Johnny Thompson was as nearly as possible a perfect physical being. Having been taught from childhood the necessity of physical well-being and muscular prowess to the business man as well as to the mechanic or professional athlete, he had kept himself fit and had never neglected an opportunity to learn some new trick or turn on the wrestling mat or gymnasium floor.
In the struggle that followed the collision there in the dark aisle of the factory neither Johnny nor the stranger had the advantage of anticipating attack. Both had been surprised.
Johnny soon learned that his antagonist was no ordinary person. Seizing the man by the feet, Johnny clamped on with a grip of iron. But to his utter surprise the man gave the sudden twist of a professional contortionist, and came up between his own knees, clawing at Johnny’s face like a cat.
Loosing his hold Johnny made a sudden grab for the other’s waist, but in that fraction of a second the man took a sudden double backward somersault, and leaping to his feet, dashed away.
Instantly Johnny was up and after him. He was dashing along at full speed, making a good gain at every leap, when of a sudden he banged into a perpendicular wall. The wall was rising. It lifted Johnny some four feet in air to dash him to the floor again.
“The fake wall!” he muttered, astonished. Had the other runner known of this trap and had he sprung it? Or had it been an accident?
There was not a moment to lose. Dashing back the way he had come, he rounded a pillar and was again in full pursuit.
The stranger was now far ahead of him, just rounding a corner to enter the loading-room.
Through this loading-room, which was a full block in length and two hundred feet in width, there ran a double railway switch. This switch was filled with freight cars, some empty, many loaded with raw material, bales of rubber-cloth, bars of steel, bundles of wire. If the man chose to lose himself among these cars the pursuit was at an end. Johnny pressed on; there was a chance that the great doors at the farther end stood ajar, and that the man would attempt escape at once.
As he rounded the corner, Johnny saw that the doors were ajar and that, a third of the way down the long unloading platform, a slim figure was fleeing.
“Can’t do it. Got to try, though,” he panted, as he sped along.
Suddenly he became conscious of a chain dangling just before him. It seemed to him that there came a slight jangle from that chain. Yes, now he saw it lift, then drop a foot or two. What could it mean? Now it moved forward a yard and stopped.
The chain was within his reach. Acting from instinct rather than reason, he grasped it, thrust his foot in the loop at the bottom, and the next minute, with a grinding roar sounding above him, he felt himself shoot forward at a terrific speed.
The chain was attached to a huge traveling crane. This crane, which was a steel beam swung from wall to wall of the structure and running on iron wheels along a steel rail set at the very top of the wall, fifty feet above, was electrically operated from a small cab that hung just beneath it.
Johnny looked up at the cab. He could see no person there. Darkness might account for that, but all the same he felt a cold chill creep up his spine. Was this, after all, a charmed factory? Had he, all unknown to himself, been moved to some enchanted city where heat, with no apparent origin, melted metals, and where giant cranes ground their way at express-train speed with no one to guide them? He was tempted to think so.
But cold reality brought him back to his senses. Dangling from a chain, he was rapidly approaching a man who was doing his utmost to escape. What if that man were armed? A wonderful target he would make, dangling there in mid-air!
Cold perspiration stood out on his furrowed brow. His knees seemed about to sink from beneath him. He swung one foot free, and began whirling about to give the chain a side-wise pendulum motion that he might prove a poorer target.
Meanwhile, the stranger did not turn to look back. The very thunder of the traveling crane appeared to lend new speed to his limbs. Perhaps he imagined the entire place to be swarming with men engaged in pursuing him. A surprised look overspread his face, as Johnny, not three feet to the right of him, swung past.
The man instantly dodged back and dropped to the floor, but Johnny, leaping from his iron swing, was upon him before he could get to his feet again.
There followed a second struggle similar to the first. This strangerwasa contortionist, there could be no question about that now. Before three minutes had elapsed, he had again wriggled like an eel from Johnny’s grasp and had dashed through the door to freedom.
