CHAPTER I  HERE TO-DAY AND AWAY TO-MORROW
 “Roll up! Tumble up! Anyway to get up! If you can’t get up, roll your money up. For we’re here to-day and away to-morrow!”
 
This curious bit of philosophy coming from the lips of Johnny Thompson, youthful world traveler and adventurer, even to himself seemed strange. Yet here he was barking his wares at the “Greatest of all Carnivals.”
 
12
He had learned those words at a county fair when a boy of seven. That they were as effective now as then was attested by the crowds of men and women that thronged about his booth. All were eager to place a dime on the square and win (if luck were with them) a basket of groceries at the turn of the wheel of fortune that spun so freely at Johnny’s touch.
 
“I don’t like this business,” Johnny had said to a friend only an hour before. “A few win. The rest go away empty handed.”
 
“I know,” his friend had agreed. “But then, after all, it’s only a dime for each one. And it’s part of the carnival. Look at those people. Do you ever think much about them? Look at their faces. Not much of a life they lead. The men work in factories putting bolts into places; same kind of bolt in the same kind of place all day long. Perhaps they lift a casting from one place and drop it down in another. The women stay at home and scrub and cook. Carnival comes but once a year. Let them have their fun.”
 
Johnny’s friend had cheered him up a bit so he went about his barking with a smile:
 
“We’re here to-day and away to-morrow.”
 
“For all that,” he assured himself, “I’ll flit as soon as some big thing breaks.”
 
13
Ah, yes, that was it, “some big thing.” Johnny was here for a purpose. The dimes that came, the baskets of groceries that passed over the counter, interested him very little. He was looking all the time for faces, certain faces, and thinking how he would mingle more and more with the men and women who were by profession followers of the Carnival. And all this for one high purpose.
 
So now with the bright lights dazzling his eyes and the incessant tumult of sounds, organs grinding, hawkers hawking, merry-makers screaming, he kept at his task of the moment, shouting:
 
“We’re here to-day and away to-morrow. Now! Round and round she goes. Where she stops, nobody knows!”
 
“Anyway,” he grumbled low to himself, “I give ’em something when they do win. No clock that won’t run, nor painted plaster-of-paris doll for me. Real basket of groceries: oatmeal, peas, canned fish and a picnic ham.
 
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“There you are, lady!” he shouted as the wheel stopped on the lucky 15. “Take this home for your Sunday dinner.” The crowd laughed and applauded as a short, stout Italian woman stumped away with her prize.
 
At that moment, from opposite directions, two youths pressed into the throng, each to deposit a dime on a favorite square. One was rather tall and broad shouldered; the other thin and of medium height. The one of athletic build was dressed as a college youth, and looked the part; latest stiff hat, bright tie, natty brown suit and spats he wore. The other seemed a freckle-faced country youth. He wore a soft slouch hat. His clothes fitted him badly. He even walked with that curious stride that suggests the lifting of feet from soft earth.
 
Johnny moved each dime to the center of its square and twirled the wheel. As he did so the college youth winked, and the freckled one, talking from the side of his mouth, said distinctly:
 
“They’re all here. Greasy Thumb and his gang. Saw ’em just now. Greasy is running a wheel. Rest are cappers. Wonder why.”
 
15
The next moment, without waiting to discover the results of the wheel’s turn, both college boy and country youth disappeared into the milling throng.
 
Johnny smiled, frowned, then gave himself over to the business of tending a spindle wheel at the “Greatest of all Carnivals.”
 
* * * * * * * *
 
The shouts and screams of the merry-makers had subsided to a murmur. The raucous grind of the merry-go-round organ was still. Lights were low. The night’s work was done. Behind closed tents the concession holders counted their nickels and dimes. Fat wives quarreled with slim husbands and grumbled about hard times that dwarfed their earnings. Slender girls of doubtful age combed their peroxide-blonde hair and flirted with boys in tight fitting suits. From this tent came a gurgle of laughter, from that a shout of derision. For, after all, the Carnival King and his crowd are as carefree a lot of ne’er-do-wells as one is likely to find in many a day’s travel. There is more truth than poetry in the expression so often at the tips of their tongues: “We’re here to-day and away to-morrow.”
 
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“This is the life,” Johnny murmured, as he sauntered over the well-worn path that led from booth to booth. “And then again, I wonder if it is. I—”
 
He broke short off to stare ahead, for in spite of the lateness of the hour he saw just before him, crowded about a dimly lighted booth, an interested and excited group of men.
 
“You’re lucky,” said a short dark man with a scar above his eyes, patting a slim man in an ill-fitting suit on the back as Johnny arrived. “You paid only half a dollar. Now see! You may win ten. Put down your dollar quick before he stops the game!”
 
Johnny recognized the swarthy individual behind the spindle wheel. His wheel carried cheap baubles while the lights were on. Now only numbers remained.
 
“Playing for money. Breaking the law,” the boy thought. “Big stakes if he can get them. Wonder if he could be Greasy Thumb?” He crowded closer.
 
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“Say, Mister!” pleaded the man with the scar over his eye. “Let me have his chance!”
 
The man in the ill-fitting suit squared his shoulders. “I’ll take it myself.” He peeled a sticky dollar bill off a meagre roll.
 
He played.
 
Johnny was disgusted. The man with the scar was a capper, one of the gang of crooked gamblers. He would lead this dupe on and on, and finally take all his money and leave him flat.
 
Johnny listened. They were at it again.
 
“Two calls for twenty-five. Oh, what luck! You’ll win!”
 
The man in the ill-fitting suit plunged again, and yet again. Twenty-five, fifty, a hundred dollars lay on the board. But always it was just beyond his reach. He must always pay more to win. His roll grew slimmer. At last only one bill remained, a fairly large one. He hesitated, then plunged for the last time.
 
“Oh! Ho! Too bad!” The voice of the man with the scar had gone flat. “You lost again!” The face of the dupe showed his consternation. He had lost a summer’s savings.
 
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But now a fresh voice broke into the game. A broad-shouldered man with a stubby beard thrust his face close to that of the spindle wheel man.
 
“That’s a crooked game,” he growled. “I know this man. He’s a truck farmer. Got five kids. He can’t afford to lose. You’ve robbed him. But you can’t get away with it!”
 
He put out a hand for the money still on the table. But his grasp fell a foot short. With a grunt and a groan he went down. From beneath the table, by a well-practiced trick, the crook had kicked him in the stomach.
 
The affair seemed over. It was not. Johnny was to be reckoned with. He was fast as lightning and hard as nails. “Strike first, and take the second,” was his motto. The gambler’s foot was not yet on the ground when he received a blow from Johnny’s good right hand that sent him hurtling into the dark. At the same instant, as if by magic, the money on the board vanished and the kerosene flare that lighted the wheel went out.
 
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The next instant Johnny felt some one tugging at his arm and heard a voice whisper hoarsely:
 
“Snap out of it, can’t you? Want to spill the works? C’mon, let’s get out of here!”
 
Recognizing the voice as one of authority, Johnny obeyed.
 
Ten minutes of ducking and dodging found him at last in his own tent.
 
“Can you beat that?” he exclaimed in a whisper as he switched on the light and looked down at his right hand. “Got that money, all of it. Now I’ll have to find that truck farmer and give it back. Gee! I hope I find him. And I hope his five kids are cute.”
 
He spread the bills out in a neat pile on his knee. Then he made them into a compact roll and thrust them deep into his pocket. But this was not the end of that affair. It was only the beginning.
 
He snapped off the light. “Can’t be too careful,” he told himself.
 
For a moment his head was in a whirl. Then of a sudden he leaned forward in the posture of one who listens intently. A faint sound had come to his ears.
 
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“Footsteps,” he whispered. “Measured footsteps as of a sentry on duty. I wonder—”
 
Now a fresh sound greeted his ears.
 
The steady drum of a powerful airplane motor, growing louder and ever louder until it filled the very air, passed directly above his head and then thundered on into the distance.
 
Once it had passed he forgot the plane. He might well have given it much thought, for the driver of that plane and its precious freight were to enter much into his life. It was the night Air Mail from New York. And on this particular night it bore curious and priceless freight.
CHAPTER II  THE MYSTERIOUS SENTRY
 As the drone of the motor died away in the distance, Johnny became conscious once more of the sentry-like tread from without.
 
“Who can that be?” His heart went into a tailspin. He was alone, unarmed. He thought of the gamblers, of Greasy Thumb and his gang, and of the money in his pocket, that roll of bills which belonged—well, to whom did it belong?
 
Regaining control of his nerves, he crept noiselessly to the front of the tent, then cautiously opened the flap a narrow crack.
 
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The sight that met his eye caused him to start back. Barely did he escape making an audible exclamation of surprise and alarm. There, walking slowly back and forth before the tent, now in the shadows, now in a narrow spot of light, was as strange a figure as one might hope to see. Wrapped from head to ankle in a long gray coat—or was it a robe?—wearing gray shoes, gray gloves and with a gray slouch hat pulled down over his eyes, and with something that at least resembled a gray beard hiding the lower part of his face, this tall, slim man, if man it were, presented an awe-inspiring spectacle.
 
“The Gray Shadow!” Johnny whispered with a shudder. Twice before, each time in the heart of the city, he had caught a fleeting glimpse of this curious figure. Each time he had been in grave danger. With the passing of the Gray Shadow the danger, too, had passed.
 
“And now it is here,” he thought to himself. As he stared, the Gray Shadow disappeared into the depths of deeper, darker shadows and did not return. At the same moment Johnny thought he discerned figures retreating in the opposite direction.
 
“Queer doings!” he muttered to himself.
 
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A moment later a low whistle sounded at the back of the tent. It was followed almost at once by sounds of stealthy movements. This time Johnny did not quail. He knew that whistle. Two minutes had not passed when two old friends, Drew Lane and Tom Howe, came creeping in on hands and knees. They had lifted the canvas at the back and entered unannounced.
 
“Did you see it?” Johnny whispered.
 
“See what?” Drew Lane demanded.
 
“See him?”
 
“Him or it? What are you talking about?”
 
“The Gray Shadow.”
 
“Again?” Drew Lane’s tone was filled with doubt. He had never seen the Gray Shadow. Being a detective, and a good one, he believed only in that which he had seen with his own eyes.
 
