CHAPTER XVIITHE UNANSWERED CALL

“I wish he were here!” Johnny exclaimed as he threw back the covers and leaped from his bed. “He’d put the thing together letter by letter, word by word, like a cross-word puzzle, and somehow make a whole of it. The fire at the school; the pink-eyed stranger; the more terrible fire that endangered Mazie’s life; the big stooping man with a limp; the fire at the Zoo; my experience at Ben Zook’s island and at the marsh; for him all these would fit together somehow. But to me they are little more than fragments of the sort of stuff life’s made of. Where’s the affair to end? I’d like to know that.”

Seizing a pen, he wrote a telegram to Pant. Pant, as you will remember from reading that other book, “The Hidden Trail,” had remained behind to finish a task he had begun in the Cumberland Mountains.

“No,” Johnny said to himself after reading the telegram, “he wouldn’t come,” and he tore the paper in four pieces and threw it in the waste basket.

Drawing the fragment of a black cylinder from his pocket, he studied it carefully.

“That ought to mean something to me,” he mumbled, “but it doesn’t; not a thing in the world.”

From a box in the corner he dragged a desk telephone, the one he had salvaged from the Zoo.

“This,” he said, “would tell a story if only it could talk. And why can’t you?” He shook his fist at the instrument. “What’s a telephone for if not for talking?”

Since the instrument did not respond, for the twentieth time Johnny unwound its wires and sat there staring at them. There was the usual pair of rather heavily insulated wires and a second pair of lighter ones, about twenty feet long.

“I ought to know what those second wires are for,” he said again, “but I don’t. I told the Chief of Detectives about it, and he laughed at me and said: ‘Do you think there’s someone with a tongue hot enough to set fire to a house just by talking over the telephone? There’s some hot ones, but not as hot as that!’ He laughed at his own joke, then saw me politely out of the room, thinking all the time, I don’t doubt, that I was a young nut with a cracked head. So, old telephone, if your secret is to be revealed you’ll have to tell it, or I’ll be obliged to discover it.”

Putting the telephone back in the box, he took the jewel case from beneath his pillow. As he saw the jewels in the light of day he was more sure than ever that they were genuine.

“I fancy,” he mused, “that the Chief of Detectives will be a trifle more interested in this than in my telephone, though in my estimation it’s not half as important. But of course there’s sure to be a reward. I mustn’t forget that. It’s to be for Ben Zook.”

The Chief of Detectives was interested, both interested and surprised. He set his best clerk working on the record of stolen diamonds. In less than five minutes the clerk had the record before him.

“These diamonds,” he said, looking hard at Johnny, “were stolen from Barker’s on Madison Street two weeks ago last night. The value is four thousand dollars.”

“And the reward?” said Johnny calmly.

“Eh, what?”

“How much reward?”

“Nothing’s been said about a reward.”

“All right. Good-bye.” Calmly pocketing the case, Johnny started from the door.

“Here! Here! Stop that young fool!” stormed the Chief of Detectives.

“Well,” said Johnny defiantly, “what sort of cheap piker is this man Barker? It’s not for myself, but for a friend who needs it.”

“Tell me about it,” said the detective, bending over and beckoning him close.

Johnny told the story so well that the Chief got Barker on the wire and pried an even five hundred dollars out of that tight fisted merchant before he would promise the return of the diamonds.

“That’ll set your friend Zook up in business,” smiled the Chief of Detectives as a half hour later he handed Johnny a valuable yellow slip. “And say, weren’t you in here a day or two ago with some story about a telephone and a firebug?”

“Yes sir.”

“Didn’t take much stock in it, did I?”

“No, you didn’t.”

“You bring that back and tell me about it again. I thought you were a fresh kid and a bit addled, but by Jove, you’ve got a head on your shoulders and it ain’t stuffed with excelsior above the ears, either.”

“I’ll do what you say,” said Johnny, “but first I’d like to run down another hunch if you don’t object.”

