“What was that?” He stopped dead in his tracks. Had he caught the sound of scurrying feet? Yes, he was sure of it. And there, well defined against a wall, were the shadows of two half crouching figures. One was tall, the other short. Johnny felt a chill run up his spine.
Felix apparently had seen nothing, heard nothing. He had gone plodding stolidly on into the gathering darkness; was at this moment all but lost from sight.
With a little cry of consternation, Johnny sprang after him.
By the time he caught up to him they were at the spot where the balloon was kept.
“We just release this clutch when we are ready to go up,” Felix explained, “then up we go. There is a time arrangement that will set the electrically operated drum, winding us back down again in two hours. We only go up about three hundred feet. Cable holds us. Quite safe tonight, no wind to speak of.”
Johnny thought this a rather strange arrangement. “No guard here?” he asked.
“No need. No one’s allowed in the grounds unless they have a pass. Climb in. All set.”
Johnny did climb in, and up they went.
Johnny had been in the air many times. For all that, he experienced a strange sense of insecurity as they rose a hundred, two hundred, three hundred feet into the murky air of night. “Pooh!” he exclaimed in a low breath. “It is nothing!”
That he might throw off this feeling of dread, he busied himself with other thoughts. His gaze swept the city where lights were gleaming. “Where,” he thought, “are Drew and Tom? Hunting pickpockets perhaps. And where is Captain Burns? I’m going to like him, I’m sure. He is so solid and real; but jovial for all that. He said he’d take me places. What places? I wonder. Dangerous places? He said—”
His thoughts were broken in upon by Felix’s voice:
“Here we are at the top. Now for the test.”
The young inventor flashed on a powerful searchlight. “All I have to do is to connect this through a switch, aim my light at a window in our house, take up this microphone and say, ‘Hello father!’ He hears me and no one else in the world can. He—
“What!” he exclaimed in consternation. “The current is off. Someone cut the light cable!”
“More than that!” Johnny’s tone was sober. He was looking over the side of the balloon basket in which they rode. “The cable that holds us has been cut! We’re drifting!”
“You’re right!” Consternation sounded in the older boy’s voice. “We’re going out into the night, over black waters. And there is no ballast!”
“They got us, those two!” Johnny muttered.
“What two?” Felix demanded.
“I saw them on the grounds, a tall one and a short one—anyway I saw their shadows. Should have told you.”
“Oh!” Felix groaned. “Wonder what we’ve done to them. But they haven’t got us—not yet!” There was courage and high resolve in Felix Van Loon’s tone. “We’ll beat them yet. You’ll see!”
Would they? Johnny silently wondered.
Strangely enough, at that moment thoughts not related at all to this adventure passed through his mind. He was once more in that place of mystery, the professor’s house, in the hallway seeing eyes in the wall, shuddering at sight of his own skeleton. “How could all that have happened?” he asked himself.
Johnny had known a thrill or two, but none quite like drifting through the night in a balloon that was not meant for drifting.
“Not an ounce of ballast!” Felix groaned. “And the night so dark we may plunge without a moment’s notice into those cold, black waters. And then—oh well, what’s the good of thinking about that?”
There truly was no use at all of thinking about it. If worse came to worst and they were able to tell the moment of great danger, they might throw his instruments and the searchlight over to lighten the balloon.
“All this equipment,” Felix moaned, “cost plenty of money!”
In spite of their predicament, Johnny found himself wondering about that equipment and what they had been about to do.
For a time Johnny was silent. Then of a sudden he exclaimed, “Felix, we are drifting northeast! That means we’ll be over the lake for hours. If the wind rises, if a strong gust drags us down, or if the gas bag leaks and we are plunged into the lake we are lost! A three hundred foot cable hangs beneath this balloon. It is weighting us down. Suppose we could cut it away?”
“It’s an idea!” Felix was all alert. “But it hangs from below. How’ll you reach it?”
“Here’s a rope. I’ll go over the side. You hang on to the rope.”