“Oh, I saw him right enough this time!” Johnny declared. “Walked across in front of my tent twice before he disappeared; exactly as if that were his business. Queerest sight you ever could look at. Didn’t seem human.”
 
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“All right,” Drew Lane agreed, rather sharply. “You may have your shadows. We’ll deal with real crooks. That’s a detective’s business. Greasy Thumb and his gang are gone.”
 
“Gone!”
 
“Cleared out, far’s I can tell. Their booth and the tent back of it are entirely deserted. They’ll not be back, is my guess. Off on some big business. Pity is, we’ve missed their trail.”
 
* * * * * * * *
 
In the meantime, the lone pilot of the sky who had winged his way over Johnny’s booth an hour before was meeting with an unusual adventure. Had Johnny Thompson known who that pilot was he would have become excited beyond words, for this was none other than Curlie Carson. And Curlie Carson, as you will know, if you have read The Rope of Gold, had been Johnny’s companion in many wild adventures in that island of the Black Republic: Haiti. At the conclusion of those adventures they had parted. Now, with one of the queer tricks she appears to delight in, Fate had brought them within a very short distance of one another. And this time each was busy battling his way out from the tangle of mystery that was being woven about him.
 
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After living in Haiti for a time, Curlie had found himself once more in the grip of wanderlust. Having returned to New York, he fell in with a friend who was in the Air Mail Service.
 
“Come with us,” his friend had invited. “Know the thrill of service in the clouds. Join a growing enterprise. Already Uncle Sam’s airplanes each day travel a distance equal to the airline that reaches from Chicago to Cape Town, Africa.”
 
Curlie had joined up gladly. A natural mechanic, and an aviator with several hundred miles to his credit, he was not long in gaining a place near the first rank of mail pilots.
 
When one of the regular Air Mail pilots flying from New York had been laid up by a case of nerves following a crackup, Curlie was given the stick. So here he was on his third long flight with fifteen hundred pounds of mail on board, his powerful plane drumming happily through the night.
 
26
Happily, but not for long. Scarcely had he passed over the bright lights that shone up from the “Greatest of all Carnivals,” than things began to happen.
 
The beginning seemed insignificant enough. His keen ears had detected a sound.
 
“What was that sound?” He had strained his ears in a vain endeavor to distinguish this new beat on his eardrums which had come to disturb him.
 
Not that there had been no sound before. There was plenty. For hours he had listened to the ceaseless roar of a six hundred horsepower airplane motor. True, this was muffled by a heavy radio head-set pressed lightly against his ears. But it was distinct enough for all that.
 
And now there had come a second sound. At first faint, indistinct. Then louder. Like bells, motors have their one definite sound and pitch. The experienced airman knows the sound of his own motor and many others.
 
“It’s a plane,” he told himself. “But at such a time, and such a place!”
 
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Allowing one hand to rest gently on his control stick, he half rose in the cockpit to peer blindly into the void of darkness, of moonless night, that lay all about him.
 
For a full moment he remained standing thus, motionless, while his eyes swept in a circle, up, down and sideways, many times.
 
“No lights,” he murmured. “I take my oath to that. Dangerous business I’d say. Suppose they’d miss the sound of my motor, the gleam of my lights!” He shuddered at thought of a head-on collision, of broken wings, flaming planes and sudden death.
 
“Breaking the law, that’s what they are! Wish I had their number. I’d report them.”
 
Had he but known it, the occupants of this plane were infractors of the law in more ways than one. Not knowing, he settled back in his seat, gripped his stick firmly and gave his mind over to the important business of bringing the Air Mail from New York.
 
The drumming of the mysterious plane did not leave his ears undisturbed, nor did troubling thoughts pass from his mind.
 
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“Up to something,” he told himself. He thought of one precious bit of cargo that lay so near him he might touch it with his feet.
 
“Forty thousand dollars,” he whispered. “Don’t seem that it could be worth that. But that’s what he said. And he’s always told the truth.”
 
“Snap on the radio,” he murmured after a moment. “May get some clue from that.” His plane was equipped with a receiving set by which weather reports and special orders reached him.
 
He was destined to receive a clue regarding the mystery plane, and that very soon. And such a clue! It would set his blood racing and his hands trembling.
 
But for the moment all was as it had been. Nothing came in over the air. His plane behaved beautifully. True, at times she bumped a bit as he speeded her up, but that was to be expected.
 
Half forgetting the other plane, he settled back in his seat to think of the hours that had just passed.
 
29
It had been George Wiseman, the mail clerk at the New York office, who had shown Curlie three unusual packages which went with hundreds of others to make up his fifteen hundred pounds of cargo.
 
Had Curlie been the usual type of air pilot he would have known nothing of those packages. He was far from the usual type. Instead of loafing about the hangar swapping stories with other pilots, he was uptown in New York, learning things.
 
His work and his mail interested him most. He was eager to know all about it from beginning to end.
 
George Wiseman had grown old in the mail service. He was tall, gray and stooped. His gray eyes were keen. He knew much and was willing to help the eager young pilot.
 
“You boys of the Air Mail know little enough about the service you perform,” he had said to Curlie as he busied himself with the tasks of making up the mail. “You see the mail in sacks. It’s packed away in the fusilage, and you go thundering away. At the other end it is dragged out, piled into a truck, and is away again.
 
30
“We at this end—” He reached for one of the registered mail pouches. “We know a little more, sometimes a great deal more. People confide in us. They tell us of their desires, their hopes, their fears.
 
“Take these three packages.” He jerked a thumb at a small, a medium sized and a rather large package. “To me they represent three things: a great necessity, an emergency and a mystery. To you—”
 
“Tell me about them!” Curlie had exclaimed quickly. “It will make the trip more interesting.”
 
“It will that!” exclaimed the aged mail clerk. “Even thrilling, you might say.
 
“That little one,” he went on, after ten seconds of silence, “is medicine, some sort of antitoxin, I think the man said. It’s for a very sick child, a beautiful little girl, five years old, a college professor’s daughter. She might die if you failed to go through.
 
31
“But there now!” he exclaimed. “Perhaps I’ve told you too much. It may bother you, make you unsteady.”
 
“It won’t,” said Curlie with assurance. “My mind doesn’t work that way. Been tried before. Added responsibility steadies me.”
 
“That’s the way to be. It’s the sign of a healthy mind in a healthy body. These boys that smoke a cigaret every four minutes, now. They’re not like that.”
 
“But tell me about that one.” Curlie pointed to the largest of the three packages.
 
“Worth forty thousand dollars.” The gray old clerk slid the package into the sack.
 
“Forty thous—”
 
“What the man said. Don’t doubt it. See who it’s for? Fritz Lieber. You know who that is.”
 
“The greatest living violinist.”
 
“Many say so. And this is his violin, one of them, perhaps his best.”
 
“But why here?” Curlie stared in astonishment.
 
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“He has another. He likes the other as well; has it on tour. To-morrow in your city he is to play for fifteen hundred crippled children. That’s for the afternoon. At night he plays for the rich, the beautiful, the mighty, in the opera house. Thirty-five hundred of them. And his violin, his precious instrument, is out of commission. Don’t know why nor how. Somebody careless, probably.
 
“And this,” he added, placing a hand lightly on the package, “is his chance, the only other he can use.”
 
“His and the crippled children’s chance.” Curlie’s tone was almost reverent. “They shall have the chance. We’ll go through, my plane and I.”
 
Curlie recalled these words now as he ploughed on through the darkness and the night. Still there came to his ears the mysterious drumming of that other plane.
 
And then, suddenly, so loud that the speaker seemed at his very elbow, words broke in upon the thunder of the motor.
 
“The radio!” he whispered tensely.
 
“Official orders!” came in a gruff voice. “Land at once.”
 
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“Land at once! in this darkness!” the boy thought in dismay. He was over a level farm country. The thing was possible. But why?
 
Emergencies, the child’s medicine, the violin, all called for full speed ahead.
 
“Land!” he cried aloud to the waiting night. “Land!”
 
There was no reply vouchsafed him. His machine carried no sending set.
 
“Land!” he muttered suddenly. “It’s a plot!”
 
He touched a lever. His motor thundered louder than ever and his thoughts raced with the plane.
 
“That,” he told himself a moment later, “was a mistake. It told them at once that I accept their challenge.”
 
But what did they want? Again his thoughts flew to the sack of registered mail in the fusilage just before him.
 
“Three precious packages,” he thought. “Can’t be the medicine. Who would rob a dying child?
 
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“The violin! Forty thousand dollars! that’s it. They would rob the mail to get that.”
 
And yet, as he gave the matter a second thought, the thing seemed uncertain. There was no doubting the true value of the violin. But where would a robber sell it? Such instruments are few; they are known the world over. To offer a stolen one for sale would be to court arrest.
 
“There’s the third package,” he told himself. “Mr. Wiseman said this one contained a mystery. ‘A strange, wild-eyed man in shabby attire brought it to the office. He placed a twenty dollar gold piece on the counter, paid the highest possible insurance fee upon the package, which is heavily sealed with wax, and then without a word he walked away.’ Those were Mr. Wiseman’s very words.”
 
But now the time for reflection was past. The time for action had come. The voice was once more in his ear. Gruffer than before, it set aside all pretense.
 
“You’ll come down, or we’ll bring you down like a crippled wild goose!”
 
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Curlie shuddered. What was this, a plain robbery, or did that mysterious package contain some terrible secret?
 
He was alone in the dark. The hour neared midnight. He was high in the air. What could he do?
 
“The mail bag is within my reach. I could swing out with it and jump. Parachute would save the treasure and me,” he thought.
 
But would it? The parachute was large and white. Even in the night it might be seen.
 
“Then they’d land and catch me. I’d crash my plane for nothing, and all that mail would probably be burned.”
 
Crash the plane! No. He couldn’t do that. That old plane meant much to him. In it he had outridden many a wild storm.
 
Then, too, there was the Air Mail pilots’ slogan: “The mail must go through.”
 
“And it shall!” he shouted into the night.
 
“You’ll come down!” the voice from the air insisted.
 
In his desperation the boy lifted his eyes to the skies in silent prayer.
 
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Did the answer come at once? Be that as it may, a thought flashed into his mind.
 
In the fusilage directly behind him was a twelve foot parachute. Fastened to the parachute was, of all things, a large doll and a new doll buggy.
 
