Mystery Wings Read online

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  _A Mystery Story for Boys_

  MYSTERY WINGS

  _By_ ROY J. SNELL

  The Reilly & Lee Co. Chicago

  COPYRIGHT, 1935 BY THE REILLY & LEE CO. PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER PAGE I The Mysterious Chinaman 11 II A Strange Prophecy Comes True 23 III The Thought Camera 33 IV A Place of Great Magic 45 V Johnny's Think-O-Graphs 58 VI Beside the Green-Eyed Dragon 63 VII Mystery Ship 70 VIII Strange Passengers 82 IX "Who's Afraid of a Chinaman?" 96 X Clues from the Dust 103 XI What an Eye! 112 XII The Vanishing Chinaman 128 XIII Secret of the Pines 135 XIV The Steel-Fingered Pitcher 143 XV The White Flare 155 XVI A Tense Moment 162 XVII A Narrow Escape 172 XVIII The Flying Ball Team 181 XIX A Revelation in Chinese 190 XX Ether and Moth-Balls 200 XXI Liquid Air--Almost 209 XXII The Smoke Screen 220

  MYSTERY WINGS

  CHAPTER I THE MYSTERIOUS CHINAMAN

  "Pardon, my young friend!"

  Johnny Thompson started at the sound of these words spoken by someoneclose behind him. He had been seated in a corner of the park. It wasearly evening, but quite dark. He sprang to his feet.

  "Pardon! Please do not go away." There was something reassuring in theslow easy drawl of the stranger. Johnny dropped back to his place. Nextinstant as the light of a passing car played upon the stranger, he wastempted to laugh. He found himself looking into the face of the smallestChinaman he had ever known. To Johnny the expression "Who's afraid of aChinaman?" was better known than "Who's afraid of the big bad wolf?"

  But what did this little man with his very much wrinkled face puckeredinto a strange smile, want? Johnny leaned forward expectantly.

  "You think hard. You are worried. Is it not so?" The little man took aseat beside him. "All the time you think baseball. You do not play. Butyou think very much. Is it not so? This town, your team, they areeverything just now. Is it not so? And you are troubled." The wrinkles onthe little yellow man's face appeared to crinkle and crackle like veryold parchment.

  "Let me tell you," he put a hand on Johnny's arm. "You think ofCentralia. A long time you have thought, 'They will defeat us unless wefind a pitcher, a very good pitcher.' And you have found a pitcher.Perhaps he will do. You are not sure. Is it not so?"

  Johnny started. All this was true. Centralia was the great rival of thelittle city he chanced to call home at that moment. He was thinking ofthe coming game. But this new pitcher! That was a closely guarded secret.Only three people knew and they were pledged to silence.

  "Ah!" the little man leaned forward, "You are more greatly troubled now.You are thinking, 'Someone has told.' No, my young friend, it has notbeen told. It is given Tao Sing to know many things. Tao Sing can tellyou much."

  "Are you Tao Sing?" Johnny fixed his eyes on the dark face beside him.

  "I am Tao Sing." The little man blinked strangely. "It is written, Ishall be your friend. Tao Sing shall tell you many things. Ah yes, many,many things."

  Johnny was astonished, so much so that for an instant his eyes strayedaway to the deep shadows beyond. When his gaze returned the dark figureof the little yellow man was gone. He had vanished into the night.

  "How could he know that?" the boy asked himself in great perplexity. "Ihave only known it three days. It has been a pledged secret." Here indeedwas a mystery.

  Johnny Thompson was, at that moment, living in the little city ofHillcrest. Having wandered the world over, sleeping beneath the tropicalmoon and the Midnight Sun, and meeting with all manner of weirdadventures, he had returned to the place that had fascinated him most asa very small boy--his grandfather's home. At the edge of this sleepylittle city, a hundred and fifty miles from any truly great city, Johnnyhad found the rambling old home still standing, and in it, a littlegrayer and slower, but still his kindly old self, was his grandfather.

  "You've come for a long stay this time, Johnny," he said with a warmingsmile. "That's fine!"

