“The books—they had been stolen from our store,” Nida went on after a time. “A detective was put on my trail. The little old man disappeared. A—a house detective, with eyes like steel blades, accused me of stealing the books!”
“I think I know him,” Grace broke in. “He looked into Frank Morrow’s shop one night.”
“Yes—yes, that was the man! He calls himself J. Templeton Semp.” Nida’s eyes were wild for an instant.
“He made me sign a paper,” she went on. “I learned later it was a confession. They discharged me. I went to other places and asked for work, many places. Everywhere the answer was the same:
“‘You worked at K——’s. We cannot employ you.’
“You see—” Her voice broke. “I had been put on the black list. I—I wouldn’t do that to anyone!
“Well,” she sighed at last, “that’s all. Good old Frank Morrow took me in spite of the list. And here I am.” She forced a smile.
Five minutes later Nida was gone. Grace sat staring at the curious reflector on the wall. “That,” she whispered, “is Nida’s story. And all the time she was talking someone was looking, listening. I am sure of that. I wonder how? Television? I wonder what that really is?”
Finding herself enshrouded in a cloud of gloom, she drew on her coat and, taking up a basket filled with small boxes, she went out on Maxwell Street.
Moving along from door to door, she made brief Christmas Eve calls on the simple, kindly people she had learned to love. The small boxes contained homemade candy. She left one at every door.
She found Mamma Lebed busy decorating a tiny tree for her two dark-haired little ones. “It’s not much we can give them,” she beamed. “But the dear ones, how they will dance and prattle when morning comes!” She brushed a tear from her broad cheek.
“Merry Christmas!” Grace whispered.
“Same to you!” Mamma Lebed gripped her hand hard.
Grossmuter Schmalgemeire was filling stockings. There was no fireplace in her tiny home back of the shop, but a straight-backed chair did as well.
“He said a mouse would come in through the hole in the toe, Hans did,” she laughed. “But I told him an orange would fill it up. And so it shall. I found one in the street that is not too bad.”
And so Grace found them, these friends, on every hand. Poor, but making much of the little they had, and all filled to overflowing with the spirit of Christmas.
When she returned to her rooms, her cheeks were glowing. “Tonight,” she whispered, “I am like the moon, filled with light. The light of happiness. It is reflected happiness, but happiness all the same.”
And then, into her mind there flashed questions that had grown old, but were ever new: “Who is the Whisperer? Where is he? Why does he want Nida’s story?”
In the meantime tremendous things were doing in the little house where Captain Burns had spent his childhood.
For a time, it is true, the silence in that little gray home out where the snow lay white and glistening on field and road continued.
Madame LeClare sat by the narrow drop-leaf table knitting. Joyce Mills, with a big black cat on her lap, seemed more than half asleep. Dark-haired Alice had curled herself up on two cushions beside the fire. The others sat in dreamy silence. It did not seem a time for small talk, this Christmas Eve. Were their thoughts busy with other Christmas Eves? Who can say? Were they thinking of the future, of the approaching New Year and what it would bring to them? Did they think at times of the five public enemies still at large and free to follow their evil ways? Perhaps, at times, all these. At any rate, they were silent.
Into that silence there crept a whisper. The effect was electric! Madame dropped her knitting. Joyce started so violently that the cat bounced from her lap. With an involuntary motion Drew Lane reached for his gun. “Lanan—” the whisper began, “Lanan Road, attention! Those in Captain Burns’ old home, attention!” The whisper was like a call “To Arms!”
“You are in grave danger. Grave danger! The report is just that. I can tell you no more. Be on your guard!”
The whisper ceased. The clock ticked on. From without came the hoarse scream of the rusty windmill. The black cat, walking across the floor, settled himself beside Alice among the cushions.
As if directed by a common impulse, Drew and Tom removed their automatics, examined them with care, then dropped them with a little chug back into their places.
“Peace on earth, good will toward men!” Drew quoted dryly. “In such a world as ours there can be no peace.”
“Grave danger,” Johnny thought to himself. He was looking through the window to the white silence outside. “Danger? It does not seems possible! Captain Burns has kept this place a secret. We came here in a very round-about way. Surely no one followed us.
