro was solicitous again, “the main thing
is not to fall, you know.”
“Yes, I know,” there was a touch of humor in Mary’s voice, “Me father used
to say that I had the most trouble in keepin’ my head but tonight it’s a case
of whin me worst trouble is keepin’ me feet I’m thinkin’.”
And then they separated.
Renfro found Captain Pete’s door. The old man unbarred it, held high his
little old lamp with the blackened chimney, identified his visitor and gruffly
commanded him to come in. The rabbits were ready, but for the life of him
he couldn’t see any use of Renfro’s coming so late. When he was young
parents didn’t allow their sons to be out so late, and—
“But I had to carry my paper route,” Renfro spoke pleasantly, and the
captain thawed to an extent.

When he went to wrap the rabbits in an old newspaper he muttered
something about being short on paper and Renfro brought his two extra
papers out of his bag. “Seeing you won’t be a regular customer without
being shown the advantage of a newspaper, Captain Pete,” Renfro smiled a
winning smile, “I’m going to sample you for a while as the boys say. Every
night I have an extra paper I’ll bring it down to you and soon I’ll warrant
you’ll be a regular customer. I always carry an extra so that if I get a new
customer, I can leave the paper right then.”
Pete shook his head. He muttered something about it being too far for a boy
to come alone. All of which only made Renfro more determined to visit
him. As he had declared the night before the actions of Captain Pete were
evident that though innocent himself perhaps, he was not ignorant
altogether about the kidnaping of Helen Wier.
Outside of the shack Renfro circled around to avoid suspicion, should
Captain Pete happen to open the door again, and worked his way back to
the meeting place he and Mary had appointed. He waited, he counted the
minutes, he fumed, he fretted and still no Mary arrived. He pulled out his
watch with its radio face and saw that it was a quarter after eight o’clock.
“Mary won’t get to sing alto tonight,” he murmured to himself. “We’ll get
back to town just about the time it’s over.”
And then Mary came. She clutched at his arm. “I can’t be stoppin’ to talk,”
she was hurrying him toward the fence. “I’ve promised the leader I’d get
there in time to practice the Sunday anthem and I will keep me promise too.
You can go with me on the car, Hooch.”
“And say,” they were at the fence again, “I’ve got a few clues of my own.
And,” Mary put her foot on the first rail, “You help me all you can. That
falling down sort of affected my constitution, Hooch.”

CHAPTER XIV.
THE MAN IN THE HAUNTED HOUSE.
Mary was the first one to speak and then it was to reassure Renfro, “You
needn’t worry about your folks askin’ any questions,” she told him. “They
went to the show unexpected like and won’t know what time you get home.
I heard your paw tell your maw he’s got the tickets and he bought only two
for he thought you needed to go to bed early after bein’ out so late with your
route.”
Renfro nodded and felt a bit of relief. He and Mary were near the center of
the car. Mary had chosen that spot because there were few passengers there
and they could talk without being afraid some one could hear them.
All the passengers and even the conductor had stared at the odd pair when
they boarded the car. Several had smiled broadly and Renfro had been
indignant until he had happened to look at Mary and someway in her
downfall at the fence she had gotten her hat turned completely around. The
big red rose directly on the back of her hat was too much for him. And he
too giggled.
“Mary,” he whispered, “Your hat’s back slided and—”
Mary Dugan laughed heartily. “Don’t make much difference,” she added,
“Me nose and face is so bloomin’ red tonight I don’t need the rose for any
further touch of color to me make up.”
And then she began to tell about her experiences. She had moved close to
the big house at the corner at which she had arrived, keeping a close look
out for the big airedale which she felt sure would turn up at the most
unexpected minute. Carefully she had worked her way around the house—
the west side, the south side, the east and there she had discovered her first
sign of life in the big house.
A glimmer of light thru a torn place in the heavy blind over the window.
She had realized in a minute that thru those thick blinds she would not
discover anything. So she had felt her way around to the north, found a

loose weatherboard, pulled it off and worked the blade of her knife, which
she always carried, thru the plastering. A few vigorous, skilful twists and
she had worked a hole which made a good peeping place for her right eye.
Her homely face became alight with the joy of success. She had chosen that
spot well. It gave her a view into the lighted room. Cautiously then she had
worked out another peep hole for the left eye and then she had studied
every move in the adjoining room.
After a time she had discovered that there was but one occupant and that he
was exceedingly cautious. He moved always so that he was not near the
window. He had passed the doorway only three or four times and each of
these times Mary had studied him closely. He was short, heavy set, his hair
was gray, his clothes of an ancient style and he was what Mary termed
“uncouth” getting an “ou” sound which Renfro felt that he would always
remember.
But he had never once turned his face toward the open doorway and Mary
had not seen his face. So, of course, she knew nothing of the condition of
his eyebrows. But she felt sure that they would be missing. His hair had
been white. Naturally his eyebrows would be too. His hair looked as if it
were very coarse.
And the eyebrows in captivity back in her Bible were so coarse that had
they been scattered on the floor they would hardly have been taken for
human hair.
Moreover the man was in hiding. That was plainly evident. And Captain
Pete? Didn’t that wily old fellow show by his actions that he was helping to
conceal some one in the big house?
Renfro clutched his paper bag in which were the rabbits. Yes, indeed, he
would watch Captain Pete. But Mary was not thinking much of watching
Captain Pete. They must find some way to see that man’s face. No use to
knock. They would have to plan some better ruse than that. She would think
about it over night, she assured Renfro, re-read some of her correspondence
course in “detectiveness” and be ready to have a conference with him on the
next day.
“Some plan, partner,” Renfro slapped Mary boyishly on the back
completely dislodging her hat. “You’re a brick, a gold one, and a jeweled

one and—”
“A plain chimney one,” Mary laughed while she twisted and turned her hat
until she felt that from the way it set on her head that the red rose was either
directly in front or behind. A cautious search with her fingers made her
mind easy on that, and she continued her conversation. “All right, Hooch,
only don’t never call me a brick for a foundation. It’ll make me think of that
fence and my downfall. All the way to that house I was so frivolous like,
that I kept humming over and over. ‘How firm a foundation, Ye Saints of
the Lord’, and laughin’ because I, one of the Saints, couldn’t git over a
wobbly log fence, and wonderin’ what I would do should I strike a firm
foundation in my path.”
They had reached the mission, now, and the choir was in full force of
rehearsal. The bass was leading much to Mary’s disgust. She snorted
derisively and assured Renfro that when she got in there they wouldn’t ever
hear that insurance agent, who put on airs, sing.
At the door when he turned to go home she suddenly clutched at his coat.
“Oh. Hooch,” she whispered, “I clean forgot to tell you something very
disturbin’ I read. When them detectives looked at them scratches on the
window they said right away they had been done by a knife and then they
found two of them coarse hairs. They didn’t think much of them, the paper
says, but still they are keeping them. And” she pushed him down the steps,
“that means we have got to work fast.”
Renfro found that he was trembling when he reached the foot of the steps—
not from fear of being apprehended himself but of some other person
discovering the kidnapers before he could. His only hope lay in the fact that
the detectives had all based their search on the idea that Helen Wier had
been kidnaped by persons who would either soon demand a ransom or by
some one who wanted to have revenge on Judge Wier.
And neither Captain Pete nor his brother could have that motive in mind he
was sure. He had investigated some old newspapers at the Globe office that
evening and found that Judge Wier had been a mere stripling of a lawyer
when Captain Pete’s brother had been found guilty of counterfeiting and
been sent to prison. Also he had not had anything to do with the
prosecution.

He looked back over his shoulder, and saw the light in the windows of
Mary’s church even down to the basement. It was all a brilliant blaze. “A
fire!” He gasped and started to run back.
Then he remembered. Mary had said that the charitable women of the
church were going to work there that night to fix Thanksgiving baskets for
the poor. They were making clothes for them. The other members of the
church would have to donate the food and clothing.
Renfro gave a sudden jump. It was followed by another, and then a wild
Highland fling. “I have it, I have it, I have it!” he yelled out loud.
A door opened directly in front of him. An inquisitive head was thrust out, a
fretful voice asked, “What’s the matter?”
And Renfro fled.
Half way down the block he stopped to laugh. “But it was worth making
some one think I was insane,” he laughed. “And I’ll do it, too.”
Early in the morning he would go to the minister of the church which his
mother, his father and himself attended. He would tell him about the
turkeys. He would offer three of them to the poor, which the church would
feed at Thanksgiving time. There were many people in that wealthy church
who bought The Globe on the street instead of being regular subscribers. He
would add some of them to his list.
“I’ll do it—I will,” he whispered this time.
But his whisper was full of ardor. “And wait until next week when I see
Morrison’s face. Six of those turkeys are mine.”
Just then he decided to go into a little lunch room hardly bigger than the
lunch wagons in the west part of town, and get himself something warm to
drink. There was one near the corner at which the car stopped. He looked
through the door, saw the steaming “hot dogs” on an iron grate and entered.
The place was deserted except for the old man doing the cooking and a dog
lying close to his little stove. The big dog was a collie and a very suspicious
creature for he barked at Renfro as he entered. The man quieted him with a
hoarse growl, took Renfro’s order and filled it all the time frowning sullenly
as if he considered a customer an insult.

He was tall and thin and bent and broken. Evidence of a hard life were
written all over him. His shrewd eyes spoke volumes about bartering.
Renfro was wondering about the methods he used when there sounded on
the back door an imperative tapping and the man went back to answer it.
Renfro watched him swing some rabbits into view, heard him quarrel about
the shots being in their bodies instead of their heads, and smiled when he
paid the person who was selling the rabbits with a handful of small coins.
“Seems to lower the price that way,” he thought.
And then he listened closely. The restaurant man has said something about
the thickets west of town being full of rabbits and that a fellow who had
access to them ought to be a little cheaper on his rabbits to a poor restaurant
man than was this old man.
With a careful, quiet movement he was off his stool, and had started toward
the front door. But the big dog intercepted his progress, had given a series
of growls and stood in a menacing position till the owner slammed the door
and came to Renfro’s rescue.
The man was half way down the street before Renfro was to the front door.
And it was evident he did not intend taking a car so Renfro skirted around a
block and passed him farther down, face to face.
At least Renfro’s face was toward the other’s, whose visage was shaded by
a heavy pair of goggles.
But Renfro knew one thing. The man was not Captain Pete. And he was
almost sure of another. That he was the man whom he had met face to face
the first time he had seen Lang Tammy. But of one thing he was uncertain.
Mary had seen a stranger in the big house a short time before. Then how
could he have gotten across the town on foot in such a short time?

CHAPTER XV.
A DEAL IN TURKEYS.
Saturday was almost over before Renfro got to see the Rev. Mr. Bottleman,
who was the clergyman in charge of the church which he and his parents
attended. He had made his first trip to the parsonage early in the morning,
before he had time to tell Mary about the stranger at the little lunch room on
the night before.
And Mr. Bottleman had been out making some early morning calls on the
sick. But his wife, a very friendly woman giggled and blushed like a young
girl, assured Renfro that he would be back at noon and urged him to come
then as she always considered the time, during which a man was eating, the
best time to make a request.
She and Renfro had been friends since Renfro’s dog had ruined the garden
of the deacon, whose wife criticized the parsonage lady for the length or
rather the lack of length to her street costume. Though she didn’t have any
idea what sort of a request he was going to make of her minister husband
she determined to help obtain it if she could.
From there Renfro had gone direct to a meeting of Morrison’s carriers.
Morrison usually had meetings only on great occasions such as giving out
Christmas presents or the bestowing of prizes won by his boys or for other
events of that order, but this time he felt that one was necessary to stimulate
all the carriers in his district to carry away Thanksgiving turkeys.
It was the first time Renfro had seen the boys who worked in his part of
town together. They filled Morrison’s room, Boy Scouts in uniform, tall
boys out of uniform, little ones in corduroy suits and fat ones in heavy
overcoats. The boy next Renfro was a Freshman in high school and the son
in a family of eight children, all the boys in which were then or had been
newspaper carriers.
“It’s just like joining the army,” he informed Renfro. “Once it gets in your
blood you have to enlist. And we kids had to work to pay our way thru high
school.”

