The young Air Mail pilot whom Johnny had, for the tenth time that day, decided to search out, had not been idle.
Two long hours he had crouched beside the wall of the museum waiting for the one who had robbed him of the precious, mysterious package. He waited in vain. At last he gave up hope.
With leaden feet and drooping spirits he left the park in search of a restaurant.
A hot breakfast revived his spirits. “I’ll go back and face the music,” he told himself with a grim set of his jaw. “What I did was, I judged, for the greatest good of all, and no man can do more than that.”
He climbed a stairway, boarded an elevated train and went rattling away toward the distant airport.
He settled back in his place for half an hour’s ride and allowed his thoughts to wander. They were long, long thoughts. He was the youngest air pilot in the mail service. He had worked hard to reach that goal. The money for his flying instruction had been saved bit by bit. When he had earned an air pilot’s license he still had a long way to go. Little by little, he had piled up hours of successful flight until he was considered eligible for the Air Mail service. Months as a substitute, with an occasional flight, had preceded his regular commission.
“And now this!” he groaned.
He had not entered the service through a desire for adventure alone. He wished to serve his country. Knowing how rapidly the air service was developing, he had decided that there lay his great opportunity.
“Romance, adventure,” he murmured, “that’s all some people see in this airplane business.” He had once heard Lindbergh say that piloting a great passenger plane was about as exciting as driving a truck.
“And yet,” he smiled grimly, “the last few hours have shown me adventure enough. Forced down by an unknown pilot in the night.” He wondered now who his assailants could have been. He no longer believed they had been after the priceless violin.
“It was that other package sent by one radical group to another. But what did it contain? What must it contain to incite men to such reckless deeds of intrigue?”
He saw now where he had made his mistake. Having learned from the noted violinist, Fritz Lieber, something of the nature of the package he was carrying and of the people to whom it was addressed, he should have moved with greater caution.
“Too late to think about that now,” he told himself. “Have to go to Crane and tell my story.”
Robert Crane, Jr., was District Manager of the Air Transportation Company. He was young, a college graduate, and son of a rich man. Curlie had seen little of him but had always feared him. Old men of long experience, whatever their importance in the world of affairs, never frightened him. But of a young man in a high position he simply did not know what to expect, that was all.
Thus it was with many misgivings that he sought out the young manager’s office.
Robert Crane sprang to his feet the instant the boy entered the door.
“Where have you been?” he demanded.
“I—”
“Delivering the mail in person, I am told. Since when has our company held that contract?”
“In an emergency,” Curlie was getting control of himself, “when there is great need one does what seems best.”
“Sit down!” The manager indicated a chair. Curlie sat down. “Now tell me about it, but be brief. There’s a man from the Government Secret Service waiting in the back office.”
Curlie shuddered, cleared his throat twice, spoke a few words, choked up, took a fresh start. Then securing a firm grip on himself he proceeded to tell his story.
The young manager sat erect in his chair. The clock ticked off the seconds. From somewhere far away came the rumble of an airplane motor. When the boy had finished he was aware that he had told his story well.
“That—ah—” The young manager started to speak as Curlie finished, then stopped to stare at the ceiling. He punched two holes through a blotter, looked up, then punched three more.
“Undecided,” the boy thought to himself. “He’s young. That’s the trouble. An older man would know exactly what to do. I—”
“We’ll talk to that man.” Robert Crane broke in on his thoughts. He rang a bell. A girl appeared.
“Show in Mr. Simons.”
A moment later a short, stout man with bristling gray hair appeared.
“This is Curlie Carson,” said the manager, “our man.” Curlie liked the way he said “our.” “Sit down. I’ll tell you about it.”
Simons sat down. “Secret Service,” Curlie thought, and shuddered anew.
In the five minutes that followed Curlie’s admiration for Robert Crane grew by leaps and bounds. He told Curlie’s story to the Secret Service man, told it as the boy could not have told it, and all in the space of five minutes.
“What if he is a rich man’s son?” Curlie said to himself. “He’s not to blame for that. He has his work to do in the world just as the rest of us have. He’ll do it, too.”
“That’s his story,” Robert Crane finished, “and don’t forget this; it’sourstory as well. He isourman. We trust him; don’t hire a man we can’t. He’sourman. We’ll back him with the last resource we can command!”
