The one chosen by Johnny that night led through a soap factory. There the air was heavy with the clean, perfumed scent of soap.
A man in a shabby sheepskin coat received him in silence, motioned him to a place at the corner of a loaded elevator, clanged an iron gate, and set the elevator to sinking into the earth.
There is something deeply depressing about being lowered beneath the natural surface of the earth. Whether it be a well, a mine, a cave or a tunnel, it is all the same. Johnny Thompson was not free from this feeling of depression. Indeed, so powerful was its influence that it was with the utmost difficulty that he resisted an impulse to go straight back to the surface. As you will see later, he was to have reason to regret resisting this impulse.
However, once he had accustomed his eyes to the weird green and red lights of the place, and his ears to the great din when a train passed and the vast silence when there was no train, he found himself feeling more at home than he had imagined possible.
“One can see,” he told himself, “why men might even enjoy working here. The air, circulated by powerful fans, is pure. It is not hot in summer nor cold in winter. There is no glaring light and no real darkness.”
He was taken to the portion of the tunnel which he wished to inspect. This portion was the one nearest the museum.
“There will be no trains on the spur leading to the museum,” the trainman told him. “On that track you’ll be safe enough. If you wait for the green lights, you’ll be fairly safe on other tracks.”
After imparting this information the engineer threw on his switch and went rattling away, leaving Johnny to the silence of a night in a tunnel.
Night in a tunnel. What strange life exists here to come creeping boldly about at night. A black bat, snapping his teeth at who knows what insect, goes whirring by. A mouse comes creeping forth to munch some morsel that has fallen from a workman’s lunch box. Two squealing rats go scurrying away.
“Night,” Johnny murmured. “Night, half darkness, bats and rats. And who knows what greater perils?” He shuddered, then hurried on. In his right hand he gripped a large revolver, a relic of one of the raids made by Drew Lane.
“I’d hate to have to fire it,” he murmured. “Wow! What a rumpus it would kick up down here!”
He did not know that ere the night was over he would hear an explosion which would make the sound of his gun seem but the low pop of a pea-shooter.
CHAPTER XIX
A NIGHT’S GRIM BATTLE
Johnny’s journeys on foot that night were long and varied. In the spur leading to the museum there were no lights. He was obliged to depend upon his electric torch. This cast weird shadows. Every now and then he fancied he detected a crouching figure ahead. Each time as he advanced it proved to be only a pile of supplies in a niche in the wall, or a padlocked tool box.
“Probably no one anywhere,” he grumbled to himself. “Great waste of time.”
He was wrong. There was someone.
Coming at last to the end of the museum spur, he examined the elevator carefully. He did not attempt to ascend to the museum as Curlie had done. Instead, he turned and retraced his steps.
On the return journey he did not exercise the caution resorted to on coming to the museum. It did not seem necessary. He was looking for someone who might be in hiding. The person had not been found. It was natural to suppose that on his return he would find no one.
In this world one must learn that nothing may be taken for granted. With his flashlight pointed at his toes, Johnny had not gone a hundred paces on his return journey before, to his vast surprise, a figure sprang up from the darkness directly before him and went sprinting down the track.
So astonished was he that for a full ten seconds he stood motionless. This gave the fugitive a start.
“Must have been following me,” Johnny’s mind registered at last. “Wonder why?”
The next thought was: “He may be my man!” This startled him into action. Throwing his light far ahead, he saw the man plainly, even his face, for just then he looked back.
It was a wild sort of face, with a stubby beard, unkempt hair and no hat.
“That,” he thought, “is not my man. And yet—a day and a night in a tunnel. Who knows?”
At that he sprang away after the fugitive.
From the museum to the main line of tunnel is three eighths of a mile. The man was not a good runner. Johnny was. He gained. Foot by foot, yard by yard, rod by rod, he shortened the distance between them. Now he was five hundred feet behind, now three hundred, now two hundred, now—
But suddenly, as they neared the main line, the fugitive stopped. He appeared to place something in the center of the track. Then at redoubled speed he raced on.
At that moment Johnny seemed to hear a voice cry:
“Stop! Go back! Back!”
Was it a human voice? Was it a superhuman voice, or was it no voice at all? In the light of that which followed Johnny will always believe it to have been a human voice.
At any rate, he obeyed. He stopped.
It was well that he did. Ten seconds had not passed when the whole world appeared to have been blown into fragments.
