No two cities are exactly alike. New York, Boston, London, Paris; all these have their subways, giant tunnels through which thousands upon thousands of workers are hurled to their day of toil. The metropolis of our story has no subway; yet far down beneath its busy streets forty, fifty, sixty feet underground, one still finds life. Forty miles of tunnel, a great spider-web network, pass beneath this city.
It was into one of these tunnels that Curlie Carson, while in pursuit of the man who had snatched the precious package from beneath his arm, had entered.
The roaring sound he had heard was the approach and the passing of a tunnel train. But such a train as it was! A narrow, box-like electrical engine shooting out purple sparks; a man with his hand on a lever; a dozen cars the size of a city dumpcart, only narrower and deeper—this was the train; for these trains carry only freight.
Day and night, year in and year out, this endless procession of tiny trains carries coal to the heating plants of giant skyscrapers and bears the cinders away. By this route, too, thousands of tons of merchandise, shoes and suits, cheese, cabbages, silverware, and socks find their way to the great city department stores or from factory to ship or train.
How many dwellers in the great city are conscious of this life that throbs on and on beneath them as they walk the city’s streets? Perhaps one in a hundred. Curlie Carson had not so much as heard of these tunnels. Yet he was passing down the narrow stairway that led to a small landing platform. In less than a moment he would be called upon to make an instant decision which might spell victory or utter defeat. And this decision would have to be made in ignorance of that which lay beyond him in those dim caverns.
It is often so in life. Always we are preparing ourselves for an emergency. Are our eyes bright, our minds clear and free from low thoughts that drug the soul? If so, then we are ready for the sudden, the unexpected. Curlie was ready.
The thing that happened was this: As the boy came stumbling down the last twenty steps of that long stairway, he heard again the ever-increasing rumble that told of an approaching train. As he stepped at last upon the dimly lighted platform he saw the man he sought at the far end. The package was under his arm. He was looking the other way.
“Now I have him!” he thought, and his heart beat a loud tattoo against his ribs.
Curlie was slim but strong, and agile as a cat. He had a clear mind. He kept himself fit. He had no dread of an encounter.
At this time at least there was to be no encounter. For as Curlie sprang forward the man turned and saw him. At the same instant an empty train came rattling around the curve.
Urged on by who knows what desperate need, the stranger played a bold hand. The cars were moving rapidly. Not three feet above them, charged with enough electricity to kill a hundred men, ran a high tension wire. Despite all this, the stranger made a sudden leap, caught the side of a steel car, struggled desperately, regained his balance, and disappeared within its depths.
At that instant Curlie felt hope vanish. Despair gripped his heart. The man with that package, the loss of which meant to him dismissal, disgrace, perhaps a prison, was rattling away. Who could tell whither the car was bound? Knowing nothing of these tunnels, the boy could not so much as guess.
All this passed through his mind like a flash. Cars still bumped and rattled by. It was a long, empty train.
The boy looked up the tunnel. Except for a narrow space above, the cars filled the tunnel completely. If he attempted to duplicate that man’s feat and failed in the least detail, he would meet instant death.
Yet he could not surrender. Too much was at stake. He had risked too much for others. Now he must risk more for his own honor. With a brief prayer for guidance and protection, he put out both hands, gripped the edge of a steel car, swung his feet high, caught the gleam of copper wire above him, felt the shudder of steel beneath him and then fell with a force that stunned him to the bottom of the car.
For a long time after that the train, bearing its strange cargo, rattled on and on into the perpetual night that is the tunnel system beneath the great city.
The various sections of this intricate system are placed in exactly the same manner as are the streets of the city. Indeed, at their intersections they are plainly marked: “State and Madison,” “Wabash and Monroe,” “Michigan and Jackson.” Had Curlie dared to raise himself from the floor of the car he might at once have determined his position in relation to the city above him.
The deadly copper wire warned him down. “Besides,” he reasoned, “what’s the good? One does not rise through fifty feet of clay and sand, rock and cement to burst up from the street like a chick from an egg.”
There is in this tunnel an intricate system of signal lights. Red just ahead warns the operator of the engine that a train will soon cross his path. Green indicates a clear track.
Once, when the lights were against the train and it came to a jolting stop, Curlie rose to his knees and stared ahead.
He could hardly make out the intersection names, but thought it was Congress and Wabash, a long way from the place he had left when entering upon this surprising adventure.