A lump rose in Curlie’s throat. He felt that he was about to disgrace himself with tears. So this was Robert Crane, the young man he had feared!
Regaining control of himself, he turned to face the Secret Service man.
“Quite right, Mr. Crane, quite right,” Mr. Simons was saying. “But the young man’s conduct has been—well, irregular. One doesn’t open locked mailsacks with a knife, not as a common thing.
“And this affair,” he leaned suddenly forward. “You are not aware, perhaps, that this innocent looking package contained a king’s ransom in jewels?”
Curlie stared. Crane started to speak, then stopped.
“Fact.” The Secret Service man’s voice cracked like a pistol. “Smuggled in. Part of the Crown Jewels of Russia. Reds over there had ’em. They decided to risk sneaking ’em here to be sold over the grapevine trail. Then, like as not, they’d spend the money trying to make this a Godless country without families or homes.
“And now,” he exclaimed, “for all we know they will succeed! Who has that package now? Tell me that! Who but some Bolshevik? Who dares even guess it is anyone else? And where is our Government’s rightful customs duty on those jewels? Gone. Hundreds of thousands, to say nothing of the inestimable harm that that money will do!”
He reached for his hat. “Well, we’ve got to get that man!” He went stumping out of the room.
“Guess that’s about all.” There was a kindly look on the young manager’s face, as he turned to Curlie. “You need sleep. Better get some. And don’t worry. We’ll fix it, we and God. Don’t ever forget that God is in on every transaction, either for or against us. We try to be on His side.”
Curlie did not speak. He could not. He turned and walked slowly from the room.
He was hardly out of the door when he was confronted by an eager-faced young lady.
“If you please,” she said, “is Mr. Carson in there?”
“I am Curlie Carson.”
“Now what?” the boy thought to himself.
“I am Grace Palmer,” said the girl, “and I wanted so much to see you.”
Grace Palmer. Worse and worse. He had never heard of her. Here was fresh mystery.
Yet, if he had but known it, this sudden meeting was to figure largely in his destiny.
In this life of ours, years become months, months become weeks, weeks narrow down to days, days dwindle to hours, hours to minutes; then the unexpected happens.
Johnny Thompson was about to meet his one time pal. Once more their lives were to be joined in a great adventure. But not yet. Years, months, weeks, days had dwindled, but hours had not yet become moments in the hourglass of fate.
Johnny was on his way to Curlie’s airport. He stood on the curb, waiting for the westbound car, when someone touched his elbow and demanded in some surprise:
“What’s happened?”
It was “The Ferret,” the silent worker of the detective world.
“Enough has happened,” Johnny answered, not at all displeased by this surprise meeting. “Drew and Tom have been shelved. Greasy Thumb has been found and turned loose. I am shortly to take a course in shoemaking behind iron bars. And—”
“Hold on!” “The Ferret” stopped him. “It can’t be as bad as that. Give me a few details. Come on in here. It’s a crooked dump of a place, but I’m known, or at least they think they know me.” He smiled a twisted smile. “Anyway, it’s an off hour. There’s sure to be no one here.”
He was right. The small, barn-like room they entered was deserted. Doors on three sides were closed. For all this, Johnny felt that they were watched.
“Speak low,” “The Ferret” said, as he took a place beside a table worn smooth by cards and dice. “No one will hear.”
Johnny told all that had happened.
“They won’t do that!” “The Ferret” declared when Johnny spoke of the marked money. “They wouldn’t dare try it. Send you to prison? That’s a huge joke!
“They might put you on the spot, or take you for a ride. Hardly that, though. Not yet. You’ve not caused them enough trouble. But watch out. When the heavy hand falls, it falls hard.”
For a time he sat in an attitude of deep thought.
“So they’ve shelved Lane and Howe!” Johnny heard him mutter. “There’s something for the Voice. I’ll give it to him. And how he’ll love it! How he’ll ride ’em for it! Great boy, the Voice! But it’s a dangerous game. Suppose they find out. Just suppose they do?” He shrugged his shoulders, then shuddered.
“Who’s he talking about now?” Johnny wondered to himself. He wanted to ask who this Voice might be. He did not quite dare. So there, for a time, the matter dropped. But not for good nor for long. A new, powerful and altogether strange force was about to enter this uncertain and apparently uneven battle for the right.
Grace Palmer, Curlie Carson learned at once, was the daughter of Professor Palmer, and sister to the child whose life he had done much to save.