Morrison began talking. He told them how nearly to the winning mark
several carriers on other routes were. Then he gave the rating of the boys in
his own section. Renfro smiled when his name was read first on the list.
Now if his Sunday idea worked out all right he was sure that he would
move up miles ahead by Monday.
“Hooch Horn,” Morrison beamed on Renfro, “has Old Grief, and he got
every one of his subscribers out there on that route.”
The boy who had carried the route in the spring laughed derisively. “Gettin’
subscriptions out there,” he said, “is as easy as eatin’ pancakes on a cold
morning. But collecting the money for them is just the same as eatin’ them
same pancakes when it’s hot in July.”
Renfro stared at him but was silent. He knew that Morrison would tell him
how many subscriptions had been paid in advance. And Morrison did. He
had big hopes for Hooch he said.
After the talk Renfro noticed that the older carrier boys eyed him with
respect. It was a new experience for him to be rated according to his own
work and not just according to his father’s reputation, and he liked it. None
of the boys there knew whether his father was a financier or a butcher; but
they all did know that he was a successful route carrier for The Globe and
that was what counted.
The meeting over, Renfro called up the parsonage again but the minister
was still away. There was no use for him to come out there to wait, Mrs.
Bottleman told him, for her husband had telephoned that he was going out
to a country parishioner’s home after some supplies for a poor family.
“He went with the doctor, and his car is pretty much out of order these cold
days,” she laughed, “so you just call from time to time today and I’ll let you
know when he comes.”
Back at his home Renfro ate his dinner and talked a short time to Mary. The
staff of detectives following a clue which they had obtained were leaving
for another city, the name of which was a secret. Some of Judge Wier’s
enemies had been tracked there.
There had been no more letters from Helen, so they were sure that she was
out of town and that these, the family had received, had been brought back
to town before they were mailed to avoid suspicion. Mrs. Wier had given up

hope of ever seeing her daughter again but the Judge with his grim
determination still believed that she would be found.
“And the guilty parties shall be punished,” he ended his declaration sternly.
Even his wife’s entreaties and the detectives’ advice to avoid threats could
not influence him.
Mary considered this news good news. But as to the man who had been
selling rabbits to the restaurant keeper the night before she didn’t believe he
would throw any light on their mystery. The town was full of low heavy set
men. And did Hooch see his eyebrows?
Hooch had not. He had worn heavy goggles. But still Mary was skeptical.
She had definitely arranged in her mind, following more research in her
correspondence school books, that the guilty parties would be lodged in the
haunted Hall house. Of course, she didn’t expect Helen Wier to be found
there. Like the detectives, she believed that the child had been spirited out
of the city, but she knew positively that the Hall men knew something about
the kidnaping, “Well, all about it,” she added.
That afternoon, the minister still being an absent personage, Renfro
canvassed his route for new customers and got just three. “A third of a
turkey, almost,” he laughed to himself.
Saturday’s paper was out early so he was thru delivering it by four-thirty.
He made it a rule to collect in the mornings. Straight from Washington
Street he went across the town to the Methodist parsonage in which the
Rev. Bottleman lived. And there he found that that gentleman had just
returned.
His smile when he shook his hands with Renfro was encouraging. With
spirits rising Renfro put forth a direct question, “Would you like to help get
some turkeys for three poor families in your church?”
The minister didn’t smile. “You bet!” he agreed boyishly.
Renfro plunged immediately into the story of the Globe’s offer of a turkey
for every ten new subscribers their carrier boys secured. “I’ve made up my
mind to have six,” his mouth closed in the firm decisive line Henry Horn’s
did when starting a business venture, “And I need some more subscribers.”
“Yes,” Mr. Bottleman raised his eyebrows.

“I want you to announce my proposition to your parishioners after church
tomorrow morning. Tell them that the poor get the turkeys. I get the
business. That’s what I want.”
“Sure I’ll do it,” a gleam of amusement crossed the minister’s face but
Renfro didn’t see it. And immediately the pastor began talking.
“You stand at the little table just inside the outer door as the congregation
leaves the church,” he gave definite directions. “Exactly as I do, following a
missionary sermon, and preceding the missionary collection. You’ll get
some new subscribers I’m sure.”
Back home Renfro ate his supper and planned to have a quiet evening. But
there came a complaint from the office. Mr. Bruce had given directions that
each boy, on whose route there came any complaint of a missing paper, was
to see that that paper was properly delivered.
And there were two missing on Old Grief.
Renfro brought his skates and with them over his shoulder made his way to
the street. With the papers in his overcoat pocket he skated out to the two
little cottages at whose doors he had left papers earlier in the evening.
Either a neighbor’s dog or a neighbor’s boy he felt sure had gotten the
papers.
“Gee, I hope this doesn’t last all winter,” John Lehman, the carrier of the
best route in town, met Renfro on Main Street with a whole stack of papers
in his arms. “I think that the kidnapers must have decided to steal
newspapers instead of lawyer’s kids. I’m so dead tired I won’t go to church
in the morning,” he complained.
Renfro was glad of that for John went to Dr. Bottleman’s church. And the
next morning as he sat in the pew next his mother he looked around and did
not see a single Globe carrier whom he knew. He waited impatiently all thru
the sermon for Dr. Bottleman’s announcement about the turkey proposition.
When it did come he felt that he was blushing to the roots of his hair and
wondered why his mother did not put out her hand and say that he could not
do that.
But his mother was amazed along with several other members over the
peculiar announcement. Nor did she notice when he slipped out of the pew
and took his stand at the church door.

He saw neither of his parents until near the end of the processional of
people leaving the church. And then he was so excited over his good luck in
having gotten enough subscriptions, lacking one, to have won the turkeys.
He was counting the list when he happened to look up and see his parents.
His mother’s face was fiery but his father was smiling. Gravely he took out
his pocket book and counted out the money for a subscription. “Have it sent
to Mary’s mother,” he said, “I heard her say the other day that she wished
they could afford the paper at her home.”
Renfro took the money, gravely counted it and then looked up at his father,
his eyes twinkling, “Dad,” he said boyishly, “You’re the fellow who put the
finishing touches on the flock. Your subscription makes me have the
necessary sixty. The turkeys are mine!”

CHAPTER XVI.
BOY SCOUTS TO THE RESCUE.
Twenty-four hours passed and Mary Dugan knew nothing about the
winning of the turkeys. On the way home from church Renfro had asked his
father and mother not to mention his success to Mary. “Afraid she’ll kick on
cooking the whole lot?” Mr. Horn laughed.
Mrs. Horn stared at her husband with hauteur. He was in admirable humor
over the whole affair. The Rev. Mr. Bottleman had shook his hand after he
and Renfro had had a little talk over the success of the scheme. “Another
king of industry, Horn,” the minister had laughed.
Renfro had touched his arm. “Will you have your three names ready for the
charity turkeys?” he asked. “I’d like to deliver them in a few days.”
“I’ll get them to you tomorrow night,” the minister promised. “I want to do
some looking around to be sure that they are delivered at the homes where
there are the most children.” He put out his hands. “Come again, when you
have another deal like this one,” he said gravely.
And then the Horn family had gone out to their car and started home. Mr.
Horn, sensing the mood of his wife from the lofty elevation of her chin, did
a monologue on the sermon; and Renfro was trying to picture Morrison’s
pride in the morning when he heard that six turkeys would go to one of his
carriers.
When suddenly Mrs. Horn gave a moan and grabbed her husband’s arm.
“Oh,” she began, “what if there happened to be a reporter at the church.
We’ll be the laughing stock of the town all because you gave your
permission for him to carry that detestable route and—”
“We’ll be the victims of three funerals tomorrow if you grab my arm like
that again,” Mr. Horn said hotly, “Didn’t you see how close I ran to that
telephone pole?”
Then Renfro reassured his mother. The Globe would not use the story
without Mr. Bruce’s permission, he knew. Also no other paper would carry

one line of it because that would mean free advertising for the Globe. “And
newspapers aren’t run that way,” he ended.
But Mrs. Horn was not convinced.
However, she soon forgot her worries. A knot of neighbors on the corner
caused Mr. Horn to stop his car. He found the group discussing new turns in
the Wier kidnaping. The detectives in a town half way across the state had
ordered the arrest of a man, one of the gangsters, who had been indicted in
the election fraud case and had left the town the night Helen was kidnaped.
They would arrive in town that night. The man’s actions had been
mysterious for several days before the kidnaping, in fact enough so for the
police to send word out to watch him. “But as usual with our police,” said
the doctor on the corner, who himself having been robbed during the fall,
was vindictive, “no watching was done.”
That afternoon Renfro called Morrison for news of the Wier kidnaping,
verifying what news in regard to the story he had heard that morning. It
seemed to be an assured fact that this man had been arrested and that he was
being brought back tonight.
Renfro too heard stories about the scratched window pane. But the
workman who put in the new windows at the Wier house offered evidence
which seemed to make all these no clues at all. Very seldom he said were a
set of windows ever installed in a new home without some of them being
scratched by the workmen.
Most of the work done involved the use of knives. And these scratches were
knife made. The chief of detectives, hearing this had laughed and promptly
put in his desk the two gray hairs he had been guarding since a short time
before.
Monday morning papers told of the return of the man believed to have some
knowledge of the crime and his incarceration in the city jail. Mrs. Wier’s
condition, according to the story, was improving. Another letter had come
to the Wier home, this one sent from a nearby city, written in the child’s
handwriting, assuring her mother that she was well and comfortable.
On his way to school Renfro telephoned Morrison. And that executive had
been very jubilant. “How did you do it?” he demanded, “and are you sure
all your subscriptions are acceptable?”