“That,” said Felix slowly, “will be taking a long chance.”
“Whole thing’s a chance.” Johnny was tying a loop in the rope. “Now I’ll put a foot in this loop, hold to the rope with one hand and work with the other. Flashlight will tell me all I need to know. Can hold the light in my teeth.”
“You should be in a circus.” Felix laughed. For all that, he made the other end of the rope fast, then prepared to lower his companion.
As he climbed up and over, Johnny felt his heart miss a beat. It was strange, this crawling out into space. All was dark below. Was the water a hundred or a thousand feet down? He could not tell. The majestic Lindbergh light swept the sky, but its rays did not touch them.
“If only it did,” he murmured, “someone would see us.”
Strangely enough, at this very moment the professor’s golden-haired daughter, Beth, was making strenuous efforts to bring that very thing to pass, to get one of those eyes of the night, a powerful searchlight, focussed upon the runaway balloon.
Her father, sensing that something had gone wrong with the balloon, had hurried her away to the spot from which the balloon had risen. Arrived there after a wild taxi ride, she had discovered on the instant what had happened.
“Some—someone cut the cable with an electric torch!” In vain her eyes searched the sky for the balloon. She was about to hurry away when a hand gripped her arm.
“Where would you go?”
“Why! I—”
Taking one look at the man, she sent forth an involuntary scream. She had seen that man before. He carried a knife in his sleeve. She was terribly afraid.
Her scream had electrifying results. A huge bulk of a youth with tangled red hair emerged from somewhere.
“Here you!” he growled, “Let her go!”
Releasing the girl, the small dark man sprang at her protector.
“Look out!” the girl screamed. “He—he has a knife!”
Her warning was not needed. The little man’s knife went coursing through the air. Next instant the little man followed it into the dark. The big fellow’s fists had done all this.
“Now, sister,” the young giant turned to Beth, “where was it you wanted to go?”
“The—the Skidmore Building.”
“The Skidmore? O.K.”
Fairly picking her up, he rushed her to the taxi that was waiting for her, then climbed in beside her. “Skidmore Building. Make it snappy!”
Once in the taxi and speeding away, Beth was able to collect her thoughts. There was, at the top of the tall Skidmore Building, a searchlight. This was not always in operation, but was held in readiness for any emergency either on the water or in the air. If only she could get that light searching the air for the runaway balloon something, she felt sure, could be done about it.
The taxi came to a sudden jarring halt.
“Here you are!”
“Here.” She dropped a half dollar in the taxi driver’s hand. At the same instant something was pressed into the palm of her left hand. She looked up. Her powerful young protector was gone. In her hand was a card.
A moment later as she shot toward the stars in an elevator she looked at that card and smiled.
“Gunderson Shotts, 22 Diversey Way” it read. And in the lower right hand corner, “Everybody’s Business.”
She smiled in spite of herself as she murmured, “Gunderson Shotts, Everybody’s Business. What a strange calling!”
* * * * * * * *
At that same moment Johnny was going over the side into the dark. It was strange, this adventure. “Must be careful,” he told himself. And indeed he must. Dark waters awaited him. A drop from that height would probably kill or at least maim him.
“No chance,” he murmured.
The bright lights of the city called to him from afar. He had seen much of that bright and terrible city; had meant to see much more. “Must see it all,” he told himself.
“But now I must forget it,” he resolved.
And surely he must, for now he was beneath the basket. The tiny finger of light from his electric torch shot about here and there.
Steadying its motion, directing it toward the end of the cable, he began studying the problem at hand.
And then—something happened. Did his hand slip? Did the noose about his foot give away? He will never know. Nor will he forget that instant when his flashlight, slipping from his chattering teeth, shot downward and he, by the merest chance, escaped following it.
How it happened he will never be able to tell. This much he knew: he hung there in all that blackness supporting his weight by one desperately gripping hand.
Somewhere below was the noose that should offer him footing. Somewhere far, far below were black waters waiting. And through his mind there flashed a thousand pictures of the bright and beautiful world he might, in ten seconds’ time, leave behind.