“And yet—” A thought struck him squarely between the eyes. “And yet, the Whisperer, alone in his tower among the stars—he knows!
“The Whisperer—who can he be?” He said the words aloud.
Alice, who sat almost at his feet, shook her head. She did not know. No one did, at least almost no one.
Was he a friend of the law, or its enemy? A friend, Johnny would have said. And yet, as he recalled how Spider had barely escaped death when he attempted to take a picture of that mysterious man of the tower, he could not be sure. Spider had not repeated his hair-raising experiment.
Curiously enough, it did not occur to one of them that they might slip out quietly, pile into their cars and go speeding back to the city. They had come here with a plan. They were to hang up their stockings, each of them, as if he were once more a small child. They were to stay all night, the ladies sleeping upstairs, the men and boys in two tiny downstairs bedrooms. There was to be joy in the morning and feasting at noonday; a twenty-five pound turkey awaited Madame’s skill at stuffing and baking. Who should interfere with these glorious plans? No one, surely!
* * * * * * * *
In the meantime, Grace Krowl in her parlor in the distant city had received a strange visitor.
Hardly had she returned from her little journey dispensing Christmas cheer, when there came a knock at her door.
“Who can that be?”
Springing up, she threw open the door, and there before her, smiling like some fairy, was a tiny little lady all dressed in furs.
“I received your letter.” She stepped inside. “I came to see about the little trunk.”
“But you—you’re not Emily Anne!” Grace stared with all her eyes.
“Oh, dear, no!” The little lady’s laugh was like the jingle of a silver bell. “I am her niece, Miss Baxter. Aunt Emily is dead, I am sorry to say—has been for two years.”
“Oh!” There was a note of genuine sadness in Grace’s voice. “Ex—excuse me!” she apologized. “But I came almost to know her by the lovely things in her trunk.”
“I am sure you did.” The little lady beamed. “She was a choice soul, Aunt Emily Anne!
“But tell me—” She dropped into a chair. “Your letter interested mesomuch. Won’t you tell me how you came into possession of this trunk, and how you came to write that wonderful letter?”
“Wonderful letter?” the girl thought. “At last one has returned to give thanks. How gorgeous!”
She did tell Miss Baxter all she wished to know about the trunk and the letters.
“But this Bible?” The little lady’s eyes gleamed. “You say it is worth several thousands of dollars?”
“I am sure of it.” Grace nodded her head. “I’ve had the signature verified. It is genuine.”
“Then,” said Miss Baxter, “let us form a society, you and I—a ‘Society for the Return of Lost and Strayed Trunks.’ How does that sound? There is a ‘Society for the Return of Lost and Strayed Cats.’ Trunks are more important than cats, much more!”
“But you are the only one who returned to thank me. Besides,” said Grace, “I don’t quite understand.”
“Oh! The plans,” the little lady smiled, “we must work them out little by little. We shall sell the Bible. I will add to that fund. This will give us working capital. You shall be the secretary, and do a great deal of the work.”
“Nothing could be more wonderful,” Grace murmured, too overcome for speech.
“And now!” Miss Baxter sprang to her feet. “This is Christmas Eve, and I must be on my way. I’ll see you again soon!”
With a wave of her hand, as if she might be a feminine Santa Claus, she was gone, leaving the astonished Grace to stare after her.
“Life,” she thought, “is strange, so very strange, so much mystery!” She closed the door, but did not stir from her place. She was thinking, and they were long, long thoughts.
These thoughts were broken in upon by a second knock on the door. No light tap of a sparrow’s wing, this knock, but one like the thump of a policeman demanding admittance in the name of the law. Her hand trembled as she gripped the knob.
The silence in that little gray home out there on the snow-blown prairies lasted for ten long moments. To those who waited time seemed to creep at a snail’s pace. Drew Lane, shifting uneasily in his chair, was about to suggest something—he will never know what—when, sudden as before, all thoughts were drawn to the mysterious talking reflector against the wall.
The instant a voice broke the silence in that corner, Drew Lane leaped to his feet. Tom Howe, crouching like a cat, remained motionless in his chair. There was something menacing, sinister, altogether terrible about that voice. The words, more spoken than whispered, caused Johnny’s blood to freeze in his veins.