In disgust, Johnny sat up and dabbed at some scratches on his face which were bleeding. “Never saw anything like that,” he grumbled.
Above him the traveling crane hung in impressive silence. He gazed up at the driver’s cab. All was motionless there. But what was that? Did he see one of the landing doors on the fourth floor open a crack, then close again? He thought so, but in the pale moonlight that streamed in through the windows he could not be sure.
“Fate seems to mock at a fellow sometimes,” he mumbled. “Look at the luck I had, that trip on the crane and everything, and then look at the luck I didn’t have; he got away!”
He moved a foot to rise, and something jangled beside it.
“What?”
He put out his hand and took up a bar of steel. For a second he flashed a light upon it. His heart beat wildly; the steel was blue—the bluest steel he had ever seen.
“It’s one of the stolen bars,” he muttered. “Lost it out of his pocket.”
A careful search showed him that the second one was not there. Then suddenly he remembered that he was a long way from his main trust—the vault where reposed the remaining six bars. Rising hurriedly, he went racing back to the center of the factory where the vault was located.
Arrived at the corner of the forge-room he paused and peered away through the darkness to a point where a small light shone above the vault door. He half-expected to see a figure crouching there. There was no one in sight. Once more the aisles of machines, conveyors and tunnels appeared deserted. Strain his eyes and ears as he might, he caught only the din of the storm beating on the cupolas above the forge-room and an occasional flash of lightning.
Seating himself on a fireless forge, he leaned back against its smoke conveyor and rested. The double struggle, the race, the strange occurrences of the night, had unnerved him. He started at every new blast of the wind, fancying it the move of some new intruder.
He was puzzled. Who could have been present to give him that fast ride on the chain of the traveling crane? Surely not a watchman; these men knew nothing about traveling cranes; indeed, few men did. The manipulating of these huge burden-bearers, capable of carrying a loaded box-car from one end of the unloading room to the other, was a delicate and difficult task. There were scores of levers and switches to operate, scores of motions to memorize, yet this man, whoever he was, had shown a competent control of the massive machine. Who could he have been?
He thought again of the bar of secret-process steel which he had now in his possession. Only a few days before he had wished for a particle of that steel that he might test it. Now he had in his possession a whole bar of it, yet how was he to secure a sample for testing? Only a minute particle was needed, but how was that to be obtained?
He was seized with a sudden desire to try his skill on this strange metal. He had learned a little of steel-testing while in the salvage department. Not sixteen feet from the point where he now sat there was a branch laboratory for testing steel. All the equipment for testing it was there. There was only lacking the tiny particle of steel.
Taking the bar from his pocket, he turned it over and over. He struck it on an anvil and enjoyed the bell-like ring of it. He held it to the light and studied the intense blue of it. Never before in the history of the world had there been such steel, he was sure of that.
Laying the bar down upon the cinders of the forge, he took a little circle around the forge-room to stand at last gazing at the door of the vault.
Some faint sound caused him to turn about. At once his gaze was fixed on the forge where the steel bar was resting. The red glow of fire was on the forge. The coal was on fire. One end of the bar glowed with a peculiar white light!
His first thought was that there had been matches lying on the forge, and that they had been accidentally lighted, setting off the coal. This theory was quickly abandoned. Coal didn’t start burning that easily.
Then, remembering the old vault-keeper’s remark, “It doesn’t seem to take the heat right. Gets all sort of crumbly when it’s been heated,” he dashed for the forge, seized a pair of tongs, and drew the piece of metal from the fire. It slipped from the tongs and fell upon the cement floor with a dull thud.
In an agony of fear lest the steel had been ruined he seized a hammer and cold chisel and, placing the edge of the chisel against the still white-hot surface, struck it sharply with the hammer.
A thin circle of steel coiled up about the edge of the chisel, then dropped to the floor.
“Nothing the matter with that steel,” he muttered, as he watched the white heat slowly fade to a bright red, then dull red, then black, “but one thing, I’ll wager: That was our old friend the ‘white fire’ once more.”
