Turning his head about as if he had not heard aright and staring at the bottle of perfume, the man stammered:
“Do—do you think I’d take that stuff?”
“Of course you would!” Joyce Mills broke in almost fiercely. “You’d take anything. See here, you!” She fixed her burning black eyes upon him. “Do you remember Newton Mills, the New York City detective?”
The man shrank back.
“Well, I’m his daughter! And he’s here in this city. Now, tell this gentleman again that you wouldn’t steal perfume.”
“It—it’s all right,” the man with the missing ear stammered. “I’ll go with you.”
“Let me have him,” Joyce Mills whispered in the detective’s ear.
“But that’s not the custom. You’re only a slip of a girl.”
“Let me have him,” she insisted. Her voice was filled with a fierce determination.
“It’s all right, mister,” the other broke in. “I’ll go with her. Give you my word of honor.”
“Your word of honor!” scoffed the detective. “Oh, all right, take him,” he said, turning to Joyce. “And take this,” he slipped a small revolver into her jacket pocket, “and keep your eyes open!”
“My eyes and my ears.” The girl actually laughed as she marched away with her prisoner.
“You framed me!” the man grumbled, as they reached the outer door.
“Yes,” she replied, “I framed you. But there’s a reason. You’ll see!”
“You don’t know—”
“I know plenty. Come on! Let’s go.”
They left the store and lost themselves in the throng that milled along the busiest street in the world.
Johnny Thompson saw no more of the mysterious Gray Shadow among the clouds that morning. He was soon enough to forget all about him, for fresh adventure lay before him.
Hardly had they left the Shadow and his cloud behind than he began thinking of his promise to Curlie. He had agreed to drop from the sky and to play the part of good fairy to a crippled child.
Johnny was very fond of small children, crippled children most of all. But as the plane sped on high in the air, as they came nearer and nearer to the place where Curlie must turn and give him the signal to prepare for the leap, he found himself wishing that the sky lay close to the ground where one might step off at any time.
“Well,” he sighed at last, “there must always be a first time.
“And,” he groaned a moment later, “if anything goes wrong, the first is last and the last is first.”
At that he began thinking of Curlie’s instructions: “Walk out on the wing. Watch your balance. Play you are on a diving board. Make a dive. Count five. Pull the cord. The parachute will do the rest. Only, when you come close to the earth, see that your knees are bent. Don’t land stiff-legged. That’s dangerous.”
Buttoned inside of Johnny’s jacket was a doll. Wrapped about the doll was the marked money.
“Anyway,” he sighed, “I’ll be through with that money. They’ll never suspect this trick of ours. And they’ll never find it. This is once in my life when I do the Robin Hood.”
Hardly had he thought this through than Curlie turned his head about to nod. He held up three fingers.
“Three fingers. Three minutes!” Johnny’s mind went into a whirl. Three minutes of sunshine and fleecy clouds. Three minutes of glorious freedom and life. And after that?
He rose stiffly to his place. As he put out a hand to steady himself it seemed that he was stiff as a wooden soldier.
“What nonsense!” He got a grip on himself. “Gotta go through! Lots of fellows have.”
At this he felt better. He moved carefully a little way out on the wing, looked to the straps about his body, allowed his eyes to circle the sky; then, putting his hands together, he made a perfect dive.
At once he was shocked because there was no shock. He was going down. But what a glorious sensation! Like real flying, a bird’s way.
“One. Two. Three. Four. Five!”
He pulled the cord. More gliding downward. A slight shock that told him the parachute was open; then the earth came up to meet him.
At first a blurred impression, it resolved itself into fields and pastures, an orchard, a farmhouse, and last of all, a small girl dressed in red.
Johnny came down standing. He ran a few steps. His parachute folded up. He lurched a step or two, then stood still not thirty feet from a very much surprised little girl who fairly danced, in spite of her crutches.
“Where did you come from?” she demanded. “I looked, and you were not there. Then I looked again and you were. How funny!”
“Yes,” said Johnny, “it is strange. But then, this is a strange world.
“I came down from the air to bring you a doll. Curlie sent it—Curlie Carson.”
“Curlie Carson! A doll!”
“Yes,” said Johnny. “She shuts her eyes when she sleeps. And she can talk a little. But the best part is her dress. See! It is all made of real money! There is another dress underneath. So tell your daddy to take off this green dress and use it buying things for you.”
“Oh!” The little girl stared. She did not understand all this. But she took the doll.
“Her father may not understand it either,” Johnny told himself. “Guess I’ll leave it that way, at that.”
“Good-bye, little girl. Have a good time.”
