Arrived at the mail box, he put up both hands, as one will; one to lift the metal flap, the other to drop the letter. All this was true to form, except that he dropped two parcels instead of one.
As he turned about he was seized from behind. A car glided to the curb. Three men sprang out. He was overpowered, gagged and thrown into the car.
Just as the motor purred a shadowy figure sprang from the darkness, to leap upon the spare tires which this car carried, and cling there as the car sped away.
“Well,” Johnny thought grimly, “they have me; but they won’t get the bullets. The trial will go on.”
The next instant he received a shock. As the light from a passing auto flashed upon them, the man at the wheel of the car shifted his position and Johnny saw his hand. He was the man with a hole in his hand.
As the car sped swiftly westward, Johnny realized that he was, in the language of gang-land, being “taken for a ride.”
His heart stood still. He felt a sudden chill pass over him and the terror of it all came to him. To-day, to-morrow, perhaps the next day his bullet-ridden or fire-charred body would be found beside some deserted road. That was how they did it. They were possessed of no heart, no compassion, no conscience. “Dead men tell no tales.”
No greater falsehood was ever uttered than this. Dead men have told many tales. More than once a dead man’s tales have brought men to the gallows. But gangsters have not learned this. They are a stupid lot.
One fact consoled Johnny. These gangsters wanted something. They wanted the telltale bullets that were capable of sending their fellow gangster, him of the masked face, to the electric chair or to prison for life. These they would have at all cost. They undoubtedly expected to find them on Johnny’s person.
“They will question me,” Johnny told himself. “I can stall; hold them off. They may torture me!” He shuddered and turned his thoughts to other channels.
He thought of that slim, dark-eyed girl, Joyce Mills. Drew had told him all about her. He was sure he would have enjoyed knowing her. Frank, friendly, fearless, she would have made a great pal. He regretted not having seen her. Had she gone to her cousin’s in Naperville? Somehow he doubted that. She had said she could help her father; that shewould. She had seemed very determined about this. Was she trying to help? How? He had seen no sign of it.
At that moment they approached the end of a street. A blank brick wall loomed darkly before them. Of a sudden, above the blur of white caused by the car’s lights, there appeared a spot of vivid red which formed itself into an arrow of fire, then as quickly lost form and vanished.
At the same instant the car swerved sharply to the right and missed an iron post by a narrow margin.
The man sitting beside the driver seized the wheel with a curse.
The driver muttered something about the “arrow of fire,” then settled down once more to steady driving.
The thing puzzled Johnny. At the same time it cheered him. He had not forgotten the words of Drew Lane: “Justice is an arrow of fire.” It seemed to him that he felt the presence of someone hovering near him, someone who cared and would help if such a thing were possible.
The shadowy creature that had sprung out to attach itself to the spare tires when the car started, still clung there.
The car sped on and on into the night. Past low narrow cottages interspersed with apartment buildings, past long rows of modern apartments, across countless railway tracks, in and out among great looming factory buildings, they glided.
Into the open country where the air was heavy with the scent of weed dust and fresh cut grain they went, and the end was not yet.
A stretch of broad paved road ended in gravel and dirt. The car bumped and swung from side to side.
Farmhouses, drowsy with night, flashed by them.
At last, with a lurch, they swung off the road and entered a narrow lane and arrived in the back yard of a house that appeared abandoned.
The grass, damp with dew, was up to their knees as they alighted.
“No more likely place could be found for dark deeds!” was Johnny’s mental comment. Once more he shuddered.
Still he did not wholly despair.
Pushing him before them, the gangsters approached the house.
At the same time a dark shadow, that might have been a dog, a wolf, or a skulking human being, glided from the back of the car toward a great barn that loomed away to the right.
Arrived at the door of the house, the man with the hole in his hand gripped the doorknob and shook it. The door did not open. Producing a small flashlight, he turned it on the door.
“Padlocked,” he grumbled. “Tony’s been here. Got no key.”
“Let’s go to the barn,” suggested a gruff voice.
Without another word they turned and started for the barn.
Had they flashed their light against the one small window on that side of the barn, they might have seen there a frightened, staring, but determined face.