“You brought her medicine. You saved her life. She is my only sister.” The young eyes were filled with honest tears of gratitude.
Curlie hated tears. They made him feel awkward and out of place.
But Grace Palmer was not one to spill them needlessly. She was a girl of purpose and strength. Grace Palmer, Curlie would discover soon enough, was not the average type of girl. Reared beneath the shadows of stately university buildings, she had unconsciously acquired something of their quiet dignity. At this moment she wore a hand-tailored suit of dark blue broadcloth. The suit made her appear a good deal older than she really was.
Yes, Grace Palmer was a dignified person. She was possessed of a good mind, and her father had seen to it that her mind was trained in the art of thinking. For all that, beneath the almost severe broadcloth coat there was a heart that was capable of beating very fast at the thought of mystery and adventure. She was not sorry to be on her present mission.
“Father has classes,” she explained. “He teaches. I am studying, but my periods are all in the afternoon. He asked me to drive out here and thank you. He—he also wanted me to ask you if the—the way you delivered our package got you into any trouble.”
“It has,” Curlie said, rather bluntly. “Plenty.” He was tired; wanted to clean up and rest. Anyway, what could a girl do?
“My troubles,” he said, taking a step toward the door, “don’t matter.”
“Oh, but they do!” Impulsively her hand gripped his arm. “We—we owe you so much. We can help, I am sure. Won’t you let us? Won’t you tell me about it?”
Curlie could not resist this appeal.
“Oh, all right,” he said. “I’ll tell you.
“But,” he added, as a ghost of a smile flitted across his face, “if I fall asleep, you must waken me.”
He led the way to the fresh outdoor air. There he dropped upon a bench.
He told his story briefly. But to his own surprise, led on by the girl’s expressions of sympathy, excitement and consternation, he told it well.
“And,” she exclaimed as he finished, “you say the man went east from the museum? Perhaps he went over to the island.”
“Island?” Curlie stared. “There is no island off that shore.”
“Oh, but there is one, a mile and a half long. There are to be others. Men make them with dredges and dump trucks.
“It’s really quite an old island,” she continued. “Trees on it twenty feet tall and some shacks where men live; three or four shacks.”
“Shacks? Men?” Curlie’s voice was full of suppressed excitement. “Perhaps the man who stole that package lives there. Perhaps the package is there still.”
“Yes,” she agreed, “that may be true. Shall we go and see?”
Curlie paused for thought. A film seemed to close over his eyes.
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “No. Not now. I’ve reached my limit. I’m no good.”
“You need rest,” she said quickly. “But can’t I come back for you later? It’s really considerable of an island. I go there often. And truly I think it’s worth looking into.”
“Yes,” Curlie acquiesced, “you come. Any time after six.”
Ten minutes later in the airport bunkroom he lay quite still, lost in deep sleep.
He was awakened in mid-afternoon by a newsboy calling his papers. As he listened, still half asleep, he thought he caught words that sounded like “Air Mail.”
He was out of his bunk at once. Had it appeared in the papers—his story?
He threw up his window and sent a coin rattling to the pavement below.
“Bring one up,” he shouted. The boy pocketed the coin, waved and disappeared.
He reappeared almost at once by the bunkroom door, with a cheerful:
“Here y’are, mister. All about the Air Mail robbery.”
Curlie dropped down on his bunk and stared in amazement. There it was, on the front page of the afternoon scream-sheet. Two planes in mid-air; this drawn by a staff artist. His own plane on the ground; a real photograph. And his picture in the oval inset.
He read the story breathlessly. There was much there that he did not know. His plane, so the story ran, had been rescued and brought into port. No damage had been done. The number of mailsacks taken was not yet known.
The story made him out quite a hero. He flushed when he thought how he had bungled matters in the end.
“No clue as to the assailants,” he read on. “An unlicensed radio station, surprised and overhauled in the vicinity of the attack, offered no real clue.
“One thousand dollars reward offered by the air transport company for return of the missing package.”
“Kind of them to make the offer,” he thought. “But that’s one reward that will go unearned.” Little he knew!
The picture that interested him most was one running entirely across the top of the second page. In this were shown the smiling, happy faces of scores of crippled children.
“Their concert saved,” was the caption.
“That,” he said with conviction, “is even worth going to jail for.”
Of a sudden he recalled his engagement with Grace Palmer to visit that island. He looked at his watch.