“Sure,” Renfro laughed back, “I’ve got the money in advance.”
Then came a conversation with Bruce, and Renfro was ordered to come
around past the office that afternoon early enough to have his picture
snapped with the prize turkeys. Renfro had laughed to himself, “mother will
die,” he imagined her horror when she saw the picture, “But I can’t help it.
Business is business, and mothers have to expect some publicity if their
sons are successful.”
At the office that afternoon he stood very straight while his picture was
being made. The six turkeys were magnificent birds. The boys, who owned
routes for several months, and those, who had been carriers for more than a
year, were very envious. And also eager to hear how Renfro had secured his
subscriptions.
Mr. Bruce called Renfro into his office, and to him and Morrison, Renfro
told the story of his business deal with the minister, and of its success. Mr.
Bruce had then held out his hand. “Congratulations old man,” he had
beamed. “You’re one of the fellows I need right at the post. There are going
to be some vacancies in some dandy routes. You’ll have first choice at any
of them.”
“I protest,” Morrison was all dignity, “Mr. Bruce, Hooch belongs to my
bunch. He can’t be sent in any other district route manager’s territory.”
It was then Renfro spoke, “If you please, Morrison,” he was quite in
earnest, “I would like to keep Old Grief.”
And both Morrison and Bruce were speechless.
A little later, Renfro decided to take his turkeys home before he carried his
route. That would make him later and he would have a better chance of
investigating his eyebrow mystery. And after he straightened his shoulders
and thought to himself, “The turkeys are won and I’ve got to solve that
mystery in the same way I won them.”
It was Macauley who suggested that Renfro drive the turkeys home—
Macauley, who had a twinkle in his eye and a rich brogue, both of which
should have made most people suspicious but they rarely did. He had lived
on a farm in his youth. He had helped care for turkeys, “the most recreant
birds in the category of farm animals,” and he laughed boyishly, “and
always they wandered away daily while I hunted them daily and drove them

miles. All you need, Hooch, is two or three fellows to help you, and to
remember this bit of advice. KEEP TO THE ALLEYS FOR FEAR YOU
MIGHT FRIGHTEN THE LADIES.”
Three boys started out to help Renfro drive his brood home—among them
the little carrier whose route was next Renfro’s and who had rushed into the
office the minute he had heard that Old Grief had won Renfro six birds.
Jimmy Noel called in a rush to be ready to offer first aid and have a chance
to win more merit badges, and after him a little colored boy who had been
playing in the alley back of the Globe office.
The birds trotted down the first stretch of alley in a beautiful manner and
then they crossed the street with the same precision. The second alley
would have been a quiet course had it not been for the washwoman who
was carrying a bundle of clothes toward the oncoming flock. Thinking these
turkeys were runaway birds and scenting an easy way to get a Thanksgiving
dinner she dropped her washing and started after the largest bird.
And then came the stampede. Jimmy, Renfro and Bill, the other route boy
kept after the turkeys which perched on buildings, ran in all directions and
made a medley of noises which could never be described. But the little
colored boy took after the woman of his own race and after she had given
up the chase of the turkey he kept up his pursuit, shouting at the top of his
voice.
At the corner Jimmy sighted some other scouts starting on a five mile hike.
He signaled them with all the authority of a patrol leader in his troop and
they, being good scouts, joined in the chase. Two little girls who had wished
for boyish adventure recognized this as a great opportunity and came to the
throng.
Such chasing, such climbing, such squawking as followed. But before long
the entire six were back in a group in the arms of six sturdy scouts. “One
good turn today,” they informed Renfro, “Better let us help you get them
home.”
And Renfro agreed. At the next corner they were met by a colony of colored
people, the old washwoman gesticulating and protesting, while the little
chap who had pursued her was also talking vehemently. Renfro gasped at

the bunch. It was their evident determination to accompany himself and the
scouts to the Horn residence.
He raked his mind. And then he talked to Jimmy. “Mother’s club is meeting
tonight,” he said. “If this bunch would follow me home well—”
And Jimmy, the general, was quick to size up the situation. “Give the kid a
turkey,” he suggested. “You can’t cook them all, anyway, and he sure has
run some. Besides he isn’t a scout and doesn’t have to do a good turn for us
other fellows.”
So Renfro handed the little colored chap a turkey. And to their amazement
the little colored boy and the big colored woman whom he had been
pursuing, straightway made up all their differences and went away carrying
the turkey between them.
“Well, Jimmy,” he laughed, “I’ll change my mind. He’s a good scout after
all.”

CHAPTER XVII.
RENFRO FINDS THE MYSTERY MAN.
Like a patrol of victorious soldiers, the Boy Scouts in khaki, with the big
turkeys perched on their shoulders, entered the Hall domain from the alley
entrance. Jimmy’s decisive “Halt!” brought them all to attention—all except
the turkey, on the head of which was the responsibility for the alley episode,
and he flapped his wings and started all the other turkeys to doing likewise.
There was no law in all the list of the manual which told how to control a
recreant turkey. So Jimmy forgot his dignity as a patrol leader and clutched
one of the birds by the neck. She screamed no longer. But her big wings
flapped, her body twisted, and even her tail seemed to go into convulsions.
Convulsions which caught Mary Dugan’s attention as she passed by the
window with a bowl of thousand island dressing in process of completion
for the salad for the Hyacinth Reading Club now in session in the Horn
library. The bowl went into the kitchen table, and Mary Dugan out thru the
back door, across the porch, and right into the midst of the group.
“The saints be praised!” Mary Dugan forgot what she called “The Horn
Decorum” and reverted to her own home ways. “And now that you’ve
surprised me by winnin’ ’em all on a Monday here you’re goin’ to choke
’em to death before I can have the pick of the one I want to cook.”
She flew to the big garage door, threw it open, and gave stentorian orders,
“Here,—put ’em in here—let ’em roost in peace till I’ve finished my
supper. Then I mix ’em a bit of dough for refreshment followin’ a soldier
party.”
She bowed to the boy scouts and opened the rear gate for their departure as
soon as the turkeys were inside the garage and the big door swung shut
again. Her gesture was imperative. With Jimmy hastening them on, they did
not mark time but did “double quick” steps down the town’s best alley.
Then Mary Dugan looked at Renfro, “There be only five,” she accused him.
“You don’t mean to tell me all them boys let a turkey get loose.”

“No, Mary,” Renfro was impatient. “It was really a salvage article in a
worth while conflict. But I’ll tell you all about it and how I happened to get
them so soon and everything—new clues and all,” he promised, “only I’m
late as the dickens with my route now and there’ll be a dozen complaints
and I have to go.”
Now whatever else could be said of Mary Dugan the fact remained that she
was always a good scout and without another question she swung open the
alley gate once more, watched Renfro through it and shouted down the alley
after him. “There be three kinds of cake and striped ice cream for the
reading club. I’ll save all kinds for you.”
Again Renfro chose an alley route through town. It was the quickest way to
reach Washington Street and the drug store. Once there he saw something
unusual. All the packages of papers except his own were gone. Swish! That
was the sound of tearing the paper which bound them. Clash! They were
going into his bag. And clatter—he was off down the street to the front
porch of his first customer.
Up one street, around a corner into another, and back and forth on it he
went. It was dark, the thaw predicted by the weather man had set in early in
the afternoon, and there were places where it was so slippery from the
melting ice that he had to walk very slowly and carefully. He did not
complain. Old Grief had become the first rung of his ladder to success. And
a mighty good rung she had been.
At the corner, nearing the Wier house, Renfro brushed against a stooped,
old woman of the type usually seen around pawn shops and cheap
restaurants. She was carrying a lot of bundles, but it was not these Renfro
noticed. Around her neck with both ends flapping free and showing plainly
in the glow from the light in the middle of the corner intersection was the
peculiar looking scarf the old man whom he had passed outside the
sandwich shop last Friday night had worn.
“Humph!” Renfro laughed at his own exclamation days later. But he was
too amazed then to say anything else. It was possible for two people to have
as odd scarfs as were these, but hardly possible he thought. And then—well
then, he decided to do a little investigating.

He sauntered a little farther down the street, stepped behind a tree and
watched the old woman journey slowly down Washington street—still more
slowly, and still more slowly, but always in the same direction,—the one
taken by everyone of the queer looking individuals who journeyed out to
the big old house, which everyone said was haunted—everyone except
Captain Pete who declared that claim all tomfoolishness.
Renfro looked back to his own surroundings. He was directly across the
street from Judge Wier’s house. The blinds were drawn to the bottoms of
the windows. The afternoon papers had said that Mrs. Wier was very
despondent again. There had been no letter from Helen that day. She had
declared that she knew the child was dead and wished that she too would
die.
The man in the county jail had been questioned and sweated, and sweated
and questioned, but still stuck to his original statement that he knew nothing
about the kidnaping. Though the chief of police declared that it was a
foolish waste of time the detectives were off on the trail of his confederates.
“And Helen’s not two miles from this very spot,” Renfro declared
vehemently to himself. “And perhaps she is suffering though she wrote that
she wasn’t. Well, I’m going out to the shack and the big house tonight and
I’m not going to come home until I know something much more definite
than anything I’ve seen up to this time.”
He half ran to finish the remaining few houses on his route, then hurried
down the road, crashed across the orchard and down to Captain Pete’s little
cabin. Once he heard a queer suspicious noise in the undergrowth just
beyond the orchard, but he felt sure it was Lang Tammy come to jump on
him and play a game of tug-of-war with his paper bag.
Near the cabin he stopped a minute to listen. He looked around the corner.
Everything was quiet. He stopped, listened intently and then heard voices.
Two men, talking in rather loud tones as if they were having an argument.
Something sounded like the thwack of a fist on a table and then Renfro
walked to the cabin door.
He knocked with a decisive, determined air. Captain Pete called out, “Who
is there?”

But Renfro answered with another knock, more determined than the first.
He heard the growl of a dog and then stopped as if some one had choked
the creature into silence. And then he did a veritable tattoo of knocks on the
big, heavy door.
And stamping angrily across the floor Captain Pete came to open it. The
heavy door jerked on its hinges with the force of an angry host and Captain
Pete’s grizzled face seemed to fill the door way but not quite—
For back in the shadow of the room sat a man, stooped over something—a
man who was heavy set and short and who looked exactly like the stranger,
whose shadow Renfro had seen so often on the curtain of the window at the
big house across the deserted orchard and lane of Captain Pete’s domain,
again on the coming out of the back of the restaurant stand and several
times on Washington Street.
“I told ye I didn’t want the paper,” Captain Pete growled.
Then Renfro did the thing which surprised Captain Pete too much for him
to realize in time to object to what he was doing. He stepped into the room,
around the table and up to the stooped, old man, “Would you like to have a
sample copy of The Globe?” he asked.
The question, the boy so near him and everything, seemed to frighten the
old man out of his self possession. He shifted his feet, shook his head and
then raised it enough so that Renfro could see his eyes, and—
ABOVE THEM THE OTHER HALF OF THE MISSING EYEBROWS.

CHAPTER XVIII.
THREE MEN IN THE PLOT.
One instant Renfro stood staring—the next he gave a quick jump. For, with
a threatening growl the heavy old man had sprung forward, his fist raised
menacingly. Past Captain Pete out thru the open door Renfro jumped and
ran together.
Behind him he heard the old man swearing, heard a loud growl, a series of
barks, imperative orders “Get him, Tam,” and ran behind the first shelter
which offered itself—a low old ash hopper, which had stood near the cabin
since pioneer days.
He was not afraid of the big airedale dog but he did have an idea that the
old man—might shoot if he happened to be able to get hold of any of the
arms Captain Pete kept hanging on the wall, all loaded as he had told
Renfro, ready for the first rabbit which would cross his track.
The big airedale shot around the ash hopper. Renfro dropped on his knees to
be out of sight. But against Renfro he only sniffed, rubbed his head over his
rough mackinaw and whined like a happy child over the joy of finding a
playmate once more.
From the open door came sounds of quarreling. Renfro listened, heard
Captain Pete tell the other man to call his dog back, that the boy was a
friend of his and was not to be harmed.
“But ye warned me agin’ him yourself,” the other growled.
“Call yer dog back!” Captain Pete was determined.
“I aint,” the other’s voice was dogged.
“Then I’ll—” there was a break in Captain Pete’s speech, and Renfro raised
on his knees so that he could see the inside of the cabin. Captain Pete was
reaching for one of his guns. The other man slouched toward the door and
called gruffly. “Lang Tammy, come here,—come here!”