“No objections. Run down as many as you care to. Bring ’em all in. Mebby I can help you, and more’n likely you can help me.”

Johnny left the place with a jubilant heart. He had enough money now to buy Ben Zook a small ranch. He knew the very place, a half acre, ten miles from the city limits, a sloping bank with oak trees on it and a cabin at its edge, and a touch of green pasture land with a brook at the bottom. Wouldn’t Ben Zook revel in it? And wouldn’t his salvaged poultry thrive there?

He wanted to row right out and tell Ben about it at once. Had he been able to read the future he would most assuredly have done so, but since he could only see one step ahead, and had planned to revisit the marsh and have a look at that black shack at its edge, in the end he cashed the check for five hundred and deposited it in a savings account for safe keeping. After that he took a train for the marsh.

An hour later, with a feeling of dread that was not far from fear, and was closely connected with his startling and mysterious experiences on two other occasions, he found himself approaching the black shack.

Since this shack was built on the side of the marsh nearest to the lake, it was flanked by low, rolling sand-dunes. This made it easy for Johnny to approach the shack without being seen by anyone who might be inside.

After crawling to within fifty feet of it he lay down behind a low clump of willows, determined to watch the place for awhile. After an hour of patient watching, his patience deserted him. Gripping something firmly in his hand, he advanced boldly forward until he was within arm’s reach of the building.

There for a time he stood listening. His footsteps on the sand made no sound. If there were people in the shack they could not be aware of his approach.

Nerving himself for quick action and possible attack, he stepped round the corner to look quickly in at the window.

Then he laughed softly to himself. There had been no need for all this precaution. Inside the shack was but a single room. In that room there was one person, and that person lay stretched full length upon a couch with his face turned toward the wall. To all appearances he was sound asleep.

Seeing this, Johnny proceeded to make a calm survey of the room. In one corner stood a table and chair. On the table were dirty dishes, an empty can, and a loaf of bread.

In a back corner stood a rifle, and across from that some strange looking black cylinders. It was the cylinders that interested Johnny. But realizing that he could get a better look at them from the only other window of the place, he contented himself, for the moment, with a careful look at the man. The face could not be seen, but there was about the large, heavy frame and rounded shoulders something vaguely familiar. Still, after all was said and done, Johnny could not be sure that he had ever seen the fellow before, and certainly he did not feel disposed to waken him to find out.

He passed around to the other window and for a full five minutes studied those black cylinders. They were strange affairs, about four inches in diameter and two feet in length. They resembled huge firecrackers coated black. Instead of fuse, however, each one had on its end two small shiny screws such as are found at the top of a dry battery.

“Probably what they are,” was Johnny’s mental comment, “just big dry batteries.”

Yet he could not quite convince himself that this was true. In the end, however, he concluded that was the nearest he could come to it at a guess, and since a guess was all he was to get that day, he moved away from the cabin and was soon lost in the sand dunes.

“Never saw any batteries half that big,” he grumbled to himself as he trudged along, “and besides, what would he be doing with them out here?”

Again he trudged forward for a half mile in silence. Then, of a sudden he came to a dead stop, turned about, made as if to retrace his steps, then appearing to think better of it, stood there for a moment in deep meditation.

“It might be true,” he murmured to himself. “It don’t seem possible, yet it might be, and if it is, then the fellow could be miles away when the thing happens. And if it is true, then that solves it.”

“But then,” he added thoughtfully as he resumed his march toward the station, “it seems altogether too fanciful.”

Since there were no new clues to be followed out, and because he had grown tired of haunting the central fire station with its incessant clatter of telegraph instruments and its eternal flashes of light, at ten o’clock that night Johnny went again to the river and taking his old friend’s boat from its place of concealment rowed slowly toward Ben Zook’s island. The lake was calm as a millpond and there was no reason for strenuous rowing. Then, too, he wished to think as he rowed. Johnny was one of those fellows who thought best in action.