When they entered the large room that had doubtless at one time been a granary, the place was deserted.
Had they looked carefully they might have noted that the dust on the stairway leading to the loft had recently been disturbed by fleeing feet. They did not look. Their minds were concentrated upon the telltale bullets.
“Now, young man.” It was Volpi, he of the hole in his hand, who spoke. “Where are them slugs?”
“Slugs?” said Johnny.
“Bullets then. Them bullets?”
“I have no bullets. I use no gun. I shoot only with bow and arrow.”
“Ah, yes! With those you are skillful!” Volpi’s words carried infinite hate. He knew what had happened to Jimmie McGowan. Jimmie had been useful to him in many ways. And now, who knows? Ah yes, he must have those bullets at any cost.
“Look here, you!” He advanced upon Johnny in a threatening manner. “You know what slugs I mean. Them slugs that this New York bull’s been makin’ evidence with. You’re goin’ to give ’em up!”
He did not wait for Johnny to give them up. He stepped up and thrust his hand into the boy’s inner coat pocket.
A look of blank astonishment overspread his face. When he had gone hurriedly through all the boy’s pockets, he stood back to stare into Johnny’s face. His fingers worked convulsively. His small eyes became buttons of staring blue. It seemed that he would spring at the boy and tear him to pieces.
At that instant a curious thing happened. The room, lighted as it was only by a small flashlight, was more than half in darkness. Into that darkness there stole a strange red light. On the floor, at the gangster’s feet, there appeared the flaming arrow of fire.
“O-oof!” The man sprang back as if from a ghost. “The arrow!” he mumbled. “The arrow of fire!”
As on those other occasions, even as he spoke, the apparition vanished.
Whatever may have been the gangster’s intentions in the beginning, they had been changed by the arrow of fire. Leading his men into a corner, he began to talk to them in whispers. Was he recounting to them in detail the history of that mysterious arrow? No one but they will ever know.
The person who leaped upon the back of the car as it went speeding out of Grand Avenue, who left it only as it arrived at the abandoned farmyard, and who now found himself in the mammoth hayloft of that barn, was none other than the new bus boy of the Seventy Club.
You may have guessed that this person was not a boy, but a girl, and that her name was Joyce Mills. This is true.
The thought of going to Naperville, of lolling about in white duck skirts on summer porches or playing tennis with well-to-do and self satisfied suburbanites had been abhorrent to her. The love of adventure was in her blood.
More than that; she had come to this city with the expectation of finding her father in jail. Instead, thanks to a boy, a young detective, and a sergeant of the force, she had found him free and employed as he should be at the task for which God had created him. She wanted above everything else to prove herself of service to those who had brought so much joy into her life. She wished to assist in the capture of Jimmie McGowan and his gang.
This was not the first time she had masqueraded as a boy. More than once, while living in the Sicilian quarters of New York, she had dyed her face brown, donned trousers and haunted dark places of crime, as a newsboy or a city waif.
Having secured the secret card, she had donned her disguise and had succeeded in getting herself employed at the Seventy Club.
She had been able to shadow the gang. She had witnessed the capture of the crook, Jimmie McGowan, had learned of the intended reprisal, had ridden to the shack on the back of the gangster’s car, and had seen them spying there.
There had been no opportunity for warning Johnny. She had ridden on the car to this deserted spot in the hope that here she might be of some service.
Her best course at present appeared to be that of leaving the barn and going for help.
But how was this to be effected? There appeared to be but two entrances to the hayloft: the trapdoor which led to the room now occupied by the gangsters, and a large one very high up, through which in days of farming the hay had been drawn. Both of these were too dangerous. The way seemed blocked.
As her eyes became accustomed to the light, however, she saw a ladder leading to the very peak of the barn. It ran up one end, and was only a dozen paces from the spot where she stood.
The floor was strewn with chaff. Her light footsteps, as she moved toward the ladder, made no sound.
With one hand on the first round of the ladder, she paused to remove her shoes and tie them about her neck.
Nimble as a squirrel, she darted up the ladder to the very peak of the barn. A small opening there gave her a view of the overgrown pasture that lay dizzy depths below.