He glanced about him apprehensively, as if fearing to see glowing eyes staring at him from the dark, but all he saw was a fresh flash of lightning followed by a burst of thunder.
Looking down, his eyes were caught by the thin coil of steel cut from the bar. It was cool now and blue almost to transparency. He picked it up and dropped it again, to see it bounce ten inches from the floor.
“Nothing the matter with that steel,” he repeated.
Then a new thought struck him.
“Why, that—that bit of coiled steel is my particle for testing.”
Touching the bar of steel he found it still hot. Waiting impatiently for it to cool, he paced the floor, his eye first on the vault-door, then on the precious steel. What if he were to be successful in his analysis of the steel? That would be a great honor, indeed.
Retracing his steps to the side of the forge, he once more tested the steel bar. Finding it cool enough, he thrust it into his pocket, picked up his bit for testing, and strode away to the laboratory, where through a window he could keep watch of the vault door.
On a work bench before the window in the laboratory there rested an instrument the like of which Johnny had never seen before entering the factory for work. The main body of it was a black drum about a foot long and ten inches in diameter. Out from this drum there ran a tube which, bending first this way, then that, passed into a bottle, then out of it into a second, then out again and so on until six or eight bottles had been included in its route.
“Let’s see,” said Johnny. “This one catches the carbon, this one, tungsten, this, water vapor, this, iron, and so on. Guess the thing’s all set for taking off the different known elements that are likely to be found in any steel. But how about those unknown elements? Here’s a wild shot in the dark.” Taking down three bottles from the wall, he poured a little from each into a fourth bottle. He then replaced the three bottles and, by the aid of two short tubes, inserted the bottle he had just filled into the circuit running from the drum. Repeating the operation with a new set of bottles he added a second bottle to the circuit.
“There,” he smiled, “if there are any strange atoms floating around, those ought to give them a home. Now for it!”
Pushing open a slide in the side of the drum he adjusted his bit of steel in a position between two electrical poles and directly before a small nozzle. He then shut the drum, turned on a switch which started a low snapping sound inside the drum, turned a valve which set a slight roar resounding within the drum, then sat back to watch.
Presently a greenish gas could be seen passing along inside the glass tube.
“Working!” he smiled. “Pretty slick arrangement! Electric spark sets fire to the metal, oxygen feeds the flame. Burn up anything that way. That gas was the hardest, most flexible steel in the world a moment ago.”
As he sat there watching the process go forward, hearing the hum and snap inside the drum, now and then catching the roll of thunder from the storm that raged outside, he thought of the three Shakespearean witches and their steaming caldron. He liked to think of himself as a modern wizard with his smoking electrical caldron.
But something caught his eye. The color of the liquid in one of the bottles of chemicals he had mixed at random was turning from white to a dull brown as the gas from burning steel passed through.
“Catching something!” he ejaculated. “Wonder what it may be?”
For ten more minutes he sat watching. Then, when all the gas had apparently passed off he turned the valve, threw out the switch, and sat there lost in thought.
It was interesting, this experiment. This instrument had always fascinated him. He felt that it might be that he had made a discovery. But thus far he could go, no farther. Of chemical analysis he knew nothing. Already he had made a vow with himself that, as soon as his debt of honor was paid, he would begin somewhere, somehow, a study of those sciences which were so closely related to industry—chemistry, metallurgy, engineering, mechanics, physics.
But now he was stuck. He had never really been given permission to work in the laboratory alone at night and he was loath now to admit he had done so.
“Oh, well,” he sighed, “probably nothing to it, anyway. I’ll just label you and put you up here for the present.” He scrawled a few words on a label, pasted it to the bottle containing the dull brown liquid, then set it upon an upper shelf.
“Some day,” he smiled, “perhaps I’ll have the nerve to tell Mr. Brown about it, but not now.” Brown was the head of the laboratory.
He went out into the aisle and began walking slowly up and down before the vault. He was sleepy and tired. This night work was telling on him.