But Captain Pete still held his gun. And Renfro, fearing violence on Captain
Pete’s part, softly commanded Lang Tammy to go back into the house. With
dragging feet and hanging tail the big dog obeyed his command. Once
inside the door, the dog gave a yelp of pain. Renfro rose angrily to his feet
but the big door was swung shut.
“Well, I’ll not bring any more papers here without observing the rule of
preparedness first,” he declared as he crouched close to the fence and
worked his way back to the lane again.
He talked to himself all the way. “And one sure thing, Lang Tammy’s my
friend. He even deserts his master for me. But no wonder the way he yelped
when he went back into the cabin. Poor doggie.”
At the fence he stopped. Yes, there across the deserted orchard in the lower
west window of the big house was a dim light, and moving back and forth
across the blind a dim shape. Some one was in the deserted house.
Two men in Captain Pete’s shack! That was the Captain and his brother,
Renfro had felt sure of that. But there was another in the big house. “There
was a woman,” he remembered the old woman who had carried the supplies
and worn the scarf.
Well, he would cross to the house, peep in the window and make sure that it
was she. It might—
He stopped—it might be Helen Wier shut in that little room, left alone in
the big house while her captor visited at the cabin.
But—he shook his head. That wasn’t probable. They would be afraid she
might escape. It must be the old woman whom he had passed back on
Washington Street. He would make sure.
Cautiously, he worked his way across the orchard, around the house, close
to the west window, and with his face as near the window as he dared place
it. But hardly had he gotten it there until the light went out and the noise of
footsteps told him that the person inside had gone across into the other
room.
With a joyous exclamation Renfro found the peep holes, which he had cut
out a few nights before with his knife. Carefully, he put his eyes to the two

holes, stared thru them, waited a long time, and then his watch was
rewarded.
For with great deliberation an old man, the exact counterpart of Captain
Pete carried a lamp to the little table, spent much effort in adjusting it,
brought to the table some sort of a little melting pot, under which he lighted
a fire and then moved away again.
Renfro remembered the stories he had heard about Captain Pete’s brother
being a counterfeiter. Here he was, evidently getting ready to ply his
counterfeiting trade again. The little melting pot, and array of instruments
he was collecting and bringing to the table. The lamp under the melting pot
burned dully. The old man tested the something in it, shook his head,
indicating that everything was all right and went away again.
When he returned he carried a large tea kettle, which he proceeded to settle
on his knees. Then with the soldering he took from the pot on a long
soldering iron he began to mend a hole in its side near the spout.
It was a relieved but disappointed laugh Renfro gave. The old man was
doing the most ordinary thing in the world—the old man who looked so
much like Captain Pete that no one could doubt their relationship.
Slowly Renfro journeyed down the lane toward the road, Washington
Avenue and home again. The old lady had not been in evidence again. The
old man in the house was a simple old soul whose part in the crime if he
had any was of an unsuspecting accessory.
Again, no doubt Captain Pete knew much, though he might have been
innocent of any part of it. But the man with the missing eyebrows? Yes,
indeed he was the fellow, and Renfro knew that it was up to him to move
quickly and with well thought plans if he got him before he escaped.
He rode home on the car. He was so hungry that he felt that his ribs were
caving into his stomach. With home in sight his spirits began to soar. Mary
was sure to have him a good warm supper and a good cold dessert to top it
off—Mary would be ready to listen to all his adventures and to pat him on
the back and urge him to greater effort. Mary was—
And then the light outside the garage door went on and Mary was out there
with Renfro’s father gesticulating, talking in loud tones, protesting against
his opening the door any wider and trying to command and explain at the

same time. Renfro grasped the situation in a minute. He rushed to Mary’s
aid.
“Don’t open it wide, Dad, or they’ll all come out,” he begged. “My prize
turkeys you know. They are all in the garage but the one I had to give the
colored boy for chasing the old woman who would have stolen it anyway
—”
“But I have to have my car,” Mr. Horn was impatient. “And besides the
garage is no place for these infernal birds anyway. Your mother had no
better judgement than to tell all those women I would take them home in
the car and I want it in a hurry before the lodge meeting is over.”
He motioned Mary to one side and Renfro to the other. “Can’t you two keep
them in the corner while I drive out,” he began.
His hand reached the switch. A button was pressed and the garage was
flooded with light. And there on the top of the big Marmon sat a sleepy red
and bronze and black mixture of feathers and skin—the largest of Renfro’s
prize turkeys. Another was on the hood, the third on the gasoline tank, the
fourth on a wheel. The fifth was not in evidence.
Not until he stepped in front of the car did Mr. Horn discover the
whereabout of the fifth turkey. Silently and with a gesture which not only
accused but did so vehemently, he pointed through the windshield. There on
the steering wheel, as if guarding the wheel of state, sat the fifth of the big
birds.
“Who ever heard of putting turkeys in the garage?” he began, “You don’t
seem to have any sense as to the proper way of doing things. Your mother
—”
“Mister Horn,” Mary was the sly strategist again, “Mrs. Horn’s a waitin’ in
there for this machine to be takin’ her company home. She’s got the head
ache and you know—”
With rapidity then, the work of getting the turkeys into the corner huddled
together and Mary’s guarding them, was finished. Mr. Horn backed the
machine out. Mary and Renfro followed him and the door was closed.
Outside Mr. Horn’s good humor returned. Mrs. Willis, the wittiest woman
in the community, he often said, and the wife of his best friend was on the

porch. Before either Mary or Renfro realized what he was doing Mr. Horn
had her to the garage, had showed her the turkeys in the corner, told her of
the sight which had greeted him when he had opened the door and was
laughing about the surprise he had received at the church the day before.
Then it was impossible to keep Mrs. Willis out of the living room where she
retold the story to the other members of the Hyacinth Club and led in the
laughter which followed. She declared that she was bowed down with
admiration for Renfro and wanted him brought before her. So out of the
kitchen he was half dragged, the napkin Mary had fastened around his neck
still there and the best of his supper back on the table melting.
But when they were thru feteing him and praising him he went back to it,
not the least minding the terrible condition in which it then was. For he
really believed that his mother, excited by the admiration of the other
women, had become proud of him.
“Mary Dugan,” he interrupted Mary who was out of sorts over the large pile
of unwashed dishes before her. “Now if you were a fellow whose praise
would you rather have—the fellows or your mother’s?”
And Mary being out of patience with all mothers who belonged to Hyacinth
Club and made extra work for the “hired help” replied with alacrity, “Why
the fellows, of course.”

CHAPTER XIX
RENFRO IS KIDNAPED.
Renfro’s next question brought Mary Dugan to her feet. “Were there any
Complaint calls in?” he asked. “Did Morrison or any one call up from the
office or—”
“Hooch,” Mary was herself again in spite of her weariness, in spite of the
pile of dishes, and the excitement thru which she had passed. “There were
several calls for you and all from the office, and I told them a plenty too,
how you’d won the turkeys and had to be allowed to bring them home in
peace, and then when they just kept a callin’ I just took the receiver and left
it off the hook without paying any attention to the buzzer till your maw
heard and came and put it on the hook.”
“But that settled them,” Mary’s voice was full of pride. “For none of them
called again.”
“Oh, well they all got their papers all right—even Captain Pete,” Renfro’s
voice was weary. “But I do hate to have a lot of complaints go into the
office like must have gone in tonight.”

There were two people doing the work. Renfro knew that, because one
tied his feet while the other bound his hands. They worked in the
hedge.
Then he remembered something else. “Did the minister send the addresses
where he wanted the turkeys delivered?”
Mary had to hear the story of the way the turkeys had been won so early in
the game. When Renfro told her that a great deal of credit was due her, that
her going to choir practice Friday night made him think of the help of the
church, she beamed at him.
And then she told him of some new plans she had made for working
together on the kidnaping mystery. The Hyacinth Reading Club with its
extra cooking had taken all of her time that day. Captain Pete had gone next
door with rabbits. The cook there had told her of his arrival and his
departure with more than a half dozen of the same.
“Now allus before he’s come here when he had even a rabbit left,” Mary
was convinced. “So I know he is suspicious of us.”
Renfro was thinking of the experiences he had had that night, and was
making decisions. No, he wouldn’t tell Mary about them yet. He wanted to
be sure the man at Captain Pete’s was his man; he wanted to see him either
in daylight or in a light which would show his eyebrows up a little better.
He wanted to be sure they matched with the missing parts.
And then he rose and went to his room. Very slowly he undressed, waited
until it was quiet below, slipped down stairs and to the drawer in the kitchen
cupboard, in which Mary kept her Bible. Then he took out the two packages
containing the missing eyebrows.
Yes, it would be better for him to carry them for a few days. He might meet
the man on the street, or in a store and after seeing him while memory was
still strong, he wanted to compare with it the parts of the eyebrows which
he had taken from the windows of Judge Wier’s home.
He turned his trousers pockets inside out, then those of his coat, surveyed
the motley collection in each, replaced the different articles in them and
shook his head. His eyebrows would not be safe in such a lot of things as
these. He looked around the room and then he saw his cap.

With a bound he had it in his hand. The band inside was deep and strong
and loose—all just the way he wanted it to be for a good hiding place. He
knew that telegraph messenger boys carried messages in their caps. With
great care he sewed an envelope inside that band in which he had sealed the
two smaller packages.
Before he went to bed that night he did several little things he had wanted to
do for a long time—wrote a letter to a chum in another town, counted up his
balance in the bank and made out his Christmas shopping list. He even
straightened his dresser, made a memorandum about delivering the charity
turkeys, went to the window, and looked out at the neighborhood for a time.
He felt queer—neither elated nor depressed, but quite as if a different sort
of an experience from any he had known, loomed before him.
He was glad they had taken his picture at the office. If anything happened to
him—
He laughed boyishly. If he did happen to find the place where Helen Wier
was being kept then they too would be glad they had his picture. That happy
thought sent him to bed and to sleep so fast that it was quite late when he
awoke.
The day seemed to rush by. His mind was on one thing though he heard of
many others. His fame in winning the turkeys had spread thru Grant high
school, thanks to Jimmy Noel and his crew of helpers. The teachers
congratulated him; the boys praised him, and some of the girls he knew best
were inclined to try to twit him.
But he hardly heard them. Before him there loomed the big house in which
the old man had mended the tea kettle, the cabin in which Captain Pete and
his strange guest had quarreled, and the old woman, whose wearing the
scarf had made her have some connection with the mystery. And always
each picture showed to him the fierce, cruel face the old man assumed when
his anger was aroused.
He was early on his route that night and delivered all his papers with
precision. Directly after supper he was going to tell Mary the whole story
and see if she would go with him to the cabin and big house once more.
That was the best he was sure.

But he didn’t get to tell Mary. While he was at the supper table there was a
call from the office for him—a complaint from on his route. He took the
number, went back to the table to finish his dessert and to listen to his
mother give a monologue on the dangers of carrying a paper route.
Carrying complaints on such nights as this was sure to give him pneumonia
some time she argued. People were careless with their papers. No doubt the
boys often left them at these complainers’ homes and then they—
Renfro started at her charge. Why he remembered now that he had left a
paper at that number they had given him at the office. That was the number
of the house where the little crippled girl sat at the window and watched for
him—a long, low house without any paint and with a tin roof on the front
porch, which roof was about in the same condition as that of the big house
at which the mystery was deepening.
He went back to the telephone, called the office, and asked for the number
again. He might have heard wrong he thought. Exactly the same number
was given him again. He wanted to tell the manager he remembered leaving
the paper there. The little crippled girl had herself opened the window that
evening for it, but he knew that an argument would only make his mother
more uneasy, more set against his continuing with Old Grief.
Now that he had been successful she declared he should have a better route,
his own home or one in the business part of town. If once she conferred
with Mr. Bruce who had offered him such a route, Renfro knew it would be
very hard for him to continue with Old Grief.
“And,” he told himself, “I don’t want to leave there until I have the
circulation worked up to 80% of the number of residents on that route.”
He stepped out into the dark street, fumbled his way around the house to the
side porch where his bicycle had been left, but did not take it. There was a
puncture in the front tire and it was flat. He walked to the corner and here
took a car. Car fare was a minor consideration now that he needed time. He
would hurry back, tell Mary about the story and perhaps then when she had
all her work out of the way she would go scouting with him.
He dropped off the car at the nearest corner, and with the paper under his
arm scurried down the street. Past the big house, next door to the little one
he hurried, and then in sight of the one with the tin roof and the little

crippled girl. His feet suddenly slipped on something which felt like a
carpet of banana skins; down he went clutching at a hedge to break his fall,
and then someone clutched him.
Something strong—it felt like a band of leather was passed over his mouth.
Both of his hands were caught behind him and a sharp thong passed around
his legs. But his eyes were left free. As they tied his hands behind his back
he wondered why he had not been blindfolded. And a little later he learned.
There were two people doing the work. Renfro knew that,—because one
tied his feet while the other bound his hands. They worked in the hedge.
Renfro wondered then why the city council had allowed all the tall hedges
to stand in this old part of the town. Had they never seen the possibilities
they offered to thieves and people like these? Evidently these men had
realized them fully, for in giving a number from which to send a complaint
they had chosen one next door to one of these hedges.
And then he realized that one of his captors was a woman. She moved in
front of him and her skirts swished against his knees. That discovery made
him more furious than ever. He twisted his body, shoved with his shoulders,
and pushed against her with all his might. The next minute he was firmly
lifted by the other captor, from whose strength he knew was a man, carried
out into the street and deposited on a small wagon there.