He gathered up his parachute and started for the road.
“Aren’t you going back into the air?” she asked.
“Not to-day. Some other time.”
He climbed over the fence, caught a ride on a passing truck, and was gone.
That night there was surprise and great rejoicing in the little unpainted farmhouse that lay beneath the great Air Mail route to New York. And many were the happy days that followed.
It is safe to say that Greasy Thumb and his gang never guessed the final disposition of their ill-gotten gain—their marked money.
Johnny Thompson was back at the shack in the city. Drew Lane and Tom Howe were there. So too was “The Ferret,” and two heavy-set Federal men. But the center of attention was a certain slim miss in a plain, dark gray suit—Joyce Mills.
“I have the whole story,” she said impressively, as the last man to arrive drew up a chair. “The trail leads north to the woods and lakes of Michigan.”
“Did he tell you where the loot is hidden?” It was a Federal man who spoke.
“He did not, because he could not. He didn’t know. He gave the package to another man.”
“And where is he now?”
Joyce Mills shrugged her shoulders. “How should I know? In the city somewhere.”
“You let him go!” The Federal man’s tone held guarded scorn.
“I did. On his own word that he would not leave the city, nor get in touch with those in the north woods.”
“His word!” The Federal man’s scorn was unveiled.
“Yes, his word!” The girl’s black eyes flashed. “And if you wish to use the information I have, you will treat me as a lady should be treated!”
The Federal man recoiled. For a moment there was silence in the room.
“I—I—” The pompous Federal man unbent. “I apologize. Please go on.”
“That man,” Joyce Mills said slowly, “the one with one ear gone, was a stool pigeon for my father. My father has things on him that would send him to prison for years or get him shot in twenty-four hours. He told me the whole truth. He did not dare do otherwise. The trail leads north. He does not know where the package is. Those who do are up there. We must get those men.”
Those who listened knew well enough the men she meant; knew, too, that they were dangerous characters. Yet there was not one of them who was not eager to follow her into the forest. For now, at last, they felt themselves close to the end of the trail. Not one of them questioned this slim girl’s statement that she had, in a manner all her own, discovered the whereabouts of the earless one and obtained from him the full story of how Curlie Carson was forced to earth in his Air Mail plane and later robbed of his priceless package. Drew Lane and Tom Howe would be vindicated. They would have a new deal. Curlie Carson’s name would be cleared. The city they loved would be freed from a dangerous band of outlaws.
“Lead on!” Drew Lane’s tone was impressive. “We will follow.”
So, one by one, with a slim girl in the lead, they filed out of the shack.
At an hour after darkness had fallen, had you happened upon a certain rather large cabin on a point of land where many islands and this point form a bay on the shore of Lake Huron, and had you chanced to look through a crack in the rough board shutters, you might have witnessed an impressive sight.
The room was large, twice as large as the average living room. It was not ceiled. The single fluttering candle formed grotesque shadows among its rafters of round cedar logs.
The place was devoid of furniture. In lieu of a chair, the present occupants had brought in from out of doors blocks of wood, an orange crate and some nail kegs found on the beach.
Seated as they were in a half circle about the candle, with revolvers strapped about waists and rifles across knees, they looked grim and determined.
There was Drew Lane with stiff hat still on one side, and Tom Howe, silent as ever. There was “The Ferret,” shrinking into the darkest corner. There were the two over-stout Federal men. There, too, was Johnny, eager and expectant; and close beside him, as if trusting him most of all, as in truth she did, was Joyce Mills. So, for a time, they sat in silence awaiting the zero hour. For directly across the bay about half an hour’s row, was a hunting lodge which was to be the center of their attack.
“Do you see this cabin?” The voice of “The Ferret” sounded strange, coming as it did from his dark corner. There was no answer. None was expected. “It has seen much of life, this cabin has. It has known life and death, love and hate, fear and defiance. And now comes the law to claim its humble protection.
“It’s a ragged old cabin; yet how many homes have witnessed more of life than it has?
“Do you see those papers pasted close to the peak? They are old. If you climbed up there as I did when I was sort of looking round up here a few weeks ago (I’ve always suspected that lodge over yonder), you’d find that they were printed thirty-five years ago.
“It was a homestead cabin, this. Old Heintz Webber, a German, a stolid fellow, took up land and brought a bright young bride here to pine away with loneliness. She died when the child came. He found a hard woman to take her place. The two hard ones reared the child in their hard way. And she came to hate them both. So the cabin which had witnessed death came to witness hate. When she was seventeen she ran away with a man twice her age; not because she loved him, but to get away.