His thoughts that night were long, long thoughts, long and tangled. It was as if he had a half dozen skeins of yarn all tangled together and was trying to find the ends of each and to disentangle it from the others.

His mind was still working upon those black cylinders out in the black shack. He had a feeling that the man he had seen asleep out there was none other than the one who had twice gone gunning for him out there in the marsh. If that were true and if he were the man who had been at the Simons Building fire and at the Zoo and later on Ben Zook’s island, then those black cylinders must have some significance.

He smiled at this complicated chain of circumstances. “Fat chance!” he murmured to himself. “And yet that might be true, and if it is there’s some connection between the telephone with double wiring and that scrap of black pasteboard we found on the island after that blaze.

“Black pasteboard!” he exclaimed suddenly. “That’s it! The piece we found is part of one of those cylinders!”

“But if it is,” he said more soberly a moment later, “then why would they burn it out here on Ben’s island? Lot’s of sense to that!”

So in the end he got nowhere in his thought unravelling process. However, his arms were working mechanically all the time and he was nearing the island. As he thought of this he suddenly sat straight up and, as if eager to reach his goal, began to row with all his power.

He was eager, too, for he suddenly recalled that he was bound on a very pleasant mission. Was he not to tell Ben Zook that at any time he wished he might leave the island for a place of trees, green grass, flowing water and a real cabin of fair dimensions? Small wonder that he hurried.

As he neared the shore his heart warmed at thought of the smile that would come to the face of the kindly, cheerful, little old man.

“Surely,” he thought to himself, “in spite of the fact that he’s a bit strange and uncouth, he’s a real gentleman after all and deserves a great deal more than is coming to him.”

He smiled as he thought of the little chicken coop Ben Zook had showed him. A low-roofed affair with a roost of bars about three feet long; five chickens on the roost, blinking at the light; a single goose in a corner with his head under his wing; this was Ben’s poultry house and his brood. There’d be more to it now—a real chicken house and perhaps a hundred fine fowls. It would be a Paradise for Ben Zook.

As he mused happily on these things his boat touched the shore. Springing out nimbly, he dragged the boat up the beach and turned his face toward Ben’s house.

At that moment, as a cloud passing over the moon sent a chill down his spine, something seemed to whisper to him that all was not well. That he might dispel this dark foreboding, he lifted up his voice in a cheery shout:

“Ben Zook! Oh, Ben Zook, I’m coming.”

The distant skyscrapers, like some mountainside, caught his words and flung them back to him, seeming at the same time to change his “Oh” to “old.”

“Ben Zook! Old Ben Zook!”

Again and again, more faintly, and yet more faintly:

“Ben Zook! Old Ben Zook. Ben Zook—Zook.”

As the echo trailed away in the distance, a foreboding came over Johnny. There had come no answering call.

Still he tried to cheer himself. “He’s asleep,” Johnny told himself. “Little wonder, too. I was out here till near morning.”

After that he trudged in silence over the piles of broken brick, sand and clay.

As he came at last within sight of Ben’s place he was cheered by the sight of red coals on the grate.

“It’s not been long since he was here, anyway,” he said.

Yet his feeling that Ben was not in his house proved true. The place was empty.

“Probably gone for a stroll down the beach,” was his mental comment as he dropped down in Ben’s big arm chair.

The chair was a comfortable one. The fire, with a chill breeze blowing off the lake, was cheering too, yet there was no comfort for Johnny. He had not been seated two minutes when he was again upon his feet.

“I don’t like it,” he muttered.

The next moment he was chiding himself for a fool. “He’ll be here in a moment and I’ll tell him about the reward.” Johnny smiled at the thought.

Walking to the tiny poultry house, he opened the door and, flicking on his flashlight, looked within. The calm assurance of chickens on their roost, of the single goose who did not so much as take his head from beneath his wing, did much to allay his fears.

“Just look about a bit, anyway,” he mused. “May find another case of diamonds,” he added with a forced chuckle.