On the route, a few miles beyond a small city, was a farm. Curlie had made a forced landing there the trip before this one. There he had made the acquaintance of a child, a happy, most cheerful little girl, and yet a terrible cripple.
 
Curlie read his Bible. He believed what he read. Some day, if he fed the poor, visited the sick and was kind to crippled children, he would hear the great Master say, “Come!”
 
He had written a letter to the crippled child, had received an answer and had learned that she wanted a doll and a doll carriage. This day he had meant to send the gifts down by a red parachute. The clouds had hid the little farm. The parachute was still behind him.
 
37
“If I remove the doll and attach the registered sack to the parachute I can toss it over and they won’t see it. Red shows black at night. They’d never find it. Then I can land and take what comes.”
 
“You have two minutes to land!” The voice was more threatening than ever.
 
Two minutes! The hum of the other motor grew louder. The radio was not on that plane, but on some building not so far away.
 
Two minutes! He worked feverishly. The cord stuck. He cut it, then tied it again. He dragged out the bag. He lifted the parachute free.
 
“The violin!” His heart sank. Yet the parachute would lower the sack gently to the ground.
 
“It’s the only chance.” With one wide, clear swing, he tossed the sack over.
 
The next instant his plane tilted downward. Not a moment too soon, for a motor thundering by passed again into the darkness.
 
“Meant to shoot me down,” he muttered breathlessly.
 
He reached for a switch, pulled it, and at once saw a finger of light from his powerful landing lamp pointing earthward.
 
38
For a space of ten seconds he studied the surface of the ground.
 
“Level pasture. Take a chance. Land in the dark. Might escape.”
 
Again there was darkness. And now, too, came silence. He had shut off his motor.
 
“They’re landing, too,” he thought with a thrill and a shudder. “I wonder where?”
CHAPTER III  A COLD SCENT
 “Yep, they’re gone all right. Cleared out.” Drew Lane spoke in tones scarcely above a whisper. “Of course they may be just outside, for all we know.” His hand involuntarily strayed to his hip.
 
Johnny Thompson, Drew Lane and Tom Howe were still in Johnny’s tent. The adventures that were befalling Curlie Carson, for the moment, meant nothing to them. They were beyond earshot of it all. All unconscious of it, they were discussing their own affairs.
 
“I don’t think so.” Tom Howe, who seldom spoke, but whose actions spoke for him, broke the silence. “It’s my notion they have gone out for the big thing, whatever that is.”
 
“The big thing?” Johnny leaned forward eagerly.
 
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“Sure,” Drew Lane broke in. “You don’t think such fellows as Greasy Thumb and his mob would come out here to run a tin horn gambler’s game, do you? Say! They’re supposed to be right next to the Big Shot.”
 
The Big Shot! Johnny was impressed. Who had not heard of the Big Shot, the man who headed the greatest beer running, gambling house operating gang of robbers the land has ever known?
 
“Yes,” said Tom Howe. “They’re after something big. But what it could be in a quiet little city like this is more than I can guess.”
 
Perhaps you have wondered how it came about that Drew Lane and Tom Howe, the successful young detectives of a great city’s force, were to be found in a small carnival city fifty miles from the bright lights of the greatest boulevard.
 
The truth is, a city’s detective force does not confine its activities to the city’s limits. The crooks that make a city their home belong to that city. If they choose to leave it for a time, certain of the city’s hounds of justice are likely to camp on their trails.
 
41
Summer is the time for the migration of evil doers. They thrive on crowds. In a crowd a purse may be snatched, a hold-up perpetrated, even murder done, and the criminal may at once lose himself in that crowd.
 
In winter crowds are found only in cities. Summer sees country parks, carnivals and fairgrounds thronged with people. The crooks prey upon these crowds just as the pike does on a school of perch.
 
Some city police officers are content to spend their lives patrolling a beat. They have their place and contribute their bit to the city’s happiness and safety. Others ride about in squad cars listening for trouble. Still others, like Drew Lane and Tom Howe, restless souls, are by nature free lances. They know hundreds of evil doers by sight and are ever clinging doggedly to their heels.
 
It was even so now. Having become aware of the exit of a dangerous gang of professional criminals from the city, they had followed. And here they were.
 
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If you have read that other book, The Arrow of Fire, I need not tell you that Drew Lane, not many months out of college, impersonated a natty college youth, and Tom Howe, slight, stooped, and freckled, had prepared himself to play the role of a country boy come to the “Greatest of All Carnivals.”
 
And now here they were gathered in Johnny’s tent, for a time completely off the trail of Greasy Thumb and his gang, awaiting the break of “something big.”
 
Even as they waited, not ten miles away Johnny’s old pal, Curlie Carson, was preparing to land his plane in an unknown field at night, forced down by a voice in the air, and with the mail sack containing three precious packages sinking to earth somewhere in the void of darkness behind him.
CHAPTER IV  A MOMENTOUS DECISION
 In choosing to land in the dark on an unknown field, Curlie Carson realized that he was taking a terrible chance. Night landings are always a problem. The appearance of the ground is deceiving. A narrow run, deep and dangerous, may be hidden by its banks; a sudden swell may bring disaster.
 
“It may be a life lost. But there are times when one must take chances,” he told himself stoutly. He was thinking of the medicine in that sack back there somewhere in the dark.
 
“Are those villains doing all this for gain, or what?” He thought now of those mysterious ones who were hounding him. “They can’t know how terrible it all is. I—”
 
There came a sudden bump; another; another; many bumps in quick succession. He was landing. Setting his brakes hard, he unsnapped his harness and prepared to leap.
 
44
With a suddenness that was startling, the plane came to a stop. It appeared to strain forward; then it recoiled.
 
“Hit a fence,” he breathed. “Good thing it wasn’t sooner.”
 
He was over the side and away. Plunging forward, he paused to grope for the fence. Having found it, he went skulking along it from post to post.
 
His reasons for this were two. If a light shot in his direction the fence would offer some chance of concealment. He could become a stone in the fence row. Then, too, the fence gave him direction. He had been flying due west. This fence ran north and south. It would be crossed by another. When he found this he would turn east. About a mile and a half back was the precious mail sack.
 
“I’ll find it,” he assured himself. “It’s not too late yet. Only sixty miles more to go. Some one will take me to a station or an airdrome. Please God, the medicine will reach its destination.
 
45
“And the violin,” he added. “Fifteen hundred crippled children!”
 
He paused to listen. Some one was shouting. They had found his plane, discovered that he was gone.
 
“What will they do now?” He raced on.
 
He was to know soon enough. From somewhere in that expanse of pasture a pencil of light began circling.
 
“It’s a searchlight from their plane. I’m lost, perhaps.
 
“But no. Perhaps not.”
 
With one eye on the light, he moved slowly forward. When at last it sought his fence row and followed it, there was nothing moving there. The light did not pause as it passed across a log or a stone in the fence row. It moved to its limit in that direction and then began searching other corners.
 
“They won’t suspect that the bag is back yonder,” he told himself. “Think I have it.”
 
For a time, ready at any moment to play ’possum, he crept forward. Coming to an intersection of fences, he turned east.
 
46
At last he sprang to his feet and ran again.
 
Quite out of breath, and beyond the range of the light, he slowed down.
 
“A mile and a half,” he whispered. “Covered half of it already. Have to use my flashlight to find the bag. More danger. They may see it. Oh, well, my legs are as good as theirs. But guns!” He shuddered.
 
Fifteen minutes of brisk walking and he judged himself to be near the place where the parachute had dropped.
 
Turning his back to the fence he prepared to walk straight forward for some distance. He had not taken a dozen steps when his foot caught on something and he barely escaped a fall.
 
Putting out a hand, he let forth an involuntary exclamation. He had tripped on the red parachute.
 
“Great luck!” he exclaimed.
 
The next moment found the precious bag and the parachute (which he vowed should still bring a doll to his little friend) tucked under his arm.
 
47
“Now,” he thought, “what next?”
 
He paused to reflect. This was a pasture. Every pasture, if it does not touch the farm yard on one corner, has a lane leading to the farm buildings. If he continued to follow the fence he might come to the farmer’s house. So he reasoned.
 
And he was right. Fifteen minutes had not passed before the farmer, aroused by the loud barking of his dog, was standing in his door, demanding:
 
“Who’s there?”
 
“An Air Mail flyer,” Curlie replied, in as even a tone as he could command. “Plane’s down in your pasture. I need your help. The mail must go through.”
 
“Down, there!” the man growled at his dog. “What do you want,” he asked Curlie.
 
“Have you a car?” Curlie asked, stepping to the door.
 
“Yes, a truck.”
 
“How far is it to town?”
 
“To Aurora, eight miles.”
 
48
“Aurora!” Curlie’s hopes rose. At Aurora there was an airport. If this farmer but knew the way to the airport, the precious parcel of mail would not be long delayed.
 
He felt for the sack. The three packages, undamaged by the fall, were still there.
 
“Take me to Aurora at once,” he said in a tone that carried authority. “You will be well paid. But besides this, it is your duty. Every man, in time of emergency, is the servant of his country.”
 
“Yes, that is true,” the man agreed, as he drew on his coat. “We’ll get the car; then we’ll go for the mail.”
 
“I have it here.”
 
“So little!” The man stared with unbelieving eyes.
 
“There is much more. This is all that matters now. This is urgent. It’s a registered sack. Perhaps a matter of life and death.”
 
Even as Curlie spoke he caught the sound of voices. They came from the direction of the plane. His pursuers were approaching the farmhouse, having discovered that the registered mail was gone. Would he yet be caught?
 
49
“Come!” he exclaimed. “We must go!”
 
The farmer, too, had heard the shouts. He appeared bewildered, undecided.
 
Without wasting another word, the boy whipped out his flashlight, set it circling the barnyard, then dashed to a shed where the truck was kept. The next instant the motor was purring.
 
Before the farmer had collected his wits sufficiently to move, Curlie had driven the truck into the center of the yard.
 
“Perhaps he thinks I am a mail robber, those others the pilots,” he told himself. “What can a farmer know about such things? If worse comes to worst, I’ll drive away alone and take the consequences.”
 
This proved unnecessary. Awakened from his sleep to find himself confronted by an emergency, the slow-going, methodical farmer had found his mind unequal to the situation. When his own truck came rumbling up to his doorstep he climbed in; then, at the boy airman’s request, he pointed the way to the small city nearest his home.
 