CHAPTER XX.
HIDDEN IN THE CAVE.
He was placed on the floor of the wagon, face downward. As the wagon
started it went with a jolt which thrust his face against a rough board and
cut his nose and cheek. More jerks did a series of bruises on his forehead,
his chin and his nose. By almost superhuman effort he managed to roll over
on his side and then on his back.
By the time this was accomplished they had traveled down a dark road quite
a distance. It was so dark Renfro could not see three feet ahead of his face
at first. But his eyes soon got accustomed to the darkness. And little by
little, he began to recognize the tops of the trees and by the feeling of
surroundings to know that they were on the road which ran off East
Washington.
Instinct, more than anything else, told him that they turned off at the second
lane of the first on the Hall place. The first one was only used by
pedestrians. The second was for wagons, but it had been used so little that it
was in a horrible condition. The jolting sensation was terrible. Renfro
realized that his face would have been cut beyond recognition had he not
managed to turn over.
They jolted close to trees, through a lot of low underbrush which ground
against the wheels of the wagon and across a little bridge. The limbs on one
low hanging tree struck his face and scratched it still more.
The silence, which the couple had maintained in town and along the road,
was now broken. The old woman, whose voice was almost as gruff as her
companion’s complained of the way he drove. He in turn offered to share
the privilege with her if she so desired to seize it.
An imperative “whoa” stopped the horse, suddenly. The man clambered
out, thrashed around the wagon, seemed to be tugging at a door. A
squeaking of rusty hinges followed his efforts, and he called out gruffly,
“Drive on in Maggie, and remember the log on the east side. You hit it the
last time.”

Renfro hoped that Maggie would not hit it this time. He held his breath
while the wagon jolted thru the door into a dark, dilapidated building which
was full of moldy odors. And there the horse stopped. He had to lie still
while they unhitched the horse, all done in the darkness. They discussed the
harness which seemed to be needing repairs from what they said.
The old man told Maggie to get some food at a bin, but she replied that she
couldn’t find it by just feeling around. She wanted to light the lantern but he
wouldn’t allow her. A trifle crossly she refused to even try to help farther.
And he said surlily, “If you had them 15 years in the darkness I did, you’d
be able to find anything by feel.”
After that she was more patient and seemed to help all she could with the
finishing of the feeding. She came with the old man to the wagon, and
stayed with him while he took out a knife and cut the strap which tied his
legs.
“You walk with me, just as I tell you, or you’ll know what you’ll get,” the
man’s surly voice was charged with a threat which Renfro knew he would
not hesitate to keep.
So he meekly followed his directions and walked between the two of them.
The old woman who seemed to have a more human disposition than the
man, helped Renfro along by holding his arm. They went across decaying
vegetable matter, through a door, close to a manger, and then into another
room, smaller and close and possessing much more moldy odors than had
the others.
There the old man lifted some sort of a door in the side of what seemed to
be a banked part of the barn and they all stepped into a place so dark that
Renfro could not see at all. While the old woman closed the door, her
companion lighted a lantern.
For several minutes the light, though it was dim, blinded Renfro. Then his
eyes gradually became accustomed to the light, and saw that they were in a
narrow passage way. A few feet along it, and they came to some steps. They
went down them—down, down, down, into an opening which seemed to be
a cave. And there Renfro with his hands tied, and his mouth still bandaged
was thrust into another and darker place and the door, which had been
opened to allow him being pushed through, was shut again.

His first sensation was that he was on solid ground. Then his feet seemed to
give away under him and he fell heavily, his head striking something sharp
and hard. A quick pain, worse than any he had felt during the short ride, and
then Renfro drifted into unconsciousness.
When he came to, it seemed that hours had passed, but it had really been
only a period of some twenty minutes. He was lying on a pallet of mouldy
smelling rugs and comforters. They were full of hard knots which sent
shooting pains through his bruised body.
The room was not entirely dark now. There was a dim light and Renfro
turned a little onto his side, saw that it came from a coal oil lantern, which
emitted much more bad smelling smoke than it did light.
The bandage had been taken from his mouth. But the stout cords were still
on his wrists, and others had again been tied around his ankles. They were
tied in such a manner that if he lay perfectly still they were comfortable, but
if he twisted or attempted to move, they cut into his flesh like circular
knives.
But in spite of the pain caused by his moving, Renfro managed to twist
himself until he could see the nature of the room in which he was
imprisoned. It was cold and damp and mouldy. Odors like those coming
from a musty cellar, in which vegetables had long been stored, were strong
around him.
There was some one in the room but Renfro could not see who it was.
Heavy, rapid breathing behind him—in the direction he felt sure was the
door through which he had been thrown—proved that. He watched directly
above him and to the side of the room he was facing.
And after a little looking he realized that it wasn’t a room at all but a cave
in which he was a captive. The rough jagged wall and ceiling were of rock,
from which hung stalactites now stained and discolored by the rain and
smoke of fires, which had been kept burning in a rusty coal oil stove.
There was a fire in the stove now, and Renfro was getting some heat from
it. Besides it and the pallet, on which he was lying, Renfro could see no
other furniture in the room. The lantern was flat on the floor.
Renfro shivered. He was cold to the marrow of his bones. He shivered again
and then a long, hard sneeze came out of his nose and throat. It was

followed by another of the same, and then a whole series.
The person behind him stirred and came around the pallet until Renfro
could see her—a swarthy, heavy set woman with a sour, disappointed
visage and stooped, weary shoulders. Over her head she wore the odd
colored scarf Renfro had seen twice on the street—first outside the little hot
dog restaurant and next on East Washington Street.
She looked down at Renfro and he saw that her eyes were not half as hard
and sour looking as her face. Her lips drawn in a straight line seemed to
relax a little in their severity while she looked. And then she opened them
and asked one short word, “Cold?”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Renfro sneezed again.
With her free hand, the other was holding something under the scarf, she
pulled the coal oil stove closer to his pallet and then she opened a door,
slipped through it and closed it after her, and Renfro was left alone—but not
for long. When the door opened again, it was the old man who entered this
time, a heavy, horse blanket in his arms.
On his head was the hunting cap with the sharp, low hanging bill. He spread
the blanket over Renfro, gruffly asked him if he wanted something to eat
and, after receiving a negative answer, squatted on the floor and looked
close at the boy.
And Renfro looked back at him. There was instant recognition on the part
of both, the old man who had been in Captain Pete’s cabin and the boy who
had burst in and handed him a sample copy of the Globe.
For quite a time they stared at each other and then the old man realized that
his attempts to frighten Renfro had failed. He gave a short chuckle, which
was more disagreeable than anything else, and then jerked off his cap.
And in the dim light to which Renfro’s eyes had grown accustomed, was
plainly visible the remainder of the eyebrows, half of each of which had
been left sticking to Judge Wier’s frozen window pane.

CHAPTER XXI.
HELEN WEIR IS FOUND.
The old man’s first words came in the form of a question. “Where are the
rest of ’em?”
Renfro did not attempt to answer. To force an issue the old fellow was
tempted to use gruffness but a look deep into Renfro’s steely blue eyes told
him that would be a waste of time. The boy couldn’t be frightened into
telling anything. Better treat him as he would a man.
“You scraped them off the window pane?”
This time Renfro answered, “Yes.”
“I knew some one had when I read the newspaper about the knife
scratches,” the old fellow was talking like a human being, and not in the
gruff disagreeable tone he had used up to this time. To be exact he seemed
to be getting some pleasure out of talking to some one who had recently
come from town and who knew the town’s version of the kidnaping affair.
“And I knew it was you,” the talker was measuring wits with Renfro, “as
soon as I saw you staring at me, out at that hot dog shop.”
His voice was triumphant. He rose from his half sitting, half kneeling
posture and came over to Renfro. Turning him over roughly he went into
his pockets, pulled out all of the contents, and carried them to the lantern.
He was so busy examining them, that he could not see the look of elation on
Renfro’s face, followed by one of apprehension toward his cap which was
on the floor not far from his pallet.
With a surge of joy Renfro realized that it was muddy and dilapidated and
torn. In that condition it would not receive any attention. No, the hiding
place of the missing eyebrows was safe.
The fact that his search was unsuccessful made the old man quite angry. He
threw the things he had taken out of Renfro’s pockets to the floor, and came

back to the boy. “You didn’t destroy them.” There was no question but just
a simple statement.
Renfro was silent. “Well you’ll tell me where they are and I’m goin’ to git
them tomorrow.”
Again silence. For some reason or other the old man did not seem to care to
argue. He merely stared at Renfro, curiosity keen in his deep eyes. And was
it imagination or did Renfro actually see a gleam of admiration in them as
he stood and stared?
The door opened and the old woman’s voice, now weary and fretful, put
forth a question, “Does he want anything to eat, Bart?”
Renfro answered for himself—a courteous “No, ma’am—I thank you.”
The same voice with its touch of queerness mumbled something about it
bein’ late, and she was sleepy, and for Bart to come out and leave the boy
alone. Then Bart threw another cover on Renfro, took the coal oil stove in
one hand, the lantern in the other and followed her through the door.
And Renfro was left in black darkness. The cover on him warmed him and
he began to feel drowsy. He was too tired to wonder what the folks were
doing at home now that it was time for him to be missed, or to regret the
fact that he had not taken time to tell Mary of the find he had made in
Captain Pete’s cabin the night before.
He didn’t wonder whether or not they would start a search for him. He was
thinking of his route. Who would Morrison send out tomorrow to carry it
for him? And would he find his list of new customers? And would they
remember to take the three charity turkeys to the parsonage and—
There was a sharp bark in the next room. Renfro’s heart surged with joy. He
was not alone in the cave. He had a friend as a fellow prisoner. That bark
came from Lang Tammy. And after it a girlish voice said sharply, “Can’t
you see Tammy’s half starved to death? He wants milk—don’t you,
Tammy?”
And Renfro twisted until the throngs cut down into his flesh. That voice
belonged to no one else but Helen Wier. She was in the cave too—just on
the other side of the partition from Renfro.