As he stepped over the first mound of clay he thought he detected a sound behind him. Stopping dead in his tracks, while little tufts of hair appeared to rise at the back of his neck, he said in a low, steady tone:

“Ben. Ben Zook.”

There came no answer, no other sound.

He crossed another mound, and yet another. Then again there came a sound as of a brick loosened from a pile.

“Ben. Ben Zook,” he called softly. Once more no answer.

Then, just as he was about to go forward again, having thrown his light ten feet before him, he started back in horror. There at his feet lay a dead man!

Trembling in every limb, feeling sick as if about to fall in a faint, yet battling it back, he stood still in his tracks for such a space of time as it might take to count one hundred.

Then, finding he could once more trust his wobbly knees, he moved forward three paces, threw his light at his feet, took one good steady look, put out a hand and picked something up, held it for ten seconds, bent low for a better look, then like one who had seen a ghost he went racing and staggering across the piles toward the shore and his boat.

Fear lent him wings. Nor did he stop at the shore. With one motion he shoved the boat into the water; with another, regardless of wet feet, he sprang aboard and before he could think twice found himself well out into the lake.

There at last he dropped his oars to sit staring back at the island and to at last slump down in his seat.

His mind, first in a whirl and next in a dead calm, was trying to tell his senses something that seemed impossible.

At last, raising his face to the sky, he said solemnly:

“Ben Zook is dead! Poor, harmless, golden hearted Ben Zook! Someone killed him. I’m going after the police boat now. The police will do what they can to find the man. But, by all that’s good, I will find the murderer and he will pay the price for his cowardly crime.”

Having thus made his vow, he found that strength, hope and courage came ebbing back. Seizing his oars he rowed rapidly toward the city.

From that time until the end Johnny conducted his search with such reckless daring that it could bring but one of two things: A crown of triumph or a quiet six feet of sod in a church-yard.

After accompanying the police boat to the island and having watched in silence the investigation made by the police, which was followed by a short search for the man who had visited the island with such tragic results, Johnny returned at once to the city and there made straight toward the river bridge.

Imagine his surprise when, upon setting foot on the bridge, he discovered light shining through the crack left by the closed shutters of his window.

“Waiting for me,” he muttered. “Wonder which of them it is? Well, let them wait,” he added fiercely, “I’m not so defenseless as I might seem.” He put a hand to his side pocket. A friendly policeman, finding Johnny unarmed as they searched the island, had pressed a small automatic upon him and had forgotten to take it back. Johnny was now thankful for the oversight.

Without a second’s hesitation, but keeping a sharp lookout that he might not be ambushed by some guard stationed outside, he crossed the bridge, dodged down a narrow alley and having reached the ground floor door that led to the back stairs, paused to listen.

Having heard no sound, he pushed open the door, closed it noiselessly behind him, then went tip-toeing softly up the steps. At the second landing he paused to listen, yet he heard no sound.

“That’s queer,” he whispered as he resumed his upward climb.

As he reached his own door he recalled an old copy-book axiom: “Delays are dangerous.” So, gripping his automatic with one hand, he turned the knob with the other and threw the door wide open.

Imagine his surprise at seeing a single figure slumped down in a chair, apparently fast asleep.

The person had his back to him. There was something vaguely familiar about that back. Slowly a smile of pleasant anticipation spread over Johnny’s face.

“If it only were,” he whispered.

Tip-toeing to a position which gave him a side view of the still motionless figure, he stared for a second, then there came upon his face an unmistakable smile as he exclaimed:

“Pant! You old trump you!”

It was indeed Pant, the Panther Eye you have known for some time, that strange boy who had accomplished so many seemingly impossible things through his power to see in the night and to perform other magical tricks.

“Why, it’s you!” said Pant, waking up and dragging off his heavy glasses to have a good look at Johnny. “I figured you’d be back sooner or later.”

