No ringside rules here. One of the men was fat. Like a battering-ram, Johnny aimed his head square at that one’s stomach. The man went over with a groan. But not Johnny. Regaining his balance in a flash, he swung his good right arm to bring his heavy package squarely down upon a second man’s head.
The package flew from his hand. In a fair fight with one man, or even two, Johnny needed only two well-formed fists. As the third man sprang at him, he squared away to give him an uppercut under the chin that closed his jaws with the snap of a steel trap and put him out for a count of twice ten.
But at that instant something crashed down upon Johnny’s skull. The fourth member of the gang, he who had hovered in the shadows, had gone into action.
Ten minutes later when a detective threw the beam of his flashlight down that alley it fell upon a lone figure huddled against the wall.
He was about to pass on, thinking it was some poor wanderer fast asleep, when something about the person’s clothes caused him to look again. Two long strides and he was beside the prostrate form.
“Johnny Thompson, as I live!” he muttered after bending over for a look.
“And somebody’s got him! I wonder if it’s for keeps?”
Johnny was not out for good. But his return to consciousness was gradual. He began to hear things dimly as in a dream. There was a certain melody and harmony about the sounds, like a pipe organ played softly at night. This was shot through at times by a loud pop-pop-crack. Had memory returned, the boy might have thought they were fighting it out over his prostrate form, those men and the police.
Memory did not return. A drowsy feeling of painless well-being swallowed him up. He did not struggle against it, did not so much as wish to struggle. For all that, his eyes began seeing things—one more step on the way to full consciousness.
Like someone seen dimly in the clouds, as they do it in the movies, a vaguely familiar face appeared above him. A narrow, rather dark, tense face it was, with large eyes that seemed to burn with a strange fire.
“Joy—Joyce Mills,” his lips whispered.
“Yes, Johnny. We’re glad you’re back.”
“Back?” He pondered that last word. “Back to what?”
He began to feel things—a third step in his return to the realm of reality. The cold fog was gone, he knew that. The darkness too was gone. A subdued light was all about him.
“Back,” he thought once more, “back to what?”
Then, as if reading this thought, the girl said, “You are back in the shack on Grand Avenue. Don’t you remember?”
At that all his memories came flooding in. The shack, Drew Lane and Tom Howe, keen young detectives, his staunch friends; Newton Mills, the one-time derelict and veteran detective, and Joyce Mills, his vivacious, ambitious daughter who at times had proven herself the keenest detective of them all.
“The shack!” he exclaimed, making a brave attempt to sit up. “The shack! How—how wonderful!” He sank back dizzily. A sharp pain had shot across his temples.
When this pain was gone, he gave himself over entirely to memories. The girl’s face had vanished. Something told him, however, that she was seated close by his side.
Memories, gorgeous, thrilling memories! They would be with him until he died. He and this slim, dark-haired girl had not been lovers; much more than that, very much more. They had been pals. And as pals they had shared dangers. They had dared together and had won. Drew Lane had been with them, Newton Mills too, and Tom Howe. Men there had been who would gladly have killed them. Yet, standing side by side and fighting for the good of all, they had won.
“And now?” He said the words aloud.
“Now you have only to rest,” came in that same melodious voice. “Someone hit you rather hard on the head. That’s what you get for going it alone. You might have known we were still in Chicago. You did not look us up. You can’t go it alone. No one can—not in this world of today. We stand shoulder to shoulder, or we don’t stand at all.
“But now—” the girl’s voice fell. “Now you are here in the shack and Drew Lane is here. Others are not far away. You must rest.” Her voice trailed off into silence.
Johnny wanted to tell her he had tried to find Drew Lane at the shack and had failed; that he had not wished to go it alone, that he did appreciate his friends. But somehow the words would not come. His thoughts were all mixed up with dreams, dreams of eyes blinking from the wall, animated skeletons and mysterious packages. Truth was, he had fallen asleep.
* * * * * * * *
“I went to an auction.” Five hours Johnny had slept on a cot in the corner of the large room at the back of the shack. Now he was sitting up on the cot, talking eagerly. From beneath his crown of bandages his two eyes gleamed like twin stars. “I bought a library, a professor’s library, bought it at auction. Because he was a professor I had to get it back to him.