Johnny was thrown twenty feet, to go crashing against the wall. He rolled over once, then lay quite still.
For a short time the place remained in utter silence. Then there was a sound; but Johnny did not hear it. It was a most ominous sound. It increased in volume as the seconds passed. It was the sound of rushing water. Above the tunnel, between it and the surface of the street run the great water mains that quench the city’s thirst and protect it from devastating fires. The explosion had torn away the thin tunnel wall and had broken one of these water mains.
What would follow was a thing prearranged and quite automatic. Great iron doors at the end of the museum spur would close. This would confine the flood to the spur. The main tunnel would be safe from flood. In time the motor would be shut off and the main mended. Not, however, until the museum spur had been filled with water, perhaps for hours.
In the meantime Johnny lay where he had fallen. He was quite still. Was it the stillness of death?
Before the low rising tide of water, rats, a whole army of them, went scurrying away. Some raced over the boy’s unconscious form. Still he did not stir. And Johnny had always held rats in great abhorrence.
Creeping like some vile reptile, the water advanced. Now at a depth of two inches, it reached the boy. It rose.
And now at last the prostrate form appeared to stir. High time, too!
Did he throw out an arm? No. It was but the water lifting the arm.
So this was the end. And such an end for so gallant a soul! Ever striving to be of service. Always on the side of the right. Forever fighting ignorance, cupidity and crime. What a pity! Well, they had got him at last. Put him on the spot, perhaps. Who knows?
The water became deeper. The silent form, even in its defeat, appeared to struggle against death. It rose and sank, rose and sank.
But what is this? Comes a splashing. A figure is approaching, an odd figure, one clothed from head to toe in a long gray coat and a gray cap. His face is all but hidden by this cap and a gray beard.
Had Johnny’s lips moved, they would have said:
“The Gray Shadow.”
They did not move.
And now began one of the grimmest battles ever fought in the dark. From this spot to the main tunnel was but half a block. But there the door was closed. There appeared to remain but one hope, the museum end.
Seeming to realize this the strange being, who appeared possessed of great strength, lifted the boy to his shoulders and began making his way through the flood to that distant goal.
The distance was long. The water rose rapidly. Now the water rose to his knees, now to his thighs, now to his chest. He had covered but half the distance when he was lifted off his feet and obliged to swim.
Undaunted, he struggled on; yet what hope was there? The water now filled half the tunnel. The end could be but a few moments away. To reach the museum was impossible. Yet the gallant Gray Shadow struggled on.
The space above the water narrowed. Now it was four feet, now three, now two. Death by drowning; what must it be in such a place?
At last the hands ceased to move. Was the battle over?
No. Not yet.
Into that darkness, from somewhere far above, stole a very feeble ray of light. What was it? Whence its origin? There were no other stations. The museum was far away. And yet here was light. One look, and the Shadow redoubled his efforts.
He had understood. This light was a ray of hope. Nor was hope entirely vain. A fresh avenue lay above him. When a new building is to be erected in the city and the excavation is going forward, a narrow chute is sunk to the tunnel. Down this chute the excess earth is run into cars and is thus carried away without cluttering up the streets.
One of these chutes lay just above the Gray Shadow and his burden. Could he but drag the unconscious form into the chute they would be safe for the moment.
To tell of the struggles of this lone figure there in the night; how he tried five times to drag the body to safety, only to fail; how at last he succeeded in bringing his burden into the chute; how he struggled up and up; how the slippery clay more than once defeated his aim and threatened ultimate catastrophe; and how at last just as dawn was breaking, he emerged, an unrecognizable figure, dragging one quite as unrecognizable, would require many pages of print.
It is enough that he did emerge triumphant; that he did find water in a pool and bathed the boy’s face as best he could; that he felt the pulse quicken, saw the eyes open; noted the approach of workmen to their day of toil, and then slunk once more into the shadows where he appeared to belong.
CHAPTER XX
“WE WILL DIG HERE”
The forces of nature are never at rest. Man makes his mark upon the earth. Nature destroys it. A day may be required for the task, a year, a generation, a thousand years. It is all the same to nature. She wins at last and the man and his works are forgotten.
