CHAPTER TWELVE   THE LOOKOUT

Kitty had never felt so conscience-stricken in her life as when she found Billy was lost.

“Maybe he went back and joined your father and Miss Dawson,” Brad suggested.

“I don’t think so. We’d come too far. He trailed us all the way, pretending to be shooting at us from behind trees. Oh, Brad, do you suppose he fell from that bluff into the water?”

“But he can swim like a fish.”

“You go along the bluff and I’ll go through the thicket,” she directed.

She ran from him, darting here and there, calling frantically. If anything had happened to Billy she would never forgive herself for being so preoccupied with this strange jig-saw puzzle she and Brad were trying to work out.

Suddenly she stopped short under the towering pines, tears streaming down her eyes. “Oh, Billy darling, where are you?” she wailed. “Kitty will die if anything has happened to you.”

Suddenly she caught the queer little noise he made in his throat when pretending to fire a machine gun at her. She glanced around, startled. He was nowhere in sight. That must have been something she heard, because she so wanted to hear it.

“Billy,—where are you?” she called almost desperately.

Again there came the playful sound, and this time Kitty thought it was overhead. She must be having hallucinations surely. Hopefully she moved in the direction from which she thought the sound had come. Suddenly a cone fell almost at her feet. Then there was a burst of childish laughter from the nearest treetop. She looked up to see a mischievous face peering down at her from the high branches. Her overwhelming relief was only momentary, for it was followed by terror lest Billy break his neck.

“Why, Billy Carter, how in the world did you climb that tall pine?”

“It was easy. Come up, Kit. You can see clear across the world.”

“I’m not coming up, and you’re coming down this very instant,” she said firmly.

“It’s fun up here! Let me stay,” pleaded Billy.

Kitty saw Brad running toward them, attracted by their voices.

“Oh, look at him! In the top of that pine,” she told Brad. “How will he ever get down?”

“I can get down,” stated Billy, unexpectedly willing to show them the wonderful feat.

With the agility of a little monkey he swung through the wide-spreading branches that crowned the towering column of rusty brown. Kitty’s hands were clenched agonizingly as he reached the smooth trunk, which had no supporting branches.

“Oh, dear God, bring him down safely,” she prayed. Seeing Brad take a step toward the tree, she whispered, “Don’t speak to him or make him nervous.”

Then they saw an amazing thing. Billy’s feet were seeking small niches cut in the trunk, and his hands holding to something that hugged the bark.

“I do believe there is wire wrapped all the way up that trunk,” whispered Brad, noting that she had seen it too.

“Put there so somebody could climb up and down that tree easily,” added Kitty. But at the moment she did not stop to realize how significant it might be. She was too grateful to know it was there to make Billy’s descent less dangerous.

Thirty feet above the ground the sturdy limbs of a young oak spread around the pine trunk. Billy stepped lightly to those limbs and a few minutes later had scrambled safely to the ground.

Kitty caught him to her, moaning, “Oh, Billy darling, you might have broken your neck! Never do such a thing again.”

“Huh!” he grunted, resenting being made a baby. “It was fun—like climbing our old magnolia back in N’ Orleans. Aunt Nina let me play up there any time.”

“I’m afraid Aunt Nina spoiled you terribly.”

Billy stepped back and surveyed the tree with a proud air. “I never went so high before. You can see the ocean off yonder.” He swung his arm seaward with a grandiose air. “The hospital, too. There was even a seat to sit on.”

“A seat!” exclaimed Brad. “You mean boards nailed across the limbs to make a seat?”

Billy nodded. “I sat on it. The wind swings the top. It was fun. I was a bird up there!”

“Kitty, I’m going up!” Brad said, with sudden decision. “Somebody has a lookout here.”

“Oh!” The very idea seemed to take Kitty’s breath away.

A moment later Brad was scaling the tree by the route Billy had taken.

“He can climb ’most as good as me,” boasted Billy. “I’m going up, too.”

“Indeed, you’re not! You’re never going to climb such a high tree again.”