“I found his address. I went there. I was in the hall. Eyes gleamed at me. A skeleton danced before me, my skeleton. I—”
“Your skeleton?” Drew Lane, the keen detective, grinned at him.
“Sure it was my skeleton! Don’t you suppose a fellow knows his skeleton when he sees it?”
Drew Lane laughed, a low laugh, but made no reply.
“Then,” Johnny went on rapidly, “a girl opened the door, a taffy-haired, boyish sort of girl, and said she was sorry. It is a house of magic, the ‘House of a Thousand Eyes.’”
“Eyes?” Joyce Mills leaned forward eagerly. “What sort of eyes?”
“That,” said Johnny, “is what I don’t know. They seem to do things, those eyes, open doors and shut ’em, make coffee maybe, I don’t know. That’s why I’m going back. I want to know. Oh! Don’t I though!”
“So you’re going back?” Drew smiled.
A large man sitting before the fire, a man Johnny had never seen until that night, turned and looked at him in a strange way.
“Sure I’m going back. I’m to help them!”
“Help them at what?” Drew Lane was curious.
“Don’t know.” Johnny’s brow wrinkled.
Had Johnny been a little wider awake and a little more alive, he would have realized that the young detective and Joyce Mills were humoring him as they might a drunken man. “He was hit on the head in that alley—I found him and brought him here,” Drew was saying to himself. “He’s slightly cuckoo from that terrible bump he got. All this stuff he’s talking is sheer nonsense. He’s delirious. He’ll come round all right.” Joyce Mills was thinking much the same. Not knowing their thoughts, Johnny rambled on:
“We put some wires and things in a place nearby. Two queer ones live there, a long one and a short one. One carries a knife up his sleeve.”
“Nice friendly sort.” Drew grinned. “Was he the fellow that hit you?”
“Hit me?” Johnny’s hand went to his head. “I—I doubt that. It—it was a different place.”
“Of course,” he added thoughtfully, “they might have followed me all that time. But why? I hadn’t done anything to them—not yet.”
“Not yet? Are you going to later?” Joyce Mills gave him a look.
“Something tells me I am. Fellow gets hunches, you know that. That old professor interests me and so does that ‘House of a Thousand Eyes.’ He said there’d be danger. But who cares for danger?” Once more his hand went to his head. “They—they didn’t get me, not yet. But if I find that fellow who hit me with that iron bar—and I will find him, don’t doubt that—when I find him, well—” He did not finish.
“Did you see him?” Drew asked eagerly.
“Not out there in—”
“In the ‘Wild Garden of Despair’?” Drew laughed low. “That’s what they call West Madison Street. You didn’t see him there, did you?”
Drew was beginning to believe that Johnny was all right in his head after all.
“He’s the only one I didn’t see.” Johnny’s tone was thoughtful. “All the same, I have a notion I’ve seen him right enough. Unless I’ve got him all wrong, he sat beside me in that auction house and prodded me in the ribs, telling me to bid on a package I had no notion of buying.”
“Did you buy it?”
“Sure did.”
Johnny told of his experience in the auction house, then of the battle in the “Garden of Despair.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” Drew said slowly when the story was told. “The fellow who talked you into buying that package may have belonged to the gang that beat you up in that alley. Package was gone right enough when I found you. You’re sure there was nothing in that box but a broken lamp?”
“I wouldn’t swear to that.” Johnny dropped back to his place on the cot. “I didn’t untie it; just explored it with my hands.”
“It’s a toss-up,” Drew concluded. “Man who carries a knife up his sleeve, or the fellow who made you buy what you didn’t want. One of these hit you. Which one? Nice little riddle. We’ll help you solve it, won’t we, Joyce?”
“Yes, and let me in on it!” The large man by the fire stood up.
“Johnny,” Drew said, and there was a note of deep respect in his voice, “this is Captain Burns, a chief in the detective bureau. He—he seems to like being here in our shack now and then. But keep it dark,” he warned. “There are people who would like to meet the Captain here in a very unsocial way—boys of the under-world who’ve felt his steel. Right, Captain?”
