The Galloping Ghost

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The Galloping Ghost
A Mystery Story for Boys
by
Roy J. Snell

The Reilly & Lee Co.
Chicago

THE GALLOPING GHOST COPYRIGHT 1933
BY THE REILLY & LEE CO.
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

CONTENTS
I Kidnaper's Island
II Whispers in the Night
III "We Must Escape"
IV The Ghost Appears
V Red Wins to Lose
VI The Red Rover Gets the Breaks
VIII A Journey in the Night
VII "The Rat"
IX Red Goes Into Action
X The Invisible Footprint
XI Hotcakes at Dawn
XII Johnny Gets a "Jimmy"
XIII Light on the Water
XIV Drew Lane Steps Into Something
XV "Shootin' Irons"
XVI The Branded Bullet
XVII Johnny's Jimmy
XVIII Dreaming at Dawn
XIX Night on Isle Royale
XX Riding a Moose
XXI The Shoe
XXII On the "Sleeping Lion"
XXIII A Visit in the Night
XXIV Uncle Ned Does His Bit
XXV The Trail Leads North
XXVI Battle Over the Waves
XXVII A Haunted Bay
XXVIII The Light That Failed
XXIX Silent Night
XXX Hollow Chuckles
XXXI "Play by Play"
XXXII "70,000 Witnesses"
XXXIII The Flea Flicker
THE GALLOPING GHOST
CHAPTER I
KIDNAPER'S ISLAND
RED RODGERS rolled half over, squirmed about, then sat up. For a long time he had felt the floor beneath him vibrate with the throb of powerful motors.
His eardrums, beaten upon as they had been by the roar of those motors, now seemed incapable of registering sound.
Not the slightest murmur suggesting life reached his ears. "Not the rustle of a leaf, nor the lap of a tiny wave; not the whisper of a village child asleep," he told himself. "Can I have gone stone deaf?" Cold perspiration started out upon the tip of his nose.
And then, piercing the silence like a siren's scream in the night, came a wild, weird, mad hilarious laugh.
Startled by this sudden shock of sound, he shuddered from head to foot. Then, at once, he felt better.
"At least I am not deaf."
"That laugh," he mused a moment later, "it was almost human, but not quite. What could it have been?"
To this question he could form no answer. The wild places, wilderness, forest, lakes, rivers, were sealed books to Red. He had lived his life in a city, lived strenuously and with a purpose.
"Some wild thing," he murmured. "But where am I?" His brow wrinkled. "I've been kidnaped, dragged from my berth; in a sleeping car, thrown into a speed boat, carried miles down a river, bundled into this airplane, whirled for hours through the air, and landed here. But where is here? And why am I here at all?"
"Hours," he whispered slowly. A stray moonbeam lighted a spot on his knee. He placed his wrist there and read the dial of his watch.
"Yes, hours. It's five after midnight. And tomorrow, hundreds of miles away, I was to have made at least two touchdowns. The crowd would expect at least one sixty-yard dash by the Red Rover."
"The Red Rover." That was the name the fans had given him. Well, the Red Rover would not run. He smiled grimly. But, after all, what did it matter? They were to play Woodville. What was Woodville? A weak team. Old Midway's cubs could beat them. It was a midweek game, mainly for practice. He wasn't needed for that. But Saturday's game! Ah, well, that was another story.
"But kidnaped!" He brought himself up with a start.
"I've been kidnaped! Dragged from my berth. Whirled all the way to some place where wild creatures laugh at midnight."
Kidnaped. The whole affair seemed absurd to him.
He had read of kidnapings. There had been many of late. It had always made his blood boil when some innocent child, some helpless woman had been carried away to a dismal hole and held for ransom. "Lowlived curs," he had called the kidnapers.
"Ransom!" He laughed a low laugh. He was a college student, a football player for two months of the year, a night clerk in a hotel the rest of the year, an orphan boy working his way through the university.
He thought there were three dollars in his pocket, but he could not be sure.
"Kidnaped! Must have got the wrong fellow this time. Tell 'em who I am, and they'll turn me loose; hustle me back, like as not."
He was wrong. They would neither turn him loose nor hustle him back.
"All right, Red. You can get out." These words were spoken as the airplane door swung open.
"Red!" the boy thought with a start. "So they do know who I am. They did mean to get me. I wonder why!
"Whew!" he whistled as a cold breeze struck his cheek. "Cold up here."
"Cold enough" the other grumbled. "Come on, shake a leg! This boat swings about."
"Boat." It's strange how a single word tells a long story. The whiff of cold air had told him that they had flown north. Now he knew that they had landed on water. But what water? And where? "There you are." A hand in the moonlight guided him to a seat in the stern of a small boat.
Red opened his eyes wide at the scene