He looked at his watch. It showed six o’clock. “They’ll be looking for me,” he told himself. “Supposing something happens to me and I do not return at all. They will search the city, the country, over for me.” He thought of good aviation pals who would spare no pains to discover his whereabouts.
“They will always believe in me, as I in them,” he told himself stoutly.
“But there will be others. Some will believe I have betrayed my trust, carried away that package and left the country to live on stolen riches.”
Riches? What did the package contain? Fritz Lieber had said it was not bank notes. What then could it be?
“Who knows?” he grumbled to himself. “Only one thing is certain. My company will be obliged to pay a thousand dollars if I do not get it back. It’s insured for that much, the highest registered letter insurance. I must have it back. I—”
Once more the train came to a jolting stop. This time as he looked ahead he saw that their train stood squarely across another track. Then he saw something that threw him into a panic. The man he had followed so far was coolly climbing out of his car, which at that moment stood on the intersecting track.
“Defeat!” he whispered hoarsely.
It appeared to be true. So closely did the cars hug the wall that it was impossible for him to climb out and follow.
Yet, even as he despaired, the train started again. Nerving himself for a second perilous leap, he climbed out as far as he dared and waited.
A second sped into eternity; another; and another. Ten seconds, and then with a sudden intake of breath he threw himself out of the car.
He landed squarely, stumbled, then pitched forward, all but under the grinding wheels. Recovering his poise, he whirled about to go dashing along the path the fugitive had taken.
Curlie was a fast runner. There was a good chance that he might overtake the other one, but his troubles were not at an end.
He sighted his man, redoubled his pace and gained on him yard by yard. Now he was twenty yards behind, now fifteen, now ten, now—
But around a curve came blinding terror, the headlight of a train that, bearing down upon him, threatened instant destruction.
Stopping dead in his tracks, Curlie glanced wildly about him. He found no avenue of escape. Cold and cruel walls were on all sides. The engine and the cars filled all the space before him. It seemed that he must be ground to pulp.
Even as he despaired, something flashed by him. It was the fugitive.
As when a bear and a wolf are stranded upon an island in the flood they become harmless, so for the moment Curlie had forgotten the one he had pursued.
Turning, he attempted to follow, twisted an ankle, fell flat before the on-coming train.
Only the clear brain of an engineer saved him. Brakes screamed, wheels ground, the engine came to a sudden stop, not ten feet from the spot where he had fallen.
But what was this? There came a wisp of smoke, then a sudden flare of light. The air was filled with the smell of burning phosphorous and brimstone.
“Matches!” he cried, as he turned to flee. “One of those cars was loaded with matches. The sudden jolt has set them off.”
This time the race was joined by a third person, the engineer. A lusty runner he was, too. Full well he knew the danger of being trapped in a narrow subterranean passage filled with fumes.
He outran Curlie. The boy was three yards behind when once more he stumbled and fell.
The fumes were upon him. He could feel them in his eyes, his lungs. They were blinding, stifling, stupifying. Yet he must not give in.
Once more he was on his feet. He had not gone a dozen paces when there appeared a still greater terror. Before him, slowly, inch by inch, but none the less surely, a pair of massive iron gates were closing.
He understood in an instant. These gates, placed at certain points in the tunnel, were intended for just such an emergency as this. When they were closed and a second pair behind were likewise shut, the fire, a menace to all workers in tunnels, would be confined to a narrow space. The oxygen would soon be burned from the air and the fire extinguished.
“I must make it!” he cried as his knees threatened to betray him. “I must! I must!”
Yet even as he struggled it seemed to him that his case was hopeless. Scarcely two feet of open space remained, and the gates were still slowly closing.
“Drew, old boy, we win!”
Tom Howe put out his hand to grip his partner’s solemnly.
It had been a stirring night. Now gray dawn was creeping up the narrow canyons that are a city’s streets.
As we have seen, they had come, quite by accident, upon Greasy Thumb and his undesirable companion. They had arrested them on suspicion. But suspicion holds no man in jail.
They had found concealed weapons upon them. But well enough they knew that in this city no man could be held for such an offense unless the arresting officer had a search warrant. They had none.
For all this, a bit of glorious good fortune had come their way. In attempting to conceal or discard a small package, Greasy Thumb’s partner had bungled. Tom Howe’s eagle eye had detected the move.