“Time to dress and have a bite to eat,” he told himself, as he began hurrying into his clothes.
As he stepped out of the airport on his way to the lunch room across the street, he all but collided with an old time pal.
“Johnny Thompson, as I live!” he exclaimed.
“Curlie Carson!” Johnny gripped his hand.
The invisible threads of silken dreams that had been drawing them closer and closer had brought them together at last.
They talked for a moment or two of old times and far-away places.
Then all of a sudden, Johnny started. “But I can’t talk any more now.” He turned about. “Came here to find an Air Mail pilot.”
“What’s his name?”
“Don’t know.”
“Describe him.”
“I can’t.”
“Then what—?” Curlie stared at him.
“He brought the mail from New York. Was forced down; plane robbed. He—”
“Spare your breath,” Curlie grinned. “I’m the guy.”
“You?” Johnny stared in astonishment.
“Surest thing in the world!”
“Then,” said Johnny, “I’m in luck.”
“Come on over and have a cup of coffee. Got a heavy date with a lady.”
“A lady?”
“Professor’s daughter. Thinking of taking a course in something or other myself,” Curlie bantered. “Come on. Let’s go.”
Seated on lunch counter stools, devouring ham and egg sandwiches and drinking coffee, the one time pals told of their experiences.
Johnny listened in silence to Curlie’s account of his narrow escape, his forced landing, his night wanderings as a messenger boy, his thrilling adventures in the tunnel beneath the city. When he came to the point where he had lost the trail of the one who had snatched the package of rare jewels (if, indeed, the Secret Service man’s statement were correct) he straightened up and put a hand on Curlie’s arm.
“I’ll tell you what I think.” He was in deadly earnest. “That fellow never left the tunnel. Why should he? Finest hiding place in the world. What?”
“No doubt about it. For all that, I think he did leave it.”
“You’re wrong. Come with me to the tunnel, and we’ll find him.”
“Can’t. Got a date to search an island; date with that college girl, Grace Palmer.”
“An island?” Johnny pondered. “Oh, yes, I remember.”
Johnny did remember many things about that island. Thrilling adventures had come to him there when the island was younger, as you will recall if you have read the book calledThe Fire Bug.
“Might be something to it,” he said thoughtfully. “Well, you look that place over and I’ll take a look at the tunnel. Somehow, we must find that man.
“Old Greasy Thumb and his pals were at the bottom of this Air Mail robbery, or I’m a green one. Thing to do is to get evidence, then get them. Next time they’ll stay in jail.
“One thing troubles me most of all.” His brow wrinkled. “That’s the way the Chief acts about the whole affair. Then, too, there’s that reporter. He’s certainly a queer one. You don’t expect to find anything wrong with a reporter from a paper like theWorld. They’re always on the side of decency, and honest reform. Oh, well, we may be all wrong about everything. Time’ll tell.
“You’d better hurry over and keep your date. I hope we’re going to be seeing a lot of each other.”
“Hope so.” Curlie hastened away.
They were indeed, and the result was to be adventure such as seldom comes to any one.
Grace Palmer arrived late. It was growing dark when her car pulled up before the hangar. She came alone. Curlie was surprised. He had expected her to bring the chauffeur.
“You’ll have to pardon me.” She smiled as she threw open the door. “Usually I arrive at the tick of the clock. But I had a blowout. The old bus described a parabola and nearly put me on the curb. But hop in. We’ll get there all right now.”
Curlie climbed in and they were away. He was beginning to have a comfortable feeling about this new friend. “Here,” he told himself, “is unexpected aid.” And aid was what he needed. In spite of the fact that his youthful employer had treated him in a magnanimous manner, he felt morally responsible for the return of that mysterious, and supposedly priceless, package.
“If that Secret Service man knew what he was talking about,” he said to Grace Palmer, “those fellows were not only beating the Government out of thousands of dollars in customs duties, but were planning to use the whole proceeds for the purpose of striking what blows they might at the land that feeds, clothes and protects them. And if they get away with it, I’ll be to blame.”
“They won’t get away with it,” Grace Palmer said stoutly. “We will see to that!”
* * * * * * * *
In the meantime, Johnny Thompson had not been idle. He meant to enter the tunnel where Curlie had, quite by accident, lost himself and nearly lost his life in the bargain.