The moon was out. She could distinguish every detail of the scene beneath her. Beyond the narrow pasture was a field of wheat in the shocks. These shocks cast dark shadows.
“Like so many tombstones in a cemetery,” she told herself with a shudder.
She measured the distance to the ground, and then shook as with a chill.
“No use,” she told herself. “I’m trapped.”
Turning about, she tried to peer into the dark depths of the hayloft.
As she did so, she became conscious of a beam that lay directly before her. This beam, which ran the length of the barn, was suspended by iron bars at a distance of two feet from the peak. It formed a track along which, in haying time, a car carried great bundles of loose hay to all parts of the loft.
As she looked she saw that stray moonbeams lighted this track at regular intervals.
“Cupolas,” she told herself.
She had noted that curious little structures, perfect little barns, some four feet square and six feet high, had been placed along the ridge of the barn. These were in truth cupolas. Their sides were made of slanting slats. These let in air, and kept out rain. They were for the purpose of ventilation. New made hay needs air.
She studied this beam with dawning hope.
“If I could climb out over that beam,” she told herself, “I could swing up into the first cupola. I might then be able to reach the roof and at last the ground.”
It was uncertain, but worth the risk.
Gripping the beam with both her strong hands, she let go her feet and, swinging in midair, made her way hand over hand along the beam until she was beneath the cupola.
Now for swinging up. This seemed easy. It was difficult. Was it impossible? Twice she swung her legs up. Twice she failed.
Her arms were tiring. If she failed again could she make her way back to the ladder? She doubted it. And to fall!
One last desperate endeavor. A toe caught. She swung the other foot over. She clung there a moment. Then, after executing a revolving motion, she lay panting atop the beam, beneath the cupola.
Ah! How sweet life was! How cool the air from the cupola that fanned her cheek! How good it all was!
But there remained much to be done. She roused herself; dragged herself to her knees, then stood erect in the cupola.
At once there came a wild and noisy whirring of wings. Pigeons were sleeping there.
She caught her breath. Would the gangsters hear? Would they find her? She wore the bus boy’s brown uniform. They would understand. She would never return alive. And life was so sweet!
The pigeons were gone. There came no other sound. If the gangsters had heard they had thought nothing of it. Who would?
The slats of the cupola fitted loosely into grooves. She had only to lift them out. She took out five and laid them down without a sound. Then she crept out into the moonlight.
One look told her that at the end farthest from her, the barn ended in a lean-to. The eaves of this lean-to reached within ten feet of the ground. Close by these eaves was an old straw pile.
“What could be sweeter?” She straddled the ridge of the roof, then hunched herself along until she was at the end. There, by clinging to the edge, she let herself down to the roof of the lean-to. Down the lean-to roof she glided. Then, with a spring, she landed on the straw pile.
She slipped, did a somersault, then tumbled into a patch of weeds.
She was just picking herself up from this patch of weeds when she caught a slight sound to her right. She looked. There was a man, a guard. He had turned. He was looking her way. Without doubt he had heard a sound as she struck the straw pile. But had he seen her?
Her heart pounded against her ribs as she crept deeper into the mass of protecting weeds.
In the shack on Grand Avenue, Drew Lane stirred uneasily in his sleep. He awoke at last. With that feeling which so often comes to us in the middle of the night, that something is not right, he sat up in bed.
He stared about him. Johnny’s cot was empty. He could not understand. He threw on a light. Johnny was not in the room. He went to the door and looked out. He was nowhere to be seen.
The creaking of the door awakened the veteran detective.
“What’s wrong?” he asked sleepily.
“Johnny’s gone.”
“Gone?”
“Nowhere to be seen.”
“Gone!” Newton Mills sprang out of bed. He began to walk the floor.
“Gone! I should have warned him. That’s the trouble with a boy. There are so many things he must be told. Judgment; that’s what a boy lacks. Judgment comes only with years of experience. Gone; and the bullets gone with him! They have him. They have the bullets. The case is lost!”