“Pant,” said Johnny, lowering himself unsteadily into a chair, “there was never a time in all my checkered career when I was so glad to see you.”

“You must be in pretty deep,” grinned Pant, “‘powerful deep,’ they’d say in the mountains.”

“But Pant, what happened?” asked Johnny. “How does it come you left the mountains so soon?”

Pant put on a sad face. “Those mountain people are superstitious, Johnny, terribly superstitious.”

“Are they?”

“Are they? Why look, Johnny, we were having a school election down there, regular kind. Everybody wanted his sister or his cousin or his daughter in as teacher. We were about evenly divided and were fighting it out fair enough with the great American institution, the ballot, when an argument came up in which Harrison Crider, their clerk of election, knocked Cal Nolon out of his chair. Right there is where things began to start. There were fifteen or twenty on a side, all armed and all packed in one room twenty feet square. You can see what it was going to be like, Johnny.” Pant paused to go through the motion of mopping his brow.

“They were all standing there loaded and charged, like bits of steel on the end of a magnet, when a strange thing happened.” He paused to stare at the wall.

“What happened?” asked Johnny.

“Well, sir, it was one of those queer things, ‘plumb quare,’ they’d call it down in the mountains, one of those things you can’t explain—at least most people can’t.”

“But what did happen?” Johnny demanded.

“That’s what I’m coming to,” drawled Pant. “Well, sir, believe me or not, there came such a brilliant flash of light as was never before seen on sea or land (at least that’s what they all say. I didn’t see it; had my eyes shut tight all the time). And after that, so they say, there was darkness, a darkness so black you couldn’t see your hand. ‘Egyptian darkness,’ that’s what they called it, Johnny. You’ve heard of that. It tells about it in the Bible, the plague of darkness.

“It only lasted three minutes; but would you believe it, Johnny, when the three minutes were up there wasn’t a bit of fight left in them? No sir, limp as rags, every man of ’em. And the election after that was as calm and sedate as a Quaker sewing society.

“But, Johnny,” Pant’s face took on a sad expression, “would you believe it? After it was all over those superstitious people accused me of the whole affair; said I was a witch and that I produced that darkness by incantation. Now Johnny, I leave it to you, was that fair? Would you think that of me?”

“No, Pant,” said Johnny with a grin, “I wouldn’t. I know you’re no witch, and I know any incantation you might indulge in wouldn’t get you a thing. But as for creating that darkness, I’d say it was a slight trick compared with others I’ve seen you do.”

“Ah, Johnny,” sighed Pant, “I can see the whole world’s against me.”

“But Johnny!” he exclaimed, changing suddenly from his attitude of mock gloom to one of alert interest, “what’s the lay? To tell the honest truth, I’ve been bored to death down there. I knew if I could find you I’d be able to mix in with something active. So here I am. What have you to offer?”

“Plenty!” said Johnny. “And, thank God, you’re here to take a hand.”

After dragging the Zoo telephone from its box and taking the scrap of black cardboard from a shelf, Johnny sat down to tell his story. He told it, too, from beginning to end; from the school fire to the discovery of Ben Zook, dead upon his island.

When the story had ended Pant sat for a long time slumped down in his chair. From his motionless attitude and his staring eyes, one might have thought him in a trance.

He came out of this with a start and at once began to reel off to Johnny the story he had just been told; only now there was association, connection, and a proper sequence to it all. He had put the puzzle together, piece by piece. No, it was more than that. The fires were one puzzle; Johnny’s affairs at the island another; and those at the marsh still another. After solving each of these separately and putting each small part in its place, Pant had joined them all in one three-fold puzzle board that was complete to the last letter.

“Sounds great!” said Johnny breathlessly as Pant concluded. “If all that is true we have only to find the man.”

“Find that man!” said Pant in a tone that carried conviction.

Twelve o’clock the following night found Johnny and Pant in a strange place. Standing with their backs against the unpainted and decaying side of a frame building, they were watching a door.