All this in the space of a split second, then groping madly, he found the rope with his other hand. After that began the heart-breaking task of groping in the dark with his foot for the dangling rope loop, while the muscles in his arms became burning bands of fire.
“I must win!” he whispered. “I must!”
“Johnny! Johnny Thompson!” came from above. “What has happened?”
“Don’t know. I—I’m dangling. Dra—draw me up if you can.”
Came a sudden tug on the rope that all but tore the rope from his grip. “No! No! Wait!”
Once again he sought that noose with his toe.
* * * * * * * *
As for Beth, she had gone shooting up in that express elevator in the Skidmore Building.
Like a rubber ball she bounded from the car, then raced for a cubby-hole in a corner where two men were standing.
“The balloon!” she exclaimed. “The captive balloon! It’s loose, drifting! You must find it with your light!”
“What’s that?” one man demanded sharply. “Impossible! There’s no gale. That cable couldn’t break!”
“It’s loose! Drifting!” the girl insisted. “They cut the cable, someone cut it. My brother and another boy are in the balloon. You must save them.”
One man glanced at the other. “All right, we better try it, Ben!”
At that a long finger of white light began feeling its way through the blackness that is sky above Lake Michigan on a cloudy night.
Johnny, unable to find the loop in the rope, feeling his strength unequal to a climb hand over hand, felt the muscles of his arms weaken until all seemed lost.
And then, as if some miracle had been done, night turned into day. The powerful light had reached him only for a second, but that was enough. His keen eye had caught the loop in the rope. It was by his knee. A sudden fling and his knee was resting in that loop.
“All—all right now!” he called. “Try to pull me up.”
And at that the gleam of that powerful searchlight returned to rest on the spot of air in which the runaway balloon hung.
“I’ll step over and call the sausage balloon, Ben,” one of the men in the great steel tower said to the other as Beth, at sight of the balloon still drifting high, began breathing more easily. “They’ll have to go to the rescue.”
One more fierce struggle and Johnny tumbled over the side into the balloon’s basket.
“It—it’s put on with steel rings,” he panted.
“It—what is?” Felix stared.
“The cable. What did you think?” Johnny laughed in spite of himself. “That’s what I went over to see about.”
“Yes,” Felix grinned. “But now they’ve found us. All the honest people in that great city will want to save us. Isn’t it wonderful when you think of it?” he marveled. “So many good people in the world! So many willing to give a fellow a lift when he’s in trouble. If only we could all pull together all the time, what a world this would be!”
After that, each occupied with his own thoughts, they drifted on into the night.
A half hour later a dark bulk came stealing toward them. This was a small dirigible balloon owned by an advertising firm. Soon they were alongside. Instruments were taken aboard, the runaway balloon deflated, then they went gliding back toward the city of a million lights.
“Should have had this old sausage in the beginning,” Felix grumbled. “Will next time perhaps.”
Johnny wondered if he would be invited to participate in that next endeavor and, if so, what he would learn.
In due time they were back on good solid earth. But the day, for Johnny, was not yet over.
“Say!” Felix exclaimed as they boarded a car bound for home. “Wonder how it happened that searchlight fellow was looking for us.”
“Somebody told him,” Johnny suggested.
“Yes, and I know who!” The young inventor’s face fairly shone. “It was Beth; couldn’t have been anyone else. Fellow without a sister is just square out of luck, that’s all. The way she gets me out of things! Say, man! It’s great!”
A half hour later, over cups of steaming chocolate produced, as before, by the mysterious “Eye,” Beth told her story.
“Gunderson Shotts,” Felix murmured, examining the card Beth handed him. “‘Everybody’s Business.’ Suppose that means he tends to everybody’s business?”
“Got quite a job on his hands,” Johnny laughed.
“He’s big enough to take a huge load of it on his shoulders.” Beth was staring into space.