“Listen, you Hell hounds!” Those were the words. “Listen! You whisper, do you? Well, so do we! You narrow-cast, and you think we can’t listen. Well, we can!
“Listen!” The voice became more terrible. “You have been on our trail long enough! Public enemies! Bah!”
As if choked with words, the voice ceased for a second. Everyone in the room had turned into a statue. Only the cat was unconscious of it all. He purred loudly in his place among the cushions. And the windmill, poor thing of rusty steel, it uttered one more unearthly scream.
“Listen!” The voice was hoarse with hate. “We got you, see? Got all of you. You’ll never leave that place, see? Not one of you all! Christmas Eve. It’s a laugh!” There came a hoarse chuckle that was terrible to hear. “Hang up your stockings! Get ’em up quick! We’re coming to fill ’em, and we’ll fill ’em right with machine gun slugs! That’s how they’ll be filled!
“Good-night, everyone!” The speaker’s voice dropped to a mocking imitation of a radio announcer. “Good-night. And a Merry Christmas to all!”
For a full moment the silence in that little parlor, that through the years had witnessed so much of joy and sorrow, was profound.
“It’s a joke,” Spider said hoarsely at last.
“It’s no joke!” Drew Lane’s lips were white. “I know that voice.
“I only wish,” he said slowly, “that you ladies were out of it. Those fellows have machine guns. If they cut loose, they’ll riddle this place.”
“I’m a detective’s daughter.” Joyce Mills stood up square shouldered and slim.
“And I a slain policeman’s widow.” Madame LeClare stood up at her side.
“And I his child.” Alice was not smiling as she joined the two. There was a glint of fire in her dark eyes.
“Is—is that Iggy the Snake?” Madame LeClare asked.
“Beyond doubt it is.” Drew’s eyes were gleaming. “He and his gang, the men who killed Jack LeClare, the men we swore to get. And with God’s help we’ll get them yet!” He set his teeth hard.
“You ladies can shoot?” he said in a changed voice.
“As well as any man!” Madame held up her head proudly.
“That’s good! Let’s see.” Drew moved to the cupboard by the stairs. “The Captain showed me a new sort of gas bomb. Yes, here it is. Puts ’em out completely for a full half hour. Be swell if we could use it.”
“But they’ll be a respectful distance away,” Tom Howe objected. “How can we?”
“That’s right. Have to trust our automatics, I guess. Here!” Drew handed one of his guns to Johnny.
“And you.” Tom passed a thing of blue metal to Madame LeClare as if it were a bouquet of roses. She accepted it with a bow.
“There’s no phone—no way of spreading an alarm.” Drew spoke calmly. “No one passes this way at night. They’ve got till morning. Johnny, has the place a cellar?”
“Only a hole for vegetables—no windows.”
“No use to us. They’d burn the house. Smother us like rats. We’ll have to stand our ground, every one at a window. This is the way our forefathers fought savages.” His voice had grown husky.
“These are more savage than they!” Madame LeClare added.
“We might make a dash for it. Try getting away in the cars,” Tom Howe suggested.
“They may be all set to mow us down as we come out,” Drew objected. “We’ve not been watching, you know. But we’d better be, right now!” His tone changed. “We’ll set a watch at the windows. There’s one on every side. We’ll watch in pairs. Misery loves company. You and you there; you and you—” He pointed them to their places rapidly.
Johnny found himself settled upon a cushion behind the low window in the small southwest room. At his side, so close he fancied he felt her heart beat, was Alice LeClare. He thanked Drew for that. If the watch were to be long, here was pleasant company. Then, too, he had learned by the glint in her dark eyes that, if worse came to worst, if he were wounded, out of the combat, this splendid girl would fight over him as bravely and savagely as any Indian fighter’s wife had fought over her fallen man.
It was strange, the silence of the place, once they were all settled and the lights out. The fire in the cracked old stove shone red. The little clock that had ticked the good Captain’s boyhood quite away, as if it would end the suspense and bring the dawn at once, raced more furiously than before. The girl at Johnny’s side breathed steadily, evenly, as if this were but the night before Christmas and she waiting for Santa Claus in the dark.