At exactly the same time Judge Wier and Henry Horn were in council with
the detectives at the police station. After Renfro had gone an hour from the
Horn home a search had been instituted for him. Inquiry at the Globe office
had failed to give them any evidence except the number of the house from
which the complaint had been sent.
A hurried trip out there and Mr. Horn and Morrison, who had come to his
aid in looking for Renfro, discovered that the complaint call had been
cleverly faked. Their suspicions were fully established. But still they did not
give up hope. They called up all the homes of Renfro’s friends, they had
both the house and office of the Globe ready to send out relief calls if
Renfro should happen to appear.
But hours passed, and there came to the two men no news. And then they
had gone to the police station. Judge Wier was summoned and the two
fathers went into close conference.
They, with the detectives, decided that for the sake of their search, after
both Helen and Renfro, that it was best not to let the town know of Renfro’s
disappearance until evening—not even Mrs. Horn. The detectives wanted a
chance to start a well organized search.
Early attempts to hunt Helen had been hindered by the crowd of people who
had collected as soon as the news of her kidnaping had spread. Scores of
foot tracks around the fateful house, all made by the curious persons, had
made it impossible for footprints to furnish a clue.
Cleverly Mr. Horn concocted a story for his wife about Renfro’s going
home with Morrison to do some extra work, early in the morning. When he
told her about it she was very much out of humor and condemned paper
routes in biting language.
“If she only knew the truth,” Mr. Horn thought to himself and trembled.
Some time the next day she would know the truth.
Mary Dugan, dead tired, heard the story and believed it without a qualm.
She was sorry Renfro had to do the extra work. That meant just one more
day for her to feed the turkeys, which he had said belonged to the church.
Morrison in turn had gone out to the Bruce home, and Bruce, after hearing
the story, had gone straight to the city editor. Together they mapped out the
course they would follow. Their noon edition would contain a story of the

kidnaping—that would be their scoop, and early in the afternoon they
would send more detectives to help the local ones in the search.
Then Bruce and Morrison departed to their individual homes and went to
bed.
But neither Henry Horn nor Mary Dugan slept much that night. The
detectives had assured Mr. Horn that they would soon find Renfro, that his
kidnaping had given them definite proof that Helen Wier had been taken by
local criminals. They would start an investigation from a new angle.
In the morning, of course, he would not go to work, just seemingly do that,
so as not to disturb his wife. He would show those kidnapers that he was
not a slow man to deal with like Judge Wier had been. He would prove to
them they couldn’t—
And directly above them Mary Dugan had hunted her Bible, read her
Golden Text for next Sunday and was fumbling with the family pictures.
And then she remembered the missing eyebrows. She opened the book at
page 222, the one next to which she had put them.
And then she fell back with a low cry. The packages were gone. There was
not even one white hair left.

CHAPTER XXII.
THE LIGHTS ARE REVEALED.
Merle Riker carried the names of his six new subscribers to Morrison’s
office only to discover that Morrison was out. Wearily he sat down into the
big chair to wait. He had accomplished what had seemed to him impossible
a few days before. And he wanted Morrison’s approval. And after that he
wanted Renfro Horn’s.
“He taught me how to do it,” Merle had told Jimmie Noel on his way to the
office. “Renfro Horn is a good sport.”
“He’s a good scout,” Jimmie added soberly, “And that reminds me. I
haven’t seen Renfro all day. Let’s go out there tonight and have a talk with
him.”
Merle promised. “My mother doesn’t care for me being out at nights when
I’m with a boy like Renfro Horn,” he explained. “Meet at the corner drug
store?”
Jimmie had agreed to that meeting place. Just as soon as Morrison came,
Merle decided he would rush home, announce to the Riker family they had
a Thanksgiving turkey, eat a hurried supper and come back to the meeting
place and then go to the Horn home.
But Morrison didn’t come. The clock struck six-thirty, seven, and then
Merle rose. He went straight to the corner drug store, met Jimmie, and took
him home with him. So Jimmie heard Merle’s announcement about the
Thanksgiving turkey and witnessed the joy it created. And as soon as Merle
had eaten his supper they started back to the Horn residence.
But there they faced another disappointment. Mary Dugan told them Renfro
wasn’t home, was still out on his route and that they could walk out to meet
him if they wanted to see him.
“She isn’t cross usually,” Jimmie volunteered. “But she’s tired out or
something. Usually it’s as Hooch says, ‘Mary Dugan is the best scout of
them all.’”

Together the two boys walked out toward East Washington Street, but
though they watched every corner and every car they didn’t see Renfro.
“Might as well give it up,” Merle was disappointed, “and go home. I’ll tell
him in the morning.”
“We’re near the Globe office,” Jimmie offered. “We might go past and stop
in to see if Morrison’s back. You’d like to tell him, if he’s there—wouldn’t
you?”
They went to the carrier’s room, found it empty but the door to Morrison’s
was ajar. Jimmie started toward it and stopped, his attention suddenly
riveted by voices he heard. “But his mother must not know.” It was Mr.
Horn talking.
He recognized Bruce answering. Morrison too chimed in. And little by little
Jimmie learned the whole story—of how Renfro had been kidnaped, of how
they were keeping it a secret and of how they hoped in this way to get a
quicker solution of the kidnaping mystery.
Jimmie, when he learned all the particulars, pushed Merle back out onto the
street again. “How much did you hear?” he there demanded.
“Not enough to understand anything except that Renfro has been kidnaped,
too, just like Helen Wier,” Merle was inclined to be gloomy, “and they were
both my friends.”
“And we’re not to tell a word we heard,” Jimmie caught Merle’s arm and
shook him. “Do you understand? Telling this would hurt Renfro. It would
lessen their chances to find him. We’ve got to keep still and—”
“Help find him,” Merle answered, the steel in his eyes shining so that
Jimmie could see it as he never had before.
Jimmie Noel stopped. “Wait,” he commanded, “Wait a minute. I have to
think.”
For fifteen minutes Merle waited. Then Jimmie drew him toward the corner.
“Can you stay out very late?” he asked. “It may be all night. I have an idea.
It may be nothing and again it may reveal to us where and how Renfro was
kidnaped. Can you go out to ‘Twin Cedar Cabin’ with me? And stay all
night?”

Merle nodded. “I’ll call mother. If I tell her we’re going out there to see
Renfro, she’ll be all right,” he explained, “and that is what we are going to
do if he’s there—isn’t it?”
“You bet!” Jimmie’s spirits were soaring, “I’ll telephone, too. And I’ll tell
Jack Burton we’re going. I won’t tell him about Renfro but I’ll ask him to
go along. He has some sense and he may help out some.”
They separated and a little later they met, having deemed it more safe to use
different telephones. “Jack can’t go,” Jimmie explained. “His brother raised
a row against him going and so he has to stay at home.”
On the way out to the camp, Jimmie explained many things to Merle—of
how when the cabin had been purchased and he had heard the story of the
two chiefs who had fought for the hand of the pretty white girl, he and one
of the young scout masters had decided to add to the lure of the place for all
good scouts. They had gone out secretly and dug two graves, burying two
old skeletons which had been in the trash room of the high school.
“It wasn’t hard to believe those skeletons belonged to Indians,” Jimmie
laughed, “so we named the graves those of Wampum and Big Eagle.”
And then he told about the odd lights which they had seen on the nights
they had been there. “Now I was suspicious,” he added, “and began to study
ways those lights might have been made. And I just discovered the other
day. Someone who wanted to keep anyone away from that cabin could have
placed a number of batteries there and then operate them from quite a
distance. I believe that is just what someone is doing.”
He drew a deep breath. “Every time any of the fellows go out to the cabin to
stay all night they watch for the lights and they are not disappointed about
seeing them either. So it stands to reason that they are being operated to
keep scouts away from that cabin. Now, tonight we’ll lay for those fellows.
I have a hunch we’ll find a fellow who is connected with Renfro’s
kidnaping.”
Merle listened while Jimmie made his plans. They would go to the cabin,
light the lamps, and build a roaring big fire in the fire place. Then Merle
would stay in the cabin while he—Jimmie would go to the graves, hide near
there and watch for some sign of life.

They reached the cabin safely. The lamps were lighted, the fire made, and
then Jimmie slipped out of the cabin. A little later, Merle, following
directions, extinguished the lamps and crept to the window.
He looked down toward the mounds. And soon his watch was rewarded.
Violet and blue lights alternately played over the graves. They left for a
little while and then they came back. For about fifteen minutes they
lingered this time and then they suddenly went dark again.
Merle waited. Minutes passed, and then longer minutes. But the lights did
not come back. Nor did Jimmie. This was a hard wait for Merle. He began
to wonder if anything could have happened to Jimmie. He had been told
before Jimmie left not to dare leave the cabin but just stay there and watch.
Something of unusual importance might happen right there.
And just as he was about to throw Jimmie’s commands to the winds and
leave the cabin to search for him, Jimmie appeared. He was a ruffled,
muddy Jimmie. “Great Scott!” he ejaculated, “I was never so disgusted in
my life. If I hadn’t had that club in my hand and given them a dozen or
more healthy raps I would feel like batting my head in the hope I could get
some more brains into it.”
He went to the fireplace and sat down. “It was just as I thought,” he said.
“Those lights came from electric batteries. Only they belonged to the high
school boys who want this cabin. They tried to get it when the scouts got it
but we had the most money. Jack Burton’s brother led the gang. Whenever
Jack would start out here they would come and operate their battery system.
They thought they would scare us out pretty soon.”
Merle was quite as disappointed as Jimmie. He came over and sat down
beside him. “I ran into the whole nest of them,” Jimmie continued, “and I
knocked them right and left with my club. I think they thought I was a score
of scouts for they ran—FROM ONE BOY,” he laughed.
Merle laughed with him. “But that doesn’t help us with Renfro,” he began
suddenly.
“No,” Jimmie shook his head, “Poor old Hooch! Wouldn’t he have liked to
be in on this tonight?”
Later they snuggled up in their blankets and went to sleep. And when it was
morning they soberly went back to town, both of them with one great

determination and one secret in their minds. They were going to keep still
about Renfro Horn’s being gone and at the same time they were going to
help hunt him.
“Tonight, I’m going to walk over his route after I carry mine,” Merle
assured Jimmie, “and hunt out every suspicious looking person on it. Want
to go along?”
“Yes, sir,” Jimmie was emphatic.
“And keep still all day?”
“You bet!” Jimmie’s lips went close together.
“Then tonight at six o’clock,” Merle had the last word, “and meet me at
Flaherty’s butcher shop.”

CHAPTER XXIII.
HELEN TALKS TO RENFRO.
Renfro awoke early the next morning. The room of the cave in which he
was confined was dark and the air seemed colder, more mouldy than on the
night before. He wished that they had left the foul smelling lantern in his
room, though the evening before he had hoped it would be removed.
His wrists and ankles felt numb. Last night they had ached for quite a long
time. He decided while he lay alone in the dark that when Bart or Maggie
came in he would ask them to ease the cords a bit. But when, after more
than an hour, the old man, still wearing the low brimmed cap and surly air
of the night before, came into the room Renfro decided not to even mention
the tightness of the cords.
It was the same smoking, ill smelling lantern of the night before that he
swung in his hand. He set it down near the bed, looked at Renfro, and then
felt of the cord around his wrist. “Not so bad as that—not that bad, though it
was a long time,” he muttered to himself.
He rose heavily and fumbled his way through the door back into the other
room. This time as he had done every time before he closed the door after
him. “No use doing that,” Renfro thought, “I’ve already heard Helen’s
voice.”
The old woman came back with him. She carried a bowl of steaming stew
in which onions were one of the principal ingredients. That was evident
from the odor. And with it were several slices of toasted bread.
“Do you want some coffee?”
Renfro decided that her voice was not gruff through a habitual bad
disposition but exposure and poor food and it might have been suffering. He
forced a smile when he assured her that he would rather have some milk if
she could give him some.
“After a while,” she promised, “presently when I go up to the grocery.”