He had retrieved the package. And, of all good fortune, he had found it marked with the Air Mail’s special stamp.
As he showed it to Drew, his eyes shone.
“You wouldn’t have thought they’d keep it,” Drew whispered excitedly.
“Wouldn’t?” Tom drew ten one hundred dollar bills from the envelope. “Wouldn’t they, though! It’s wonderful what they’d do for money.
“Besides,” he added after a moment, “the thing seemed safe enough. Done in the dark. No witnesses. No nothing. Clean get away.”
“Wonder where the rest of it is?” Drew mused.
“The rest?”
“You don’t think they’d do all that for one grand, a mere thousand dollars! They were after something big. Wonder if they got it.
“By the way, what became of the Air Mail pilot?”
“That’s a mystery. He’s vanished.”
* * * * * * * *
Had they but known it, that air pilot was at that moment beneath the city in that labyrinth of subways, still in pursuit of the man who had snatched the mysterious package from him.
* * * * * * * *
“What will you do with them?” Johnny Thompson broke in, poking a thumb at Greasy Thumb and his partner in crime who stood huddled sulkily in a corridor of the police court building.
“We’ll take them right to the Chief,” Drew replied cheerfully. “He’ll book them. We’ve got the goods on ’em. The world will not see them again for many a day.”
They led the prisoners to an elevator, rode up two flights, walked down a dark corridor and entered a room where a heavy-set man with beady eyes sat behind a massive desk.
This was the Chief. He looked at the youthful detectives through eyes that seemed heavy for lack of sleep.
Drew advanced in silence and placed the Air Mail envelope on the Chief’s desk.
“What’s this?” The Chief did not look up.
“Evidence.”
“Evidence!” the Chief exclaimed. “That’s what we need. The people are clamoring for convictions. We must have evidence. We—”
At that moment he looked up and his glance fell upon the cowering prisoners.
Like a pike caught on a spoon-hook, he appeared to stiffen. He continued to stare straight ahead.
At that moment a man Johnny had not noticed before, a young man with a boyish face but crafty eye, moved silently forward and whispered in the Chief’s ear.
“Where you boys been?” the Chief demanded almost savagely, as he wheeled about to face Drew and Tommy. “You know you are supposed to report to me every day. This is the fourth day. No report at all.”
“There’s our report.” Drew Lane held his ground. He pointed at the envelope on the Chief’s desk.
At that moment Johnny Thompson stole a look at Greasy Thumb and his man. The change that had come over them gave him a start. Gone were their dark and doleful looks. They seemed almost cheerful.
“If you please, Chief,” Greasy Thumb appeared to hesitate, “that’s a letter they took from me by force. I received it by Air Mail yesterday.”
“Yes, and I suppose your name is Robert Deering,” Drew Lane scoffed. Robert Deering was the name on the envelope.
The wily crook hesitated, but only for a space of seconds. “Chief,” he replied evenly, “it is. That’s my name. As you know, I have many enemies. I am living under an assumed name.”
Once more the man beside the Chief bent over to whisper in his ear. Drew Lane frowned.
“Is this all the evidence?” the Chief demanded of Drew.
“It is, except that they were near the scene of the Air Mail robbery last evening.”
“Give it back to ’em. Turn ’em loose.” The Chief’s voice had taken on a hostile, almost savage tone. “There’s no law against receiving money by Air Mail. You can’t hold a man on any such evidence. Turn ’em loose. Do you hear me? Turn ’em loose!”
“And now,” he said, after Greasy Thumb and his partner had vanished, “I’m going to put you boys where it won’t be so much trouble to report to me. From now on you’re on court room duty. No more carnivals and baseball games for you. You’re on court room duty, see?”
For one full minute by the clock Drew Lane and Tom Howe stood where they were. It was a minute of grim silence. The Chief sat staring like an angry Buddha. The young man behind him wore on his face one of those fixed smiles that never become a sign of mirth.
Johnny looked first at Drew, then at Tom in a vain attempt to understand.
At last Drew turned in silence and led the way out of the room.
Drew walked down the corridor, turned to the right, entered the third door to the left, waited for Tom Howe and Johnny Thompson to enter, and then closed the door. Dropping into one of the three hard-bottomed chairs the narrow, box-like room afforded, he sat looking out of the window, first down the cement paved court, then far up to the tenth floor where were many barred windows.
“What does it mean?” Johnny asked at last.