“Have to look him up and thank him,” Felix drawled. Already the events of the day were fading from his memory. He was dreaming of some strange new contraption that might startle the world.
“You’ll stay with us tonight.” Roused from his revery, he turned to Johnny.
“Why I—”
“Sure, sure you will. Show you the room right away. It’s on the third floor; a little strange, you may find it, but comfortable, extra fine, I’d say.” Felix favored him with a smile.
The room they entered a few moments later was strange in two particulars. It was extremely tall. Johnny thought it must be fully twenty feet to the ceiling. “Queer way to build a room,” was his mental comment. Like other rooms in the house, it was illuminated to the deepest corners; yet there were no lamps anywhere. “Odd place, this,” he thought. Yet Felix had warned him. He had been given ample opportunity to say, “I don’t like the looks of it.” Now he shrugged his shoulders and asked no questions; that was Johnny’s way.
“Light begins to fade in twenty minutes,” was Felix’s only comment as he left the room.
“Light begins to fade,” Johnny grinned when the door had been closed. “Sure is a queer way to put it.”
Twenty minutes later he began to realize that the strange boy had spoken the exact truth. The light did begin to fade. At first the change was almost imperceptible, a mere deepening of shadows in remote corners. Then, little by little, the pictures that hung low on those tall walls began to fade. The windows too, short, low windows, too short, Johnny thought, for so tall a room, began letting in light about the shades, a very little light, but light all the same.
Breaking the spell that had settled upon his drowsy senses, Johnny sprang to his feet, threw off his clothes, dragged on his sleeping garments, then crept beneath the covers of a most comfortable bed.
“Light is fading,” he murmured. He recalled the lights on the stage of the opera house. They had not blinked on and off. They faded like the coming of darkness on the broad prairies. “Sort of nice, I think,” he murmured sleepily. “More natural. Like—like—”
Well, after all, what did it matter what it was like. He had fallen asleep.
How long we have slept we are seldom able to tell. At times an hour seems a whole night, at others four hours is but a dozen ticks of the clock. Johnny slept. He awoke. And at once his senses were conscious of some change going on in his room. He was seized with a foreboding of impending catastrophe.
At first he was at a complete loss to know what this change was. There was the room. The low windows still admitted streaks of light. The chairs, his bed, the very low chest of drawers were in their accustomed places.
“And yet—” He ran a hand across his eyes as if to clear his vision. And then like a flash it came to him. That exceedingly tall room was not so tall now—or was it?
“Impossible! How absurd!” He sat up, determined to waken himself from a bad dream.
But the thing was no dream. The ceilingwaslower, fully five feet lower. And—horror of horrors!—it was still moving downward, lower, lower, still lower.
There was not the slightest sound, yet the boy seemed to feel the breath of moving air on his face.
Too astonished and frightened to move, he sat there while that ceiling marched down over the pattern of a quite futuristic wall-paper.
When at last questions formed themselves in his fear-frozen brain they were, “How far will it come? Will the posts of my bed arrest it? If the bed crashes under the weight, what then?”
While he was revolving these questions in his mind and wondering in a vague sort of way what chance he had of escaping from one of those third story windows, he noted with a start that the ceiling had ceased moving. It was as if its desire to hide great stretches of wall paper had, for the time at least, been satisfied.
The ceiling having settled nine feet or more, Johnny found himself in quite a normal bed chamber. Windows were the proper height, pictures correctly hung and furniture matching it all very well.
He settled back on his bed. It had been a long day. He would just lie there and keep a wary eye on that playful ceiling.
On the following morning at dawn the whisper returned to Grace Krowl’s little parlor on Maxwell Street. She had just wakened and lay on her comfortable bed staring at the faint tracings of beautiful forms on her unusual walls, when she heard it.
“A pleasant day to you! Here I am again, talking to you down a beam of light.”
Springing to her feet, she threw on a dressing gown and dashed into her parlor. She would trap the intruder. But she did not. As before, the room was empty.