“The two hard ones sold out for a hard price. Then the cabin was alone for a long time. A very lonesome place it was, too. The moon looked down over the fir trees as it might over a graveyard. The wild deer—”
He broke off short. “What was that?”
A curious sound reached their ears. “Covey—covey—covey.”
“Only a porcupine talking to his mate,” Johnny chuckled, “Go on.”
“Well, one day a young soldier back from the war saw this place and came to love it as he did the girl he meant to make his wife. He built a rustic porch and covered it with balsam boughs. He made a bed of cedar poles and a table of white birch. And here for one short month they lived, those two, the soldier and his bride. The song-sparrow built his nest in the balsam boughs over the porch and sang them to sleep at night. The sound of waves rushing on the shore mingled with their dreams. The sun over the cedars awakened them. And so this old cabin at last came to witness true love.
“But now!” His tone changed. “Now the hour has come. The law must have its turn. And may justice triumph. Come, gentlemen, and you, Miss Joyce, we must be on our way.”
This was the most dramatic moment in Joyce Mills’ life. She had promised Johnny that she would find the man who had snatched the package from Curlie Carson on the dim-lit streets of the city. She had made good. Coming upon him in the very store in which she worked, she had “planted” a bottle of costly perfume on his person by slipping it in his pocket. When she had caused his arrest she had forced him, by telling him she was Newton Mills’ daughter, to confess his part in the affair that had thrown a shadow over Curlie Carson’s life and had placed Drew Lane and Tom Howe practically in retirement.
The affair, he had confessed, had been pulled off by Greasy Thumb, Three Fingers and their gang. That gang was now hiding in the far north woods. The priceless package was hidden, he knew not where.
So now they were here at the dead of night, prepared to march against an enemy whose numbers they did not know.
“Let’s go!” Johnny whispered in her ear. “We’ll get ’em! All bad men are cowards at heart. We’ll get ’em, you’ll see!”
As long as he lives, Johnny will not forget that ride across the bay. There was no moon. The water was black as ink. They were all crowded into one flat-bottomed boat. A wave would have thrown them all into the lake. But there were no waves. The water was still as the grave. He was crowded in close to Joyce Mills. He could feel her very heart beat. She said nothing but for all that, he knew what she thought. She was thinking of her father; of how he would love to be here, and wondering a bit sadly where he was and if he were living at all.
Had she but known!
The boat grounded at last quite noiselessly on a sandy shore. A few whispered instructions and they were away single file over a winding moss-padded trail.
At last the lights of the lodge began to shine through the trees. They scattered, circling the place. Weapons in hand, they waited. Came the sharp command of the Federal officer. He called upon those in the lodge to surrender.
All that followed will remain forever blurred in Johnny’s memory. A figure rose from the bush to leap at Joyce Mills. Instinctively he sprang at the figure. They went down together. They rolled over and over, fighting hard. For one brief second he was under, pinned down. Cold steel pressed against his temple.
“This is the end!” he thought.
Then something, a gray shape, came hurtling over him. A shot rang out, something crashed into him. His light went out.
He could not have been unconscious more than ten minutes. When he came to, the forest was silent once more. A figure lay beside him, a man with a gray beard, his figure enshrouded in a long gray coat.
“The Gray Shadow!” he thought with a start. “At last he is still.”
Joyce Mills was hovering over him. When he sat up dizzily, she gave a sharp cry of joy.
Heavy footsteps came crashing through the brush. Drew Lane, Tom Howe and “The Ferret” were there.
“What happened?” Drew demanded. “They surrendered tamely enough, old Greasy Thumb and Three Fingers. The Chief was with them and—”
“The Chief!” Johnny could not conceal his surprise.
“Yes, and his whispering reporter. But what is this? And who are these?”
He pointed first to the Gray Shadow; then to a dark form huddled in the weeds.
“The Ferret” played the light of his electric torch on the dark huddled form.
“That,” he said impressively, “is the Spy—the worst man that ever lived. And he’s done for. Thank God! A bullet in his head.”
“And this,” said Johnny, tearing away a fake beard, “is Newton Mills.”
As he said this, Joyce Mills threw up her hands to utter a low cry.
“Let’s see!” “The Ferret” crowded in. He played the light on the pale, blood-stained face. He bent over it for an instant.
“Some one bring water,” he said in a business-like voice. “It’s only a scalp wound. He’ll be around directly.”
Johnny, watching Joyce Mills, admired her more than ever. For, after all, it was her father, the man she loved more than life, who lay there before her. She swayed back and forth once or twice; then turning to Johnny, she said a bit unsteadily, “I hope that we are going to have chicken dinner together in the shack to-morrow, father and Drew, Tom and I.”