  "Yes," Johnny had replied, "I'm tired of big cities, of adventures andmysteries. I--well, I guess I'd just like to sit in the sun awhileand--well, perhaps play around a little."

  "There's a fine ball team," the old man had said enthusiastically. "Lotsof interest in it this summer."

  "Baseball--" Johnny said the word slowly. "I'm rather poor at that. Mightbe ways I could help though."

  And there had been ways. When their best pitcher's arm went bad and theirhopes of winning the Summer League pennant promised to go aglimmering, hehad marched bravely into the office of Colonel Chamberlain, the town'smost resourceful business man, and said, "Colonel, it's up to you to helpus out."

  To Johnny's vast surprise the Colonel replied, "Sure I will, Johnny." Atthe same time the Colonel had smiled a mysterious smile. "Truth is," hesaid, "I've been sort of holding out on you boys. I've got a man righthere in the laboratories who can throw circles all around any pitcher inthe League."

  "Here in the lab--"

  "Wait and see!" the Colonel stopped Johnny. "You bring Doug Danby aroundtomorrow night." (Doug was Captain of the team.) "I'll have him throwover a few for you, just in private." He had kept his promise.

  "Mysteries," Johnny thought, sitting there in the park in the dark afterthe little Chinaman had vanished. "They're not just in big cities nor intropical jungles either. You find them everywhere. Take that pitcher--oneof the most mysterious persons I ever saw. Such a strange looking chaptoo--dark-skinned as some priest from India. And can he pitch!

  "Boy, oh boy!" He spoke aloud without meaning to. "Will we win!"

  "No, my friend!" So startled this time was Johnny, at once more hearingthe sound of the little yellow man's voice that he sprang to his feet,wild-eyed and staring.

  "No, my friend, you will not win," the little man repeated quietly."There is a reason. Soon I shall tell you the reason, my young friend."

  "Why you--"

  Johnny saw a yellow hand waving before him for silence.

  "One more thing I will tell you," the little man continued. "There is apep meeting tomorrow night. You will not go."

  "No, I--"

  Johnny did not finish. Once more the little yellow man had disappeared.

  "How could you know that?" Johnny called into the darkness.

  "I have a picture of your thoughts," came drifting back. "You will notbelieve. Sometime I shall show you this picture of your thoughts."

  "A--a picture of my thoughts." Johnny d
ropped back to his place on thebench. "A picture of my thoughts? How could that be? And yet--

  "How could he know?" he repeated after a long period of silence. Andindeed how could this little man know all he had told? In regard to themysterious pitcher the Colonel had discovered for the team, there was abare chance that someone had talked. They, the three of them, Doug Danby,Colonel Chamberlain, and Johnny, had agreed to keep this a secret for atleast one more day.

  "Yes," he thought slowly, "someone might have talked. But that pepmeeting! I only decided last night that I'd better not go. And yet he, astrange Chinaman I have never seen before, he comes and tells me what Ihave thought. How strange! How--how sort of impossible. And yet--

  "He said he had a picture of my thoughts. I--I hope he brings it roundfor me to see." Laughing a short uncertain laugh, the boy rose from thebench to walk slowly toward his grandfather's home.

  A rather strange city was this one where, for the time, Johnny had ahome. No city of its size has a more unusual population. A dozen or moreyears back it had been a mere village. Only native-born Americans livedthere. Then it began to grow. The Chinese people came first. For somereason all his own, a very rich Chinese merchant, Wung Lu, had settledthere. In almost no time at all, he had gathered about him a large groupof the strange little yellow men. They had erected a Chinese Chamber ofCommerce. Men came from afar to bargain here for Oriental goods fromacross the sea.

  "They're queer, these little yellow men," Johnny told himself now, "butsomehow I like them."

  Yes, though he was not very conscious of it, this was one of Johnny'sgreat gifts. He had a way of "somehow liking" everyone. And because theysomehow came to know this, they liked him in turn. He and Wung Lu, theChinese merchant who, rumor had it, was immensely rich, had become greatfriends.