“Mean?” Drew Lane pointed to the bars above and across the court. “It means that the fellows behind those bars (and we put some there, too) are going to have it soft compared with us.
“They got thirty days, maybe sixty. But when that’s over, they are free. But we—we have an indeterminate sentence.
“Court duty!” He threw out his hands in a gesture of disgust. “Know what that means? It means that you stand all day with your back against the wall, keeping guard against disturbances that never come.
“You listen to well-dressed young men tell the judge that their well-dressed young wives will not try shop-lifting any more, if he’ll let them off.
“You see ten or twenty colored men brought in for shooting craps or drinking moonshine.
“And all the time the court room smells of garlic and sour beer.
“If you’re sent out at all it’s to bring in a witness who has forgotten to appear. And that takes about as much brains as a six-year-old child has, and not half as much courage.
“Oh, I know,” he ended bitterly. “Some one has to do it. But why Howe and me?”
“Why did he do it?” There was pain as well as disgust in Tom Howe’s voice.
“The Chief? Yes, why?” Once more Drew Lane lapsed into silence.
After that the moments ticked themselves away and not a single word was spoken.
Through Drew Lane’s mind many dark thoughts were passing. The Chief had thrown them down. That seemed certain. Why? He could form no answer.
The fact that they had made no report for three days was not the reason. He was sure of that. The same thing had happened many times before, and there had been no protest.
It had been generally understood that he and Tom Howe were to be free lance detectives for the city.
This freedom they had welcomed. And, happy in it, they had done their best to deserve it. They had studied the city and the ways of evil doers as a factory foreman studies his plant. They had familiarized themselves with hundreds of faces. They could actually call hundreds of pickpockets, tin-horn gamblers, stick-up men and general hoodlums by name.
Not that they were friendly with them. Quite the reverse. They were constantly on their heels. Making it hard for them to do wrong. Making it easy to do right? Yes, if any sincerely wished it. But how few ever did!
“Professional criminals.” How those words had been borne in upon them. What else would such “professionals” do but rob and steal?
“And now,” Drew said aloud, bitterly, “all the months we have spent in preparing ourselves for the great task of city detectives is lost!”
“Perhaps not,” Tom said hopefully. “The Chief may put us back after a week or two.”
“Not he!” Drew’s tone carried conviction. “Did you see that look on his face?”
“Yes,” sighed Tom. “But why?”
Yes, that was the question, why?
Dark forebodings took possession of Drew Lane’s mind once more. He knew full well the power of the forces of evil in this great city. There were millions of dollars at stake. A man such as the Chief, sitting in a place of high authority as he was, might be rich if he but turned his back upon the gambling houses and peddlers of poison labeled strong drink.
Until now, Drew had admired and respected his Chief. Had the lure at last grown too strong for him? Had he fallen?
He knew the Chief’s great ambition. In a moment of relaxation he had taken the boy into his confidence.
“Drew, old son,” he had once said, “when I was a boy of sixteen I was not very strong. Like the great Roosevelt, I was sent west for my health. For one whole year I lived on the range. I came to love it.
“You know, the wild, free life. The cattle feeding. The sunset across the green of spring, the brown of summer. The tents, the roasting steaks. The wild, free out-of-doors.
“And, in winter, the big, roomy ranch house. Cards, dances, and all the good times. I want enough money to retire on a ranch like that. Who wouldn’t?”
“Yes,” Drew sighed, “Who wouldn’t? But the price!” He sighed again.
“It looks easy,” he mused. “Just turn your back. Hundreds have done so before you.”
“Johnny Thompson,” he said quite abruptly, “who is the meanest man in the world?”
“A professional criminal.”
“No, Johnny, you’re wrong.” Drew’s smile was sad. “No, Johnny. The meanest man is the one who turns traitor to the cause he has sworn to serve.
“Who is it that we remember with real hatred when we think of our American Revolution? Is it Cornwallis?
“He is not the man. Benedict Arnold, the traitor, is the man.”
“Yes,” Johnny agreed, “that’s right. But you don’t think—”
“Stop!” Drew Lane held up his hand for silence. “This is no time for thinking out loud. We must wait and see.”
“Waiting is not my long suit!” exclaimed Johnny, springing to his feet. “I am long on action. And why not? I am free. You have been free lances for the city. I am a free lance on my own. I can go where I please.”