While Billy picked up his imaginary gun once more and played at shooting them, Kitty’s mind was in turmoil. Finding this tree lookout was certainly a sequel to what Uncle Mose had told them. It seemed quite obvious that the man who had leased Terrapin Island wanted to be sure that this end of the estate was kept entirely private, even to the extent of moving an ignorant old negro from his life-long home.

“Can you see very far?” she asked, when Brad reached the top.

“Plenty. The highest lookout that could be found in the entire marshes.”

Kitty felt sure he must be right, for the ancient pine looked to be the father of all the pines in the entire thicket.

When Brad again stood beside her on the cushiony brown carpet of needles he said, “Kitty, that wire has been strung up there recently.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s still loose, and not embedded in the trunk anywhere.”

“You must be right. Even wisteria vines growing around pine trunks soon press tightly into them.”

“Kitty, I’m sure glad we headed for this spot.”

“You’re telling me! The minute Dad told me Beeson came over to the hospital to haul stuff off for his swine I thought he might be mixed up in the dirty business.”

“Evidence is piling up bit by bit.”

“Looks as though we ought to be able to bring ’em to justice sometime soon.”

“But when you come to think of it, Kit, we haven’t got a single thing that would really convict anybody of anything.”

She looked puzzled and distressed. “That’s true,” she had to admit. “Just because some Bayshore Bakery bread was found on that sub, and because we saw a nailed-up box on a trash barge doesn’t prove anything about ‘who dunnit.’”

“And just because there’s an easy way to climb this pine that has a seat at the top doesn’t prove that anybody on this island is a spy.”

“Of course boys have been building seats in trees for hundreds of years. Maybe it was old Uncle Mose’s young ‘Massa’ when he was last here.”

“Not very likely. That seat was put up there so recently that the nails aren’t even rusty—and you know that doesn’t take long in this salty air. And what’s more, there’s a boarded up shield on the side toward the Marine Base. It’s so cleverly camouflaged you’d hardly know it from the ground—see.”

Only after Brad pointed it out did Kitty see the brown painted wood in the thick upper branches.

“If they are using light signals for subs out at sea the Coast Guard would surely see them from the beach,” said Kitty.

“They probably don’t use lights, but some other signal code.”

They walked slowly toward their landing place and Kitty let Billy run ahead to join her father and Hazel.

“He can hardly wait to tell them about climbing the pine,” Brad said.

“We can’t keep him from telling that,” said Kitty, “but let’s not mention how significant that pine seems. I—I’m afraid Dad may forbid my nosing about. I think he already has an idea I’m up to something.”

“Maybe it would be better if he did forbid your nosing about, Kitty,” said Brad unexpectedly. “No sense in your taking chances of coming out here to the marshes alone as you did yesterday.”

“Oh, I won’t do that again,” she promised. “Now that I know there’s real danger. But to be perfectly frank with you, Brad, I have an awful feeling that somehow Dad’s good name may be at stake in the dirty business that’s going on.”

“You’re not alone in wondering about that.”

“You know Hazel Dawson let it slip out the other day that Dad asked for this appointment, and she practically admitted that she asked to be sent here, too. I know now that Dad and Hazel are old friends, and are pulling together with one purpose.”

“To clear Chief Pharmacist’s Mate Dawson.”

“Exactly,” said Kitty. “And if the same complications still exist my own dear dad may get in bad.”

They were too near the others now for further discussion. As they joined the older couple Mr. Carter said, “You must have taken a long walk.”

“We really did,” Kitty told him.

“Billy has been telling us about his tree climbing.”

“He almost scared the life out of me,” Kitty reported. “Dad, you’ll really have to scold him again about this tree climbing.” However, she wanted to change the subject as quickly as possible and said, “Let’s eat! I’m starved.”

She had brought a luncheon cloth which they spread on the clean pine needles. Brad poured the iced tea from their thermos jug while she set out the sandwiches, cold ham, rolls, pickles and cookies. Food had never tasted quite so good to Kitty. As they ate, the pines made soft music in the gentle breeze, while the lowering sun painted long shadows on the woodland carpet. It seemed hard to believe that any evil deed could be done in so beautiful a spot, and that beyond these peaceful tide-washed shores a world was in chaos because of such intrigue everywhere.