The frame building formed one wall to an alley which was in reality more path than an alley; a path of hard-beaten mud that ran between two buildings. Although the path ran through from street to street, the hard beaten part of the path ended before the door which the two boys were watching.

“Here comes another,” Pant whispered, drawing Johnny back into the shadows.

“And another,” Johnny whispered back.

Two shadow-like creatures, appearing to hug the darkness, came flitting down the hard-trodden path. As each reached the end of the path the door opened slightly, the shadows flitted in, and again the door went dark.

“Like shades of evil ones entering their last, dark abode,” whispered Johnny with a shudder.

They were watching that door because they had seen a certain man enter it—a tall, stooping, slouching figure of a man who walked with a decided limp. They had picked up his trail in a more prosperous neighborhood and had followed him at a distance through less and less desirable neighborhoods, down dark streets and rubbish strewn alleys, past barking dogs and beggars sleeping beneath doorsteps, until of a sudden he had turned up this path and entered this door.

“Come on,” Johnny whispered impatiently, “it’s only a cheap eating place. I heard the dishes rattle and caught the aroma of coffee. They’ll pay no attention to us.”

“I’m not so sure of that,” Pant grumbled. “Looks like something else to me. But—all right, come on. Only,” he continued, “take a table near the door.”

The place did prove to be some sort of eating place. There were small round tables and steel framed chairs placed about the room. Around some of these tables men and women were seated, playing cards. Openly roaring at good fortune or cursing an evil turn of the deck, they paid no attention whatever to the newcomers.

The card players were for the most part situated in the back of the room. Tables at the front were covered with dishes. Men and women, engaged in eating, smoking and talking, swarmed about these tables.

Indeed, the place was so crowded that for a time Johnny and Pant were at great difficulty to find chairs. At last, as they were backing to a place against the wall, a small animated being, a slender girl with dark, vivacious eyes, rose and beckoned them to her table. She had been sitting there alone sipping dark coffee.

Bowing his thanks, Johnny accepted a chair and motioned Pant to another. The table was not as near the door as he might have liked, but “beggars cannot be choosers.”

A waiter appeared.

“Coffee and something hot in a bowl,” said Johnny. “You know the kind, red Mex. with plenty of pepper.”

“Make it the same,” said Pant.

“And waiter,” Johnny put out a hand, “something nice for her,” he nodded his head toward the girl. “Anything she’d like.”

“The gentlemen are kind,” said the girl in a foreign accent, “but I have no need. I will have none.”

Since their new-found friend did not accept of their hospitality and did not start a conversation, the two boys sat silently staring about them.

It was a strange and motley throng that was gathered there. Dark Italians and Greeks; a few Irish faces; some Americans; two Mexicans in broad sombreros; three mulatto girls at a table by themselves and a great number of men and women of uncertain nationality.

“There! There he is,” whispered Johnny, casting his eyes at the far corner. “And there, by all that’s good, is Knobs, the New York firebug! They’re at the same table. See! I can’t be mistaken. There’s the same hooked nose, the identical stoop to his shoulders.”

“Together!” exclaimed Pant. “That changes my conclusions a little.”

“Don’t appear to see them,” whispered Johnny. “What are we to do?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps a police raid. But not yet; I want to study them.”

Their bowls of steaming red Mulligan had arrived. They had paid their checks and had begun to sip the fiery stuff, when of a sudden there came cries of “Jensie! Jensie!” and every eye was turned in their direction.

Johnny felt his face suddenly grow hot. Had he been recognized? This beyond doubt was a den of the underworld. Was this a cry which was but a signal for a “Rush the bulls”?

Since he could not tell, and since everyone remained in his seat, he did not move.

“If the gentlemen will please hold their bowls,” said the girl, smiling as she handed each his bowl.

What did this mean? They were soon to see. Stepping with a fairy-like lightness from floor to chair, and chair to table, the girl made a low bow and then as a piano in a corner struck up a lively air she began a dance on the table top.