She took a seat by her table. “Ah! There you are!” There was a glad note in the whisper. “How beautiful is youth!” She flushed.
“I have no message of importance for you today,” the whisper went on steadily. “But tomorrow—who knows?
“One request: do not disturb any object in your room. To do so may destroy the charm. And, in the end, you would regret it.
“Let me assure you I am an honorable person. I am for the law—not against it. My motives are good. You may trust me. And you may believe me when I tell you I am more than a mile away.”
The girl started. There it was again. “More than a mile away. How could anyone be seen through a mile of space—much less send a whisper over that great distance?
“A radio,” she thought. A careful search revealed no sign of a radio. Only one object in her room was strange, the two foot reflector against the wall.
“Dawn is passing,” came once again in a whisper. “Like the fairies, I must be on my way. Cheerio, and a good day to you!” The room went suddenly silent. It was silence such as Grace Krowl had seldom experienced.
Strangely enough, at the “House of Magic” in quite another section of the city, Johnny Thompson heard that same whisper. What was stranger still, the words were not the same. From this it might surely be learned that this was, at least, not a radio broadcast.
He had fallen asleep staring at that magic ceiling that had a way of falling silently. He awoke at dawn, still staring at that ceiling. To his vast surprise, he found it now fully twenty feet above his head. “Was that way when I went to bed,” he assured himself. “Must have dreamed it—must—”
He broke short off to listen with all his ears. In a clear, distinct whisper had come a greeting:
“Good morning, Johnny Thompson!”
“Good—good morning,” he faltered. He was conscious of a feeling that he was not heard. In this he was right.
“We are glad you are back in the city, Johnny. You will tell your friend Drew Lane that we will soon have a definite message for him—one that has to do with his present mission. We will whisper it to you some day at dawn. That is your room. You must keep it. No harm will befall you there. And now, may your day be a busy and profitable one.” The whisper ended.
We might say that, though Johnny failed to notice it at that time, there was on the far side of his room a circular mirror or reflector, such as we have seen in Grace Krowl’s room, and that his window was open toward the east.
“A good day to you.” Grace Krowl, the girl from Kansas, recalled these words, whispered to her “down a beam of light” many times during the trying hours of that day.
“Whispers,” she repeated to herself, “whispers at dawn. What does it mean? And this whisperer? Is it a man or a woman? Could one tell by the quality of tone?”
The Whisperer had given her little intimation of his purpose. She had been assured that the purpose was honorable and kind. She had been requested to leave her room just as it was. This request had caused her to look at the strange oval reflector on the wall.
At times she thought of telling her uncle all about it. “But no,” she decided in the end, “this shall be my own small secret. What harm can come from a whisper? The Whisperer said that he would return. Well then, let him!” With that, for the time, she set the matter aside.
After a hasty breakfast served by her uncle’s aged housekeeper, she went down into the “store.” “Look!” Her uncle pointed to a number of trunks standing on end just inside the door. “Yesterday was express auction day. It comes always on Tuesday. I have bought these trunks. What is there in them? How should I know? Probably wrags.” Nicholas Fischer was very German in his speech.
“But you will be surprised.” His faded eyes brightened. “We have very swell customers on Wednesday. They come from the north side and from out by the University. They are curious. They want to see what they can buy cheap. And they buy, right from the trunks. You shall see.
“You will be very helpful,” he went on. “You are young. They will like a bright face. You shall wait on them. You will know them by their fine clothes, fur coats, all that. And I—” He looked over his cheap garments. “I shall wait on the poor ones, the ones who buy a few towels or some very poor dishes.
“Yes, you wait on the fine ladies. Only—” he held up a finger, “always I make the price.”
An artist looking in upon this bewhiskered, shabbily dressed keeper of a second-hand store and his niece all pink and fresh in her spotless smock, would have found contrast to suit his taste.
“See!” Nicholas Fischer spoke again, “I will break open the locks and lift the lids, but you must not unpack the trunks. Leave that to the fine ladies. They will tell you they are ‘exploring.’”
