The Rope of Gold

Night was settling down over the mountain side. Already the valleys far below were lost in darkness. The massive fortress which the dwellers on the island of Haiti have always called the Citadel hung like a mountain cliff above a boy who, hot from climbing, had thrown himself on a bed of moss at the foot of a gnarled mahogany tree.

"Whew!" he exclaimed softly to himself. "Even three thousand feet above the sea here in Haiti it's hot. Hot and dry. Fellow'd think--"

He broke short off to stare. A curious thing was happening. Out from a small dark opening some forty feet up the perpendicular wall of the massive abandoned fortification, something quite indistinct in the twilight had moved and was creeping slowly down the moss-grown wall.

"Like a snake," he told himself, "only, here in Haiti, there are no snakes to speak of and certainly not one as long as that. Only look! It's down to the window below; a full twenty feet.

"That window--" He caught his breath, then began to count. "One, two, three, four,--

"That's the window of Curlie's 'laburatory' as he calls it. It--why, it's a plot! I should warn him. It--"

He half rose, preparatory to a race up the mountain side. Then he settled back to his seat on the ground.

"Couldn't make it," he told himself. "Ground's too rough. Boulders there big as a house. Too far around, take a full hour to come in from the rear. By that time, if anything really serious is to happen, it will be over.

"Besides, if worst comes to worst,--" He put out his hand to grip a six foot bow. It was a good yew bow. The arrows at his side were tipped with triangles of steel sharp as razor blades. Down here in Haiti he had used these for hunting wild guinea hens and wild pigs.

"But if worst comes to worst," he told himself, settling back against the trunk of the tree, "it's an easy shot. I wouldn't miss. And the person, whoever it may be, would not go on."

You who have read our other book called "Johnny Longbow" will know that his thoughts were true when they assured him that he would not miss; for Johnny Thompson, by long and careful application to the task, had mastered the difficult art of archery. And this boy, resting here at the edge of a tropical forest in that mysterious island of Haiti, was none other than your old friend Johnny Thompson. How he came here; what strange stroke of fate it was that brought him into company with the slim and supple young inventor, Curlie Carson, does not, for the moment, matter.

For some time after that Johnny's mind was busied with many thoughts. The thing that dangled there from window to window, was, he thought, a rope. Later he decided it must be a ladder, a rope ladder of henequin. The natives of Haiti are expert spinners and rope makers. From the tough fibers of the henequin leaf they twist the finest cord and stoutest rope.

"But why is he there? And how did he get there?" He was thinking of the mysterious being whose invisible hand had let down the rope ladder. "We've been about the place for five days and have seen no one. It's been quiet here--too quiet. Ghostlike. Fellow can hardly sleep nights in such a monstrous bat roost with its hundred years of mystery and tragedy hanging over his head, and it so silent.

"And here," he told himself, flexing his arms that they might be fit for any emergency, "here we come upon someone who apparently has evil intentions against Curlie. Of course, it may be only curiosity. And who wouldn't be curious? Got me guessing. All that stuff--batteries, boxes, canvas bound packages. Three donkey loads. You'd think he was setting up a high-power wireless station. But he hasn't, as yet. Hasn't even erected an aerial."