“I wouldn’t say that exactly.” Drew Lane spoke in a quiet, even voice. “He must have left the shack for something. They must have got him. That is unfortunate. Will they get the bullets? I doubt it. Johnny is an unusual boy. I haven’t lived with him all this time without knowing that.
“And if the bullets are gone, we have a witness, Rosy.”
“If she lives.”
“She must live. Life is too beautiful for such a girl to part with it so soon.”
“And yet it has ended for many at her age.”
The two men fell into silence.
“I’ll call up headquarters,” said Drew at last. “The night chief will send some men over to question old Mask Face, who says his name is Jimmie McGowan. They’ll make him tell where the gang hangs out. We’ll get Johnny back yet.”
Jimmie McGowan was one person who talked only when he chose to talk. The men from the Detective Bureau learned nothing of any importance from him.
* * * * * * * *
In the meantime Joyce Mills, in her bus boy costume, was creeping through the weeds down a one-time cattle lane that led away from the barn toward the wheatfield.
Once she reached the field, she rose on hands and knees to crawl toward a wheat shock. She was nearing the dark shadow cast by one of these shocks when a shot rang out.
Dropping flat in the shadows, she waited and listened, breathless. She heard the blood beating in her temples. It was like the ticking of a watch in the dark.
Creeping around the shock, she started toward another. She had just reached the second shadow when she heard a gruff voice say:
“What you shoot at?”
“Something dark moving out there. Dog, maybe.”
“Wolf, maybe.”
“Might be.”
Again the girl’s blood raced. Would they come to search for her?
An idea occurred to her. These shocks were like miniature tents. The bundles were long. They were set two and two, one against the other. The shocks were long. There was room for a slim person like herself to creep in there without disturbing a single bundle.
No sooner thought than done. Wriggling like a snake, she worked her way into the center of the shock. She lay there, head upon one arm, quite still.
The day had been warm. The night air was chill. The earth beneath the shock and the shock itself were still warm. How cosy it was! What a sweet place for a few pleasant dreams. The night was well on. She felt the need of sleep.
“But I must not sleep!” she whispered fiercely. “I must get away. Somehow I must get to the city.”
For half an hour she lay there wide-awake. No further sound came to her. Without doubt the dark spot had been forgotten.
She crept from beneath the shock. She crawled from the shadow to another shadow, and another, until the barn was far away. At last she sprang to her feet and ran for a cornfield.
Once in the cornfield she was safe. The corn was above her head. Ten men on horseback could not have found her there.
By following a row of corn she came at last to a fence and a road.
She tramped the road for an hour. Then a truck driver gave her a lift. He stared at her strange costume, but thought of course that she was a boy.
He was on his way to the city. Did his truck carry flour, melons, green corn, or moonshine? The girl will never know because she did not ask. She curled back in one corner of the seat and went fast asleep.
In the granary room of the abandoned farmstead, Johnny was being questioned by some very angry men.
“You had the slugs. You can’t deny that!” Volpi exclaimed with an oath. “What have you done with them? Did you drop them in the car? Where are they?”
Johnny was puzzled. What should he say? He might tell them the whole truth, that he had dropped them with his letter into the mail box back there in the city. As far as the bullets went, this would do no harm. They could not possibly return to the mail box and rifle it before the collector arrived and carried the package away. But would not this hasten his own death? Once in possession of the whole truth, they would not hesitate to kill him.
His reply was: “I do not know where the bullets are.”
In this he told the exact truth. For who can tell at what hour mail is collected from street boxes at night? Or is it collected at all between midnight and 6:00 A.M.? Johnny did not know. Perhaps the package still lay in the box. Perhaps by this time it was in a branch post office.
“You don’t know!” The gunman sprang at his throat. A companion pulled him back.
“Not so fast, Mike,” he grumbled. “Plenty of time. He will tell.”
He whispered a few words in Volpi’s ear. Volpi nodded.
The man left the room. Johnny thought he heard him jimmying a window to the house.
No doubt he interpreted the sounds correctly. The man returned presently. Then they all marched to the house, pushing Johnny before them.
Arrived at the house, they thrust Johnny unceremoniously into a dark cellar and barred the doors behind him.