“Maybe so,” the Captain rumbled. “Anyway, I wouldn’t want our happy retreat broken up.
“But this ‘House of a Thousand Eyes’?” He turned to Johnny. “Tell me more about it.”
“I will,” said Johnny with a broad grin, “when I have more to tell.”
Several hours later, having quite recovered from his severe headache, and apparently not so very much the worse for the terrible thump he had received on the head, Johnny sat before the open fireplace in Drew Lane’s shack on Grand Avenue. About that same fire were gathered his friends of other days, Drew Lane, Tom Howe and Joyce Mills. With them was the ruddy-faced, smiling Captain Burns, one of the best known and most feared officers of the law in that city.
If you have read “Arrow of Fire” you will know that the “Shack” was the one remaining structure of days long gone by when the east end of Grand Avenue—which, after all, has never been very grand—was at the edge of a sandy marsh where in the autumn one might hunt wild ducks.
This shack was now surrounded by tall warehouses. Hidden away and quite forgotten, it made a perfect meeting place for such as Drew Lane and his little group of crime hunters.
Drew Lane was still young. With his derby hat, bright tie and natty suit, he looked still very much the college boy he had been. Endowed with great strength, trained to the limit, with a brain like a brightly burning lamp, he was the despair of evil doers. Scarcely less effective was his team-mate, Tom Howe. Small, freckled, active as a cat, silent, full of thoughts, Tom planned, while, more often than not, Drew executed.
Joyce Mills, as you may know, had become a member of this group quite by accident. Her father, Newton Mills, after many years of distinguished service as a detective in New York, had at last fallen a prey to strong drink. Johnny and Drew had found him in Chicago drinking his life away. They had saved him to a life of further usefulness. Joyce, deeply grateful, and always at heart a “lady cop,” had cast her lot with them. And now here she was.
“But your father?” Johnny was saying to her at this moment, “where is he?”
A shadow passed over the girl’s dark face. “Haven’t seen him for two months.
“But then,” she added in a lighter tone, “you know him. Gets going on something and forgets everything else. He’ll show up.”
“Yes,” Johnny agreed, “he’s bound to.”
Johnny was thinking of the time the veteran detective had turned himself into a gray shadow and had, all unknown, dogged Johnny’s heels, saving him from all manner of terrible deaths. The time was to come, and that soon enough, when he was to wish the “Gray Shadow” back on his trail.
“Drew,” Johnny said, turning to his sturdy young friend, “I came here the moment I reached the city. How come the place was locked up and dark?”
“Been on a vacation; just got back.” Drew’s face lighted. “Went to the Rockies. Had some wonderful hunting—grizzly bears. Can’t say that’s more exciting than hunting crooks, though,” he laughed.
“Met a girl you’d like on the way back.” Drew Lane turned to Joyce. “Came on the bus. People in a bus, traveling far, get to be like one big family. Funny part was—” He gave a low chuckle. “She’s coming here to help her uncle. He has a store on Maxwell Street. Maxwell Street! Can you imagine?”
“Rags, scrap-iron, poultry in crates, fish smells and noise—that’s what Maxwell Street means to me!” Joyce shuddered.
“Just that!” Drew agreed. “This truly nice girl from somewhere in Kansas is going there to help in her uncle’s store. She doesn’t know a thing about Chicago. Thinks Maxwell Street is all the same as State Street, I’m sure. Believes her uncle’s store is anyway six stories high. Well, she’s in for a terrible shock. I feel sorry for her. Have to get round and see her—gave me the address. She asked me what I did in Chicago.” Drew chuckled once more.
“What did you tell her?” Joyce asked.
“Said I looked after people, lots of them.”
“And for once you told the truth,” Johnny laughed.
“But Johnny!” Joyce exclaimed. “Tell me some more about this ‘House of Magic’ you’ve discovered. Sounds frightfully interesting. We all thought you were a little delirious when you first talked of it. But now—”
“Now you begin to believe me.” Johnny’s eyes shone. “It’s a truly wonderful place.”