“Why not in the cabin that has seen love and hate, life and death?” asked Johnny, finding it hard to control his emotions.
The hunting lodge was large. When Newton Mills came to, he was comfortably stowed away in one of its many beds. Joyce Mills was left there with him.
The others gathered about a great fireplace. The prisoners, Greasy Thumb and his pal, were not handcuffed. The windows were heavily shuttered from without, and a Federal officer sat on guard at the door.
“Nice night,” said Johnny, seating himself beside Drew Lane.
Across the fire the Chief scowled at him.
A radio was at Johnny’s elbow. He turned the dial.
“Just in time to hear the Voice.”
“The Ferret” started. The Chief’s scowl deepened. The whispering reporter moved uneasily in his place.
* * * * * * * *
Meanwhile, Grace Palmer, the college girl, had received a second mysterious letter. It came this time by messenger. It read:
“The package you seek is hidden among the rocks of the breakwater on the island, just at the point where it turns from east to north.”
She read this with no little astonishment.
“The Crown Jewels!” she murmured.
She looked at her watch. It was nearly ten o’clock, a moonless night.
For a moment she hesitated, a moment only. Then she went to the telephone.
She got Curlie on the wire. He was back from his trip. She read the note.
“But would you go there to-night?” he asked.
“With you, yes. To-morrow may be too late.”
“O.K. Meet me at the west entrance of the 12th Street Station.”
“I’ll be there.”
She hung up. Five minutes later her car slid out of the driveway and went gliding down the boulevard.
A strangely tense bit of drama was being enacted in that hunting lodge in the north woods.
Johnny, you will recall, had turned on the radio. For a space of three minutes they listened to a familiar tune. Then, as Johnny held up his watch, pointing to the hour of ten, the place grew so silent that the far-away throb of an outboard motor seemed strangely loud.
“The Voice!” Johnny announced huskily.
But the voice did not sound. A moment passed; another and yet another. The silence grew oppressive.
Then suddenly a voice boomed out with startling clearness.
But what was this! This was not the old familiar voice. And what was it saying?
“We are sorry to announce that there will be no Voice to-night. A terrible thing has happened.”
“The Ferret” started from his chair. The Chief and his whispering reporter shrank into the shadows.
“The Voice,” the announcer continued, “has been—”
At that instant there came a strange sputtering.
Something had gone wrong. Was it the distant station or the radio at Johnny’s elbow? He turned the dial and at once there came to the ears of the listeners the faint, mournful, melodious notes of a pipe organ.
Ever endowed with a sense of what is fitting in life, Johnny allowed this second station to continue its sweet, sad dirge.
“It is for the Voice,” he told himself. “He is dead.” At once a feeling of infinite sadness came over him. The Voice was dead. Little enough he knew about this strange person and yet he had come to love him, as had hundreds of thousands of others. “He was young,” he whispered, “and now he is dead. The beautiful world with its sunshine and flowers, its singing birds and laughing children is lost to him forever.”
That every person in the room shared his opinion, he did not doubt. It was a strange situation. Perhaps the very persons who had plotted the murder, yes, and paid well for it, were in this very room. Greasy Thumb and his confederates had committed deeds as evil in the past. They appeared to cower now.
Then, too, there was “The Ferret.” He had always displayed an extraordinary interest in the Voice. What did he know of him? Was he possessed of secrets hidden from the others? Certainly at this moment he was behaving strangely. The look on his face was a terrible thing to see. Yet his manner was controlled. Though small of stature and mean of feature, “The Ferret” was every inch a man. He had a brain that could think, a heart that could feel, and a will that was ever in action.
“Chief,” he said as he advanced to the corner, “you are going to resign! To-night! Now!”
In his righteous indignation, the little man appeared literally to tower. He pointed at a phone.
The Chief, moving heavily toward the instrument, called for long distance and asked for a number. He waited while the clock ticked three minutes away, then mumbled some words too low to be understood, and returned to his place. An hour later every radio station in operation, and all the late newsboys were announcing to the astonished city that the Chief of Police had resigned.
“As for you,” said “The Ferret,” turning his attention to the reporter, “you are going to vanish. You may choose your own method. I’ve enough on you for your double-crossing, your play between honest work and the worst form of double dealing, to put you away for ten years. But you’ve a good mother. I would spare her. The Canadian border is but twenty miles away.” He pointed toward the door.
Gone was the smirking smile of the reporter who had turned traitor, as he shuffled toward the door.