It was, he found soon enough, quite an unusual thing for the entrance to be left unguarded. When he tried to go down, a watchman stopped him.
“Have to get a permit from Mr. Rusby,” he told the boy gruffly. “He’s the manager.”
“Where is he?”
“In the office.” The man jerked a thumb to the right. “No. Let’s see.” He consulted his watch.
“Nope. Gone home. You’ll have to come to-morrow.”
Johnny had no notion of waiting until to-morrow. The tunnel would, he reasoned, be used less at night. That would give him greater freedom in making his search.
“More than forty miles,” he grumbled. “Forty miles of tunnel. Like looking for a pearl in a gravel pit.”
For all that, he hurried to the office, caught a belated office girl, secured Mr. Rusby’s telephone number from her and then hurried to a drug store.
But there he came to a halt. Mr. Rusby, he was informed, was out and was not expected back before eleven o’clock. And no one at his home could tell where he was to be found.
“So there you are.” Johnny banged down the receiver. “May as well go back to the shack and listen to a few tunes on the radio.”
He did just that. But he heard more than tunes on the radio that night. What he heard started a fresh mystery. It made him sit up and think sober thoughts, too. You may be very sure of that.
* * * * * * * *
Curlie and the college girl were on the island. A curious sort of island it was. The early explorers had not discovered it. There was reason enough for that; it had not been there.
Men had made that island, men and trucks, pile-drivers, dredgers, and more men. The refuse from a great city: ashes, old cans, glass, and the clay from beneath many a skyscraper had gone into its making. And with these, sand, much sand from the bottom of the lake.
It is strange how nature hates ugliness. Men had left this island ugly. Nature had added a touch of beauty. Wind had sifted sand over all. Cans, glass, ashes were buried. Trees and bushes had grown up. And now it was a place where one might stroll with pleasure.
But Curlie and the girl, as you know, had not come here for a stroll.
Almost at once they stumbled upon something. What? They could not tell.
They had climbed over a great heap of rocks, used as a breakwater, and were about to descend an even higher pile when the girl gripped Curlie by the arm and pulled him back. At the same time she put a finger to his lips.
He listened. At first he heard nothing save the distant, indistinct murmur of the city. And then there came the sound of heavy footsteps. After that, silence.
And into that silence came a voice. Low but distinct, it said, “Shall we bury it here?”
The girl gripped Curlie’s arm till it hurt. Yet he made no sound.
His heart raced. Bury what? The package of jewels, to be sure. What luck! Or was it so lucky after all? They were not armed. These were likely to be desperate men—men who stop at nothing.
What was to be done? They were in the midst of a pile of giant, jagged rocks. Beyond the rocks on one side was water, on the other, sand. On the sand, not five yards away were men, strange men. And in the darkness they were burying something.
“Can it be?” whispered the girl.
“Who knows?” Curlie whispered back.
He touched the girl’s arm for silence. What was to be done? The men were between them and the bridge that led to the island from the city.
It was a lonely spot. True enough, the lights of a great city, ten thousand lights, gleamed in the distance. But that distance was too great. The sandy surface of a man-made island, a deep lagoon and broad park spaces lay between.
“If we stir they will hear us,” the boy whispered. “Don’t move. They may go away.”
They heard the sound of scraping in the sand and the puffs of exertion. Moments seemed hours. The girl felt a cramp taking possession of her right foot. She made a furtive attempt to relieve it. Then came catastrophe. A stone, dislodged by her foot, rolled down with a thud which in that silence seemed a crash.
A muttered exclamation was followed by heavy footsteps. Curlie seized the girl’s arm and fairly hurled her over the rocks. The next instant, with the men in hot pursuit, they were dashing away over the sand.
“Some building over there,” Curlie panted. “Have to try for that.”
They did try. But Curlie could fly better than he could run. He was short of breath. The men gained on them, a yard, two, three, five yards. They almost felt the breaths of their pursuers.
Curlie tried to think what it would mean if they should stumble.
They rounded a second breakwater and there stood the building. But such a building as it was! A low structure of many sides and a large dome. It seemed a tomb.
“And not a light!” The boy’s heart sank.
There was nothing to be done but to race on. Heavy footsteps, labored breathing were behind them; the city was far away. They reached the wall of dark marble. No doors there. They began circling this astonishing edifice.
Their pursuers were all but upon them when they came at last to a door.