“Tell us about it.” Captain Burns insisted from his corner. “Heard about some of these things before. Shouldn’t wonder if they’d do things in the end to lift the load off us poor, over-worked detectives.”
“I’ll tell you all I know, which isn’t much,” Johnny agreed.
And here I think we may safely leave our friends for a little time while we look in upon Grace Krowl, the girl from somewhere in Kansas. She had found her uncle’s store on Maxwell Street. And how she had found it!
A slender mite of a girl, barely past her eighteenth birthday, Grace Krowl was possessed of an indomitable spirit and a will of her own; else she would not have been walking down Maxwell Street in Chicago hundreds of miles from her home, in Kansas.
The look in her eyes as she marched down that street where all manner of junk and rags are mingled with much that, after all, is pleasant and desirable, was one of utter surprise.
“A store,” she murmured, more than once, “a store in Chicago. And Maxwell Street. I am sure I can’t be wrong. And yet—”
Arrived at the street number written on a slip of paper in her hand, she stood staring at the narrow, two-story building with its blank windows and unpainted walls for a full moment. Then, a spirit of desperation seizing her, she sprang up the low steps, grasped the doorknob, then stepped resolutely inside.
Once inside, she stood quite still. Never in any place had she witnessed such confusion. What place could this be? Her mind was in a whirl. Then, like a flash, her eyes fell upon an object that threw her into action. With a startled cry, she sprang at a group of women.
She snatched a tortoise shell comb from a huge black woman’s hand just as she was about to try it in her kinky hair. She dragged a pink kimono from beneath a tall, slim woman’s arm and, diving all but headforemost, gathered in a whole armful of garments that an astonished little lady had been hugging tight.
By this time the battle turned. She found herself at the center of a concerted attack. The black woman banged at her with a picture frame, the tall, thin one jabbed her with sharp elbows and the little lady made a grab at her hair.
“Ladies! Ladies!” came in a protesting man’s voice. “Why must you fight in my store?”
“Fight? Who wants to fight!” the tall woman screamed. “Here we are peaceful folks looking over the goods in your store, and here comes this one!” She pointed an accusing finger at Grace. “She comes in grabbing and snatching, that’s what she does!”
“Store! Goods!” Grace’s head was in a whirl. How could they call this a store? It was a place where people robbed strangers,—stole their trunks and rifled them. Surely there could be no mistaking that. Were not the trunks open there before her, a half dozen or more of them? And was not her own modest steamer trunk among them? Had she not caught them going through her trunk? Were not the articles in her arms, the tortoise shell comb, the kimono and those other garments her very own? Goods? Store? What could it all mean? Her head was dizzy.
“A store,” she whispered to herself, “my uncle’s store in Chicago. He gave me this address. He must be in the business of stealing trunks and selling their contents!” She felt, of a sudden, all hollow inside, and dropping like an empty sack, half sat upon a partially emptied trunk.
“Miss! Why do you do this?” The bearded man who now spoke was almost apologetic in his approach. “Why do you do this in my store? Many years I, Nicholas Fischer, have sold goods here and never before have I seen such as this!”
“Nich—Nicholas Fischer!” The girl’s eyes widened. “Then you are Nicholas Fischer. And this is your store? STORE!” she fairly screamed.
She wanted to rise and flee, but she was half stuck in the trunk and her wobbly legs would not lift her out, so she said shakily:
“I did it be—because that’s my trunk. I—I am Grace Krowl, your niece who came from Camden Center, Kansas, to help you keep your store. But I won’t, I won’t stay a moment. I’ll never, never, never help a thief!”
“You?” The bearded man’s face was a study. Surprise, mortification registered themselves on his face. “Grace Krowl, my niece,” he murmured. “Her trunk! It is her trunk! A thief it is she says I am—I, Nicholas Fischer, who never stole a penny! Tell me, what is all this?” He stared from face to face as if expecting an answer. But no answer came.
And then a slow smile overspread his face. “Now I begin to understand,” he murmured. “It is all a mistake, a terrible mistake!