50
For a time at least after that, fortune favored Curlie. The road to town, he found, led by the airport. Half an hour had not elapsed before the shuddering farm truck drew up at the airport’s entrance.
 
Hastily handing the farmer a banknote, he began pounding at the door of a room where a dim light shone.
 
“What you want?” grumbled a voice, as the door opened.
 
“A plane to Chicago. Special Air Mail. An emergency. Plane down in a pasture five miles back.”
 
The man glanced at the mail sack, at Curlie’s uniform, then said cheerily:
 
“Righto! Warm one up at once. Good bus. Want the stick?”
 
“You better come. Take her back. I can’t.”
 
“Right!”
 
A moment later a powerful motor began a low rumble. The rumble increased to a roar, then died down again. Three times this was repeated. Then Curlie climbed aboard a two-seater.
 
51
“Time for three winks,” he thought, as he strapped himself in.
 
Long hours had passed since he had left his last airport. Excitement and mental struggle had tired him. Accustomed as he was to being aloft, he fell asleep at once and remained so until the bump-bump of his plane, landing on the city field, awoke him.
 
“We’re there!” he thought to himself. “The city at last!”
 
But his task was only begun. Ordinarily he would have delivered his mail to a truck driver. The driver would carry it to the post office and his responsibility would end. But to-night he was late. An emergency existed. Knowing the great need, he was obliged to decide whether or not to take matters in his own hands. Should he rip open the locked sack and deliver the three parcels in person?
 
52
In such a course he realized there would be a grave element of risk. Tampering with the mail is serious business. Should one package escape from his hands before it was delivered, he would be held responsible. The loss of one precious package would mean a loss to his company. The company alone was responsible for the mail until it was received by the postal authorities.
 
“A slip would mean loss of position—disgrace,” he told himself.
 
He looked at his watch. It was well past midnight. “The last post office messenger boy leaves at 11 o’clock,” he told himself. “Had the emergency existed in the beginning I might have phoned in and had a mail clerk stay until I arrived. Now there is only one chance. I must take matters in my own hands or wait for the office to open in the morning. And that may be too late.” For a moment he hesitated.
 
He was tired. The way had been long. His comfortable bed awaited him. It would be so easy to report the whole affair, send planes and pilots for his abandoned mail plane, and then turn over the special sack to the office and go home.
 
53
“A fellow isn’t responsible for that which he is not supposed to know,” he told himself stoutly. “Mr. Wiseman had no real right to tell me about those packages. I—”
 
But now rose the picture of a child tossing in pain, of a father pacing the floor waiting for medicine that did not come. Then a second picture came to haunt him: hundreds of eager-eyed crippled children waiting in vain for the celestial notes of a marvelous violin played by a master’s hands.
 
“The law of the need of those who suffer is higher than any other law,” he told himself stoutly. “I will take the risk. I will deliver them in person.”
 
Five minutes later, after having reported the astonishing affair to the night director of the airport, he plunged into the darkness that is a great city’s outer borders at night, with the precious sack still under his arm. Written on the tablets of his mind was the address of the home where the sick girl lay.
 
Boarding a street car, he rode eight blocks. Having overhauled a night prowling taxi, he leaped into it from the car and went speeding away into the night.
 
54
As he settled back for an eight mile ride, there crept into his mind again grave misgivings. The sack at his side had been cut open by his own hand, and this the most precious, the most carefully guarded of all mail. Not one package might pass from one hand to another without an official signature and a stamp.
 
“And I dared break all rules!” he told himself, as his heart stood still. “One slip now, and I am done!”
 
“Done! Out of the mail service forever. Out!”
 
How he loved his work! Climbing into the clouds in the dewy morning; racing the stars at night; the air; the sky; all the freedom of a bird. How could he stand losing all this?
 
And yet, even from these he passed to more disturbing thoughts. Was that gang still after him? Where were they now?
 
“They, too, may be in the city by now,” he told himself. “What if they overhaul me before my task is done?” He shuddered.
 
“They must not!”
 
55
“Driver!” He leaned forward. “Driver, all the speed you dare. And an extra fee for your trouble.”
 
With a fresh burst of power the taxi sped on through the night.
 
CHAPTER V  MARKED MONEY
 There was little sleeping that night in Johnny Thompson’s tent at the back of his booth, at the “Greatest of all Carnivals.” True, Johnny remained in the tent to doze off at times. Drew Lane and his partner spent their time in scouting about searching for clues that might lead them to the whereabouts of Greasy Thumb and his gang.
 
Once, while Johnny was alone, he drew the roll of bills from his pocket.
 
“What am I to do with these?” he asked himself. “Give them to that truck farmer? Simple enough. But where is he? Where does he live?”
 
He examined the bills closely, then let out a low whistle. Two of them were marked with a faint red cross in the corner.
 
57
“Marked money!” he exclaimed in a low tone. “Bad business! Dangerous! Like to throw them away.”
 
Yet, because this roll represented a fairly large sum of money, he did not obey that impulse. Instead, he thrust them once more into his pocket.
 
Half an hour later, having returned from one more fruitless search, Drew and Tom were about to join Johnny in a steaming cup of coffee when, without ceremony, a curious individual crept into the tent.
 
At sight of him Johnny started back. A very small man, with a long sharp nose and piercing yellow eyes, he might have been said to crawl rather than walk.
 
“It’s all right,” Drew assured Johnny. “Meet the Ferret. He is one of us. Very much so.”
 
“Hello, Ferret,” he greeted the newcomer. “What’s up?”
 
The man did not reply at once. Instead, he put out a hand for a cup of the scalding coffee, placed it to his lips and drained it without a pause.
 
58
“Hot stuff!” muttered Johnny.
 
“Very hot!” agreed Drew.
 
The dog has been named man’s best friend. Yet as a hunter he has his handicaps. True, he is a swift runner and can make a great noise. Often by sheer bluff he drives the coyote from the hen roost. Then, too, he can dig. At times he drags a rat from his den and destroys him.
 
The cat has his good points also. He is sly, patient. For hours he waits beside some enemy’s trail until the great moment comes. Then one swift spring, a cry of surprise and pain, and all is over.
 
Yet dog and cat alike are powerless before the sly, deep-digging weasel, the mink and the skunk. Only one crafty, half tamed pet of mankind can cope with these. The ferret with his slim, snake-like body, his beady eyes, his prying nose, glides noiselessly into the deepest burrows and sends its denizens rushing from their dark haunts into sunshine and death.
 
59
So, too, in the ranks of mankind the ferret is to be found. Lacking in physical strength and prowess, yet endowed with a faculty for discovering hidden dens, the human ferret is ever closely associated with the police. He wears neither badge nor uniform. His name is not on the pay roll. Despised by some, he is feared by many. For it is he who many times brings the evil doer to justice.
 
The strange person who crept into Johnny’s tent was of this sort. Indeed, so definitely had his vocation been chosen for him by nature that he was known only as “The Ferret.” If he had any other name it had been forgotten.
 
“The Ferret” had one great redeeming quality. He was a sincere friend of justice. He furnished information only to those who made an honest attempt to enforce the law. He was possessed of an uncanny power. He appeared to read men’s minds. Was an officer a traitor to the cause he had sworn to serve? “The Ferret” knew it on the instant. No information was forthcoming to such a one. Indeed, if he did not watch his step he was likely to feel “The Ferret’s” bite.
 
60
The source of his income was not known. Some rumors had it that a rich philanthropist, realizing his value to the community, had endowed him for life. Another was that he was rich in his own name, that he owned a flat building, stocks, bonds and mortgages, and that his occupation was but a hobby. Strange hobby, you will say; yet there have been stranger, and far less useful.
 
Because they were honest, sincere and fearless, Drew and Howe were ever in “The Ferret’s” favor.
 
Drew Lane’s eyes were alight as they fell upon the insignificant form of “The Ferret.”
 
“What’s up?” he demanded once more.
 
“Mailplane brought down and robbed ten miles from here.” “The Ferret’s” voice was low and soft.
 
How could “The Ferret” know this so quickly? Who can say? The source of his information must have been of an obscure nature. For when Drew pressed him for details he could furnish none. Nor could he tell whether Greasy Thumb had a hand in it.
 
61
“But what’s so valuable in the Air Mail?” Johnny asked. “I thought that was for the most part personal messages, important to the sender, but worthless to others.”
 
“For the most part, yes,” Drew agreed. “But think of the emergencies the Air Mail is prepared to meet. A big deal in stocks is on. The actual securities must be delivered within twenty-four hours. The Air Mail brings them. Mrs. Jones-Smith-Walker, the millionaire widow, arrives in Chicago only to find that a great reception has been planned for her at the country home of her bosom friends, Mrs. Burns-Walker. Her jewels, a hundred thousand dollars’ worth or more, are in New York. Without them she will not be properly dressed. The Air Mail brings them. And who knows but that, through some secret channels the powerful, sometimes rich, sometimes poor, gang that is forever preying upon the foolish rich society folks are tipped off in advance regarding the consignment. Worth going after. What? If you don’t care for the law and have little fear of prison.
 
62
“Mind,” he added, “I don’t say this is the case. I have no information which would even lead me to suspect such a thing.
 
“Only one fact stands out clearly!” he exclaimed, springing into action. “The trail leads to the city. Big affairs may be pulled off by crooks in the country at times. But they always speed away to the city afterward. For it is there that they may most effectually lose themselves.
 
“Come. Let’s be moving. We will find Greasy Thumb in the city.”
 
“I wonder if we will,” Johnny murmured to himself, as he began a hasty pack-up of his personal effects preparatory to leaving his spindle wheel and many baskets of groceries to anyone who chose to take them over on the morrow.
 
63
“The city,” he murmured after a time, “the strangest, weirdest, most fascinating, most beautiful, most dangerous place man has ever known. In the jungle the tiger slinks away from man. There you may sleep in peace. On the polar waste the great white bear floats by on his palace of ice. He will not molest you. In the Rockies where the grizzly roams and the mountain lion inhabits the treetops you are safe. But the city? Oh, well, perhaps you are safe enough there. Who knows?
 
“Good-bye,” he whispered back as he left his booth, “good-bye, old carnival. Good-bye, big-noise-about-nothing. Good-bye, screaming women. Good-bye, laughing children. We’re here to-day and away to-morrow.” He choked a little over these last words. This strange life, the carnival spirit, had got under his skin. Gladly he would have remained. But duty called. “Good-bye, good-bye. We’re here to-day and away to-morrow. The city beckons. We must go.”
 