Shortly after Curlie Carson and the college girl left the island, a storm arose; not a violent storm, but a storm nevertheless. Storms are ever changing the face of nature, not alone in the sky, but on the earth as well. This storm set the waters of the lake into motion. Waves, with increasing violence, beat on the sandy shore that lay close to the breakwaters on which Curlie and the girl had stood. Tiny particles of sand were loosened from the mass and thrown high in air. The north wind caught them. Like a kitten with a ball, it teased them, tossing them about. In time it had a million of these racing about at its will.
But now one particle, tiring of the play, dropped into a shovel mark and stayed there. Others followed and soon there was no mark. Some lodged in a footprint and in time the footprint joined the shovel mark in oblivion.
When Curlie and the girl, still troubled over the fact that the mysterious package had not been found, and that Curlie was responsible for the loss, and still wondering what those men had meant to bury and if after all they had buried it, arrived at the spot where the men had labored, they found it flat as a floor. Not a trace of any digging could be found.
“No one dug here,” said Grace Palmer in disgust. “We must have made a mistake.”
“No,” said Curlie, positively. “This is the place. Back here in the rocks is a piece of driftwood with a nail in it. I scratched myself on the nail.
“Here,” he said with a laugh, “is the scratch, and there the nail.”
“We will dig here,” he said a moment later.
There was no mistaking the cause of the pick-up in their heart beats as Curlie threw out the first shovelful of sand. The girl had stayed up until the wee hours, reading in her father’s library. She had found there a description of the crown jewels of Russia. Curiously enough, the thing that had interested her most was the description of a tiny train, made of platinum and set with diamonds, that was made to fit snugly in a large golden egg. This she knew was a perfect model of the one time private railway train of the Czar. “Only a plaything for a prince,” she told herself. “But what a plaything!”
Now, as Curlie dug, her hopes rose and fell. So, too, did Curlie’s, for the success or failure of this enterprise meant much to him. True, his youthful employer had sworn to stand by him; but this did not remove from Curlie’s shoulders the responsibility of having allowed a priceless package to escape from the hands of the law and come into the possession of those who openly regard themselves as enemies of the Government he gladly served.
For a long time the shovel uncovered nothing. They were beginning to despair when at last it touched something hard.
“At last!” Curlie breathed hard.
“If only it is!” The girl’s eyes shone.
A moment of furious digging and then they uncovered—not the parcel-post package, but something long and slim, done up in oilskin.
“That,” said Curlie in disgust, “may interest some one. It does not interest me.”
He threw it down on the sand.
The girl took the trouble to unwrap it, but was hardly more impressed when she found it contained a very old and much tarnished telescope.
“Oh, well,” she sighed, replacing it in its oilcloth covering, “we’ll take it along. May interest father.”
“We may as well have a look at that thing over there,” said Curlie with a sigh. “I don’t know of anything more exciting to do just now.”
They made their way toward the Planetarium which in the light of day lost most of its mystery.
At their request the aged professor made the sun, moon, stars and planets do their little part in their artificial universe.
The Planetarium, as you doubtless know, consists for the most part of a great white dome. Inside this dome one may sit with comfort while a great bug-like affair made of steel and glass, winking and blinking through its scores of white eyes, reproduces for him the starry heavens and throws in the planets, the moon and the stars for good measure. It was in this dome that the boy and girl had strayed in their flight of the night before. They had chanced to arrive just as the professor was testing some new form of projector.
With the light of day outside, all this seemed rather commonplace. But when they showed the professor what they had found beneath the sand, he fairly sprang at them.
“Where did you get that?” he demanded.
“In the sand.” Grace stared at him.
“What sand?”
“Out there.” She pointed out the window.
“It was stolen early last evening.” He took it from her as if afraid it would disappear again.
“This,” he said, handling it with real affection, “is one of the oldest telescopes in existence; perhaps the oldest. When you think how much the telescope has done to widen man’s knowledge of the universe, you will know how priceless it is.
“And now,” he added, “since you have done me and this institution I serve a very great service, what can I do for you?”
“One little thing,” the girl smiled. “Find us the crown jewels of Russia. You’ll know them when you see them. There is a tiny platinum train set with diamonds that is kept in a golden egg.”
The professor stared at her as if he believed she had lost her senses. But when the full story was told over a cup of coffee in the professor’s study, he readily enrolled himself as one of that growing band who were pledged to unravel the mystery of the missing parcel.
The human mind behaves in a strange manner at times. Here were a boy and a girl who had come to a man-made island to search for stolen treasure. They had happened upon men who were burying an ancient telescope, and had been frightened away.