“Ladies,” he said, turning pleading eyes on the group of customers, “will you please put back into that little trunk everything you have taken out? And if any have paid for a thing, I will repay. It is my niece’s trunk. It is one terrible mistake.” He began rocking backwards and forwards like one in great pain.
“A thief, she said,” he murmured. “But who would not have thought it?” His eyes took in the half-empty trunks all about him, then he murmured again, “Who would not have thought it?”
Four hours later, just after darkness had fallen, this same girl, Grace Krowl, found herself walking the most unusual street in America, Maxwell Street in Chicago. She found it interesting, amusing, sometimes a little startling, and always unspeakably sad, this place where a strange sort of bedlam reigns.
Here, as she passed along, fat Jewish women held up flimsy silk stockings to her view, screaming, “Buy, Miss, buy now! The price goes up! Cheap! Cheap!” Here a man seized her rudely by the shoulder, turned her half around and all but shoved her into a narrow shop, where gaudy dresses were displayed. This made her angry. She wanted to fight.
“I fight?” She laughed softly to herself. “I, who have always lived in Camden Center! A sort of madness comes over one in such a place as this, I guess.” Recalling her fight earlier in the day, her cheeks crimsoned, and she hurried on.
“What a jumble!” she exclaimed aloud as she turned her attention once more to Maxwell Street. “Shoes, scissors, radios, geese, cabbages, rags and more rags, rusty hardware, musical instruments. Where does it all come from, and who will buy it?”
She paused to look at a crate of cute white puppies with pink noses. They, too, were for sale. Then, of a sudden, her face clouded.
“Can I do it?” she muttered. “Can I? I—I must! But other people’s things? So often the little treasures they prized! How can I?”
That she might remove her thoughts from a painful subject, she forced her eyes to take in her present surroundings. Then, with a little cry, she sprang forward. “Books! ‘Everything in books.’” She read the sign aloud. She disappeared through a dingy door into a room which was brightly lighted. The lights and the face that greeted her changed all. The madly fantastic world was, for the moment, quite shut out. She was at home with many books and with a girl whose face shone, she told herself, “like the sun.”
“A book?” this sales girl smiled. “Something entertaining? A novel, perhaps. Oh no, I don’t think you’d like ‘Portrait of a Man with Red Hair.’ It’s really rather terrible. One of the chief characters is a mad man who loves torturing people.” The girl shuddered.
“But this now—” She took up a well-thumbed volume. “‘A Lantern in Her Hand.’ It is truly lovely—the story of brave and simple people. I’m afraid we’re neither very brave nor very simple these days. Do you feel that we are?”
“She really is able to think clearly,” Grace whispered to herself. “I am sure I am going to like her.”
“I’ll take one, that one,” she said putting out her hand for the book. And then, because she was alone in a great city, because she was bursting to confide in someone, she said, “He buys trunks, trunks full of other people’s things. He takes the things out and sells them, other people’s things. They packed them away with such care, and now—now he takes them out, throws them about and sells them!”
“Who does?” The girl’s eyes opened wide.
“My uncle, Nicholas Fischer.”
“Oh, Nicholas Fischer.” The girl’s voice dropped. “But he is the kindest man! Comes here with books. He sells them to Mr. Morrow who owns this store—secondhand books. Perhaps they come from the trunks. And Mr. Morrow says he helps poor people, your uncle does, and he doesn’t let anyone know who it is.”
“But he buys trunks, other people’s trunks, and sells them!” Grace insisted.
“Yes, buys them at auction, I guess. Several people on this street do that. Express auctions, railway auctions, storage house auctions and all that. And you are to help him open them up!” she exclaimed quite suddenly. “You are to explore them? How I envy you!”
“Envy?” Grace stared in unbelief.
“But why not? Think of the things you may find. Diamonds perhaps; stocks and bonds; rare old coins and rarer old books; ancient silver plate. Just think of the things people pack away in their trunks! Letters; diaries; quaint old pictures. It—why it’s like a trip around the world!”
“But it—it seems so unfair,” Grace wavered.