  "But this little fellow with the wrinkled face," he thought, "now who canhe be? I supposed I had seen them all. And he is one I could neverforget, yet I've never seen him before.

  "Strange sort of fellow," he mused. "Said he had a picture of mythoughts. How could he have? But then how could he know those things hetold me?"

  Johnny had read books about the way people think. He remembered readingsomething about one person being able to read another's thoughts. Couldthis little man do that? Had he read his thoughts? He shuddered a little.It was so mysterious, so sort of ghost-like.

  "He couldn't have read my mind, at least not when he found out I wasn'tgoing to the pep meeting. I hadn't thought of it once, at least nottonight."

  The whole affair was so baffling that he gave it up and turned histhoughts to Saturday's baseball game.

  Johnny had known for a long time that Centralia, nine miles away, andHillcrest had been rivals, friendly rivals, but the keenest of rivals allthe same. For four years, one straight after the other, Centralia had wonthe annual summer baseball tournament.

  "Last year," Johnny thought, "Hillcrest almost beat them in the lastgame. But this year we'll win if--

  "But then--" his mood changed. "He said we wouldn't win, that littleyellow man with the wrinkled face said that!" he exclaimed, half inanger. "How could he know? And yet, how could he know what I had beenthinking?

  "Oh well!" He stamped the ground defiantly. "What's one game? There areothers to be played. If we lose one, we'll win in the end. And we'll notlose this one! See if--"

  He broke short off. Soft footsteps were approaching. It was the littleChinaman again.

  "It's he," Johnny whispered. "Will I never get rid of him? He's like ashadow, a ghost haunting a fellow in the night."

  As the little man came close to Johnny he said in a voice that was littlemore than a whisper, "You know that Centralia baseball captain, BarneyBradford?"

  Johnny grumbled, "Of course I do. Suppose you have a picture of histhoughts too."

  "Ye-s-s," the little man drawled, "Tao Sing has picture of that one'sthoughts."

  "Oh, you have?" This affair was getting almost funny. "What does hethink?"

  "He thinks his pitcher has been sick. He thinks, not sick now. Pitchtomorrow. Win tomorrow. He thinks this--Barney Bradford." The littleChinaman let out a low cackle. "I have the picture of his thoughts. Sonow you know that Tao Sing tell no lie. You did not know this pitcher iswell again. Is it not so?"

  "I--I did not know," Johnny agreed reluctantly.

  "And your team mates did not know. But Tao Sing, he know. Listen!" Thelittle man's voice dropped to a whisper. "You are a friend of Wung Lu,the rich and wise one, is it not so?"

  "Y-yes, that's right," Johnny stammered, too astonished to think clearly.

  "Ah yes, you are a friend of Wung Lu," the little man murmured. "Perhapssome day I will show you the picture of your thoughts. Perhaps very soon,some day I shall show you."

  Once more the little yellow man vanished into the darkness. He left anastonished boy staring at the place where he had been.

  A few moments later Johnny met Meggy Strawn at his own door. Meggy waschampion cheer leader for Hillcrest.

  "Why Johnny, what's up?" she asked. "Why all the gloom?"

  "Burt Standish is going to pitch tomorrow."

  "Burt! He can't! He's got heart trouble. Johnny, who told you?"

  "Why, a--" Johnny stopped short. He couldn't tell Meggy that some littleChinaman had taken a picture of Barney Bradford's thoughts. That wouldsound sort of queer. "I--I--" he hesitated, "I just found out."

  "And yet I believe it," he thought to himself as he hurried past her.

  There was reason enough to believe, for next day as Johnny took his placeon the bleachers there was Burt Standish, the pitcher who was supposed tohave serious heart trouble, on the mound warming up.

  "He knew," Johnny told himself with sudden shock. "That little Chinamanknew! And yet Centralia succeeded in keeping it a dead secret. Not aplayer on our team knew Burt was to pitch." His respect for the littleChinaman's mind reading, or whatever it might be, rose several notches.