Settled on the cushions on the back seat of a high-powered police car driven by Drew Lane, Johnny Thompson had time for a few sober reflections.
 
64
As you know from reading The Arrow of Fire, Johnny’s latest venture was in the field of police detection. Many tales Johnny had read of shrewd private detectives who outwitted clever criminals and showed up the stupidity of the police. Johnny had found it difficult to believe that all police detectives were stupid. By contact with four men, Herman McCarthey, Newton Mills, Drew Lane and Tom Howe, he had come to know that men with keen minds and sturdy bodies were more and more offering their services to the police departments of their cities.
 
“No better detective ever lived than Drew Lane,” a reporter had once said to Johnny. And Johnny had found this to be true. He gave himself over with genuine abandon to the business of being Drew Lane’s understudy.
 
Yet, at this moment he found himself missing certain friends who had added joy and inspiration to his life. In a great city friends come and go quickly. Herman McCarthey had retired from active service.
 
“And Newton Mills,” he grumbled to himself. “Where is he?”
 
Where indeed? Johnny had once lifted this shadow of a great detective out from a living hell of remorse and drink and had set him doing marvelous things for the law again.
 
65
“But now he is gone,” he mourned. “I wonder if drink has claimed him. Or is he dead?
 
“Hardly dead,” he corrected himself. “Men, like wounded fish, come to the surface to die. Had he died I would have known it.”
 
Strangely enough, at this moment he thought once more of that spectre-like individual, the Gray Shadow, that had three times crossed his path and three times vanished.
 
“Unusual sort of person, if it be a person,” he said to himself. “Always appears when I am in more or less danger. If I believed in the return of the spirits of the dead I’d say it was the spirit of some dead friend set to guard me.”
 
And Joyce Mills, that daring daughter of a famous father, you will recall her. Johnny, too, recalled her with a sigh.
 
Some people he found it difficult to understand. Joyce Mills was one of these. Once she had inspired him. Now she had gone into the humdrum business of selling books in a department store.
 
66
“At least that’s what she was doing when I saw her last. Queer business for a girl like that,” he grumbled.
 
And yet, as he recollected his last meeting with her, he seemed again to detect a mysterious twinkle in her eyes which appeared to say: “You don’t know all; nor even half.”
 
“Odd sort of girl,” he said to himself. “Have to look her up.”
 
But here we are nearing the city and a new day.
 
“Turn, turn my wheel,
All things must change
To something new,
To something strange.
The wind blows east,
The wind blows west,
The blue eggs in the robin’s nest
Will soon have wings
And beaks and breasts,
And flutter and fly away;
To-morrow be to-day.”
67
So much for the thoughts of Johnny Thompson. He expressed himself in verse at times. Not so, Drew Lane. His thoughts were of a grim and practical sort.
 
“Tom,” he said, speaking to his companion and pal, “Tom, old boy, if we see Greasy Thumb and his pardner, Three Fingers Barbinelle, we’ll arrest them on sight.”
 
“And arrange a case against them later,” agreed Tom.
 
“Hold them on a vagrancy charge. Or more than likely we’ll find them carrying guns.”
 
“Almost sure to.”
 
“Then,” Johnny broke in, “you’ll need to be quick.”
 
“Son,” replied Drew with a drawl, “In this sort of work there are but two classes of people, ‘the quick and the dead.’”
CHAPTER VI  THE MYSTERIOUS PACKAGE
 What things may happen to him who travels the dark streets of a great city at night! What terrors lurk in corners that lie inky black beyond the reach of some feeble light. What unexpected hidden evil lies ever just before him. And yet, how many countless thousands have traveled these streets in peace and safety, with not one finger lifted to do them harm!
 
It happened thus to Curlie Carson. With the precious mail sack tucked securely beneath one elbow, he rode into the night while the taximeter ticked off the miles. The driver he had chanced upon was skillful and safe. He knew his city well. The street address was all he needed. In due course of time he brought the cab to a jolting stop.
 
69
The fee was soon paid, and Curlie found himself passing down a winding walk bordered on either side by a low hedge which led to a quiet looking gray brick house.
 
A light was burning in the front window on the second floor. His hand trembled as he pressed the door bell. He had risked so much. He had broken the laws of the postal service, laws that until now had been all but sacred to him. What if, after all, he were too late? What if that light were but a death watch?
 
Footsteps sounded. A light, hanging in a brass lantern above him, suddenly shone down upon him.
 
The door opened. A middle-aged man in a gray dressing robe stood before him.
 
“Is—is the Professor here?” he asked.
 
“I am the Professor.” The man’s tone was kindly.
 
“I am from the Air Mail service. There was medicine. I have—”
 
“The medicine! Where is it?”
 
“Then,” thought Johnny, “it is not too late.”
 
“Here!” He thrust a hand into the mail bag, to secure the smallest package.
 
70
“Let me have it.” The man grasped it eagerly, then sprang away up the stairs, leaving the astonished boy to stand and stare.
 
“Well,” he thought after a time, “guess that’s about all of that.” He turned, about to go, when a thought struck him.
 
He had no receipt for the package. What proof had he that it had been delivered at all?
 
“Won’t do,” he told himself. “I’m in deep enough now. Got to have a receipt.”
 
He had turned about and stood undecided whether to ring the bell at once or wait, when suddenly a woman with a very beautiful face appeared before him.
 
“You brought the medicine. It will save her. The doctor says it will be all right now. How can we thank you!” She all but embraced him.
 
Curlie took a backward step. He swallowed hard twice. Then he spoke. “You—you might just sign a receipt saying you received the package.”
 
“Certainly. Where is the form?”
 
71
“I—I haven’t any. You see,” he half apologized, “I was forced to land in a pasture. I knew about the medicine. I got through—don’t matter how. Then I—I cut the sack so I could deliver the medicine. You see I—”
 
“You mean you broke the law to save our child?”
 
“Well, you might say—. Anyway, I know it’ll be all right. If one obeys his conscience he doesn’t get into much trouble, does he?”
 
“Perhaps not. But all the same that was quite wonderful.”
 
She invited him into a room whose walls were lined with books. She left him there while she went for the wrapper that showed the registry number. When she had returned she penned a receipt and handed it to him.
 
“You must be hungry and tired,” she said. “Won’t you stay and rest? We will have some hot coffee for you at once.”
 
“If you don’t mind,” the boy smiled his thanks, “there are two other packages. One should be delivered without delay. It’s a priceless violin. Fritz Lieber’s own.”
 
72
“Fritz Lieber!” There was awe in her tone. “You must not go in a taxi. Our car is out. The driver has been ready to go for the medicine, if it were necessary. He shall take you.”
 
“That,” said Curlie as he seemed to feel the cozy comfort of a private car, “will be grand.”
 
“It only partly pays. If ever you are in trouble, and need a friend, please do not forget us.” She pressed his hand hard as she left him at the door.
 
Once more the impromptu messenger boy raced into the night.
 
“If you ever need a friend, don’t forget us.”
 
These words came to him again and again. It was as if they had just been spoken.
 
“A friend,” he thought to himself. “Will I be badly in need of a friend?”
 
Surely if anything went wrong before the remaining packages were delivered he would. He had broken postal regulations, smashed them all to bits.
 
But here he was again. The car had drawn up before a hotel of magnificent proportions. Even at these last hours of night, a liveried attendant opened the car door.
 
73
“Fri—Fritz Lieber,” said Curlie in some confusion. “I must see him.”
 
The doorman stared at him and his torn mailsack, but led the way to the desk.
 
Here the boy repeated his request.
 
“It is very unusual for a guest, especially so important a guest, to be disturbed at this hour,” said the clerk. “What is it, a registered package? You may leave it. We’ll deliver it.”
 
“It is a registered package.” Curlie spoke slowly as he sized up the clerk and decided not to confide in him. “I can’t leave it. I must have Mr. Lieber’s own signature. And I want you to know that it is important. Mr. Lieber will thank you for letting him know I am here.”
 
“I am not sure about that,” grumbled the clerk. Nevertheless, he took down the receiver and called a number.
 
He waited a moment, spoke a few words in a low tone, then turning to Curlie said,
 
“Mr. Lieber wishes to know whether or not it is a violin.”
 
“It is,” replied the boy.
 
74
A few more words, a surprised look on the clerk’s face, then a curt,
 
“He’ll see you. Room 1080. Elevator’s over there.” A jerk of the clerk’s thumb and Curlie was once more on his way.
 
“Well, that’s that,” the boy thought as the elevator ascended. “Soon be free from the responsibility of carrying about a priceless violin.”
 
“But this other package?” There was a question. What was he to do with it, try to deliver it in person, or turn it over to the postal authorities? He knew little about that package. Some wild-eyed man in shabby clothes had paid the largest possible fee to insure its safe delivery. The address was on the first floor of a building in a doubtful section of the city. That was all he knew. Little enough, yet he was destined in time to know enough about it to realize that had it been filled with high explosive it could have been scarcely less troublesome.
 
75
He was now at the door of the great violinist’s room. He knocked, and was admitted at once. He found Fritz Lieber in a dressing gown. Beside him was a table littered with papers.
 
“Already up,” he said, nodding at the sheets of paper. “I’ve been writing music. My mind’s fresh in the morning.
 
“So you have my fiddle? Good! Grand! Where’s the blank? I’ll sign it.”
 
“There—there isn’t any blank. I—” Curlie paused in some confusion.
 
For ten seconds he looked into the frank and friendly eyes of the great master. Then, dropping into a chair, he told his whole story.
 
“I’ll say you’ve done well!” exclaimed the musician. “Saved me from some bad hours.
 
“But this other?” His eyes fell upon the third package. He read the address at a glance. Then he whistled.
 
“For them! You won’t want to go around there before daylight.
 
“But see here! What a fee they paid! What can they have that is so very valuable?”
 
“Do—do you know the people?” Curlie’s lips trembled with excitement.
 
76
“Not personally. At least they’re no friends of mine. But I know a lot about them.
 
“You see,” the violinist went on in a changed tone, “my hobby is a sort of study of people and nations and all that. How they live, how they govern themselves, what becomes of their money, and so on. And these people,” he continued with added emphasis, “are Bolsheviks. They represent the present Russian government in America. They are doing the best they can to stir up trouble here. They would gladly destroy our present social order, our government, and set up one similar to the one they have in Russia.
 