Returning next day when they might have searched the whole island at their leisure, they unearthed the telescope, returned it to the custodian, had their morning coffee, and went away.
The island with its grove of young cottonwoods, its many breakwaters, its drifting sands and its three shacks of driftwood built by men of strange names and no reputation, remained quite unsearched.
CHAPTER XXI
ONLY A VOICE
Johnny Thompson’s recollection of that affair in the tunnel will always remain decidedly vague. A wild face, a fleeing form, a voice in the dark, a terrific explosion, and after that darkness and silence.
Some workmen saw a tall, mud-bedraggled figure emerging from the deep gash in the earth which formed the setting for their day of toil. By the time they had found Johnny, this mysterious figure had vanished.
Johnny was taken to the Jefferson Street First Aid Station. There it was found that he was suffering from nervous shock and a bump on the head. A warm room and a steaming cup of coffee did much to restore him. As for the bump, it might interfere with his hat for a day or two; otherwise it was not serious.
“Where was I?” he asked of the nurse, when he felt himself capable of straight thinking.
“You were found in a hole where they are preparing to build a skyscraper.”
“But I was in the tunnel.”
“The tunnel?” The nurse had not heard of it.
Johnny told her about it. “It’s down forty feet underground,” he ended. “How could I have come to the top?”
“Probably swam,” the nurse laughed. “You’d better forget all about it.”
Johnny did not take her advice. He puzzled over the affair for some time. Later fortune would lead him to the spot where he had been found. After watching the workmen shovel earth into the hole that led to the tunnel, he would guess that he had come up through that hole. His manner of coming would remain a mystery for some time.
Late that afternoon Drew Lane brought Johnny a fresh suit of clothes. When he had dressed they went together to the shack which you will recall as their home.
There they spent an evening in quiet talk. Drew Lane said things were no better at the police court. He and Tom Howe were kept standing around like old men with rheumatism, or racing around on errands like messenger boys.
“Marking time,” he sighed. “Doing nothing of real use. All our knowledge of crime and criminals going to waste. And still the crime wave goes merrily on. Three killings so far this week.
“Tom is thinking of asking for a transfer to outlying districts where he can walk a beat. Says there he can at least help little children over dangerous crossings, and that’s something.
“But I won’t do it.” He rose to pace the floor. “I’m going to stick it out. Things will change. You’ll see. We’ll get a break. We—”
He came to a sudden pause. He listened. The radio had been on—music, and they had not been conscious of it. But now, as on that other night, some one broke in with the words:
“I am the Voice.”
“The Voice.” Drew wrinkled his brow. “What voice?”
“Listen!” Johnny held up a hand.
They did listen. For fifteen minutes not a sound was heard in the room save this voice coming in from the air.
This night the Voice told the people of the city what he thought of certain men they had elected to office: the mayor, certain aldermen, the heads of boards. He charged them with graft and corruption, of winking at thefts from the city treasury.
“Those are hard words!” was Drew Lane’s comment when the Voice had ended. “But every word is true. How does he get his facts, I wonder?”
“That fellow,” he added after a time, “will get himself bumped off. They’ll put him on the spot.”
“How can they, when he’s only a voice?”
“Only a voice? Who’s only a voice? They’ll find him.”
“I don’t believe it. Do you know,” Johnny smiled, “the other night he talked about you and about Tom Howe, too? What he said then was true, too; only he didn’t go very far. If I only could, I’d tell him; but I can’t. He’s only a voice.”
“Only a voice,” Drew Lane mused. “Only a voice, and with many a great message to deliver to the countless thousands who listen in every night. What an opportunity! And yet, only a voice? It can’t be done. I tell you, Johnny, they are devils, these crooks! They’d hunt you out and put you on the spot, kill you. Know what I mean?”
“I hope they don’t.” Johnny’s words were almost a prayer.
CHAPTER XXII
THE NAMELESS ONE
Next evening Johnny met some one who thrilled him to the very center of his being. And yet, when he thought of it quite soberly in the shack afterward, he could scarcely tell why.
He came, quite unexpectedly, upon “The Ferret.” It was in a little underground restaurant where the walls were of imitation stone and all the dishes of a curious Dutch pattern.
So much absorbed was “The Ferret” in something a youth about Johnny’s age was saying that he did not notice Johnny at once. When at last he did see him he sprang to his feet with an exclamation.