“It is not locked!” the girl said aloud. “Itmustnot be!” She put out a hand and turned the knob. The door swung open. They tumbled in. Then, as if by magic, the door closed and locked itself.
Curlie knew it was locked, for a heavy hand on the outside knob failed to budge it.
The knob was all but wrenched away to no purpose. After that came silence, deep and ominous.
“Well,” the boy whispered with a nervous laugh, “here we are. But where are we?”
And where, indeed, were they? Aside from a tiny gleam of red light that seemed far away, the place was utterly dark. This feeble light, casting not the faintest shadow, appeared to make the darkness more intense.
“Ah!” the girl exclaimed in an audible whisper.
“Ah—ah—ah,” came echoing back.
“Like some terrible cellar!” she whispered. “Let’s—let’s go back.”
Futile suggestion. This unusual door had locked itself automatically both within and without.
“We will go to the light,” Curlie said. “This way. We’ll find our way out.”
Straight toward the staring red eye they marched. Twice they bumped into stone pillars and were obliged to detour. But at last they reached the spot directly beneath the light.
“A door!” the boy exclaimed tensely.
“And not locked!” Grace Palmer had tried it.
The door opened and they passed beyond. Once more darkness confronted them, darkness and a stairway.
Up the stairway they went on hands and knees.
A third door, more darkness.
But no, not complete darkness. Off to the right was an oblong of pale light.
Toward this they moved with caution.
The oblong of light formed an open doorway. The space beyond that door was more mysterious than anything they had yet seen. There were no lamps anywhere, but pale light was about them everywhere. A vast pale dome, like the sky, hung above them.
“Why! Itisthe sky!” whispered the girl. “See! There is the moon! And there the stars, pale stars!”
This seemed true. Surely there was the moon, and there the stars; yet Curlie was puzzled. The moon seemed too high, the stars too bright. What could it all mean? His head was in a whirl.
More was yet to come. As they stood there motionless, gazing upward, the entire firmament, the moon, the planets and the stars began to move.
“Oh!” breathed the girl.
They did not move rapidly, this moon, these stars. There was something dignified and terrible about the slow and leisurely manner in which they traversed the great dome above.
For fully three minutes not a sound was uttered. But when the moon vanished beneath the horizon and a million stars shone with added brightness, the girl seized Curlie’s hand to drag him into the outer darkness.
She led on blindly until a second red light appeared. Followed by her companion, she passed through a door and mounted a long, winding stairway, to find herself at last out in the clear, cool air of night, with a very different sky above, a sky full of stars, all set with a gorgeous, golden moon that did not move, at least not so you could see it.
“Oh,” she breathed, “this is better!”
As Curlie, feeling the cool lake breeze on his cheek, gazed away at the island that lay before him and at the dark waters far and away beyond, he wondered what had really happened, after all.
When they had regained their composure they began an investigation which told them they were on a narrow circular promenade some thirty feet above the surface of the island.
Fortunate for them was the fact that workmen engaged in mounting statues on the ledge had left their scaffold standing.
After a careful survey of the ground below, to make sure that their pursuers had left, they nimbly made their way down to earth and bounded away in a silent race for the car.
To their vast relief they found it unmolested.
“Well,” said Curlie, as they sat once more in the car, with the motor purring, ready for a dash at a moment’s notice, “what about that?”
“That,” said the girl, “is one of the strangest things I ever experienced. But of course,” she laughed softly, “you know what it was.”
“No,” said Curlie, slowly, “I don’t.”
“It’s a planetarium.”
“A what?”
“A planetarium. You may come here any day and see the stars, the moon, the sun and all the rest do their stuff. The old man who runs it must have been practicing up a bit.”
Curlie was nonplussed. He was obliged to admit that the place had had him guessing.
“Anyway,” he said, “it was a refuge. Question is, what are we to do next?”
“We might let the police in on this.”
“I don’t want to. Guess the thing is safe enough till morning. Either it is an important discovery, or it isn’t. Either they buried it, or they didn’t. If they did they’re not going to dig it up the same night.”
This was the way they left it. The girl was to pick Curlie up at seven o’clock. Curlie was to arm himself, and they were to return to the island to make a more thorough investigation.
“I’ll bring a garden spade,” the girl said in parting.
“And I a gun,” Curlie chuckled. “Spades and guns. Regular pirates.”