“But supposing they find something truly valuable—a—a diamond or something!” Grace protested.
“If they find a diamond, then I drop dead. What will it matter?” Nicholas Fischer laughed hoarsely.
“But you keep watch.” His shrewd eyes gleamed. “If you find a diamond, then you and I will buy us a Christmas present.”
“Good!” It was the girl’s turn to laugh. “Christmas will soon be here. I’ll find the diamond, you’ll see, and a few stocks and bonds for good measure.”
“Yes. Stocks and bonds.” Seizing a hammer and chisel, Nicholas Fischer pried off the lock of a large, round-topped trunk. “The round-topped ones,” he commented, “they come from the country. Sometimes there are very fine wool blankets in these. Then we make a few dollars.”
While her uncle was prying away at the locks, the girl had an opportunity to study the trunks that, standing as they did, huddled in a group and tipped this way and that, reminded her of a picture she had seen of six very tipsy men awaiting the police wagon.
“Trunks,” she told herself, “are like people. They have character. There is a big wardrobe—a trifle shabby to be sure, but still standing on its dignity. And there are three canvas covered ones, huddled together. Never been anybody in particular and never will be. There’s that one with bright orange stripes running around it, like a delicate lady. There’s that good solid citizen, oak ribs and stout metal edges. And there—”
Having moved a little, she had caught sight of a tiny brown trunk that appeared to hide behind the “solid citizen.”
“Horsehair trunk,” she whispered to herself. “Old as the hills. What must it contain?”
And then her uncle, chisel in hand, approached.
“Please!” Her cry was one almost of pain. “Are there not enough others? This little one must not have much in it. Let me look at it—alone tonight.”
Nicholas Fischer, looking into her pleading eyes, shook his head. “I am afraid you will wreck my business. You are too soft.” Nevertheless, he spared the little trunk.
Dropping his chisel in the corner, he threw a ragged blanket over it as he muttered, “Tomorrow will be time enough. But mind you, it must be tomorrow.”
The “ladies” came, just as her uncle had promised they would. They came dressed in furs—mink, marten and Hudson seal—for it was a bleak, blustery day. They picked their way daintily between piles of used bedding and soiled dresses, to pause at last before the open trunks.
As they looked into the slim trunk with orange stripes about it, Grace was reminded of a picture she had seen of three vultures sitting on a rock peering into the distance.
“Snoopers! How I hate them! Yet, I must serve them.” Next moment she was wondering whether or not she was being quite fair to them. They had come where things were sold and had a right to inspect the wares.
“But everything in that trunk belonged to a person who treasured it,” she told herself. “Why must such rude hands unpack it, after it was packed with such care? Why must each one carry away the one treasure she most desires, while the rightful owner goes empty-handed?” To this question she could find no answer save one haunting verse she remembered from a very old book: “The destruction of the poor is their poverty.”
She summoned a friendly smile and assisted the “ladies” in emptying this trunk which had belonged to a young lady. When, however, Grace came to a drawer of photographs, letters and personal papers, she dumped them all into a card-board box and shoved them under the ragged quilt where the little horsehair trunk seemed to peek at her through the holes.
The “ladies” turned from the next three trunks in disgust. Two men’s, and one family trunk, they offered little more than dirty rags.
“Why must people be so filthy,” a fat “lady” in a mink coat complained. “If they must lose their things you’d think they might at least wash them before packing.”
The wardrobe trunk offered gaudy finery that did not interest the “ladies” overmuch. But the big square trunk Grace had named the “substantial citizen”—this one it was that brought a fresh ache to the girl’s heart.
It turned out to be a household trunk filled with bedding, linen and all sorts of fancy articles done by hand. Everything was scrupulously clean. And the bits of hand embroidery, the touches of lace, the glints of color all done with the finest thread, seemed to say, “I belong to a home. We all belong together. We rested beneath the lamp, above the fireplace in a room some people called home.”