It was such a wild, whirling dance as neither of the boys had seen before. It seemed incredible that the whole affair could be performed upon so small a table top. Indeed, at one time Johnny did feel a slight pat upon his knee and realized in a vague sort of way that the velvet slippered foot of this little enchantress had rested there for an instant.

No greater misfortune could have befallen the two boys than this being seated by the dancer’s table. It focussed all eyes upon them. Their detection was inevitable. They expected it. But, coming sooner than they could dream, it caught them unawares. With a suddenness that was terrible, at the end of the applause that followed the girl’s performance, there came a death-like pause, broken by a single hissed-out word.

The next instant a huge man with a great knife gleaming in his hand launched himself at Pant.

Taken entirely unawares, the boy must have been stabbed through and through had it not been for a curious interference. The man’s arm, struck by a sudden weight, shot downward to drive the knife into the floor.

The next instant, as a tremendous uproar began, there came a sudden and terrible flash of light followed by darkness black as ink.

Johnny, having struggled to his feet, was groping blindly about him when a hand gripped his shoulder and a voice whispered:

“This way out.”

At the same moment he felt a tug at the back of his coat.

Moving forward slowly, led by Pant and being tugged at from behind, he at last came to the door and ten seconds later found himself in the outer semi-darkness of the street.

Feeling the tug at his coat lessening, he turned about to see Jensie, the dancing girl.

“Do you know that she saved your life?” he whispered to Pant. “She leaped squarely upon that big villain’s arm.”

“Rode it like I might a mule,” laughed the girl. “And you, Mister,” she turned to Pant, “you are a Devil. You make a terrible light, you then make terrible night. You are a wonderful Devil!” and with a flash of her white teeth she was gone.

“Now what?” asked Johnny.

“We cannot do better than to follow. They will be out at us like a pack of rats in another minute.”

“How about a police raid?”

“Not to-night. It wouldn’t do any good. The birds have flown.”

At this Pant led the way rapidly out of the narrow alley into more frequented and safer ways.

Little did Johnny dream as he crept beneath the covers that night that the following night would see the end of all this little drama in which he had been playing a part. Yet so it was to be.

As for Pant, who slept upon a cot in one corner of Johnny’s room, he was dreaming of a slender figure and of big, dark, Gypsy eyes. He was indulging in romantic thoughts—the first of his life. That Gypsy-like girl of the underworld den had somehow taken possession of his thoughts. Many times before had he barely escaped death, but never before had his life been saved by a girl.

“She’s a Gypsy,” he whispered to himself, “only a Gypsy girl. But me; who am I? Who knows? Perhaps I am Gypsy myself.”

Through his mind there passed a wish that was more than half prayer: “May the time come when I can repay her.” This wish was to be granted, far sooner than he knew.

At a quarter of six next evening, at the request of the Fire Chief, Johnny was lurking in the shadows back of the building on Randolph Street that housed such a strange collection of commodities: chemicals, diamonds, juvenile books, novelties and Knobs, the suspected firebug.

Earlier that day a phone call had tipped off the Chief. According to the call, Knobs Whittaker would bear a little extra watching that night. While putting little faith in this tip, the Chief had no desire to neglect the least clue which might assist in bringing to an end the series of disastrous fires which were reflecting great discredit upon his department. Acting upon the tip he had stationed men at every point which Knobs had been seen to frequent.

Johnny’s station was this building. He had come around behind to have a look at possible exits there. Having satisfied his mind in this matter, he was about to make his way back along the wall to the street when he was halted by the sudden sound of a truck entering the alley.

Slinking deeper into the shadows, he waited. To his surprise he saw the truck back up at the door of the very building he was watching.

“Going to take something away,” was his mental comment.

This thought was at once abandoned when he noted that the light truck was already loaded to capacity.

Climbing down from the seat, the driver and his assistant walked to the door. Finding it locked, the driver beat a tattoo on it with his fist.