“What a girl!” Johnny thought.
His eyes strayed through the open door at his back. Through it he caught the square of light from the north window. A semi-circle of shadow above its sill he knew to be Spider’s head. Spider was watching there alone. His post was an important one. That window looked out upon a small barn and the towering cottonwood tree. The tree was fully six feet through. The Captain had told of swinging from its branches as a child.
“It’s strange,” Johnny whispered to the girl, “sitting here in this quiet little gray house where men and women have lived their lives away without a breath to disturb their calm, waiting for an attack. It—why, it’s like the silence that must have hung over the fields of poppies in France during the Great War.”
“Do you think they’ll truly come?” Alice whispered back. “Or was it just a scare? They may be in Chicago, you know. The Whisperer is.”
“They are not a mile away. They will come. Drew believes they’ll come, and Drew seldom makes a mistake.”
“Promise me—” She pressed his arm. “If I go to—to—to the Last Round-Up and you—you are spared, you’ll look after the boys and—and help Gluck to be a good brave cop when he grows up.” There was a little tremor in her voice.
“I promise!” Johnny whispered huskily.
A moment later Johnny’s eyes swept the wide white field before him, then the narrow road that lay beyond. For a space of seconds his eyes remained fixed upon a dark spot on that road. “Does it move?” he asked himself. In the end he decided that it did not.
Breathing more easily, he turned to look through the door at his back, into the room beyond. He started and stared. Something was missing. The dark semi-circle that had been Spider’s head was gone.
“That’s queer!” he muttered low. To Alice he whispered: “Keep a sharp watch. I’ll be back.” Next instant he was gliding noiselessly across the floor.
Ten seconds and he was staring at a vacant spot where the other boy had been. “Spider!” He all but said the name aloud. “Spider! He is gone!”
Instinctively his hand sought the latch to the door close beside that north window. It gave to his hand. “It—it’s not locked,” he whispered. “But itwaslocked. I locked it myself.” Spider was gone, sure enough, not alone from his post, but out of the building.
At once his head was in a whirl. What was he to make of it? Was Spider yellow, after all? Had he decided to make a break all by himself? With his uncanny power of climbing, of getting through places unobserved, he would almost surely escape. “And yet—” he whispered, “is that like Spider?” He could not feel that it was. He recalled times when the boy had appeared utterly fearless, absolutely loyal.
“And yet, he was only a boy from the city streets. Supposing—” Doubt assailed him. Supposing Spider had only pretended to be loyal. Supposing that during all this time he had been in league with Iggy the Snake and his gang? Supposing it had been he who had tipped off the gang to their plans for a Christmas party!
“Yes, and suppose it wasn’t!” he whispered almost fiercely.
One fact stood out clearly. Spider’s post was vacant. It must be filled at once.
After locking the door, he slid over to Drew’s side.
“Spider’s gone,” he said.
“Gone? Where?” Drew did not raise his voice.
“Who knows? His place is empty.”
“You take it,” was Drew’s instant command. “Take Alice with you. I’ll move over where you were.
“Gone!” he murmured as Johnny glided away into the darkness. “Spider’s gone!”
Apparently it is true that, under certain circumstances at least, one can recognize a person by his whisper. Certain it is that Grace Krowl, upon opening her door for a second time that night and upon hearing the whispered message, “Merry Christmas, Grace Krowl,” said without a moment’s hesitation:
“You are the Whisperer.”
“I am.” The slim, gray-haired man before her smiled. “May I come in?”
She stepped aside. He entered and took a seat.
“It was generous of you to trust me,” he said. “You will not regret it.
“You see—” His eyes strayed about the place. “I fitted these rooms up for myself. Then, for reasons you shall know of later, I was obliged to leave them. When I learned of your presence here, I decided to trust you, and to use you. I— You have Nida’s story?”
Grace nodded.
“She is the daughter of a very old friend.” The little, gray-haired man leaned forward. “Will you tell me the story?”
Grace told the story as best she could.
“It is as I thought.” The Whisperer sprang to his feet. “That man, J. Templeton Semp, is a rascal. He tried to hide his evil deeds by persecuting others. I must go!” He seized his hat.