“You’re not the one that’s being unfair,” the bright-eyed one reasoned. “Those people can’t have their things in those trunks. Perhaps they are dead. In some cases they lost their trunks because they were too poor to pay storage or express charges. You can’t well help that. So why think about it?”
Grace Krowl was to think about it many times and in the end to do something about it. That something was to draw her into a great deal of trouble. For the moment she left the little secondhand bookshop soothed, comforted, and filled with a desire to call again.
“No doubt you think Maxwell Street a terrible place,” the smiling girl said as she walked with her to the door, “and that your uncle’s store is the worst on the street. But I could tell you—” A shadow fell across her face. “I could tell you things about grand stores on a very grand street in this city of ours. Per—perhaps I will sometime.”
Grace was startled as she looked into her face. It had suddenly become gray and old.
“How strange,” she murmured as, dodging a pushcart laden with geese, she hurried away toward Nicholas Fischer’s place on Maxwell Street. “How strange. And how—how sort of terrible. And yet—”
The words of a great man came to her. “No situation in life is ever so bad but that it might be worse.”
* * * * * * * *
“What,” you may be asking by this time, “have the adventures of a girl from Kansas to do with Johnny Thompson and his friends?” The answer is: “A great deal.” In the first place, Drew Lane, having discovered this little lady while traveling in a bus, was not the sort to desert her in her plight. In the second place, an invisible finger of light moving across the sky was destined to join the fates of Johnny Thompson and Grace Krowl.
However, for the time, we will return to Johnny and his friends.
During the course of their conversation about the open fire in Drew Lane’s shack, Captain Burns took from his inside pocket a small package which proved to be five photographs pasted securely upon a strip of stout cloth in such a manner that they might be folded together in the form of a small book. “Ever see any of these?” he said to Johnny after spreading them out upon his knee.
For a moment Johnny studied the pictures thoughtfully. Then he gave a sudden start. “That,” he exclaimed, pointing a trembling finger at the third in the row, “is the man who sat beside me in the auction—who got me to bid in that package!”
“Are you sure?” The Captain’s tone was tense.
“Can’t be a doubt about it. See that scar like a cross? Couldn’t well miss that, could I? He’s the one all right. And, though I could never prove it, I’d swear he was the one who struck me from the dark.
“And, by all that’s good!” Johnny sprang to his feet. “I’ll get that man! See if I don’t! No man can strike me from the shadows and get away with it!”
“Well, I guess that makes your friend Johnny here one of us. That right, Drew?” the Captain rumbled.
Drew Lane nodded his head.
“Sit down, son,” said the Captain. “I’ll tell you what those pictures mean. Drew here and Tom Howe carry those pictures with them always. So does Joyce, though I don’t know quite where—in her stocking perhaps.”
Joyce smiled.
“We joke at times,” the Captain went on, “but this affair is no joke. Those men are our assignment. They are to be our assignment until every man of them is behind bars or in his grave. You may join us if you will.”
“I will.” Johnny’s voice was low.
The Captain extended his hand as a solemn pledge.
“You have a right to know,” he went on, “just what men you are after, and what they have done.
“They are hardened criminals, every one, public enemies of the worst sort. A little more than a month ago they sealed their fate—they killed a policeman, the finest copper that ever walked a beat.”
For a time the Captain stared at the fire. “My boy,” he said at last, in a different voice, “I’m going to take you with me somewhere, sometime. The finest little family you ever saw!” he rumbled low as if talking to himself.
Then, with a sudden start, he repeated, “They killed a policeman. Of course a policeman’s no better than any other man. But with us there’s an unwritten law that no officer shall go unavenged.
“That wasn’t all they did, this unholy five. They went to a banker’s home at midnight and terrorized his family until morning. Man’s wife was in ill health. But of course—” The Captain’s voice rumbled with scorn and hate. “Of course you couldn’t expect these robbers to take note of a little thing like that! What do they care for women and children?
“When morning came they took the man to his bank. They compelled him to open the vault. They took the bank’s securities, more than two hundred thousand dollars worth. Then, of course, they went away.