“Wish it was over with,” he muttered. “Anyway,” he smiled, “I’ve got something to show them this time,” and he patted the steel bar in the right-hand pocket of his blouse.
* * * * * * * *
“You say someone drove the traveling crane down the loading-room and helped you chase that man!” the manager exclaimed next day after Johnny had told the story of his queer night’s adventures. “That seems incredible!”
“Maybe so, but it’s true!”
“There are only three men in our employ who can run that crane and they, I am sure, were not there.”
Johnny smiled. “Can’t explain it; all I know is, it’s true.”
“I’ll put a double guard on the place. Can’t have things going on like that.”
Johnny smiled again. He had told of the double struggle with the snake-like adversary, of the chase, of the ride on the traveling crane, and the recovery of one steel bar, but had not mentioned the “white fire” nor the steel test he had made. “What’s the use?” he had asked himself. “Who’d understand a thing like that ‘white fire’?”
“Well,” said his employer, “I’m glad you recovered one of the bars; I only wish you had secured the other. One may do us all the harm possible.”
“You never saw such a man,” Johnny half-apologized. “Like an eel, he was, a regular contortionist. I’ve handled a lot of fellows, but never one like him.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Mr. McFarland reassured him. “You did better work than many persons twice your age might have done. Well,” after a moment’s thought, “you keep that bar until this evening, then, when you go to work, give it to Marquis and have him put it in the vault. Your work will be as before until further orders.”
Johnny was disappointed. He had hoped to be relieved from this task, which would grow doubly monotonous since it was definitely known that the remaining bar of steel had been carried from the factory. He managed to conceal his disappointment, however, and went his way, to sleep the day through with the bar of steel beneath his pillow.
He did not return the bar to Marquis, the day keeper of the vault, as he had been instructed to do. When Johnny arrived he found the vault locked, its keeper gone.
“Well, old precious one,” he smiled, patting the bar of metal, “it’s one more night in my company for you, whether you like it or not.”
It was that same night, in the long, silent hours just following midnight, that something happened that was destined to change the entire course of Johnny Thompson’s life. He was sleepy—sleepier than usual, for his sleep had been broken into that day.
“If only I had another shaving off that steel bar,” he thought to himself, “I’d do that experiment again, and try for a different result.”
As if expecting the miracle to repeat itself, he walked to the forge-room and placed the bar of steel on the little heap of coals at the center of the same forge that had burned so mysteriously the previous night.
Then with a laugh, which told plainer than words that he thought he was kidding himself, he turned and strolled away down the aisle among the forges.
No room held such an endless fascination for him as this forge-room. In the day, especially toward evening when the outer light was failing, when the forge fires burned brightly, and the white hot metal on the dies glowed at each stroke of the massive hammers, when the whang-whang-whang of steel on steel raised a mighty clamor, then it was a place to conjure about. But even now, in the dead still of the night, the powerful hammers resting from their labor, the long line of forges with fires burned out spoke to him of solemn grandeur and dormant power.
He had just made the length of the room and had turned about when from his lips there escaped a muffled cry.
Instantly he broke into a run. Once more, as on the previous night, the forge on which the steel bar lay was a mass of white and red fire.
By the time he had reached the spot, the bar of metal was a glowing white mass from end to end.
His first thought was to seize the tongs and drag the bar from the forge to the floor; his second was a bolder one. It caused his heart to thump loudly, his breath to come quickly.
Dared he do it?
He put his hand to an electric switch by the side of the trip-hammer nearest the forge. The answer was a snap and a spark.
“Current’s on,” he murmured. “I could do it. Old McPherson taught me how when I was in the salvage department—but dare I?”
To the lower surface of the hammer was attached a nickel-steel die. To the surface on which it fell was bolted another. The two matched. A white-hot bit of steel placed upon the lower die at just the right spot, then struck; then moved and struck again; moved and struck two times more, would be no longer a clumsy bar of steel, but a rough-finished connecting-rod for an automobile. The white-hot bar of steel before him was just the right length and thickness. Dared he do it?