“Yes,” agreed Tom Howe. “Until the long arm of the Powers of Evil reaches out and gathers you in.”
“But until then,” Johnny went on, not one whit abashed, “I shall do my utmost to solve these mysteries. Did Greasy Thumb and his gang rob the Air Mail? If so, what were they after? And did they get it?”
“And one thing more,” said Tom Howe with a smile of genuine admiration. “What became of that Air Mail pilot?”
“That’s right,” agreed Johnny. “Looks like that is the first real problem. Find that man and perhaps secure a witness who can explain everything.”
“Yes, yes!” exclaimed the others in unison. “Find that man!”
During all this time what had been happening to the air pilot, Curlie Carson, Johnny’s one time pal?
We left him forty feet below the city’s streets in a narrow tunnel with fumes of sulphur filling in behind him, and steel doors closing before him.
Curlie Carson could not remember the time that he was not conscious of some all-pervading presence hovering over and protecting him. Call it what you will, this feeling gave him calm confidence.
With all the remaining strength that was in him, he threw himself forward and through the door.
Scarcely had he passed than the doors closed with a sickening thud, and he dropped to the floor, exhausted.
He was soon on his feet, however. There was work to be done. The package that meant so much of honor or disgrace to him was still in the hands of the mysterious stranger.
Turning, he raced down the narrow tunnel. Coming to an intersection, he paused to listen. The trainman had disappeared. For a time the echoing tunnels were still. As he placed his ear to the ground he caught the sound of receding footsteps.
“Off to the left,” he told himself, “and he is not running. He thinks I am no longer on his trail!”
On tiptoe, not making the least sound, he went speeding down the tunnel.
The man had gone farther than he thought. In such a place sound travels far. The tunnel here, too, was strange. He covered the distance of a long city block, yet came to no intersection. He doubled the distance; still no track crossing this one. The place grew strangely still. The very stillness of it frightened him.
“Like a tomb.” He shuddered.
Once more he dropped upon the track to apply his ear. To his consternation he caught no sound of footsteps. Despair seized him. What could have happened? Had he gone in the wrong direction? Had he lost his man?
The thing was unthinkable. The package must be recovered at any cost.
“No,” he told himself, “I have not lost him. He is still here.”
He began to grow suspicious. A cold chill ran up his spine. Perhaps the man was lurking in the shadows waiting to strike him down. Seeing a two foot length of strap iron lying beside the track, he grasped it firmly in his good right hand and pressed on.
He had not gone a hundred paces when suddenly the passage broadened and came to an abrupt end.
He had entered what appeared to be a blind alley in the tunnel. And here there was no one.
A quick look about him showed a large freight elevator, used, no doubt, for lifting cars to a level some twenty feet above him.
He examined the walls. Bars and braces made them easy to scale.
“He went up there,” Curlie told himself.
But had he? Doubts assailed him.
“Perhaps he did, and perhaps not,” he thought, calming a little. “At least it is the only way out, and I shall find myself out of this hateful place which has so nearly cost me my life.”
Gripping a bar, he began to climb. A lusty pull here, three steps up, a swing, a final struggle, and he lay for a moment on a cement floor.
“And now,” he thought, as he glanced about him, “where am I?”
Where indeed? All about him in the large room were packing cases. Some were small, some quite large. Many of them bore freight labels.
“Will mysteries never end?”
He passed out into a larger room. The place was quite dark, and that in spite of the fact that it must now be morning.
Approaching a narrow packing case that had been pried open, he threw the light of his electric torch into it. Then he started back in horror.
“A skeleton!” he cried aloud.
One circle of his light told him where he was.
“The basement of the Museum,” he thought, and instantly felt better.
A narrow flight of stairs brought him to a dimly lighted floor above.
There was no one there. The place was still as death.
Hastily tiptoeing down the aisle, he came at last to an open window. This window was a scant ten feet above the ground.
“He went out here,” he assured himself.
Clambering out he fell to the grass, then took a survey of the grounds about him. On every side was an open park. Except in one direction the view was unobstructed.
“He could have disappeared only by hiding in that clump of trees,” he told himself. “He’ll wait there until he thinks I’m gone.
“I’ll go around the corner out of sight, and wait for him.”
Three minutes later he found himself crouching against a stone wall, waiting in the stillness of the morning.
But even as he waited, doubt assailed him. Had the man truly left the tunnel?