When it was evident that he was going to eat the stew, the old man helped
him raise himself to a sitting posture. Then he cut the cords on his wrists.
“Now eat,” he said and spoke without any surliness. “And when the door is
fixed a little more you won’t be tied any more.”
A grim smile came onto his face. “You are too smart a boy to have loose for
a time,” he said.
Renfro was interested in the way he spoke. At least it was evident from
what he said that he was to be kept in captivity quite a time. While he ate
the stew which was not a disagreeable mess, he wondered what sort of
confusion was raging back in Lindendale. Would the detectives decide that
it was a kidnaping plot? Would they set out on another trip to a far off city
for more evidence?
He was sure they would not do that. There was Mary, who had shared with
him conjectures concerning the identity of the owner of the missing
eyebrows. She would tell them about the trips to Captain Pete’s, to the big
house, and from there he was sure it would be easy for detectives to work
their way to the old barn.
He smiled contentedly and ate on until the bowl was almost empty. If he
had known that Mary thought him safe at the home of one of his friends,
that his mother believed the same, that full charge of the secret investigation
had been given over to the detectives he would have been discouraged to
the despair point.
After he was through eating, old Bart fastened new bandages, much wider
but stronger than the others on his wrists. But they were a distinct
advantage, for they did not hurt half as badly as had the others. And when
he had changed the narrow ones around his ankles to the wide variety,
Renfro, though far from being in a pleasant posture, was not uncomfortable.
As soon as they made the discovery that he was going to be agreeable and
not cry or abuse them over his imprisonment, the old couple became much
less hostile. Renfro knew from their attitude that they did not want to hurt
or punish him—but merely to keep him shut up until they had made some
plans concerning Helen Wier.
“Well if it’s money they’re after, they’ll sure ask dad for some too, as soon
as they discover who I am,” he began to think and then remembering Mary,

decided that they wouldn’t get far with their plans before they were
discovered.
After promising to bring him something to read the old man took up the
dilapidated lantern and followed his wife, who had gone back into the other
room several minutes before. Renfro heard him lock the door between the
two rooms of the cave; and later give some commands to his wife and Lang
Tammy, who was once more in the cave.
Though the lantern was gone the cave was not so dark as it had been.
Renfro moved until he discovered the source of the light. It came from over
the top of an old door—the one, he felt sure—that the old man had spoken
about nailing more firmly before he should be turned loose.
He twisted at his thongs. They were tied too tight to ever be torn loose. He
tried them with his teeth but they were too tough for him to make more than
an impression on them. And making impressions would only harm him, for
once discovered they would be responsible for closer watch than ever being
put over him.
Quietly he lay back on his pallet and waited. In the other room they were
talking in muffled tones. A long conversation followed, a bustling noise,
and then silence.
And finally out of it came a voice which Renfro knew. “Who is in there?” it
demanded. “Is it any one who knows me? I’m Helen Wier.”
Renfro could have shouted for joy. “I’m Renfro Horn,” he answered.
“Where are they gone?”
“Up town,” Helen was just outside the locked door. “I’m not tied like they
say you are, but I’m locked in. Tell me everything you know—about mother
and father and everything. And why don’t they find me?”
Renfro had to pitch his voice loud and make it peculiarly piercing to reach
her through the heavy door and the big room of the cave. He told her of
everything he knew, how her letters had reassured her mother and kept her
well.
“Yes, they let me write them,” Helen’s voice seemed changed, more
piercing, more strident. Renfro decided that it was from her life in the cave.

“They’re not mean to me—and they don’t want money. They’re keeping
me, to get even with father.”
Quietly and without any emotion she told her story. Bart had been
sentenced to fifteen years in the penitentiary by her father years ago. He had
served most of those fifteen long years which had meant separation from
his family. While there he brooded over the loneliness of himself and
became almost a maniac, with one purpose in mind—namely to get even
with the judge who had sentenced him.
At first he had decided to kidnap the judge himself. He had kept that
thought in mind for years. When his old cellmate had gone free one day and
they had given him another he had been given a chance to plan for the
future, Captain Pete’s brother had been put in his cell and he, in time, told
of his home, of his crime, and the hidden cave in which he and his
confederates had at first made the counterfeit money.
Getting bolder the counterfeiters had moved into the cellar of the big house
and been discovered. But only the part of the story which was concerned
with the cave had interested Bart. From that time on he made his plans. As
soon as he was free he would come back to Lindendale, kidnap Judge Wier
and imprison him for months in this hidden cave. Separation from his
family for that time would give him just a hint of what Bart had served on
account of his sentence.
“Maggie told me all this,” Helen put her lips close to the key hole for her
throat was getting tired through talking so loud. “She wants me to know all
of it so that when they let me back to father I can tell him all of it and
understand exactly how and why Bart got even with him.”
“But isn’t Captain Pete in it?” Renfro persisted in asking a question though
Helen was still talking.
“No, neither he nor his brother. They just happened to discover the cave and
then they knew where I had been hidden. They’re afraid of Bart. They
won’t ever tell until I’m safe back home and Bart and Maggie are away and
safe in another part of the country, and happy because they’ve had
revenge.”
She talked a little while longer about the life in the cave. She and Renfro
conjectured together on the probable time they would be imprisoned. And

Renfro didn’t tell her of Mary Dugan’s knowledge of all his clues and his
hope of rescue from her. A surprise he decided would be a good thing for
Helen Wier.
After a time they, following Helen’s fear that the old woman would return,
lapsed into silence. Renfro sat and studied the door around which came in
small shafts of light. Now if he could only manage to get loose before that
door was made more secure he felt that he could work his way through the
door. But if—
And in the other room there came confusing sounds. Bart and Maggie had
returned, and a scuffling and barking and cavorting around told him that
they had brought with them Lang Tammy.

CHAPTER XXIV.
LANG TAMMY HELPS RENFRO ESCAPE.
Old Bart, true to his promise, brought Renfro a book and the lantern to
furnish him light for the reading. Maggie, also considerate, had polished the
lantern shade, until now it gave a light which made the cave a definite room
and was bright enough that Renfro could easily read.
But first he looked around the room. The stalactites, which had been
specters in the half darkness, became things of beauty in the bright light.
Renfro had heard that there were limestone deposits in the ground under the
Hall farm. Now he was sure of it. Why this cave was very beautiful and full
of promise.
“If old Jake—” Helen had told him the name of Captain Pete’s brother
—“had only known it,” he thought, “there was a wealth on his own land
much larger than any he could counterfeit during a lifetime.”
Bart was examining the lock on the door. He had brought in with him a
package which when opened revealed another lock that he tried to adjust.
But it was soon evident from his swearing that the new one was too small
for the door.
Carefully the old man wrapped it up. Angry over his failure he turned upon
Renfro. “You needn’t be grinning,” he said, “I’ll get a better one this
afternoon.”
By slipping over on his stomach and with his hands under him Renfro could
manage to read out of the book of pioneer stories Bart had fetched from the
Hall library. He turned the pages with his tongue. But between pages he
thought hard. If he could get loose by hook or crook he could get that old
door open he was sure.
He remembered the story he had read in the detective magazine of a very
wiry man who had managed to use a knife with his teeth. In Renfro’s pocket
had been a sharp knife. Bart had taken it out. Had he carried it away or left
it with the other things on the floor?

“While he’s gone this afternoon I’ll roll over there and see,” Renfro made
his plans definitely.
A little later Maggie brought him his dinner, milk and other things she had
considered delicacies which a boy of Renfro’s breeding was sure to like.
She was unusually kind and Renfro felt sorry that she should be so deluded
as she was.
He was so restless that he could hardly wait until Bart should start away
again and he could roll over after the knife. That would take time and he
must be free from the fear of discovery. He breathed a sigh of relief when
he heard Bart begin to make preparations to leave. He heard Maggie argue
with him about some things she wanted from her little home, back in town.
Bart refused to go after them, telling her that if she wanted them badly
enough she would go herself. And after a little while she decided to go
along. Better and better Renfro decided. Now he could do his work with
alacrity, perfectly safe from any fear of discovery at all.
Bart came in after the lantern, carried it out, refilled it and brought it back.
This time he left the door slightly ajar and while he was at work Renfro saw
a big form slip in, crawl into the farthest corner and lay there. It was Lang
Tammy and he was hiding because of the whipping Maggie had given him
for tearing the binding on her coat.
Not until they were gone did Renfro call Lang Tammy and then he came,
crawling and pleading exactly like a dog which has recently been beaten.
But as he reached Renfro and made sure that it was his friend he became
joyous and barked joyfully and frantically. And then he made ready for a
game of tug.
Joyously he seized one end of the free bandage on Renfro’s hands. He gave
it a pull which cut into the boy’s wrists cruelly. Another pull, another cut,
and Renfro tried to stop him. But the big dog was intent on the game which
was now a winning one for him. Another tug, this time a long tearing one,
and something slipped, the knot the old man had tied so firmly that
morning. Renfro jerked at his hands and Tammy was onto the bandage
again.
And then it came loose. Renfro could have hurrahed from joy. Instead he
rolled over quickly to his pile of articles taken from his pocket, found his

knife, cut the thongs around his legs and stood tottering, his legs stiff and
aching. With a bound he was to the door working at the lock. Indeed it was
old and rusty. It gave way before his onslaught and he stood free to go out
into the open.
He flew back to the other door. “Helen,” he called softly, “I’m free and
you’ll be in a little while. If they come back before help comes, be sick or
do anything you can to keep them interested and away from my door.”
Outside he stood in a new world which he soon identified as being the
thicket below the hill on the Hall farm. He found the lower road and fairly
flew to the edge of town, boarded a waiting car and rode directly to the
office of the Globe.
The big building looked like paradise to him. Straight through the outer
door, into the hall and back to the door marked “Route Manager, Morrison,”
he hurried. And inside it he fell into Morrison’s arms.
“That wasn’t a complaint, Morrison!” he burst out. “That was a fake call! I
went—”
“You—Hooch, you—you!” Morrison gasped like a drowning man, seized
Renfro, and half carried, half dragged him into Circulation Manager
Bruce’s office. The office was deserted except for that worthy and his
stenographer. He looked up at the confusion, jumped to his feet and caught
Renfro in the curve of his arm.
And to him Renfro began his story once more. “That wasn’t a complaint
call last night at all. It was just a fake. I was kidnaped. It was a cave. And I
found Helen Wier and—and—”
“You found Helen Wier?” Bruce shouted his question. Then before it could
be answered he had dragged him to the door. And there he decided that the
boy was not going fast enough. Up into his arms he lifted him. Through the
hall to the elevator cage he went, Morrison following.
“Car up!” Bruce was still shouting. “Can’t wait.”
Up the steps he ran. At the landing he ducked but Renfro’s head struck the
ceiling a hard whack, in spite of that, Renfro merely winced. At the top of
the steps Bruce made a sharp turn, rushed against the door marked
“Managing Editor” and threw it open with the weight of his big body.