“But who—who are you?” Grace cried.
“I—” He smiled. “I am Newton Mills.” Then he was gone.
What a commotion that declaration would have caused among the watchers in the little gray house on the prairies! Newton Mills, Joyce Mills’ father, boon companion of Drew Lane, Tom Howe and Johnny Thompson—Newton Mills come to life and he, of all men, the Whisperer! But no word of this could reach them now.
* * * * * * * *
It was cold over there by the north window of the little gray house. Before he and Alice established themselves there, Johnny gathered up his heavy coat and wrapped it about the girl. He was very close to her now, this brave and beautiful child of a slain policeman. They were facing death together, these two. And death drew them closer.
Bleak night was outside, and out there somewhere in hiding, creeping up behind that barn or the grove where the Captain had played as a boy, or perhaps behind the great cottonwood just before them, death was coming nearer. Johnny was seized with an involuntary shudder.
“What is it, my friend Johnny?” The little Canadian’s shoulder touched his.
“Nothing. Only thinking.” He laughed a low, uncertain laugh.
“Do you know,” he said a moment later in a voice that was all but a whisper, “that old barn behind the cottonwood was standing when the Captain was a boy? On rainy days they played in the hay, climbed high and pushed one another down, made swings of the hay ropes and leaped into the mow from twenty feet in air. They played hide and seek, boys and girls together. Sounds sort of peaceful and joyous, doesn’t it? Not—not like this.”
“You make it seem so real. Perhaps, after all, this is only a dream. Or, or only a trick to frighten us. Christmas morning will come as it came in those good days. Stockings all in a row.” Her voice was dreamy. “Presents, and a fire laughing up the chimney. All that and—
“Johnny!” She broke off suddenly to grip his arm. “What was that? A shot?”
“I—I don’t know.”
Johnny’s right hand gripped his automatic. Surely there had come a sharp crack. It sounded strange in the night.
“Board nails snapping in the frost perhaps.” He relaxed a little.
“Look, Johnny!” She gripped his arm till it hurt. “Look! Some dark object tumbling about under that huge tree. It—I think it looks like a man!”
Johnny was on his feet. “Drew! Drew Lane! Come here quick!” He all but shouted the words.
Before the call died on his lips, Drew was at his side. By that time not one dark object, but three were to be seen tumbling about on the snow beneath the giant cottonwood. Their antics were grotesque in the extreme—like men sewed into canvas sacks.
“Something’s happening,” Johnny hazarded.
“Or it’s a decoy to call us out,” Drew replied dryly.
What was to be done? Surely here was a quandary. One of the figures had stiffened and lay quite still like a corpse.
“May be faked,” Drew said grimly. “But a fellow has to see.” One hand on the door, the other gripping his automatic, he was prepared for a dash, when Johnny pulled him back.
“No! No! Let me go! You are older. If anything goes wrong, you’ll be needed here. You must remember the women.”
“All—all right.” Drew backed away reluctantly. Then, standing up at full height, ready for instant action, he prepared to protect Johnny as best he might.
Johnny was out of the door and away like a shot. Not so fast, however, but that a dark, muffled figure followed him.
Reaching the first prostrate form, he uttered a low exclamation. It was a man. Apparently quite unconscious, he lay there, his face half buried in the snow. There was a curious odor about the place. Johnny felt a faint dizziness in his head.
He stepped to the next figure. To his surprise and horror he saw it was Spider. He too lay motionless.
“Gas!” a voice said in his ear. “Can’t you see they’ve been gassed?”
He wheeled about to find himself staring in the face of the little French Canadian girl, Alice.
“You!” he murmured.
“Come out of it!” She dragged him away. “There is still some of that gas in the air.”
Johnny had got a little more of that gas than he thought. He did not lose consciousness, but he did have only a hazy notion of that which went on about him. It will always remain so—how the other members of the party came swarming out, how they found four members of the “Massacre Parade” prostrate on the snow, and Spider beside them on the ground with a broken arm—all this will always be a dream to Johnny. So too will be the story of how Drew and Tom went after the missing Iggy, who was not one of the four under the tree, and how they found him waiting in a high-powered car, and, having been fired upon, how they mowed him down with the very machine gun that had been loaded for the purpose of massacring women, men and girls alike.