She tried to picture that home. There was a man, a woman, and their children, a brother and a sister. The man read. The woman’s fingers were busy with thread and needle. The children played with the cat before the fire.
Her eyes filled with tears as she thought, “All this is being destroyed. All that is best in our good, brave land, a home, has become a wreck.”
But the “ladies”! How they babbled and screamed. “Oh Clara! Look! Isn’t this a scream? Only look at this piece! Isn’t it exquisite?” “Mary, just take a peek at this buffet runner. Two yards long! And all done by hand! It’s a treasure. I’ll offer the old man a half dollar for it. He’ll take it. What does he know?”
Grace listened and set her lips tight. Life, she could see, was going to be hard, but she would certainly see it through.
She experienced a sense of contentment as she recalled the little horsehair trunk. Tonight she would spirit that away up to her room and there she would find adventure looking inside it. There would be letters, she told herself, and photographs—and—and perhaps some real treasure.
At that moment her eyes caught a second box of keepsakes. These too she shoved away under the ragged quilt.
“Tonight in my parlor,” she told herself. She was rapidly coming to know that each trunk told the story of the owner. In her room she would read that story.
Her parlor. Her brow wrinkled. What a mysterious room! So perfect, and in such a place. “And there’s the concave mirror, and the whisper at dawn.” She shuddered in spite of herself.
Then she came out of her revery with a snap. The fat lady in the mink coat was approaching her uncle. She would offer half a dollar for the buffet runner. Gliding swiftly past, Grace whispered in her uncle’s ear:
“The price is three dollars.”
The “lady” gave her a suspicious glance. But the pricewasthree dollars. And in the end, three dollars the lady paid.
“Is that all the trunks?” The fat lady turned a petulant, spoiled face toward the girl. “Are there no other trunks?” She snatched at the ragged blanket, but Grace was too quick for her, her foot was on its edge.
“There are no other trunks to be opened today.”
“Oh—ah!” The “lady” sighed. “This has been such fun!”
Fun? Grace turned away. And in turning she found herself presenting a tearful face to none other than Drew Lane her friend of the bus, who had entered unnoticed.
“Well,” he smiled, pretending not to see her tears. “How’s the big store in Chicago?”
“Great! Great!” She managed a smile.
“How—how are all the people you look af—after?” she asked a bit unsteadily.
“Oh, they’re all right.” He laughed a low laugh. “In fact—” His voice dropped to a hoarse whisper—“I’ve got some of them locked up. Quite a number. You see, I’m a city detective. This is part of my territory. I’ll be seeing you often, I hope.”
She started and stared. That whisper! When one spoke out loud his voice could be recognized. She knew this. But a whisper? Could one truly recognize a whisper when he heard it the second time? It seemed incredible. And yet, Drew Lane’s whisper was so like the one she had heard at dawn.
“Impossible! A mere fancy!” She tried to free herself from this apparently unreasonable suspicion.
“A penny for your thoughts,” Drew Lane bantered.
“No! No! Not for a dollar,” was her quick reply.
“All right,” he laughed. “Anyway, I’ll be seeing you. Got to hurry on down the street.” He was gone, leaving the girl’s head in a whirl.
“Whispers at dawn?” she murmured as she made her way toward the horsehair trunk.
“What about these?” She held the box of keepsakes from the big trunk up for her uncle’s inspection.
“What?” He stared.
“These? Letters? Pictures?”
He made a wry face. “Baby books, maybe. Who would buy these? Throw them in the alley. Black children live in the next street. They carry them off.”
“But look! Here is the croix de guerre. Some brave fellow fought to win that,” she protested.
“Yes! But did he keep it? No! Let some black boy wear it.”
“Then I may keep them? All these?”
“If you wish.”
She rewarded him with a smile. After the evening meal she would read the stories recorded here and she would explore the little horsehair trunk.
That same morning as soon as he could gulp down his coffee, Johnny hastened over to the shack. He was full of talk about the whisperer and his message.
“What do you make of a thing like that?” he demanded of Captain Burns. “It seemed to come right out of the sky!”