“What a lucky meeting! Let me introduce my—” He broke off abruptly, appeared quite confused, then ended rather lamely, “Well—er—a friend who is very much one of us. He has, you might say, a burning desire to be of some service to his city.”
Johnny scarcely needed to be told that this youth was consumed by some great desire. He could read it in the two smouldering coals of fire that were his eyes. Indeed, as he recalled the meeting later and tried to summon a mental picture of this new-found friend, he could visualize only a pair of glowing eyes, that was all.
Johnny was invited to join them at their evening meal. What was said during that half hour Johnny does not recall. That it was unimportant is to be assumed. That which followed was important. The nameless youth invited him for a walk. And what a walk it turned out to be!
At a rapid stride the stranger led the way straight out of the business section of the city into a wilderness of apartment houses. Nor did he pause here. On and on they went. A mile of streets filled with children, of apartments where home lights were glowing. Here, through some windows they caught glimpses of little circles gathered around the evening meal, of happy groups about a piano, or some elderly couple seated reading beside a lamp.
A mile of this, two miles, three. Few words were spoken. “And this is what he calls a little walk!” Johnny all but groaned aloud.
Still there was no pause. Four miles, then five and six. Johnny was beginning to believe it was a practical joke, when suddenly the strange youth turned upon him.
“Johnny Thompson,” he said, with his eyes fairly glowing in the night, “have you seen those homes?”
“Yes, I—”
“How many were there?”
“Thousands.”
“How many honest people live in them?”
“Most people are honest.”
“That’s it!” The boy’s tone was deeply earnest. “Here is a city filled for the most part by honest folks. Yet it is ridden by crooked politicians and grafters; it is in the grip of the criminal element. This grip cannot, or at least has not been shaken.
“Do you know what I believe, Johnny Thompson?” He gripped Johnny’s arm. “I believe that this world was made for good, honest, generous, clean-minded people to live in, and that when it has become impossible for such people to live without being poisoned by moonshine, robbed by grafters or shot by holdup men, it is time for some of those who are honest and good and clean to die that their city may be made right again.”
“So that was it,” thought Johnny. “A sermon.
“Mighty impressive one, at least. And I believe he is sincere.”
“That’s all right,” Johnny replied a moment later, thinking things out as he went along. “It’s well enough to take a sporting chance, to join hands with those who endeavor to enforce the law, to help them try to work the thing out.
“But just to throw yourself in the face of certain death—if that’s what you mean—”
“I mean just that.”
“Well, then,” Johnny drawled, “all I have to say is, life is mighty sweet to me. I like to see the sunrise over the water in some deep-shaded bay, to see it set amid the golden glory of the clouds, to see the stars come out one by one.
“I love music the best of all. I like to hear children sing and see them go skipping over the grass.
“No, my friend,” he added soberly, “I’m willing to take a chance. But when it is no longer a chance, when death becomes a grim certainty, I—I’m afraid you’d have to leave me out.”
The youth said not another word. They boarded a street car and went rattling back to the heart of the city. All the way the nameless one sat with chin on breast. The fire that was in his eyes appeared to have burned out.
And yet, as they left the car he exclaimed with renewed heat: “All the same, I am sure there is no other way!”
Johnny was to recall this statement long after, and marvel at it.
“Johnny,” the stranger said, as they stood at the parting of the ways, “Johnny,” his tone was very serious, “tell me about these two young detectives. Are they grandstand players?”
“Grandstand players!” Johnny’s tone showed his astonishment.
“Some one has said they are. I wouldn’t want—well, no matter what I wouldn’t want to do. But you know them. Tell me the truth.”
“Grandstand players!” Johnny was indignant. “If you were held up by a man whose criminal record for robbery and killing is as long as your arm; if you were off duty and armed only with a small pistol, while he had a regular cannon; if you tackled him alone in the dark, with no one to watch the play; if you fought him for ten minutes; if he got his gun to your head and pulled the trigger, but it failed to go off; if he bit you to the bone, fighting like a demon; if you won at last; if you got your man, would you call that grandstand stuff?”
“No,” said the boy solemnly, “I wouldn’t.”
“Drew Lane did that. And Tom Howe is not one inch behind him. If all the coppers in this town were as square and as fearless as Drew Lane and Tom Howe, this city would be clean.”
Johnny told the youth with the burning eyes much more about his two pals of the police department. To his surprise, he found him taking notes. This, too, he was to recall long after.