“So you see,” his tone changed once more, “they are well worth a thought or two.”
 
“Yes,” agreed Curlie, “I’ve thought of them now and then myself. And I—I’ve sort of admired them.”
 
“Admired them?” The musician shot him a quick glance. “Why?”
 
“Their courage, and all that. Don’t you know? Doing things in a different way. Putting down tyrants. Starting a government where everything is owned by the people.”
 
77
“There’s something to be said for them.” Fritz Lieber’s tone was thoughtful. “They were ruled by tyrants. There is no getting around that. They were slaves. They had a right to revolt. But now—now they have gone too far.
 
“How would you like to live in a land that denied the very existence of God?” He wheeled about to face the boy.
 
“Why I—”
 
Fritz Lieber held up a hand for silence. “In a land where the authority of the Divine Master is denied, where ‘home’ and ‘mother’ are words that have no meaning, where the government is doing its best to destroy home life, where a little girl is not allowed to play with dolls because she may want later to have a home and children to call her mother!”
 
“I wouldn’t like that!” Curlie thought of his own home and his own mother.
 
78
“The present powers that be in Russia, as far as anyone can find out,” the musician went on soberly, “wish in time to raise all children in nurseries, as we do chickens in incubators, to destroy most that has long been held sacred by the nations of the civilized world. I know, for I have looked deeply into these matters. I have a friend in the United States Secret Service.
 
“And that gives me an idea!” he exclaimed suddenly. “You say a plane forced you down. You think they wanted my violin. I doubt it.
 
“My friend,” he laid one hand on the third package, “this is what they were after. They would have it at any cost.”
 
“But what—”
 
“Who knows what that package may contain? Of late these secret agents of the Soviet, these men who spread dissatisfaction among the workers and the unemployed, have had some secret source of wealth.”
 
He took the package and shook it.
 
“No sound. And yet it is not money. A long, slim package. Who sends money so?
 
79
“I’ll tell you what, my boy!” He turned upon Curlie once more. “You’d better not try to deliver this package. Take it to the post office and get a receipt for it. That lets you out. I’ll report its arrival in Chicago to my Secret Service friend. He can have it investigated.”
 
“Thank—thanks. I—I think I’ll do that.”
 
As Curlie left the room with that mysterious package under his arm it seemed to burn his very flesh. That, of course, was sheer imagination, nothing more. And yet—
 
“Bolsheviks. Hidden source of wealth,” he murmured to himself. Then he gave an involuntary start. As he left the hotel, a shadow crossed his path, then vanished.
 
It was that darkest hour just before dawn. The alleys were deep wells of shadow. The streets were deserted. A lone milk wagon in the distance rattled over the pavement. Curlie felt in his pocket. A single bill and some change reposed there. He drew forth the bill and unfolded it. By the uncertain light he read a “one” in the corner.
 
“No taxi this time,” he grumbled. “All of eight miles, and I’m practically broke. Street car for mine.”
 
80
But there were no street cars, nor even tracks.
 
“Have to go west.” He turned a corner to trudge along in the dark.
 
His active mind began going over the words of Fritz Lieber. “Bolsheviks,” he murmured once. And again, “no church, no God, no future life, no home, no mother.
 
“And yet,” he told himself, “those men are not really criminals. They are mistaken, that’s all—on the wrong track.
 
“It takes a rather hard sort of man to force an aviator down in the dark. But then, did they do that? Can’t prove it. Can’t prove anything. Some band of robbers may have learned of the value of this package. They may have decided to force me down and take it. Well, they didn’t succeed. They—”
 
His thoughts were broken off by sounds of an apparent struggle just ahead. There was not time to step aside. Three men came tumbling into him. Before the sudden impact he went down.
 
81
He was on his feet in an instant. But during that instant something was gone. For ten seconds his benumbed senses registered nothing. Then his lips parted in an exclamation.
 
“The package! They have it!”
 
Like a flash it came to him that this bit of night drama had been staged in advance of his coming.
 
There was a sound of hurrying footsteps. He followed at top speed. The man before him dashed through a door. He followed.
 
His mind was in a whirl. The package! It must be retrieved at any cost. His position, his reputation, perhaps his very freedom depended upon that.
 
The man had gone dashing along a steel track like a narrow gauge railway. He now passed through a door and lost himself in the very depths of the earth.
 
Once more Curlie followed. This was, he thought, to be the strangest experience of his whole life. Down a stairway, narrow and steep, which ran through a cement tunnel scarcely four feet across, they went down, down, down into, it seemed, the very heart of the earth.
 
82
“Like entering a mine,” he told himself. “But beneath this city there are no mines.”
 
He paused to listen. A low rumble came to his waiting ears. It grew louder, still louder. It became a thundering, crashing confusion of sound. Then it grew fainter and fainter until it was once more a mere rumble.
 
“I don’t know where I am,” he told himself, “but I must go on.”
 
CHAPTER VII  A SURPRISE PARTY
 It is strange how like the sea this world of human beings is. On the sea a great ship meets a little ship and greets it. They pass from one another’s view. They travel the world over. Five years, ten, fifteen pass, then they meet again. The same ships. New sails, fresh paint, new spars, but the same old ships. It is so with human lives. Men meet, become acquainted, are associated in work for a time. Then on the sea of life they part. In time the great circle of living that regulates all men’s doings brings them together again.
 
Curlie Carson was not the only person who entered into the grim mysteries of that great city during the darkest hour just before dawn. As you know, Johnny Thompson, his one time pal, was also to witness that dawn. And so, drawn closer and closer by who knows what mysterious forces, their lives appeared about to join again.
 
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As the powerful car that bore the two youthful detectives and their understudy into the city passed down a particularly dark street, Drew brought the car to a silent stop.
 
The next instant, crouching low and followed closely by his silent partner, he sprang out of the car, leaped across an intervening space, and said in a tone that spoke of authority backed by force of arms:
 
“Don’t move! Stay as you are!”
 
Next instant Tom Howe’s slim hand shot out as he uttered a sharper command. “Keep your hands above your hips!”
 
“You got the break. It’s in my right hip pocket.” It was Greasy Thumb who spoke from the parked car which Drew Lane and Tom Howe had just covered with their guns.
 
Five minutes later, with their guns removed to a safe place in Drew Lane’s pocket, Greasy Thumb and Three Fingers were riding to the police station in Drew’s car.
 
“What charge?” Tom asked, after a time.
 
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“Concealed weapons,” Drew replied. “That will hold them.”
 
But Drew Lane and Tom Howe were due for a surprise. Forces of which they were not aware were at work in this great, grim city.
 
CHAPTER VIII  FIRE UNDERGROUND
No two cities are exactly alike. New York, Boston, London, Paris; all these have their subways, giant tunnels through which thousands upon thousands of workers are hurled to their day of toil. The metropolis of our story has no subway; yet far down beneath its busy streets forty, fifty, sixty feet underground, one still finds life. Forty miles of tunnel, a great spider-web network, pass beneath this city.
 
It was into one of these tunnels that Curlie Carson, while in pursuit of the man who had snatched the precious package from beneath his arm, had entered.
 
The roaring sound he had heard was the approach and the passing of a tunnel train. But such a train as it was! A narrow, box-like electrical engine shooting out purple sparks; a man with his hand on a lever; a dozen cars the size of a city dumpcart, only narrower and deeper—this was the train; for these trains carry only freight.
 
Day and night, year in and year out, this endless procession of tiny trains carries coal to the heating plants of giant skyscrapers and bears the cinders away. By this route, too, thousands of tons of merchandise, shoes and suits, cheese, cabbages, silverware, and socks find their way to the great city department stores or from factory to ship or train.
 
How many dwellers in the great city are conscious of this life that throbs on and on beneath them as they walk the city’s streets? Perhaps one in a hundred. Curlie Carson had not so much as heard of these tunnels. Yet he was passing down the narrow stairway that led to a small landing platform. In less than a moment he would be called upon to make an instant decision which might spell victory or utter defeat. And this decision would have to be made in ignorance of that which lay beyond him in those dim caverns.
 
It is often so in life. Always we are preparing ourselves for an emergency. Are our eyes bright, our minds clear and free from low thoughts that drug the soul? If so, then we are ready for the sudden, the unexpected. Curlie was ready.
 
The thing that happened was this: As the boy came stumbling down the last twenty steps of that long stairway, he heard again the ever-increasing rumble that told of an approaching train. As he stepped at last upon the dimly lighted platform he saw the man he sought at the far end. The package was under his arm. He was looking the other way.
 
“Now I have him!” he thought, and his heart beat a loud tattoo against his ribs.
 
Curlie was slim but strong, and agile as a cat. He had a clear mind. He kept himself fit. He had no dread of an encounter.
 
At this time at least there was to be no encounter. For as Curlie sprang forward the man turned and saw him. At the same instant an empty train came rattling around the curve.
 
Urged on by who knows what desperate need, the stranger played a bold hand. The cars were moving rapidly. Not three feet above them, charged with enough electricity to kill a hundred men, ran a high tension wire. Despite all this, the stranger made a sudden leap, caught the side of a steel car, struggled desperately, regained his balance, and disappeared within its depths.
 
At that instant Curlie felt hope vanish. Despair gripped his heart. The man with that package, the loss of which meant to him dismissal, disgrace, perhaps a prison, was rattling away. Who could tell whither the car was bound? Knowing nothing of these tunnels, the boy could not so much as guess.
 
All this passed through his mind like a flash. Cars still bumped and rattled by. It was a long, empty train.
 
The boy looked up the tunnel. Except for a narrow space above, the cars filled the tunnel completely. If he attempted to duplicate that man’s feat and failed in the least detail, he would meet instant death.
 
Yet he could not surrender. Too much was at stake. He had risked too much for others. Now he must risk more for his own honor. With a brief prayer for guidance and protection, he put out both hands, gripped the edge of a steel car, swung his feet high, caught the gleam of copper wire above him, felt the shudder of steel beneath him and then fell with a force that stunned him to the bottom of the car.
 
For a long time after that the train, bearing its strange cargo, rattled on and on into the perpetual night that is the tunnel system beneath the great city.
 