The place was cold and damp; full of evil smells. There were rats. He could hear them scurrying about as he made his way over the uneven floor.
There were two windows. These were high up and very narrow. If he pried one of them open could he escape? The thing seemed dubious. Soon enough he discovered that his captors had left nothing to the imagination. The windows were heavily barred on the outside.
“Been used as a prison before!” His blood went cold at the thought of the dark deeds that might have taken place in this evil smelling and gloomy hole.
Feeling his way back to the stairs, he crawled part way up, then sat down. He would not dare sleep because of the rats. On the stairs he was safest from them.
He heard the gangsters rattling the lids of a stove.
“Going to cook a meal,” he told himself.
He did not expect to be fed. He was not.
Very soon he began to realize that there was something besides food in the house. There was intoxicating drink. The party became noisy. Moment by moment the hubbub increased in volume until it was a revel.
After that, by degrees, it subsided. “All drunk and gone to sleep,” he told himself. “What a time to escape!”
Search as he might, he could find no means of breaking the bars of the windows. The plank door was impregnable. At last he gave up and seated himself once more on the stairs to await the dawn.
What occupied his thoughts during these long hours? One might well be surprised. He was thinking of dark, shadowy forests, where the ferns grow rank and the pheasant rears her young. He was seeing a deep, blue-green fishing hole where black bass lurk and great muskies fan the water as an eagle fans the air. Who can say what relief one may find, from surroundings that are terrible, by contemplating that which is beautiful, though very far away?
* * * * * * * *
Drew Lane had just returned to the shack from a disheartening search for some clue that would lead to a knowledge of Johnny’s whereabouts, when an apparition burst in upon him; a person he had known for a girl, but who wore torn and soiled boy’s clothes, and whose complexion had turned a very dark brown.
“You are Joyce Mills!” He stared at her in amazement.
“Yes,” she admitted, dropping into a chair. “And I know where Johnny Thompson is.”
“You know—”
“Listen!” She held up a hand.
In just three minutes by the clock, she had sketched the whole story.
“But do you know the exact way to this farm?” Drew demanded.
“I—I’m sorry, I do not. I—I fell asleep. I—”
“Would you know the barn if you saw it?”
“Oh, yes. Surely. It is a large red barn. The paint is old. There are three cupolas. Five slats from one cupola are gone. I took them out myself.”
“Good! Here’s where the police use an airplane. You’re not afraid to fly?”
The girl sprang to her feet.
“Sit down. Drink this.” He poured a steaming cup of coffee. “Eat these.” He slammed a plate of doughnuts on the table.
He dashed to the phone. One call, then another, and another.
Joyce had just swallowed her third doughnut when Drew seized her and whirled her, dirty rags and all, into a squad car.
“CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!” went the gong. They were away.
Half an hour later, in an aviation suit three sizes too large for her, the girl saw the earth drifting away from her as she rose toward the fleecy clouds that floated lazily in an azure sky.
* * * * * * * *
That morning the mail collector on Grand Avenue was not a little puzzled over a package which was quite properly addressed to a Johnny Thompson of a certain address on Grand Avenue. All the package lacked was postage. The place addressed was but two blocks away. Since he would be passing it in a very short time, he might easily have dropped it there. This, however, would have been contrary to postal regulations. He carried the package to a branch office. There a clerk made a record of the affair. After putting in the mail a card notifying Johnny Thompson that a package mailed to him without sufficient postage lay in that office, subject to his order, he threw the package in a pigeonhole and promptly forgot about it. And that, as you will know, was the package of incriminating bullets which had caused great commotion in more than one quarter.
Had it not been for the anxiety that filled their hearts, the airplane flight would have been an affair crowded with joy for Drew Lane and Joyce Mills. The day was perfect. A faint breeze wafted fleecy clouds about them. The fields, squares of gold and green, dotted here and there by white houses and red barns, were an ever changing picture.
Straight as a crow they flew for twenty miles. Then swooping down low, they began to circle. With never tiring eyes Joyce searched the earth beneath her for the object she sought.
Barns aplenty passed beneath them, but nottheone.