“Thanks. Er—thanks a heap! You’ve helped me no end,” the boy said at last. “Good-night.” And he was gone.
“That,” said Johnny, as he walked slowly down the boulevard and across the river, “is one queer chap. He’s up to something, I’ll be bound.
“But then, if he wasn’t on the up and up, ‘The Ferret’ would never have introduced him to me. And then again, I wonder if ‘The Ferret’ ever makes a mistake.”
CHAPTER XXIII
THE FACE IN THE NIGHT
Johnny Thompson possessed a robust body. Proper food, plenty of sleep, plain living and clean thinking had kept it so. Few there are who could have endured his harrowing experience in the tunnel without a prolonged visit to the hospital.
Johnny did not entirely escape. On the second day following, a low fever set in. His doctor ordered him to bed until the fever abated. It lasted for an entire week. Such a week, for a person endowed with a boundless supply of nervous energy, was a great trial.
It did, however, give him time for thinking. And his thoughts were long, long thoughts.
Often he found them returning to the youth with the burning eyes. Over and over again he seemed to hear him say: “It is time for some who are honest, good and clean to die.”
Curiously enough, it was while listening to the Voice, which came on exactly at ten o’clock each evening, that he thought oftenest of those words. There was something about the earnest tones of that mysterious unknown voice that reminded him of the nameless one. “And may he not be the same person?” he asked himself one night.
But when he thought of it more soberly, the thing seemed absurd. “In a city of millions, how could it be?” he asked himself. Then he dismissed the matter from his mind.
There were other matters requiring consideration. And these made him restless, impatient to be up and away. Some of his friends were in trouble. Curlie Carson had opened a registered mail sack; had made himself liable to arrest; might even yet be arrested and thrown into prison by the Federal authorities if the priceless package were not found and returned.
“And how is it to be found?” he asked himself. “Find the man who took it and make him confess, to be sure. How simple!”
Strangely enough, while Johnny was still confined to his bed and might well have been thinking of this very matter, Grace Palmer received a letter which for a time puzzled her greatly.
Addressed to her at her home, it contained the simple statement:
“The man you are looking for will be at the turn of the breakwater on the island at ten o’clock P. M., Wednesday, this week.”
The note, which was unsigned, reached her on Tuesday. She racked her mind for its meaning. She had often gone to this man-made island, but never in search of a man.
“Except—” Her heart beat double time. “Except on that night with the young Air Mail pilot.
“I wonder—”
She went to the phone and got Curlie on the wire. She told him of the note.
“It’s a chance,” he said, growing quite excited. “Shall we go?”
“Yes.” She did not hesitate. “I’ll bring father’s gun.”
“Gun? Oh, certainly!”
“You know,” she supplemented, “I am really a good shot. And we may need it.” They had reason later to regret not having used it on the offensive instead of on the defensive as they had feared they might be obliged to do.
They went to the island half an hour early. In a narrow space, just wide enough to afford them a place of concealment, jammed between two huge squares of limestone with another as their resting place and a fourth forming a sort of fortification before them, they waited while Curlie’s watch ticked the half hour away.
The night was chill. There was no moon. For all that, a sort of half light reflected from the city’s street lights made it possible for them to see a moving object at some distance.
At exactly the hour of ten an object appeared on the narrow stretch of sand that lay beyond the breakwater.
From Curlie’s position it was impossible for him to tell whether it was a man or some prowling dog. He believed it to be a dog.
The girl had placed a big, blue, long-barreled revolver on the rocks before them. The manner in which her nervous fingers gripped it, together with the rapid beating of her heart which he could feel through her shoulder pressed against his own, told him plainer than words that she believed it to be a man.
Some twenty feet of tumbled rocks lay between them and the sand. Having crossed the sand, the figure proceeded to clamber over the rocks. They lay directly in his path. Curlie drew in a long breath. With her free hand, the girl gripped his arm.
“She’s not really afraid,” he told himself in some surprise. “A college girl, a professor’s daughter, too, and a real sport!”
There was little time for further thought. The man, if man it was, was coming fast. Now he had covered a quarter of the distance, now half. Now—
Curlie’s lips were formed for the word, “Stop!” when one of those curious bits of circumstance which so often bring our lives to an abrupt turn, came to pass. The searchlight from some boat out on the lake played for just a fraction of a second on the spot.