As in a dream, he seized the metal with the tongs, lifted it, swung it about to the proper position on the nickel-steel plate, touched a pedal with his foot, heard the whang of steel on steel, saw the hammer rise again, moved the white-hot metal, touched the pedal, heard the whang again; twice more repeated the operation, then tossed the bit of metal, still glowing white-hot, upon the sanded floor; a perfect connecting-rod as to shape—but as to composition? His breath came hard. Had the bit of metal been spoiled in the heating and the forging? And, if it had, how could he ever square himself?
To quiet his wildly beating heart he took a turn about the factory, then returned to the forge-room. He was just re-entering the forge-room when something caught his eye. What was it? Had his eye deceived him, or had he caught sight of a furtive figure dodging behind the sheet-metal press over at the right? In a moment he would investigate, but first he must make sure that the newly forged connecting-rod of priceless steel was safe.
Quickly his heart beat as he lifted the now thoroughly cooled steel, and allowed it to fall upon the cement floor.
“Sounds like real steel,” he exulted.
He picked it up and examined it closely. “Not a flaw. And real steel—the best steel on earth—and I forged it! But how?” He paused, a puzzled look overspreading his face. “How shall I tell them I heated it? What good will one forging do with no means of forging more?”
“Oh, well!” he murmured, at last, “I’ll tell them, anyway. And now,” dropping the connecting-rod in his pocket, “the next thing is something else. I wonder what it will be!”
He left the forge-room and walked cautiously toward the sheet-metal press.
As he neared it, a dark object, like some wild animal leaping from its hiding-place among the crags, leaped out, and away.
Who was this? Was it his contortionist-enemy returned in hopes of retrieving the lost bar, or was it some other intruder?
Johnny did not waste time on idle questions, but sprang away in hot pursuit.
Johnny had not gone far in the pursuit of the strange intruder who had leaped out from behind the sheet-steel press, before he realized that this was no ordinary runner. Not only was he fleet and sure, but he was also nimble as a deer.
Almost from the first it became an obstacle race, a hurdle race, a long-distance endurance race, all in one. Into the milling-room, where were long lines of milling-machines and where great quantities of unfinished parts—cam-shafts, crank-shafts, gears and a multitude of smaller parts—were piled close together, the fugitive raced. Over machines and heaps of parts alike he hurdled. Dodging this way and that, he was now lost to Johnny’s view and now found again.
Panting, perspiring, yet confident, Johnny followed on. Knowing full well that when it came to a test of endurance few men could outdo him, he held to his pace, striving only to keep his opponent in sight.
One thing puzzled him. In the tiger-like leap of the fellow, in the swinging, crouching stoop, there was something strikingly familiar.
“I’ve seen him before, I know that,” he told himself, “but when and where?”
Suddenly the fellow shot up the cross-bars of an inclined conveyor track which led to the second floor. Suspended from a mono-rail above this conveyor track was an electrically controlled tram.
Was the electricity turned on? Johnny’s mind worked with the speed of a wireless. His muscles did its bidding. Leaping to the platform of the tram, he threw the lever back. So suddenly did the thing start forward that Johnny was all but thrown from the tram.
The next instant he caught his breath and threw in the clutch. He was not a second too soon, for had the tram traveled ten feet further it would inevitably have struck the racing stranger square in the back of his head.
“I want to catch him, not kill him,” muttered Johnny.
But the stranger was game. Leaping away to the right, he dropped through a hole in the floor in which there dangled a chain. Quickly he disappeared from sight.
Johnny followed, and, just as he touched the floor below, heard the hum of an electric motor.
Johnny knew at once what it was—a “mule,” as the workmen called the short, snub-nosed electric trucks used all over the shops for light hauling.
“I can’t catch him on a mule,” he groaned.
But again his face cleared. Just before him there stood another of the trucks. “A mule against a mule,” he smiled. “Now we’ll see who’s the best driver.”