The effect of the gas did not last more than twenty minutes. The words used by the four would-be savage massacre men when they found handcuffs on their wrists and clothes-line rope bound round their legs, were scarcely in keeping with the spirit of Christmas. It will not seem strange that no one cared.
As for Spider, he had some explaining to do. When a doctor had set his broken arm and he had fully recovered from his share of the gas, he told a strange story.
He had caught a glimpse of someone dodging behind the old barn. Putting the whole thing together, he had decided that the men with machine guns would take their stand behind the giant cottonwood. Its thick base would offer perfect protection from bullets.
“I thought,” he went on, “if only I can beat them to the tree and climb it, with that gas bomb on my back, I’ll be in a position to put them all to sleep at once. There wasn’t a minute to lose, so, without saying anything, I made a dash for it.”
“But it’s twenty feet to the first branch!” Johnny protested. “How’d you make it?”
“The bark of that old tree,” said Spider with a smile, “is like the edge of inch-thick boards sticking out. Nothing easier than getting a grip and going up.”
“For you,” Johnny agreed. “But you were found on the ground,” he objected.
“Things didn’t go just right.” Spider indulged in a wry smile. “I got up the tree all right. They did their part, came and got under. Then I saw something I hadn’t counted on—saw the tops of heads, yours and Alice’s by that window.
“Ten seconds more, and they’d have riddled you with bullets. Guess I got excited; must have moved. Anyway, one of ’em spotted me and fired.
“Bullet hit my arm. Lost my balance, and down I came, gas bomb and all. The bomb burst all right. And, well, you know the rest.”
“Alice!” Johnny was looking into the little Canadian’s eyes. He was thinking, “What if that machine gun had stuttered just once!”
When he realized that in the face of death Alice had followed him into the night, he wanted awfully to cry, then to seize the little Canadian and kiss her on both cheeks. Being a modest youth, he merely flushed and did neither the one nor the other, which was just as well, since Alice could understand blushes quite as readily as tears and other things.
Routing out a farmer a half mile north of the Captain’s old home, Drew Lane got the local sheriff on the wire and told him what had been done. An hour later the four prisoners were behind bars in the county jail, and Iggy the Snake, who had put an end to a half-score of useful men, was in the morgue.
The clock was striking midnight when Drew got Captain Burns on the wire.
“What luck?” he asked the Captain with a voice hard to control.
“Some luck, Drew,” the Captain answered. “Tell you about it later. Thought I had something more. It went up like old St. Nick’s reindeers, straight into thin air!”
“Drive out early in the morning.” There was suppressed animation in Drew’s tone. “We got some Christmas presents for you.”
“Not what we been after?”
“The same.”
“No—N-o-o!” The Captain fairly stuttered.
“All five. One tried, condemned and executed; four behind the bars.
“Turkey weighs twenty-five pounds.” He changed his tone hastily. “It’ll be stuffed with oysters and other things. You’ll be out?”
“Before you’re up,” the Captain rumbled. “Merry Christmas!” He hung up.
“ItisChristmas at that,” Drew murmured after consulting his watch.
It was late when the stockings were filled that night. Is it any wonder that presents were sadly mixed, that Johnny received a powder-puff and Alice a bright and shiny toy pistol? But what did it matter?
The sun was high when the young people piled out of their bunks in the cold little bedrooms. Already the savory odors of a feast, of a turkey roasting, cranberries stewing, mince pie baking, was in the air. What did presents matter? A feast, and joyous and more peaceful times were just ahead.
The Captain did not keep his promise. He arrived at ten o’clock instead of at dawn.
“Had to wait for this young lady,” he explained, helping Grace Krowl out of his car. “Wanted her to have a look at one of your friends,” he chuckled. “No time to talk of crooks, but that man J. Templeton Semp, the dutiful house detective, is none other than Dapper Dan Drew in other circles, and Dapper Dan, as you know, is one of the men you have in jail.
“It often happens,” he added when the surprise had subsided, “that men who are so very good at enforcing little unimportant regulations, such as the J. Templeton Semp Black List, are very bad in other ways.