Morrison, puffing and trying to obtain answers to a whole chain of
questions he was hurling at Renfro, still perched perilously near the top of
Bruce’s shoulders, followed. He saw Bruce drop Renfro, grab a little man
who was having a discussion with Mr. North, The Globe’s managing editor,
pull him to the door, shove him through and then lock the door after him.
“What in the—” North jumped to the floor, scattering proof sheets in all
directions. “What—”
The little man who had been forcibly ejected was beating and pounding his
protest on the panels of the big oak door but Bruce didn’t mind him.
“North,” he jerked North so that he faced Renfro, “This is Renfro Horn.”
“And,” Morrison would not be ignored, “he has found Helen Wier.”
“When—where—how?” North was all editor.
“In a cave! I was there too. They kidnaped me last night,” Renfro burst out.
“She’s there now! Locked in! Bart and Maggie are up town. Let’s get her
before they come back.”
North pushed Morrison toward the door. “Get a taxi,” he ordered, “and keep
your mouth shut.”
He jerked open his desk, took his revolver from a drawer and thrust it in his
pocket. Five steps carried him to the locked door. He jerked it open,
breaking the lock. “Warriner,” he called. “We’re making a trip. Big story!
Extra edition! Get the presses ready for it. I’ll take Figg with me.”
The man sitting at the table on the front of which was printed “City Editor,”
jumped to his feet. “Figg!” he bawled, “Figg!”
While they waited North demanded Warriner’s revolver and handed it to
Bruce. “You’re going too,” he said.
Figg came out of the cubby hole which bore the name Sporting Editor—big,
burly and aggressive in every step and gesture. No one ever mentioned a
gun to Figg. With the first word of “Big story,” he had his gun out of his
desk and in his pocket.
No one mentioned elevator this time. They made their descent down the
steps. Through the hall, a curious crowd stopping at sight of the odd
procession, they rushed. Morrison outside had the taxi door open and into it

they sprang, Bruce, North, Figg and Renfro. Morrison thinking that he was
to be left behind clung to the running board.
Renfro’s directions were shouted to the driver by North. Out of town,
breaking all traffic rules they went. A sharp turn by the tile factory took
them down the river road. Beyond it they rode a few yards, made another
turn, jolted up a deserted lane and came to an abrupt stop.
Around the shrubbery to the passage to the open door Renfro led them.
Inside the room Lang Tammy sat in a dejected attitude. Bristling every hair
he jumped at the intruders, saw Renfro and sprang on him with a joyful
bark.
But a girlish voice sounded above all the confusion. “Renfro, have them
hurry! It’s time for Maggie and Bart any minute.”

CHAPTER XXV.
THE GLOBE GETS A SCOOP.
Not until the taxicab turned into Elm Street back in town once more did
Helen Wier speak. She simply crouched in one corner of the taxicab and
stared out of the window. There she clutched at Figg’s arm. “That’s my
street,” she pointed at the one they left. “I have to see my mother right
away. I do,” she was emphatic, jerking his arm savagely, “I do!”
Then North became the cunning editor. “Not immediately,” he spoke in
conciliatory tones. “The shock would kill her. She has to be prepared. We’ll
attend to that at the Globe office.”
Renfro stared at Helen. How white and thin she looked! Her voice had
sounded hollow back there in the cave. Now as he afterwards described it,
she looked hollow, too. Leaning against his knees, Lang Tammy was staring
up at him with happy eyes. From time to time he kissed his hand and gave
Figg hostile growls.
Everything at the Globe was waiting for them. Outside a long line of
newsboys was waiting for the extras to be shot through the presses and out
to them on the street in a few minutes.
A crowd of girls from the business office stared through the windows at the
motley procession. The elevator man, watching outside his cage, rushed in
again and seized the lever. They shot up to the editorial floor and rushed
into the room where Warriner had his star writer at his machine and his
copy boys ready.
He looked at the crowd. “Shoot!” he commanded. “The girl first.”
And Helen Wier encouraged by North told her story in weary, strained
gasps. “I was in the library alone reading that night. I heard a noise. There
was somebody in the room. He had a gun pointed at me. He said he would
kill me if I screamed. He said there was some one in the other room who
would kill my mother if I didn’t come with him. His forehead was bleeding.
Something was wrong with his eyebrows—”

“Oh, yes,” Renfro jumped forward and jerking off his cap, turned down the
band. “His eyebrows were missing. They froze to the window pane. He
jerked them off and I found them on the pane. That’s how I found Helen.”
North jerked him over to one side. “Your time next,” he commanded, and
nodded at Helen.
“Outside the house, he made me walk into the shrubbery. I was afraid they
would shoot my mother.” Helen’s tone was full of worry. “They didn’t—did
they?”
“No, no, she’s safe,” North clipped out his words.
The typewriter stopped its clicking. The feature writer rolled out one sheet,
Warriner grabbed it and another one was in its place.
“Shoot!”
Warriner gave the command again. “They gagged me then. A woman
helped him. She was Maggie. And they put me in a wagon. We rode miles.
It was cold and I didn’t have any coat—just an old rug they put around me.
We went through some buildings. And then down into the cave.”
It was Renfro whom North asked to give a description of Bart and Maggie.
He told his own story first—of the first night he had seen the stranger
peering into the Wier home, the second experience, his attempt to telephone
the Judge, of the line out of order, and then of his finding the eyebrows
frozen to the window pane.
The reporters moved closer to him while he talked. North interrupted to ask
questions. Warriner gave orders to copy boys, to the writers at their
machines, through a telephone to the press room and through it all managed
to hear every word of the story.
When Renfro at the close of his story again took off his cap, pulled down
the band and exhibited his specimens—The Missing Eyebrows—carefully
opened one of the square packages and took one look, held it to North, and
then handed it to one of the men. “Have them photographed and a plate
made,” he ordered.
And then he was down to the press room. North once more took command
—got more detailed stories from both Renfro and Helen, had half a dozen
reporters writing at once—descriptions of the cave, of the rooms there, of

Maggie and Bart and then one of Lang Tammy who was still by Renfro’s
side, his nose firmly clutched by one of the boy’s muscular hands.
There was a shout below. Morrison and Bruce both jumped. “The paper’s
off the press,” the reporter nearest the chute yelled and North turned to
Helen, “Get ready to go home,” he said kindly, “I’ll telephone your
mother.”
“Telephone mine,” for the first time Renfro remembered his parents. “I
can’t get home and back before it’s time to carry my route.”
North motioned to the cub reporter. “Tell Bruce to send some other boy out
on Horn’s route tonight,” he commanded. “I want to take Horn home
myself.”
The trip down the stairway was made more slowly this time. North noticed
that Renfro was limping. He reached out his hand and steadied him. “Best
story of the year,” he muttered. “And we scooped them all.”
And Renfro understood him. But he didn’t say anything except to nod at
Lang Tammy. “I’m going to keep him,” he said, “I wonder if they’ve got
Bart and Maggie yet.”
“Figg will tend to them,” North smiled. “I sent him back with some of the
boys to get the story for the next edition.”
At the door his editor’s mantle seemed to drop. He looked first at Helen and
then at Renfro. He had several children out at his home. “You’re great
kids!” he grinned.
But there was a volume in that grin and both of them realized it. In the taxi
he was quite as laconic. “Your folks will about die! I talked to both of your
dads.”
Yet it was Helen’s mother who was waiting on the porch when the taxi
drove up in front of the Wier home. She rushed down the walk as Helen
rushed toward the house. Half way they met.
North turned his head. But he heard Mrs. Wier talking. She had taken
Renfro’s hand. The tears from her eyes dropped on it but she talked bravely,
and in a collected manner, giving him the greatest eulogy he had ever
received.

The judge too talked to the boy, as one man does to another. Helen left her
mother’s arm to come over to him. “But you won’t be hard on Bart, daddy,”
she begged. “You—see—now—we know—how—cruel—it—is to be away
from the people we love.”
Judge Wier nodded his head. He looked up at North. “I will attend to them,”
he smiled, “but still I feel it would not be best to quote me on that. Just say
that I shall not be too harsh on these people.”
Mrs. Wier nodded. Then she looked at Renfro. “His mother is waiting,” she
said.
And North took Renfro back to the taxi in which Lang Tammy was waiting.
As they crossed town, Renfro nodded toward the street. “This is my route,”
he said. “They call it Old Grief.”
“The turkey route,” North laughed. “We’re going to use that story tomorrow
in our Thanksgiving number.”
He nodded at some of the dilapidated buildings on a cross street. “Want to
change it?” he asked.
“No sir!” Renfro’s answer was emphatic.
Mary Dugan was standing out close to the curbing, a clean white apron tied
around her expansive waist. Her hand reached out and grasped Renfro’s
with all the force a man gives an obstinate pump handle. And she shook it
manfully.
Now, Mary Dugan was of the kissing type, but she respected manhood. And
in fifteen minutes Renfro had grown from a boy to a man in her estimation.
Nor did she weep though she had shed copious tears when she had heard
the story. “I missed them eyebrows last night,” she said, “and I’ve dressed
both of them turkeys which was left. The three charity ones I carried out to
the preacher’s parsonage myself. I told them to eat one themselves, as he
did the free advertisin’ for you.”
Proudly she led the way to the house after she had delivered her speech.
Renfro’s mother caught him in her arms in the most genuine, motherly
embrace he had known for a long time. She sobbed and sobbed and could
not talk. But he knew without her saying a word how happy she was.

Mr. Horn laughed nervously to North. “I’ve been through Hell a thousand
times during the last twenty-four hours,” he said. “But thank Heaven I had
the courage to go through alone. I never told my wife a word about Renfro’s
being gone until you told me that he was safe. She thought he was visiting.”
He managed a few fatherly hugs in spite of his wife’s constant clinging to
Renfro. His eyes were charged with love and beyond that a look of pride.
He started to say something directly to Renfro about his feelings but with a
great effort Renfro managed to wriggle out of his mother’s arm and start
toward the dining room.
“Where are you going, Hooch?” Mary Dugan sprang to her feet with the
suspicion in her mind that Renfro was hungry.
But Renfro waved her aside. “I’m going to call up the office,” he returned.
“I want to find out of Morrison if there have been any complaints on my
route.”

THE END.
The next Renfro Horn book will be

THE LUCK OF A RAINY NIGHT

THE LUCK OF A RAINY NIGHT
or
Renfro Horn Wins the $10,000 Reward
In this second book of the Renfro Horn series of Newspaper Boys’ stories,
Renfro Horn wins the enmity of the carrier on Route No. 19, because
Renfro is held up as a model carrier by the Circulation management of the
Globe.
And on the darkest, rainiest night of the year, the carrier of Route No. 19
plans to lure Renfro to a desolate place where he hopes to give him a
beating. But Renfro, who has been keen on the trail of the Insurance
Mystery, stumbles on the body of the man who is supposed to be dead, and
he wins the reward which the Insurance company has offered for the
location of Clyde Truesdale.

THE RISE OF ROUTE 19
or
Renfro Gets a Regular Detective Badge
“Old Grief” has now been made a respectable route under Renfro Horn’s
careful carrier service, and the Globe has the largest number of subscribers
in that section of the city, so to test Renfro Horn’s fighting spirit, Bruce, the
circulation manager, offers Renfro Route 19, one of the bad routes along the
river front, where the house boats are moored, and a better route in a better
part of the city.
But Renfro Horn, being in quest of success and excitement takes Route 19
and thus begins an interesting series of adventures for this boy carrier, who
is the peer of the city’s best detectives. It ends with the Mayor of the city
pinning on his coat lapel a regular detective badge, because Renfro has
found the stolen finger prints.

THE WHITE BAG’S SECRET
or
Renfro Horn Trails Down the Thieving Dog.
By Stephen Rudd.
The jewels of Mrs. Laidlaw Garth have mysteriously disappeared. Mary
Dugan’s cousin, Bridget O’Hara, is the maid in the house and is under
suspicion.
Renfro and Mary believe she is innocent. Through the location of one of his
old paper bags, Renfro gets a clue which leads him to believe that Mrs.
Garth’s dog, “Bluff,” stole the jewels. He and Mary set out to find them,
and they are successful, of course.
But there is thrill in this story for any red blooded boy.
Published by the R. H. Gore Publishing Co.

THE CLUE OF THE TWISTED PAPER
or
The Mystery of the Lost Girl.
By Stephen Rudd.
Can a paper, which a newspaper carrier boy twists into a roll and throws on
a porch, contain a clue to the identity of the girl who has forgotten who she
is or where she comes from? Renfro Horn, the carrier boy detective, proves
this can be done.
He and Mary Dugan do it.
And the lost girl—well she is a wonder child. But read all about this
absorbing mystery in “The Clue of the Twisted Paper.” It’s coming soon.
Published by the R. H. Gore Publishing Co.

Transcriber’s note
Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MYSTERY
OF THE MISSING EYEBROWS ***

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