The race, while wild and furious, assumed an almost humorous aspect; indeed, Johnny fancied that from time to time the stranger turned about and uttered a low chuckle. That was disconcerting, to say the least. Added to this was the growing conviction that he had met this fellow before, and that under more favorable circumstances.
All this, however, did not in one whit abate his desire to win the race and capture the fellow. Wildly the mules plunged on. Around this corner, then that one, down a long row of half-assembled automobiles where a single mislaid tool in their track might mean a disastrous spill, through a maze of trucks loaded down with finished parts, now out into the open air between buildings, now through a tunnel, they raced. Now gaining, now losing, now dashing through a short-cut and almost clipping the end of the stranger’s mule, now headed off by a slamming door, Johnny gained, only to lose again, until at last he came up short to find the stranger’s mule standing deserted in the heart of the packing-room.
“Where could he have gone?”
It took but a moment for the answer. There came the grind of the overhead tram. The tram used for carrying fully boxed machines led to the great loading room where Johnny had lost his other race.
“If he makes it, he’s gone!” Leaping out and up, Johnny caught the platform of a second tram; he drew himself up, threw in the lever and was once more in the race.
At last fortune was favoring him. The door to the loading-room was locked. The stranger was running himself into a narrow passage from which escape would be impossible. Johnny leaped from his tram, to find the stranger facing him. That person was clearly on the defense. With fists doubled up he advanced to attack.
Just as the stranger struck out with his right hand, Johnny ducked low—so low that the other’s blow glanced harmlessly over his head. The next instant Johnny would have come up with a “haymaker,” had not the stranger thrown himself, stomach down, on Johnny’s back, and turned a quick somersault forward.
Whipping himself about, prepared for another wild race, Johnny was astonished to find the stranger standing smiling at him, and extending his hand;
“Good work, Johnny, old boy!” the other grinned. “You haven’t lost a bit of your pep!”
“You’ve got the best of me,” Johnny smiled doubtfully, “but if you ever had any more pep yourself, I’d hate to have followed you far!” He mopped his brow.
“Don’t recognize me, eh? Perhaps you miss the blue goggles.”
“What?” Johnny stared. “What? Not my old pal, Panther Eye?”
“The same,” smiled the other.
“But what are you doing here?”
“Been working here for a month. Got a way of getting in when I want to. Thought I’d make you an early morning call. Whew! you sure gave me a merry chase! Good of you though not to knock my head off with that tram. ’Fraid you’ll never make an ideal guard.”
“I’d never be a guard at all if I had my way. But what’d you run for?”
“Just wanted to see how much you had in you,” chuckled Panther Eye.
“Oh, you did! Well, you saw, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” the other admitted, taking his turn at mopping his brow.
“Say!” Johnny exclaimed, “since it’s only you, I’ve got to get back to my post. Got some cakes and a little ice-cream in the bottom of a freezer from the company cafeteria. Want to join me?”
“Sure.”
“All right; let’s go.”
As they made their way back through the maze of machinery to the vault, Johnny was busy with his own thoughts. Strange questions kept rising in his mind. This fellow, Panther Eye, or “Pant,” as the boys called him for short, had been with him in many an adventure. He had appeared to possess strange powers, too. The boys had called him “Panther Eye” because he appeared to have the power to see in the dark. There had been a time when Johnny had been with him in a cave dark as a dungeon, surrounded by hostile natives, yet Pant had somehow known that the natives were there, and had led the way through the dense darkness to safety. There had been other times—many of them—in which Pant had made Johnny a heavy debtor to him through his use of wonderful powers.
“Now,” Johnny was wondering, “just how much has he to do with the events of the last few days? He’s too honorable a fellow to have anything to do with the attempt to secure the secret-process steel for some other manufacturer. But how about the white fire? What of the driving of the traveling crane?”
At last he closed his mental questionings with a sigh. He had never asked Pant to reveal any of his secrets and he was not going to begin now.