“But wait!” the Captain exclaimed. “I have still another guest.” He gave Joyce Mills a strange look, then he roared:
“Old Man, come out!”
Out stepped Newton Mills. Like a flash, his daughter was in his arms.
“And might I add,” said Grace Krowl, “that he is also the mysterious Whisperer of the air!”
“That,” said the Captain, “calls for a lot of explaining. Suppose we retire to the parlor?”
“There’s really nothing very mysterious about that whisper business,” said Newton Mills when they were all gathered about the fire. “I became interested in something they call narrow-casting. It’s one of the uses of the electric eye. You really talk down a beam of light.”
“Talk down a beam of light!” someone exclaimed.
“Surely.” He smiled. “It’s really very simple. You talk into a microphone. An instrument takes up the sound impulses of your voice and changes them to light impulses. These impulses may be sent down a beam of light a mile, ten, twenty, thirty miles. How far? No one knows.
“A very special reflector catches those light impulses. A mechanism containing an electric eye changes those light impulses back into sound impulses. And then you hear my voice thirty miles away.
“The wonderful part is, Captain—” He leaned forward eagerly. “Only a person with the proper mechanism in the line of that ray of light can hear them! Think of being able to sit in my high tower and send secret messages to a score of my fellow detectives, and never a crook listening in! I tell you it is going to be a great thing for crime hunters in the future!”
“Do you know,” Johnny asked, “that you in your high tower came near being the end of this young giant?” He nodded toward Spider.
Newton Mills stared in surprise. Then he said, dryly, “A caller should send in his card.”
“But how was it you could see me as well as speak to me?” Grace Krowl asked.
“Television.” Newton Mills smiled afresh. “I’d had a set installed in that room. It’s a rather crude set. But you can see a person well enough to recognize him even now.”
“And that must have been why I could see Iggy the Snake and the stolen bonds back there in the ‘House of Magic,’” Johnny put in.
“Probably was,” Newton Mills agreed.
“Speaking of those bonds,” said Captain Burns, “last night I recovered all but a few of them. Great luck! Fine Christmas present for that closed bank!”
“And for the depositors,” Drew Lane added.
“And now,” said Madame LeClare, appearing in the doorway, “soup’s on!”
“On with the feast!” cried the Captain.
A moment later they were all seated about a broad table that groaned under its weight of good things to eat.
Bowing their heads, they sang their grace before meat.
“Peace on earth, good will toward men!” the Captain rumbled.
“If only the men of this earth had good will toward one another, we could throw away our sticks and guns and come to a peaceful spot like this to live all our days.”
It was a very merry time they had in the Captain’s boyhood home that Christmas day and a joyous journey they made back to the city. And why not? Had they not been sentenced to death by their enemies and the enemies of all honest men, and had they not escaped and triumphed?
Next day Johnny returned to the “House of Magic.” He found, however, that much of its charm had gone with the solving of its many mysteries.
“Yes. It was television that made it possible for you to see your friend Iggy and the stolen bonds,” Felix admitted freely enough. “It is very imperfect at present. The time will come, however, when you will be able to look in upon wrongdoers from some spot miles away, and perhaps,” he added with a chuckle, “we will be able to look right through walls of cement, stone or steel. Who dares say we won’t?
“I suppose,” he went on a moment later, “you’d like to know what we were about in that balloon when the long one and the short one, who beyond doubt were Iggy and one of his pals, cut us loose in that balloon. We were about to talk down a beam of light. Shortly after that I made the acquaintance of Newton Mills. He told me he had been working on that. We arranged to complete the experiment from the Sky Ride tower. He swore me to secrecy—so you see I couldn’t well take you in on it.”
“Well,” yawned Johnny, “looks as if it were going to be a trifle dull around here for a time.”
“Might be and might not,” the inventor’s son grinned. “Father is working on some marvelous things. Don’t go far from here without leaving your address. We may need you.”
“I’ll keep in touch,” Johnny agreed.
Unfortunately the peace and good will the brave Captain spoke of over the Christmas feast in his old home does not yet exist. The world is still at war with itself. Because of this we are likely to have more to tell our young adventurers in the near future. If this proves true, you will find it recorded in a book calledWings of Mystery.