In that split second Curlie saw that the figure was that of a man; saw, too, that he was short and round shouldered, that his hair was curly and that his left ear was entirely missing.
So much for well trained eyes. No man may hope to be an Air Mail pilot unless he possesses such eyes.
A split second, then the light was gone. But what was far more startling, the figure, too, was gone.
“He—he’s not there!” the girl whispered.
Curlie placed his hand gently over her mouth.
For five full minutes, with the girl’s vibrant shoulder against his own, he lay motionless. When he spoke it was still in a whisper:
“You keep the place covered with the gun. I—I’m going over the rocks.”
For a moment her hand on his arm held him back. When her grip relaxed, he went over—and found not a trace of the man!
“What a pity!” he exclaimed. “We had him in our power. Now he is gone. We should have covered him and made him surrender.”
“Yes,” she agreed, “we should have. But who would have thought he would disappear?”
“The light. I know. By the way,” he chuckled, “what did we mean to do?”
“Yes. What? But was he the man?”
“Who knows?”
“And if he was, what could he be doing here?”
“Check,” said Curlie.
“Who wrote that letter, and why?” she asked again.
“Double check,” Curlie laughed. “Let’s go home.”
“Do you think that was the man who took the package?” Grace Palmer asked as they rode home.
“I think it may have been. I didn’t see his face clearly. It was too dark that morning. But his figure was much the same.”
“You had better tell your friend, Johnny Thompson, about this. Describe him. His ear was gone.”
“Cut clean off.”
Curlie did tell Johnny. Johnny told some one else, and something worth while came of it.
CHAPTER XXIV
A VISIT FROM “THE FERRET”
Johnny did not lack friends. Those who visited him during his brief illness were an interesting lot.
On the third night, just after darkness had fallen, “The Ferret” appeared. With him was the nameless youth, he of the burning eyes.
“The Ferret” seemed nervous and ill at ease. Johnny thought this strange; it was not at all like him. In the light of what took place later it was not to seem so strange.
“This lad,” “The Ferret” explained, walking the floor the while, “wants to know more about the city, about men who break the law, and those who are appointed to defend her honest citizens. Particularly he wants to know more about your friends, Drew Lane and Tom Howe.”
There was no subject closer to Johnny’s heart than the valor of his two young detective friends. So, while “The Ferret” slowly paced the floor, he filled the ears of the eager youth with tales of their daring.
“There! There!” “The Ferret” exclaimed at last. “You have told him enough. Knew too much before. You’ll get him killed. He—”
The youth shot him a look, and there the conversation ended. The extraordinary pair left soon after. Alone with his thoughts, Johnny meditated upon many matters of more or less importance.
“There is,” he told himself, “an indefinable relationship between those two. It is as if they had known each other always, but never too well; and yet as if an unbreakable bond linked them together for life. It is strange, for ‘The Ferret’ is a middle aged man; the other only a boy.”
That night he listened as always to the mysterious Voice of the air.
This night that earnest Voice made his remarks more sweeping, more pointed and scathing than ever.
“This city is filled with traitors. And some are traitors who know it not.” Thus the voice of the unknown one rang out into the night, and a hundred thousand, listening, thrilled they knew not why.
“When an officer of the law,” he went on, “accepts money from a bootlegger, a gambler or any other law breaker, he is a traitor to the city he has sworn to serve.
“But these are not the only traitors.” The voice of the speaker was tense with emotion. “Everything goes out over the air.” This is a slogan of radio workers everywhere. Something was going out this night, memorable words that would not be forgotten.
“There are rich traitors,” the Voice went on. “When a rich man pays large sums to crooked politicians so that his taxes on his vast holdings may be reduced, he is a traitor.
“There are poor traitors, thousands of them. You may be one. If you have paid some one in your ward ten or twenty or forty dollars to have your taxes reduced, you, too, are a traitor.
“If taxes are unjust, fight them. Fight them in the courts. If the courts fail you, rise up and fight with rifles and machine guns. But never, never stoop to corruption to betray the city you should love.”
These were hard words. They were spoken in a tone that told of an earnest desire to serve. There were those listening who found themselves repeating those words of a great Master:
“Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killeth the prophets and stoneth them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not.” These said, “This city is no different from Jerusalem. This young prophet, too, will be killed.”
Many there were who became very angry. Rich men and poor men, politicians and crooks, were together in this one thing: they had been called traitors. And traitor is a hard word.