Joyce was beginning to despair when, upon entering their fourth great circle, she spied a barn with a gaping cupola.
Gripping the young detective’s arm, she pointed away to the west. He understood. They circled back. The barn loomed within their view. He studied her face, read there the look of joy; then he understood again. He directed his plane at full speed back toward the city airport.
An hour later, the fastest squad car in the city’s service sped westward toward the suburbs and into the open country. It carried six burly detectives, one machine gun, two riot guns and four rifles. Crowded between Drew Lane and Herman McCarthey, still clad in her much damaged brown suit, rode Joyce Mills.
* * * * * * * *
At the abandoned farmhouse the gangsters, drowsy from the poison they had taken into their systems the night before, slept late. When at last they awoke, they were in a quarrelsome mood.
Johnny, still sitting on the stairs, hungry, thirsty, longing for sleep, heard them, and trembled.
After half an hour of raving and tramping about the house, the men calmed down and appeared to hold a consultation.
They approached the cellar door. As one heavy bar was thrown back, Johnny dropped noiselessly to the cellar floor.
“The end has come!” he told himself. At the same time he resolved to sell himself as dearly as possible. These were wicked men who richly deserved to die.
The second bar was removed. The door was thrown open. Mike Volpi appeared on the threshold. In one hand, supported by a strap, he carried a three gallon glass jug. The jug was filled to the very top with some colorless liquid. Still carrying the jug, the man made his way unsteadily down the stairs.
“See here!” He spoke with the fierce growl of an angry dog as he looked at Johnny through bleared eyes. “You know where them slugs are. You are going to tell!”
“I do not know where they are,” Johnny answered in a steady, even tone.
His tone angered the gangster.
“Har, har!” he laughed. “Did you hear him? He don’t know where them slugs are. Well, that’s good! He don’t. Nobody does. Well then, they don’t tell no stories.
“No—nor you don’t neither!” He turned fierce, glistening eyes on the boy. “You’ll tell no tales. Do you hear me?
“Know what’s in this jug?” He laughed a fiendish laugh. “It’s alki—alcohol you’d call it. Alki’s hard to get these days. But we don’t grudge the cost. We’re going to give you a mighty sweet death, we are.
“Some cheap ones would use kerosene. Bah! Kerosene stinks!
“But this. How sweet it smells!” He removed the cork and put it to his nose. “Mm! How sweet! Pity to waste it!
“But there, we ain’t tight. We ain’t. We’ll use it, every drop!
“Know what?” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “There’s a patch of woods over yonder a mile. Forest Preserve. Campers make fires there. Nobody notices smoke. We’re going to light a torch there, a flamin’ torch. You and this alki. Do you understand?”
Johnny did understand. His heart paused. They meant to soak him in alcohol, then burn him alive. He had heard of such things, but had not believed them.
“It’ll be a sweet death,” the half drunk man raved on. “Such a sweet death. All alki, hundred per cent. A sweet—”
He broke off short, to stare at the wall. His face went white. His lips remained apart. His hands began to tremble. The glass jar dropped to the floor. It broke into a thousand pieces. The alcohol filled the air with a pungent odor as it flowed across the floor.
On the wall before Mike Volpi had appeared the arrow of fire.
“The arrow of justice!” he murmured thickly.
The next instant there came the sound of other breaking glass; a window was smashed from without. A voice said: “Don’t move! Stick ’em up! Quick now! We’ve got you covered—machine gun!” It was Herman McCarthey’s voice. The squad had arrived.
By way of emphasis a machine gun wentrat-tat-tat, and three bullets spat against the wall. The gunmen acknowledged a master. Up went their hands.
Johnny was not long in securing their weapons. Then they were marched, single file, out of the cellar, and each one handcuffed to a police officer.
On searching the house, besides other articles they found a number of ladies’ garments, all new and in original packages. These, beyond doubt, were part of the loot taken from some store. Joyce Mills was glad enough to accept the loan of some of these, and so embraced an opportunity to become once more a lady.
The gangsters were taken to the city in the squad car. Two police officers commandeered the gangster’s car. There was room for Johnny, Drew and Joyce in the back seat. So they rode happily back to town.