The various sections of this intricate system are placed in exactly the same manner as are the streets of the city. Indeed, at their intersections they are plainly marked: “State and Madison,” “Wabash and Monroe,” “Michigan and Jackson.” Had Curlie dared to raise himself from the floor of the car he might at once have determined his position in relation to the city above him.
 
The deadly copper wire warned him down. “Besides,” he reasoned, “what’s the good? One does not rise through fifty feet of clay and sand, rock and cement to burst up from the street like a chick from an egg.”
 
There is in this tunnel an intricate system of signal lights. Red just ahead warns the operator of the engine that a train will soon cross his path. Green indicates a clear track.
 
Once, when the lights were against the train and it came to a jolting stop, Curlie rose to his knees and stared ahead.
 
He could hardly make out the intersection names, but thought it was Congress and Wabash, a long way from the place he had left when entering upon this surprising adventure.
 
He looked at his watch. It showed six o’clock. “They’ll be looking for me,” he told himself. “Supposing something happens to me and I do not return at all. They will search the city, the country, over for me.” He thought of good aviation pals who would spare no pains to discover his whereabouts.
 
“They will always believe in me, as I in them,” he told himself stoutly.
 
“But there will be others. Some will believe I have betrayed my trust, carried away that package and left the country to live on stolen riches.”
 
Riches? What did the package contain? Fritz Lieber had said it was not bank notes. What then could it be?
 
“Who knows?” he grumbled to himself. “Only one thing is certain. My company will be obliged to pay a thousand dollars if I do not get it back. It’s insured for that much, the highest registered letter insurance. I must have it back. I—”
 
Once more the train came to a jolting stop. This time as he looked ahead he saw that their train stood squarely across another track. Then he saw something that threw him into a panic. The man he had followed so far was coolly climbing out of his car, which at that moment stood on the intersecting track.
 
“Defeat!” he whispered hoarsely.
 
It appeared to be true. So closely did the cars hug the wall that it was impossible for him to climb out and follow.
 
Yet, even as he despaired, the train started again. Nerving himself for a second perilous leap, he climbed out as far as he dared and waited.
 
A second sped into eternity; another; and another. Ten seconds, and then with a sudden intake of breath he threw himself out of the car.
 
He landed squarely, stumbled, then pitched forward, all but under the grinding wheels. Recovering his poise, he whirled about to go dashing along the path the fugitive had taken.
 
Curlie was a fast runner. There was a good chance that he might overtake the other one, but his troubles were not at an end.
 
He sighted his man, redoubled his pace and gained on him yard by yard. Now he was twenty yards behind, now fifteen, now ten, now—
 
But around a curve came blinding terror, the headlight of a train that, bearing down upon him, threatened instant destruction.
 
Stopping dead in his tracks, Curlie glanced wildly about him. He found no avenue of escape. Cold and cruel walls were on all sides. The engine and the cars filled all the space before him. It seemed that he must be ground to pulp.
 
Even as he despaired, something flashed by him. It was the fugitive.
 
As when a bear and a wolf are stranded upon an island in the flood they become harmless, so for the moment Curlie had forgotten the one he had pursued.
 
Turning, he attempted to follow, twisted an ankle, fell flat before the on-coming train.
 
Only the clear brain of an engineer saved him. Brakes screamed, wheels ground, the engine came to a sudden stop, not ten feet from the spot where he had fallen.
 
But what was this? There came a wisp of smoke, then a sudden flare of light. The air was filled with the smell of burning phosphorous and brimstone.
 
“Matches!” he cried, as he turned to flee. “One of those cars was loaded with matches. The sudden jolt has set them off.”
 
This time the race was joined by a third person, the engineer. A lusty runner he was, too. Full well he knew the danger of being trapped in a narrow subterranean passage filled with fumes.
 
He outran Curlie. The boy was three yards behind when once more he stumbled and fell.
 
The fumes were upon him. He could feel them in his eyes, his lungs. They were blinding, stifling, stupifying. Yet he must not give in.
 
Once more he was on his feet. He had not gone a dozen paces when there appeared a still greater terror. Before him, slowly, inch by inch, but none the less surely, a pair of massive iron gates were closing.
 
He understood in an instant. These gates, placed at certain points in the tunnel, were intended for just such an emergency as this. When they were closed and a second pair behind were likewise shut, the fire, a menace to all workers in tunnels, would be confined to a narrow space. The oxygen would soon be burned from the air and the fire extinguished.
 
“I must make it!” he cried as his knees threatened to betray him. “I must! I must!”
 
Yet even as he struggled it seemed to him that his case was hopeless. Scarcely two feet of open space remained, and the gates were still slowly closing.
CHAPTER IX  A MOMENT OF GRIM SILENCE
 “Drew, old boy, we win!”
 
Tom Howe put out his hand to grip his partner’s solemnly.
 
It had been a stirring night. Now gray dawn was creeping up the narrow canyons that are a city’s streets.
 
As we have seen, they had come, quite by accident, upon Greasy Thumb and his undesirable companion. They had arrested them on suspicion. But suspicion holds no man in jail.
 
They had found concealed weapons upon them. But well enough they knew that in this city no man could be held for such an offense unless the arresting officer had a search warrant. They had none.
 
For all this, a bit of glorious good fortune had come their way. In attempting to conceal or discard a small package, Greasy Thumb’s partner had bungled. Tom Howe’s eagle eye had detected the move.
 
He had retrieved the package. And, of all good fortune, he had found it marked with the Air Mail’s special stamp.
 
As he showed it to Drew, his eyes shone.
 
“You wouldn’t have thought they’d keep it,” Drew whispered excitedly.
 
“Wouldn’t?” Tom drew ten one hundred dollar bills from the envelope. “Wouldn’t they, though! It’s wonderful what they’d do for money.
 
“Besides,” he added after a moment, “the thing seemed safe enough. Done in the dark. No witnesses. No nothing. Clean get away.”
 
“Wonder where the rest of it is?” Drew mused.
 
“The rest?”
 
“You don’t think they’d do all that for one grand, a mere thousand dollars! They were after something big. Wonder if they got it.
 
“By the way, what became of the Air Mail pilot?”
 
“That’s a mystery. He’s vanished.”
 
* * * * * * * *
 
Had they but known it, that air pilot was at that moment beneath the city in that labyrinth of subways, still in pursuit of the man who had snatched the mysterious package from him.
 
* * * * * * * *
 
“What will you do with them?” Johnny Thompson broke in, poking a thumb at Greasy Thumb and his partner in crime who stood huddled sulkily in a corridor of the police court building.
 
“We’ll take them right to the Chief,” Drew replied cheerfully. “He’ll book them. We’ve got the goods on ’em. The world will not see them again for many a day.”
 
They led the prisoners to an elevator, rode up two flights, walked down a dark corridor and entered a room where a heavy-set man with beady eyes sat behind a massive desk.
 
This was the Chief. He looked at the youthful detectives through eyes that seemed heavy for lack of sleep.
 
Drew advanced in silence and placed the Air Mail envelope on the Chief’s desk.
 
“What’s this?” The Chief did not look up.
 
“Evidence.”
 
“Evidence!” the Chief exclaimed. “That’s what we need. The people are clamoring for convictions. We must have evidence. We—”
 
At that moment he looked up and his glance fell upon the cowering prisoners.
 
Like a pike caught on a spoon-hook, he appeared to stiffen. He continued to stare straight ahead.
 
At that moment a man Johnny had not noticed before, a young man with a boyish face but crafty eye, moved silently forward and whispered in the Chief’s ear.
 
“Where you boys been?” the Chief demanded almost savagely, as he wheeled about to face Drew and Tommy. “You know you are supposed to report to me every day. This is the fourth day. No report at all.”
 
“There’s our report.” Drew Lane held his ground. He pointed at the envelope on the Chief’s desk.
 
At that moment Johnny Thompson stole a look at Greasy Thumb and his man. The change that had come over them gave him a start. Gone were their dark and doleful looks. They seemed almost cheerful.
 
“If you please, Chief,” Greasy Thumb appeared to hesitate, “that’s a letter they took from me by force. I received it by Air Mail yesterday.”
 
“Yes, and I suppose your name is Robert Deering,” Drew Lane scoffed. Robert Deering was the name on the envelope.
 
The wily crook hesitated, but only for a space of seconds. “Chief,” he replied evenly, “it is. That’s my name. As you know, I have many enemies. I am living under an assumed name.”
 
Once more the man beside the Chief bent over to whisper in his ear. Drew Lane frowned.
 
“Is this all the evidence?” the Chief demanded of Drew.
 
“It is, except that they were near the scene of the Air Mail robbery last evening.”
 
“Give it back to ’em. Turn ’em loose.” The Chief’s voice had taken on a hostile, almost savage tone. “There’s no law against receiving money by Air Mail. You can’t hold a man on any such evidence. Turn ’em loose. Do you hear me? Turn ’em loose!”
 
“And now,” he said, after Greasy Thumb and his partner had vanished, “I’m going to put you boys where it won’t be so much trouble to report to me. From now on you’re on court room duty. No more carnivals and baseball games for you. You’re on court room duty, see?”
 
For one full minute by the clock Drew Lane and Tom Howe stood where they were. It was a minute of grim silence. The Chief sat staring like an angry Buddha. The young man behind him wore on his face one of those fixed smiles that never become a sign of mirth.
 
Johnny looked first at Drew, then at Tom in a vain attempt to understand.
 
At last Drew turned in silence and led the way out of the room.
 
CHAPTER X  “FIND THAT MAN”
 Drew walked down the corridor, turned to the right, entered the third door to the left, waited for Tom Howe and Johnny Thompson to enter, and then closed the door. Dropping into one of the three hard-bottomed chairs the narrow, box-like room afforded, he sat looking out of the window, first down the cement paved court, then far up to the tenth floor where were many barred windows.
 
“What does it mean?” Johnny asked at last.
 
“Mean?” Drew Lane pointed to the bars above and across the court. “It means that the fellows behind those bars (and we put some there, too) are going to have it soft compared with us.
 
“They got thirty days, maybe sixty. But when that’s over, they are free. But we—we have an indeterminate sentence.
 
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“Court duty!” He threw out his hands in a gesture of disgust. “Know what that means? It means that you stand all day with your back against the wall, keeping guard against disturbances that never come.
 
“You listen to well-dressed young men tell the judge that their well-dressed young wives will not try shop-lifting any more, if he’ll let them off.
 