“Do you think the Chief has been crooked?” Johnny whispered, as “The Ferret” returned to his place.
“It is not for me to say.” The little man sank deep into his chair. “The city officials can find out. It is their duty to find out.
“All I know is that he held up his hand and in solemn oath swore to protect my boy and every other honest boy in our great city. And he failed! Failed!”
“You—your boy?”
“Yes. My boy. Didn’t you know? The fine boy I introduced to you that night, who took you for that long walk—that was my only son. None ever had higher ideals and nobler ambition than he. He was the Voice. And now he is—”
At that instant Johnny held up a hand. A moment before he had turned the dial back. A sound now came from the radio. The same booming voice sounded again:
“Ladies and gentlemen, you must pardon the interruption. A thunderstorm crippled our power station. We were off the air for a time. As we were about to say, some time back, there will be no message from the Voice to-night, nor, indeed, on any other night.”
“The Ferret” sank lower in his chair.
“As I was saying,” the announcer went on, “a terrible thing has happened. An attempt was made upon this brave young man’s life, he who was known as the Voice. Fortunately, this was an unsuccessful attempt. His wounds are of little consequence. The assailant—”
At that “The Ferret” sprang up with a cry:
“He lives! He lives! Thank God, he lives!”
The assailant, Johnny gathered from what followed, had been captured by a private detective employed to guard the Voice.
“The man who had betrayed the brave youth, the man known to the underworld only as the Spy, is reported killed in the north woods.”
“Yes, thank God! He is!” “The Ferret” said fervently.
“In the future,” the announcer went on, “there will be no Voice. Those who have promoted this noble undertaking feel that the young man, whose name must remain unknown, should not further risk his life.
“So now it is up to you, fellow citizens,” he went on earnestly, “to carry forward the work which he has so nobly begun!”
“They will!” said “The Ferret” fervently. “They will! This is the dawn of a new day.”
“And for my friends, Drew Lane and Tom Howe, there will be a new deal,” said Johnny.
“Yes,” said “The Ferret,” “a new deal; an opportunity to use the talents they possess in the service of their city.”
At midnight Johnny received a long distance call from the city. Curlie was on the wire. He and Grace Palmer, following the tip from the mysterious note, had gone to the breakwater and there retrieved the registered package with its seal unbroken.
“And they are all there, the jewels,” Grace Palmer broke in over his shoulder. “The little diamond and platinum train and all the rest. And there will be a reward, such a reward! Oh, how big! And we’ll share it, we four, Curlie, Joyce and you and I.”
* * * * * * * *
“So it was you, Greasy Thumb, and your gang!” “The Ferret” said, after receiving the good news. “It was you, and not the radicals, who robbed the Air Mail! And I haven’t the least doubt that it was your money the dead Spy gripped in his hand! Blood money for betraying my boy!
“Oh, you’ll get your due now! We’ll have you before an honest judge. And the world will not see you again until your hair is white.”
Once more he lapsed into silence.
And so, before a great fire, they spent the night, until dawn and a strong power boat came together to light the waters and to bear guards and prisoners back to the city.
* * * * * * * *
Evening of that day found three people standing before the cabin that had known love and hate, life and death. There was a gray haired man and a boy. And between them a slim, dark-eyed girl. Johnny, Joyce and Newton Mills.
Having recovered from his injuries, save for a scalp wound that would soon heal, the veteran detective had told, amid laughter and tears, how he had concealed his identity under a gray coat and whiskers so that he might better play the part of protector to his young friend, Johnny.
The affair in the tunnel had been a high spot. He it had been who had warned Johnny and saved him from drowning.
The affair of the glider among the clouds was merely the result of a freak of fancy.
He had come alone to the north woods and had arrived just in time to save the boy from the murderous assault of the Spy.
“Who,” asked Joyce as the three stood watching the sun go down over the bay, “wrote those notes to Grace Palmer?”
“No one knows,” was Johnny’s reply. “Perhaps none of us ever will know. Some enemy of Greasy Thumb, perhaps. Every bad man has his enemies. And they are, more often than not, his undoing.”
For a time after that there was silence. Then, as she laid a hand gently on a shoulder of each of her companions, the girl spoke again:
“When do we go back?”
“We don’t go back.” Johnny’s voice was husky. “We go on into the silent north, perhaps. It may be that we shall find a land where men are just and merciful and kind.”
“Is there such a land?” she whispered.
“Who knows, unless he goes to see?”
Did they go on? Or did they go back? If you wish to know, you will find the answer in our next book entitled:Riddle of the Storm.