Soon they were feasting on ice-cream and cake and talking over old times.
“By the way,” said Johnny, as dawn began to break, “have you ever met Mr. McFarland?”
“Say not!” grinned Pant. “He’s the manager, ain’t he?”
“Yes. Want to meet him?”
“I’d try it once.”
“All right. Soon’s I’m relieved from duty we’ll wander around to his office.”
“Chum of yours, I suppose?”
“Not exactly. But I’m working under his orders. Got something to turn in this morning.”
“Let’s see. What?”
Johnny showed him the connecting-rod made of the strange blue steel. “Made that myself,” Johnny said proudly.
A peculiar smile played about Pant’s lips, but he said never a word.
When Pant had been introduced to the manager, as one of Johnny’s oldest and best friends, who happened to be working at the plant, Johnny produced the connecting rod, and, with trembling fingers, handed it to the manager.
“What’s that?” A puzzled expression came into the manager’s eyes.
“Connecting-rod made of the new-process steel.”
“What! Can’t be! That steel won’t work! Nobody knows how. But—” He paused to look more closely—“but it is! Say! Do you know how to work it?”
“No,” Johnny said regretfully, “I’m afraid I don’t.”
“Then how was it made? Where did you get it?”
Johnny sat down and this time told the story of the white fire through from the beginning. Only one thing he did not tell: He did not tell of testing the steel in the laboratory and of the bottle of brownish liquid on the top shelf.
The manager listened with rapt attention, now and then ejaculating: “Never heard of such a thing! Can’t believe it unless I see it myself! Impossible, young man! Impossible! Can’t believe it!”
“But here’s the forging to prove it,” insisted Johnny stoutly.
“Tell you what!” said the manager, “I’m willing to lose a night’s sleep over it, or part of one at least. We’ll try the thing out. We’ll see if the ghost walks to-night,” he laughed. “We’ll take out two of the long bars in the vault and one of the short ones. We’ll put them on the forge and—and if the fire comes and they get white-hot, we’ll cut the two long bars in half, and hammer four connecting-rods from them and one from the short one. That will give six with this one you have, making a full set for one of our chummy roadsters. Can you drive a car?” he asked suddenly.
“Yes, sir.”
“All right. If the ghost walks to-night, it’s a trip clear across the continent for you—all the way to the Golden Gate and back again! What say?”
“I—I—say all right,” stammered Johnny.
“Mind you,” warned Mr. McFarland, shaking his finger at Johnny, “that’s providing the white fire comes. But, pshaw! it won’t. Whoever heard of such a thing? But, anyway, I’ll be around at nine sharp.”
“Shall I bring Pant?” asked Johnny.
“As you like—providing the ghost doesn’t object.” The manager laughed again, and the two boys walked out.
That night, when the perpetual din of trip-hammers, riveters, millers, and general construction machinery was stilled, and the plant had taken on a hushed and seemingly expectant air, the three, Mr. McFarland, Johnny and Pant, gathered in the corner of the forge-room.
The manager seemed nervous. His hand trembled slightly as he placed the three steel bars on the forge.
Johnny’s brow was wrinkled. He was worried. He was fearful that the experiment would not work. Indeed, he had little hopes that it would. And he did want it to, for success meant the chance to get away from his monotonous task, as well as a glorious cross-continent trip.
Pant’s face wore the old mask-like look that Johnny had seen on it so many times before.
“Now, I take it,” smiled the manager, “that the formula is to place the bars of steel on the forge, then turn your back and walk away. Always must go according to formula when dealing with ghosts,” he laughed. “Are you ready? I have placed the bars in position. All right. We’re off! Remember, no looking back!” Slowly, solemnly, they marched to the end of the forge-room, then turned about. Johnny’s heart was beating violently.
“Why!” exclaimed the manager, “your friend isn’t with us!”
It was true. Pant had disappeared. Before Johnny could make a guess as to what had become of him, there came another exclamation from Mr. McFarland:
“It’s working!” There was awe in his voice.