“By some oversight, the bank’s insurance had been allowed to lapse. Because of this heavy loss the bank was forced to close its doors. It was a working man’s bank. Thousands of common folks lost their savings. These five men—no doubt they had a fine time with the currency they took!
“But the bonds—” His voice rose again. “The bonds are hot. We’ve kept them hot. They dare not sell them. And we’ll get them back yet, see if we don’t!
“And those are the men we’re after!” he added a moment later. “Are you still with us?”
“More than ever!” Johnny’s voice was husky.
Once again the Captain offered his hand. “You’re a lad after my own heart,” he rumbled. “I’ve two places I want to show you, and I’m sure you’ll like them both.”
Grace Krowl, the girl from Kansas, found plenty of things to occupy her thoughts as she sank into a chair in one of the two small rooms allotted to her on the upper floor of her uncle’s store in Chicago.
“A store in Chicago.” She laughed low. Her uncle’s store in Chicago. What dreams had she not dreamed of this store? Chicago was a grand city. His store must be a grand place. She had of late pictured it as a six-story building; pure fancy, for he had never written about its size or importance. In fact, he had not written at all until she had written first and asked for a position as clerk in his store. He had been married to her mother’s sister. The sister was dead.
When Grace had needed work badly she had written, and he had replied briefly: “I can give you work at fifteen dollars per week and board.”
So here she was. And her uncle’s store was little more than a hole in the wall. No counters, no glass cases. Things piled in heaps, and all secondhand; glass dishes here, bed covers there, dresses, sheets, towels, everything. And in the corner, like so many skeletons, a great pile of bruised, battered and empty trunks.
“He buys trunks, other people’s trunks.” She shuddered afresh.
Then the words of her new-found friend of the bookstore came to her. “Diamonds, stocks and bonds.” These were dreams. “But rare old books, wonderful bits of Irish lace, why not?” Perhaps, after all, she could drive away the ache that came in her throat at the thought that someone who truly loved these things had lost them because they were poor.
She thought of her own trunk and laughed aloud. What a sight that must have been—she snatching at her prized possessions and those other women poking her and banging her on the head!
Of course it had all been a mistake. She had come to Chicago by bus and had sent on her trunk by express. The van that went for her trunk had also picked up a half dozen others which her uncle had bought at auction. The trunks had become mixed. The lock had been pried off her own and the contents were being sold when she arrived. Everything had been retrieved except a pearl-backed brush she prized and a hideous vase she abhorred.
“That did not turn out so badly,” she assured herself. “Perhaps everything will come along quite as well.” And yet, as she took a handful of silver coins and one paper dollar from her purse and added them up, her face was very sober. She was a long way from home, and there could be no retreat.
The place she was to call home was above the store. Too tired and preoccupied to notice at first, she received a shock when she at last became conscious of her surroundings. The room in which she sat was a tiny parlor, all her own. Off from that was a bedroom. Everything—furniture, rugs, decorations,—was in exquisite taste and perfect harmony.
“Contrast!” she exclaimed. “Who could ask for greater contrast? Rags below, and this above!” She stared in speechless surprise.
One thing astonished her. Opposite the window in the parlor was an oval, concave mirror, like an old-fashioned light reflector. It was some two feet across.
“I wonder why it is here,” she murmured. She was to wonder more as the days passed.
When she had prepared herself for the night’s rest, she snapped out the light, then stood for a brief time at the open window looking out into the night. She was on the second floor of her uncle’s small building. Before her were the low, flat roofs of some one-story shacks. Looking far beyond these, she saw squares of light against the night sky. These she knew were lighted windows of distant skyscrapers. There were thousands of these windows.
“What can they all do at night?” she asked herself. “Struggling to make money, to get on, to keep their families housed and fed,” the answer came to her. Then, strangely enough, her mind carried her back over the trail that had brought her to this city. It had been an interesting adventure, that long bus ride. Six of the passengers, including herself, had ridden hundreds of miles together. They had become like a little community.
“It was as if these were pioneer days,” she told herself now. “As if we were journeying in covered wagons in a strange new land.” One of these long distance passengers, as you will know, had been a young man. In his golf knickers and soft, gray cap, he had seemed a college boy. But he was not. “Out of college and at work,” was the way he had expressed it.