That night Johnny Thompson went in search of a man. In making this search he met with adventure, such adventure as no person would go far to seek.
But before that he heard a voice. And that voice, coming as it did from the air, thrilled him to the very tips of his toes.
He was seated in the shack, the very shack you have come to know so well from readingThe Arrow of Fire—the one Drew Lane had rented from nobody in particular. It was, you will recall, surrounded by brick structures of some size. But, like some stunted little pine among a forest of giants, a relic of the past, it had held its place during all the changing years.
A fishing shack it had been at one time, perhaps, when the shore of the lake was several blocks closer to the heart of the city. Now it served as a home for Drew Lane and Johnny Thompson, together with anyone who might have met with misfortune and come under the observation of these youthful philanthropists.
At the moment Johnny was not thinking of philanthropy, but of crime. “Why is it,” he was asking himself, “that men are willing to place themselves outside the law? Why will they steal and kill? Why bring airplanes down in the night, or snatch a package from an honest boy who is trying to do his duty?
“Probably money,” he told himself. “But money for what purpose? To pay rent? Buy food? Not often. Money for pleasure, gambling, gaudy clothes, high-power cars, drink. These are what the money buys.
“Too often they wish to ape the rich. And what do the foolish sort of rich people do but put on a big show? Huh!”
He left the subject with disgust, to wonder about other matters. He thought again of that haunting Gray Shadow that, appearing and disappearing, seemed to guard his destiny.
“An angel of light,” he murmured. “Wonder if I’ll ever see him face to face. I—”
He broke off short to listen. Just before the air of the room had been filled with the melodious notes of Titl’s Serenade. Now, as the notes died away, without announcement someone broke in with the words:
“I am the Voice.”
“The Voice!” Johnny exclaimed. “Where did I hear that expression before?”
But the voice was going on. It was telling the people of this great city, at an hour when they were at home and in a thoughtful mood, just what their city was like.
“I am the Voice.” The tones were low and mellow, a kindly, almost pleading voice. “This is your city and my city. It is our home. We have always lived here. We love it. And yet it is a graft-ridden, crime-ridden city.
“I am the Voice. I must tell you of these things. I, the Voice, am hidden away. I will be hidden. No one knows my name. The announcer does not know, the station manager does not know. No one sees me. No one will see me. I am only a Voice. Each night at this hour I will tell you of our city. I will tell you many things that it is disturbing to hear; yet you must hear them. It is my duty to speak; yours to listen.”
Johnny thrilled and trembled at the sound of this Voice. It was as if the Voice was no real person, but one returned from the dead.
“Like the Gray Shadow,” he told himself. “So unreal.”
Though the Voice seemed unreal, the events it was to speak of next were real enough, as Johnny was in a position to know.
“Only one little group of facts to-night,” the Voice went on, “then I am done. A few hours ago, a known gunman was arrested. Damaging evidence was found on his person. Two young detectives who have built up an enviable record for themselves, brought him in. The evidence was placed before the Chief. The Chief returned the evidence. Why? A man whispered into his ear. Why? The gunman was released. Why?
“The young detectives have been placed in a position where they can make no more arrests. Why?
“A certain reporter is said to have unusual influence and power with the City Council and civic officials. Why?
“I am the Voice. I bid you good-night.”
Once more the instrumental trio was on the air.
“Who is this Voice?” Johnny asked himself. “How did he know all that?”
He thought of “The Ferret.” Now he recalled that he had said something about the Voice. But what voice? Was it this voice? He could not be sure.
“Have to ask him,” he told himself. At that, he was not sure he would ask “The Ferret.” Some affairs are best left secret. This Johnny knew well enough.
He went to the telephone and called a number. Ten minutes later he was out of the shack and on his way to the entrance of the city’s freight subway. He had gained permission to spend the night there. And such a night as it was to be!
The narrow tunnels far beneath the din of this vast city’s streets were built in the main to serve great enterprises. The steel cars that rattle on and on through the night carry coal to factories and many-floored department stores. The lighter cars, with frames of wood, transport shipments of goods from the stores to outlying districts where they are loaded on trucks and delivered. Manufactured goods are hurried away to warehouses and depots.
Thus it happened that Johnny, entering as he did at the dead of night, found men still toiling in these narrow burrows where the light of day never comes.
There are many entrances to these tunnels. Most of these are elevators wide enough to lift two or three cars from the depths below to the street level above.