“And why not?” The Captain smiled. “We are living in a strange world these days.
“One thing’s important,” he said as he sat up in his chair, “you must not leave this ‘House of Magic’ as you call it; at least not for long. I have a feeling that this whisperer must be on our side, the side of law and justice, and that he may be some sort of undercover man who can give us just the information we need.
“You see, Johnny—” He leaned forward in his chair. “That gang, the five public enemies, with Iggy the Snake at their head, is back in the city. They are sure, sooner or later, to sell some of these bonds they took from the bank. They are of small denominations and are negotiable. We have their serial numbers. The moment one of these bonds falls into the hands of an honest man, we will be hot on their trail. ‘Where did you get it?’ we will say to the honest man. He will tell us. We will go to the man who sold the bond and repeat, ‘Where did you get it?’ He may turn out to be honest and innocent too. But in the end we’ll reach a crooked bond dealer who knew those bonds were ‘hot’ when he bought them. If he doesn’t lead us to Iggy the Snake we’ll send him up for ten years. The charge will be receiving stolen goods.
“Oh, I tell you, Johnny!” he exclaimed, striking the arm of his chair, “we’ll get ’em, Johnny! In the end we’ll get ’em, you’ll see.
“But today, Johnny—” His voice took on a mellow tone. “While you and I are free, I’d like to take you to one of those places I spoke of the last time I saw you.”
“All—all right.” Johnny wondered what sort of place that would be.
In the Captain’s long, powerful gray car they drove across the city and into the suburbs.
At last they stopped before a home that was neither large nor showy—a bungalow with its broad side to the street, it stood in the midst of a clump of trees. Nature had planted the trees. Someone, admiring nature’s work, had built his home there.
Once inside that house, the good Captain heaved a sigh of content. A large open fire gave the tiny living room a feeling of luxurious grandeur. And yet there was about it an air of tidy comfort. The furniture was plain. Hard-bottomed rockers had been softened by handmade cushions, all in bright colors. A touch of lace and embroidery here and there on table and chairs told of fingers never still.
A short, energetic little lady with flushed cheeks hastened from the kitchen at the back to greet them.
“Well, how do you do, Captain Burns? How good it is to see you!”
“It’s good to be here,” the Captain rumbled. “And this, Mrs. LeClare, is my good friend Johnny Thompson.
“And here,” the Captain chuckled, “here’s Alice. Ah, Johnny, there’s a girl you could love!”
Johnny flushed. The girl who extended her hand laughed a merry laugh. “The Captain must have his jokes.”
The hand Johnny grasped was a chubby, capable little hand; the eyes he looked into were frank and clear. The girl’s hair was black. There was a slight natural wave in it. Her eyebrows were black and thick. She was short like her mother. Like her too, she gave forth an air of boundless energy.
“Alice LeClare,” Johnny said, half to himself. “A pretty name.”
“We are French,” Alice explained, “Canadian French.”
“If you looked over the list of Mounties that have come and gone up in the bleak northland of Canada, you’d find many a LeClare,” the Captain explained. “They’re that sort.”
Johnny saw a shadow pass over Mrs. LeClare’s face. Alice looked quickly away.
“You’ll have to excuse us,” Mrs. LeClare explained after a moment of silence. “We’re in the midst of things. Make yourselves comfortable by the fire.”
Just what sort of things the ladies were in the midst of, Johnny could guess well enough. The kitchen was not too far away—one great advantage of a small house—and from it came savory odors, meat roasting, pumpkin pies baking, apple sauce simmering.
“They can cook,” said the Captain, dropping into a chair with the air of a contented dog. “These Canadian French can cook. And what workers they are, these people!
“The boys will be here soon,” he went on. “Madame LeClare’s boys. They’re out selling their magazines. Fine boys—poor old Jack’s boys.” His voice dropped.
“Who is Jack?” Johnny asked.
“What? Didn’t I tell you?” The Captain sat up. “But of course I didn’t.