“Do you know,” said Drew, “I heard good news this morning. Rosy is past danger.”
“Good!” In one word Johnny uttered a prayer of thanksgiving.
“Say!” he exclaimed. “We will get the reward, won’t we? Two thousand!”
“Between us,” said Drew.
“My share goes toward sending Rosy and her mother back to Italy.”
“Between us,” Drew answered again.
For a time they rode on in silence. Joyce Mills was fumbling with something beneath her jacket.
All at once there appeared on the back of the seat before them a faint red arrow. It flamed up in a peculiar manner.
Drew and Johnny stared. Joyce laughed a low laugh.
“It’s a trick,” she explained. “I’ve used it before. Sometimes you can do with a trick what you can’t do with a cannon. You can frighten gunmen. They are very superstitious.
“It is really very simple.” She displayed a long black tube. “One flashlight, plus a reading glass, makes a small stereopticon. Over the glass of the flashlight I pasted a black paper in which the figure of an arrow had been cut. Before this I set a strip of glass. The glass is red, but is darker in some spots than others. The reading glass focuses the light so that the arrow becomes definite in form and intensely red. By moving the strip of red glass back and forth I am able to make the arrow appear to be on fire. Very simple, isn’t it? But it worked!”
“Yes,” said Johnny. “It worked. Once it worked too well; came near causing us to crash into a wall.”
“So you know I rode the back of the gangster’s car all the way out?”
“I guessed it.”
Joyce told Johnny the rest of the story.
“I think,” said Drew when she had finished, “that it is time we had some real women on our detective force.”
“Give me a job,” laughed Joyce.
* * * * * * * *
Two days later the Seventy Club was raided. This time the detective squad did not stop at the main floor. There was room for three men in each of those curious telephone booths. Three times six is eighteen. Each officer carried two guns. Two times eighteen is thirty-six. That was too many for the gunmen and the ladies down below. They surrendered without a fight. The place was padlocked. Five of the men and three of the ladies taken had been wanted for some time by the police. Joyce attempted to give credit for this discovery to her father. He would have none of it. He told on her.
Johnny had no trouble in retrieving the package of bullets which he had entrusted to the care of Uncle Sam in such a strange manner. The cases against Jimmie McGowan, Mike Volpi and their confederates were complete. For once a well selected jury and an unimpeachable judge gave a gang of gunmen their just deserts.
The reward was paid.
A month later, a scene half cheerful, half sad, was enacted at the Ramacciotti cottage. Rosy and her mother, smiling their best to keep back the tears, walked out of the cottage for the last time. A taxicab was waiting. They were on their way to the depot, bound for Italy. They were just an Italian mother and daughter; simple, kindly folks, just such people as we almost all are. Yet they mattered much to some; to Johnny and Drew, to Herman McCarthey and Newton Mills.
Johnny and Drew helped them into the cab, gripped their hands in a last farewell; then they turned to walk back to the shack.
Drew paused to lock the cottage which had been Mother Ramacciotti’s. He had bought the furnishings.
“What will you do with the cottage now?” Johnny asked.
“Listen.” Drew’s look was serious, sad. “We are going on a vacation, you and I, Herman, Newton Mills, and Joyce. Before that vacation is over, unless conditions change, the gunmen will have provided us another widow and more orphans to fill that cottage. I mean to keep it till there are no more. God grant that the time may soon come!”
A week later Johnny, Drew and Joyce were seated in a clinker-built rowboat over a deep, dark hole that lies close to shore on the north side of Lake Huron. On the shore was a cabin. In a sunny spot before the cabin Herman McCarthey and Newton Mills sat spinning yarns. For life must not be all work. Man’s nature demands a change. They were enjoying the change along with those who were younger.
Drew Lane’s experiences as a detective were not over. They were but well begun. The problems of enforcing the law and maintaining order in a great republic are never fully solved. They go on from year to year and from generation to generation. Drew Lane was destined to do his full part. And Johnny Thompson, as his understudy, was not to lag far behind. If you are to realize this to the full, you must read our next book entitledThe Gray Shadow.