“What work do you do?” she had asked.
He had hesitated before replying. Then his answer had been vague. “Oh, I just look after people.”
“Look after people?”
“Lots of people. All sorts.” A queer smile had played about the corners of his mouth.
She had not pressed the question further. But now, standing there looking out into his city at night, she whispered, “His name was Drew Lane. Wonder if I’ll ever see him again? I hope so. He seemed a nice boy, and I should love to know how he looks after ‘lots of people—all sorts.’”
She looked again at the many lighted windows. Suddenly those who toiled there seemed very near to her. She found a strange comfort in this.
“I, too, must do my best,” she told herself. “God help me to be wise and strong, helpful to others and kind to all!” she prayed as she gave herself over to sleep.
She was wakened at dawn by a whisper. At first, so closely did dream life blend with the life of day, it seemed natural that she should be listening to this whisper. When she had come into full consciousness she sprang out of bed with a start.
“Good morning!” The words came in slowly, a distinct whisper. “We hope you are happy this morning. Cheerio! That’s the word!”
“When you have dressed,” the whisper continued, “won’t you just step out into the little parlor and take a seat by the table? It will be good to have a look at your shining face.”
“Someone in my little parlor! I don’t like it. And that whisper!”
She dressed hurriedly, then stepped through the door. What sort of person had she expected to see? Probably she could not have told. What she did see was an empty room.
Greatly astonished, hardly knowing why she obeyed the whispered orders, she took a seat by the table. Instantly the whisper began once more:
“Ah! There you are! I am talking to you over a beam of light. I am a mile away. I have interesting things to tell you. You are going to aid me.”
For a brief space of time the whisper ended. The girl’s mind was in a whirl. “Talking down a beam of light!” she thought. “What nonsense! Going to aid that whisperer?” Here surely was some strange mystery.
For some time Grace Krowl remained at her small table awaiting some further message from the mysterious whisperer. No further message came. Had this whisper told the truth? Was he a mile away? She could not believe it.
On descending to the floor below, she found her strange uncle prepared to leave his odd store.
“Today I go to an auction,” he said to her with a smile. “Today there is nothing to unpack. Not many people will come. They come only when there are trunks. Tomorrow there will be trunks, perhaps many trunks.”
“Trunks,” Grace thought with an involuntary shudder.
“Today,” her uncle went on, “Margot will tend store.” He nodded toward an aged woman bending over a pile of soiled garments. “Today you are free. You may make yourself at home in your new place.”
All that day in her little parlor, Grace had one ear open for the Whisperer. She heard nothing. He spoke, apparently, only at dawn. The day was, for her, quite uneventful.
The same could not be said for our young friend Johnny. Late that day, with a narrow bandage still about his head, he returned to the “House of Magic.” And, almost at once, adventure struck him squarely between the eyes.
“You are just in time!” Felix, the inventor’s son, greeted him. “I have not tried that new thing. We will begin at dusk, in an hour or two in a captive balloon,—”
“A captive balloon!” Johnny felt a thrill course up his spine.
“On the Fair grounds,” Felix added. “There is one over there. The grounds are deserted. I have permission to use the balloon. I have had it inflated. No one will bother us there.”
It is better sometimes to do things where there are crowds. Felix was to learn this. There is safety in numbers.
At the gate of the deserted Fair grounds Felix presented his pass. They were admitted.
“Sent the equipment over in a small truck,” he explained to Johnny. “Rather heavy.”
“What equipment?” The words were on Johnny’s tongue. He did not say them. Just in time he recollected that he was to look, listen, help all he could and not ask questions. “I’ll be told all I need to know in good time,” he assured himself. Had he but known it, that night he was to need wisdom not written in any book.
The streets they were passing through now were strange. The falling darkness gave to everything an air of mystery. Here some great man-made dragon opened its mouth as if to swallow them, there a tattered sign fluttered and cracked in the wind. “The great Century of Progress!” Johnny whispered. “Here thousands swarmed along the Midway. Now all is still. Now—