“What’s wanted?” demanded a voice as a head was thrust out of a window to the left of the door.

“Open up!” growled the driver. “Got a consignment of chemicals for you.”

“What you coming round this time of day for?”

“Came all the way from Calumet. Had a blow-out.”

“There’s no one here but me,” said the young man, reluctantly unbarring the door. “Boss is gone. Chief clerk’s gone. His assistant is gone. I’m only a sort of apprentice. Haven’t any authority.”

“Well, we can’t dump the goods in the street, can we? It’s going to rain.”

“No, I suppose you can’t,” said the young man, scratching his head doubtfully. “Suppose you’ll have to dump them in here until morning. You’ll have to come round then and check up on them.”

“That’s jake with me.”

The apprentice began clearing a space at the back of the shop. The carters tumbled off bags and boxes, to pile them in the cleared space. After this had been done the steel night doors were closed and the truck drove away.

“They drive as if the devil were after them,” thought Johnny.

Without quite knowing why, he lingered for a time back there in the deepening shadows and as he lingered he caught an unusual sound from one of the rooms above.

“That’s odd, sounds like something heavy being rolled over the floor; a piano, or—or maybe a safe. Wonder why anyone would be doing that this time of the day?”

As it had grown quite dark by this time, he moved around to the front.

From the moment the matter had been called to his attention, this building with its strange assortment of occupants had held a profound interest for Johnny. He suspected Knobs of holding an interest in the Novelty Company, in truth suspected that floor of being his hangout. He was more than interested in the diamond merchant’s place, too. Indeed, he felt that somehow there must be a connection between Knobs and the diamonds.

“Perhaps he means to steal them?” he told himself now as he lingered in the shadow of the building. “But then, there are the burglar alarms. How is he to get around them? Well, we’ll see.”

An eddy of air sweeping up the street showered him with dust and paper scraps.

“Ugh,” he grunted, as he made for the door of the building to escape this little whirlwind, “we’re in for a blow; perhaps rain.”

“Fiddle!” he exclaimed a moment later, “I promised to go to Forest City with Mazie to-night. Carnival! Last of the season. Told her I’d do it if nothing turned up. But something has turned up, at least the Chief thinks it’s going to turn up.”

And just then things did turn up; at least one thing did, and not so small either. Treading on air, as if afraid of disturbing the spirit of his dead grandmother, there came tripping down the stair no less a person than Knobs Whittaker!

“Put ’em to sleep with a brick and argue with ’em afterwards,” Johnny seemed to be hearing poor old Ben Zook saying.

Knobs was carrying a square black satchel in his hand. His right hip bulged. He did not see Johnny, who stood well back in the shadows. Just as his feet touched the ground floor, as if drawn by a rocket, Knobs shot straight up from the floor to at last topple over in a heap. Johnny’s good right hand had spoken. He had obeyed the instructions of old Ben Zook.

Knobs’ sleep lasted for scarcely more than ten seconds; long enough, however, for Johnny to explore his hip pocket and draw forth an ugly-looking blue automatic. When Knobs opened his eyes he looked into the muzzle of his own gun.

The art of escape is sometimes cultivated to such a degree of perfection that it becomes automatic. The street door was open. With a motion that could scarcely be called rolling, leaping or gliding, the prostrate man went through that door. Before Johnny could block his escape, or even press the trigger of the automatic, Knobs was gone. One thing was against the fleeing one, however; he had left his gun and his black case behind.

“Evidence here,” Johnny whispered to himself. “Valuable evidence, beyond a doubt.”

Then, following a rule he had laid down for himself: “Always do the thing that’s least expected,” instead of following the man, he picked up the black bag and sprang lightly up the stairs and out of sight. He did not stop at the first landing, nor the second; but continued to the third, where, after hurrying down the hall, he threw back the iron shutters of the hall window, tossed the bag out, and jumped to the flat roof below. After that he lost no time in making his way down a fire escape to the ground.

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