“That window may have been opened by a caretaker,” he told himself. “And after all, what an ideal hiding place that labyrinth of tunnels would make! Why, a man might hide there for weeks and even a regiment of soldiers might fail to come upon him.”
So now assailed by doubts, now filled with hope, he waited in the dawn.
In that ancient Book called Genesis it says that God saw that it was not good for man to live alone. So He gave him a woman to be his companion. Johnny Thompson had read that old Book. He had learned, too, by experience that a man and woman, or boy and girl, fighting side by side, shoulder to shoulder, will go farther along the road to success in any endeavor than will either alone. It will not seem strange, then, that as he launched forth on a fresh adventure, as he prepared to carry forward the business of solving the mysteries back of the sinister events that had led to the downfall of his good friends Drew Lane and Tom Howe, he should think first of securing a partner for this adventure. And who could better occupy this post of honor than Joyce Mills, daughter of a great detective and partner of Johnny in many a previous adventure?
Johnny was not long in seeking her out. Fortune favored him. He arrived just at her lunch hour.
“There’s no place like a crowd for talking,” he assured her. “Come over to Biedermann’s, on Adams Street. It’s a German grill. You can get a swell cut of flank steak and all the trimmings for thirty-five cents. And there’s so much racket thrown in that not a soul will hear what we say.”
Joyce joined him gladly. To her, every new eating place was a fresh adventure.
After they had eaten the steak and onions and were sipping iced tea, Johnny told of his new adventure.
Briefly he described his experience at the “Greatest of All Carnivals,” of Greasy Thumb and his con game, and of the Gray Shadow. He even produced the roll of bills that had played so large a part in that night’s adventure.
Had he known all, he might well have regretted this move; for scarcely had he slid the roll deep in his pocket than two small men with sharp eyes and nervous, twitching fingers, sidled from their table to pay their check and leave the room. As they gained the street, the shorter of the two placed a hand to his mouth to say in a hoarse whisper:
“Marked money.”
Unconscious of all this, Johnny went on with his story. By a telephone call to the office of the Air Mail station he had secured some details regarding the packages that had disappeared with the young pilot.
“It seems,” he said, “that one package carried the heaviest insurance possible on a registered package, and that it was mailed to a rather dingy section of the city. That in itself seems strange.”
“It does.” Joyce sat up with sudden interest. “Unless you know some things. Would you believe it? I can almost name the consignee of that package.”
“You?” Johnny’s face showed his astonishment.
“I might, if I would,” she replied soberly.
“You see,” her eyes glowed with fresh fire, “I’ve all but turned radical. It’s working in the store that’s done it, I guess. When you see girls, fine young things with splendid bodies and keen minds, working for fifteen or eighteen dollars a week and trying to make a go of it, it sort of makes you hate the millionaires who own that pile of brick and stone and merchandise they call a store.
“Look at that thing of marble out on the lake front.” Her eyes burned like fire. “That place where they keep fish, live fish for folks to look at! It cost a million, they say. Built by a man who ran a big store. Built for a monument to his name, and paid for by the labor of ten thousand folks just like me! Who wouldn’t be a radical?”
“I know,” Johnny agreed quietly. “I’ve felt that way myself. And yet it is so easy to go too far.”
“I know,” the girl sighed a trifle wearily. “I’ve thought of that, and I’ve about given the radicals up. Not till I became a Comrade, though. And I happen to know that they were expecting a priceless package. And the address is about where you say it would be.”
“They did?” Johnny leaned forward. “That’s something worth knowing!
“But look here!” he exclaimed. “They wouldn’t endanger an Air Mail pilot’s life by forcing him to land in a pasture at night!”
“There’s no telling what they would do.” The girl paused to consider. “To them the ‘cause,’ as they call it, is all important. Everything and everybody must be sacrificed to that. But where would they get an airplane and a pilot, much less a radio station? Well, they might—”
“Try to find out.” Johnny gripped her hand.
“I’ll do anything for you.” The girl’s eyes were frank and fearless.
Then suddenly her face was clouded.
“Johnny,” she cried, “where is my father? I have not seen him for days. I am worried, frightened for him!”
“I don’t know.”
“Help me find him.” Her words were a cry of pain.
“I will do my best.”
“One more thing, Johnny.” She leaned over to whisper in his ear before they parted. “I am not a book sales person at the store. That is a blind. I am a store detective.”