Johnny stared for a second, then started on the run. He was closely followed by his employer. The bars, already glowing red, had turned to almost a white heat by the time they reached the side of the forge.
The manager had been an expert forge man long before he became a capitalist. He now took charge.
“Steady!” he cautioned. “One thing at a time. First we’ll cut those bars in two. A chisel edge on that anvil there. That’s right. There you are. Now forge that one while I cut the other one.”
Whang-whang-whang went the hammer. One perfect connecting-rod. Whang-whang-whang—another. Three times more, then with perspiration standing out on their faces, Johnny and his employer sat facing one another while the connecting-rods cooled. To Johnny it seemed that they must resemble nothing quite so much as two puppies, who, after succeeding in killing a rat, sit on their haunches to grin at one another.
Suddenly Johnny sprang up;
“Hello! Here’s Pant,” he shouted. “Where you been? Look what we’ve got!” He pointed at the forgings.
Pant smiled a strangely noncommittal smile. “Why, I—happened to think of something,” was all he said. There was again that teasing smile about the corners of his mouth.
“Well, now, I’d like to know more about that transcontinental auto trip,” smiled Johnny, turning to his employer.
“Not to-night. All the details are not worked out yet. Besides, it’s late, and old fellows like me belong in bed. But I want to congratulate you.” He put out his hand. Johnny shook it warmly. “The more I think of it, Johnny, the more I’m inclined to think your ghost is a scientific enigma.” With a nod to Pant which might have meant merely “good night” and which also might have indicated something more mysterious, he was gone.
“You see,” said Mr. McFarland, as Johnny took the chair by his desk next morning, “you helped us to speed things up quite a bit by getting those connecting-rods forged. This new steel must be tested out in actual service. Even had we the formula, this would be true. Now, with this set of connecting-rods in our possession, we are in a position to give the steel a thorough testing out.
“My proposition is this,” he wheeled about, and leveled his eyes upon Johnny. “We’ll get those connecting-rods milled down to the shape and surface needed, if we have to use diamond millers to do it. When they are in perfect shape, we’ll put them into one of our chummy roadster engines, and you take that roadster across the continent and back again to test them out. What do you say to that?” His face broadened into a smile. “It’ll be some trip, but by George you deserve it!”
Johnny did not appear to share fully in his enthusiasm.
“It’s all right,” he hesitated, “and I’d like to do it. It would be a wonderful experience, but—but there’s that chummy roadster I was salvaging and was to have at cost. It’s two-thirds done. It will mean a long wait. I—I’d like to finish it.”
“I see,” said the manager, stroking his chin. “You want a car of your own—that’s natural. I suppose most boys do.”
“It’s not that,” Johnny hesitated, then added: “Not that at all, sir. I want to finish it to sell.”
“Sell it?” His employer stared.
“Yes, sir! I have a debt.”
“A debt?” The manager’s eyes registered disapproval. “A boy of your age shouldn’t have debts.”
Johnny got red in the face, hesitated a moment, then blurted out: “It’s not my debt. My father’s debt, but one he would have paid every cent of had he lived.”
“Your father’s debt?” the manager asked with a curious change of tone. “Yes, he would have paid it. I believe you. And you want to pay by selling the car you have salvaged?”
“Yes, sir; part of it.” Johnny’s eyes were upon the floor.
“All right, you shall. You shall pay it. But just now we need you for this new service. Can you trust me to see that your affairs come out all right?”
“Yes, sir.” Johnny looked him in the eye.
“All right. Be back in my office here at this time day after to-morrow. In the meantime, you are on your own.”
“There’s one thing more,” said Johnny. “This fellow Pant is an old friend of mine; he’s seen me through a lot of things. Any objection to his going along?”
“None whatever. He’ll be a help to you, and between you, you must guard the car well, for you must not for one minute forget that it contains almost our entire supply of the precious new steel, and that as yet we do not know the formula.”
“We’ll do our best,” said Johnny, as he pulled on his cap and left the room.