Before Johnny could recover from his astonishment at this fresh revelation, she was gone.
“Well,” he thought to himself, “so that dark-eyed girl has put one over on me. She’s a store detective!”
After sober reflection he realized that the thing was logical enough. The girl was born a detective. Her father, one of the greatest of them all, had always inspired her. Girl though she was, she had resolved to follow in his footsteps.
“Of course,” he told himself, “she couldn’t get on the city force. Too young for that. But a great store; that’s different. They use the material they have at hand. And a young girl, even in her late teens, would be of service to them. The shoplifters, the purse snatchers, all that light-fingered tribe, would hardly suspect her of being a dangerous person. Even her fellow employees would not suspect her.” Full well Johnny knew that all too often youthful employees of a great store, dazzled by all the wealth and splendor about them, fell before temptation and began secretly carrying away small articles of merchandise for their own use.
“And that makes it hard for the honest ones,” he told himself.
He paid his check and was about to leave the place when, to his surprise, a young man tapped him on the shoulder.
“You’ll excuse me, I’m sure.” The other’s tone was apologetic. “I’m Mike Martin from the World. Reporter, you know.”
Johnny recognized him on the instant. He it had been who stood behind the Chief, whispering in his ear while Drew Lane and Tom Howe were being so neatly shelved.
He felt an instinctive dislike for the man, and yet he was obliged to admit that he knew nothing against him.
“Sit down, won’t you?” The reporter led him to a corner of the room. “I want to tell you some things that will be for your good.
“Of course you know,” he smiled deprecatingly, “we reporters get into all sorts of strange places. We meet all kinds of curious people; have to know them. That’s our job. Crooks, judges, police captains, Senators, all the rest. The more we know the more news we get and the straighter we have it.
“So you see it happens I know a lot about you.” He tapped Johnny on the knee.
“Me?” Johnny stared. “Why me?”
“Some people are more important than they appear to be. Some little people, if they blunder about, cause a great deal of trouble.
“You’re interested in Drew Lane and Tom Howe.” His tone had changed.
“Why yes, I—they’re my friends. They—”
“That’s well enough. But you think they’ve been unjustly treated. You think you can stir matters up and have things changed.
“Have a care!” He leaned forward with a hand held up for warning. “You may change things in a manner that will get you in bad. Very bad indeed.”
“Just what do you mean by that?” Johnny was on the defensive.
“Don’t ask me how I know.” The reporter leaned forward to whisper in his ear. “It is the business of a reporter to know much and write what he thinks is safe; at least that’s best for him. And in this world it’s every man for himself.
“Now I happen to know,” his voice dropped still lower, “that you have in your possession a roll of marked money.”
Marked money! There it was again. Johnny started. How could this reporter know so much?
“That money,” the reporter went on, “will be your undoing. Unless you walk a very straight and narrow path, you are going to suffer. You will sing your psalms on Sunday behind iron bars and make shoes or clothes-pins during the week.”
“Prison,” the boy thought with a shudder. The money appeared to burn a hole in his pocket. “Why did I take it? I’ll get rid of it at once.”
The reporter appeared to read his mind. “Won’t do a bit of good to dispose of it now. Those men have witnesses to swear you took it, and others who will say under oath that they saw you with it later. That’s evidence enough.
“Mind you,” he went on smoothly, “I am not threatening you. Why should I? I am only a reporter who knows things. I am telling you what is safe. All you have to do is to drop this whole affair; forget it. Take the money. Go on a fishing trip. Have a good time; you’ll not be molested.”
“I don’t want the money!” Johnny protested indignantly. “I—”
“Don’t say it.” The reporter put a hand on his arm. “Think it over. Iron bars; work in a shoe factory run by the State, behind iron bars.”
He was gone.
“Well, I’ll be—” Johnny stared after him. What did it all mean, anyway? A whispering reporter with such a warning.
Just what Johnny thought of this whole affair after ten minutes of reflection may be judged by what he did.
Pulling his cap down over his eyes in a determined way he made for the street.
“Shoes,” he grumbled. “Always did want to know how to make a pair of shoes. Lots of people can write a book or paint a picture. How many of them could make a pair of shoes. And you can learn all that for practically nothing.” He chuckled in a mirthless sort of way.
“I’ll find that missing aviator,” he told himself. “And then, we’ll—then we’ll see.”