“You see ten or twenty colored men brought in for shooting craps or drinking moonshine.
 
“And all the time the court room smells of garlic and sour beer.
 
“If you’re sent out at all it’s to bring in a witness who has forgotten to appear. And that takes about as much brains as a six-year-old child has, and not half as much courage.
 
“Oh, I know,” he ended bitterly. “Some one has to do it. But why Howe and me?”
 
“Why did he do it?” There was pain as well as disgust in Tom Howe’s voice.
 
“The Chief? Yes, why?” Once more Drew Lane lapsed into silence.
 
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After that the moments ticked themselves away and not a single word was spoken.
 
Through Drew Lane’s mind many dark thoughts were passing. The Chief had thrown them down. That seemed certain. Why? He could form no answer.
 
The fact that they had made no report for three days was not the reason. He was sure of that. The same thing had happened many times before, and there had been no protest.
 
It had been generally understood that he and Tom Howe were to be free lance detectives for the city.
 
This freedom they had welcomed. And, happy in it, they had done their best to deserve it. They had studied the city and the ways of evil doers as a factory foreman studies his plant. They had familiarized themselves with hundreds of faces. They could actually call hundreds of pickpockets, tin-horn gamblers, stick-up men and general hoodlums by name.
 
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Not that they were friendly with them. Quite the reverse. They were constantly on their heels. Making it hard for them to do wrong. Making it easy to do right? Yes, if any sincerely wished it. But how few ever did!
 
“Professional criminals.” How those words had been borne in upon them. What else would such “professionals” do but rob and steal?
 
“And now,” Drew said aloud, bitterly, “all the months we have spent in preparing ourselves for the great task of city detectives is lost!”
 
“Perhaps not,” Tom said hopefully. “The Chief may put us back after a week or two.”
 
“Not he!” Drew’s tone carried conviction. “Did you see that look on his face?”
 
“Yes,” sighed Tom. “But why?”
 
Yes, that was the question, why?
 
Dark forebodings took possession of Drew Lane’s mind once more. He knew full well the power of the forces of evil in this great city. There were millions of dollars at stake. A man such as the Chief, sitting in a place of high authority as he was, might be rich if he but turned his back upon the gambling houses and peddlers of poison labeled strong drink.
 
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Until now, Drew had admired and respected his Chief. Had the lure at last grown too strong for him? Had he fallen?
 
He knew the Chief’s great ambition. In a moment of relaxation he had taken the boy into his confidence.
 
“Drew, old son,” he had once said, “when I was a boy of sixteen I was not very strong. Like the great Roosevelt, I was sent west for my health. For one whole year I lived on the range. I came to love it.
 
“You know, the wild, free life. The cattle feeding. The sunset across the green of spring, the brown of summer. The tents, the roasting steaks. The wild, free out-of-doors.
 
“And, in winter, the big, roomy ranch house. Cards, dances, and all the good times. I want enough money to retire on a ranch like that. Who wouldn’t?”
 
“Yes,” Drew sighed, “Who wouldn’t? But the price!” He sighed again.
 
“It looks easy,” he mused. “Just turn your back. Hundreds have done so before you.”
 
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“Johnny Thompson,” he said quite abruptly, “who is the meanest man in the world?”
 
“A professional criminal.”
 
“No, Johnny, you’re wrong.” Drew’s smile was sad. “No, Johnny. The meanest man is the one who turns traitor to the cause he has sworn to serve.
 
“Who is it that we remember with real hatred when we think of our American Revolution? Is it Cornwallis?
 
“He is not the man. Benedict Arnold, the traitor, is the man.”
 
“Yes,” Johnny agreed, “that’s right. But you don’t think—”
 
“Stop!” Drew Lane held up his hand for silence. “This is no time for thinking out loud. We must wait and see.”
 
“Waiting is not my long suit!” exclaimed Johnny, springing to his feet. “I am long on action. And why not? I am free. You have been free lances for the city. I am a free lance on my own. I can go where I please.”
 
“Yes,” agreed Tom Howe. “Until the long arm of the Powers of Evil reaches out and gathers you in.”
 
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“But until then,” Johnny went on, not one whit abashed, “I shall do my utmost to solve these mysteries. Did Greasy Thumb and his gang rob the Air Mail? If so, what were they after? And did they get it?”
 
“And one thing more,” said Tom Howe with a smile of genuine admiration. “What became of that Air Mail pilot?”
 
“That’s right,” agreed Johnny. “Looks like that is the first real problem. Find that man and perhaps secure a witness who can explain everything.”
 
“Yes, yes!” exclaimed the others in unison. “Find that man!”
CHAPTER XI  THE DOORS CLOSE
 During all this time what had been happening to the air pilot, Curlie Carson, Johnny’s one time pal?
 
We left him forty feet below the city’s streets in a narrow tunnel with fumes of sulphur filling in behind him, and steel doors closing before him.
 
Curlie Carson could not remember the time that he was not conscious of some all-pervading presence hovering over and protecting him. Call it what you will, this feeling gave him calm confidence.
 
With all the remaining strength that was in him, he threw himself forward and through the door.
 
Scarcely had he passed than the doors closed with a sickening thud, and he dropped to the floor, exhausted.
 
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He was soon on his feet, however. There was work to be done. The package that meant so much of honor or disgrace to him was still in the hands of the mysterious stranger.
 
Turning, he raced down the narrow tunnel. Coming to an intersection, he paused to listen. The trainman had disappeared. For a time the echoing tunnels were still. As he placed his ear to the ground he caught the sound of receding footsteps.
 
“Off to the left,” he told himself, “and he is not running. He thinks I am no longer on his trail!”
 
On tiptoe, not making the least sound, he went speeding down the tunnel.
 
The man had gone farther than he thought. In such a place sound travels far. The tunnel here, too, was strange. He covered the distance of a long city block, yet came to no intersection. He doubled the distance; still no track crossing this one. The place grew strangely still. The very stillness of it frightened him.
 
“Like a tomb.” He shuddered.
 
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Once more he dropped upon the track to apply his ear. To his consternation he caught no sound of footsteps. Despair seized him. What could have happened? Had he gone in the wrong direction? Had he lost his man?
 
The thing was unthinkable. The package must be recovered at any cost.
 
“No,” he told himself, “I have not lost him. He is still here.”
 
He began to grow suspicious. A cold chill ran up his spine. Perhaps the man was lurking in the shadows waiting to strike him down. Seeing a two foot length of strap iron lying beside the track, he grasped it firmly in his good right hand and pressed on.
 
He had not gone a hundred paces when suddenly the passage broadened and came to an abrupt end.
 
He had entered what appeared to be a blind alley in the tunnel. And here there was no one.
 
A quick look about him showed a large freight elevator, used, no doubt, for lifting cars to a level some twenty feet above him.
 
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He examined the walls. Bars and braces made them easy to scale.
 
“He went up there,” Curlie told himself.
 
But had he? Doubts assailed him.
 
“Perhaps he did, and perhaps not,” he thought, calming a little. “At least it is the only way out, and I shall find myself out of this hateful place which has so nearly cost me my life.”
 
Gripping a bar, he began to climb. A lusty pull here, three steps up, a swing, a final struggle, and he lay for a moment on a cement floor.
 
“And now,” he thought, as he glanced about him, “where am I?”
 
Where indeed? All about him in the large room were packing cases. Some were small, some quite large. Many of them bore freight labels.
 
“Will mysteries never end?”
 
He passed out into a larger room. The place was quite dark, and that in spite of the fact that it must now be morning.
 
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Approaching a narrow packing case that had been pried open, he threw the light of his electric torch into it. Then he started back in horror.
 
“A skeleton!” he cried aloud.
 
One circle of his light told him where he was.
 
“The basement of the Museum,” he thought, and instantly felt better.
 
A narrow flight of stairs brought him to a dimly lighted floor above.
 
There was no one there. The place was still as death.
 
Hastily tiptoeing down the aisle, he came at last to an open window. This window was a scant ten feet above the ground.
 
“He went out here,” he assured himself.
 
Clambering out he fell to the grass, then took a survey of the grounds about him. On every side was an open park. Except in one direction the view was unobstructed.
 
“He could have disappeared only by hiding in that clump of trees,” he told himself. “He’ll wait there until he thinks I’m gone.
 
“I’ll go around the corner out of sight, and wait for him.”
 
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Three minutes later he found himself crouching against a stone wall, waiting in the stillness of the morning.
 
But even as he waited, doubt assailed him. Had the man truly left the tunnel?
 
“That window may have been opened by a caretaker,” he told himself. “And after all, what an ideal hiding place that labyrinth of tunnels would make! Why, a man might hide there for weeks and even a regiment of soldiers might fail to come upon him.”
 
So now assailed by doubts, now filled with hope, he waited in the dawn.
CHAPTER XII  A LADY DETECTIVE
 In that ancient Book called Genesis it says that God saw that it was not good for man to live alone. So He gave him a woman to be his companion. Johnny Thompson had read that old Book. He had learned, too, by experience that a man and woman, or boy and girl, fighting side by side, shoulder to shoulder, will go farther along the road to success in any endeavor than will either alone. It will not seem strange, then, that as he launched forth on a fresh adventure, as he prepared to carry forward the business of solving the mysteries back of the sinister events that had led to the downfall of his good friends Drew Lane and Tom Howe, he should think first of securing a partner for this adventure. And who could better occupy this post of honor than Joyce Mills, daughter of a great detective and partner of Johnny in many a previous adventure?
 
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Johnny was not long in seeking her out. Fortune favored him. He arrived just at her lunch hour.
 
“There’s no place like a crowd for talking,” he assured her. “Come over to Biedermann’s, on Adams Street. It’s a German grill. You can get a swell cut of flank steak and all the trimmings for thirty-five cents. And there’s so much racket thrown in that not a soul will hear what we say.”
 
Joyce joined him gladly. To her, every new eating place was a fresh adventure.
 
After they had eaten the steak and onions and were sipping iced tea, Johnny told of his new adventure.
 
Briefly he described his experience at the “Greatest of All Carnivals,” of Greasy Thumb and his con game, and of the Gray Shadow. He even produced the roll of bills that had played so large a part in that night’s adventure.
 
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Had he known all, he might well have regretted this move; for scarcely had he slid the roll deep in his pocket than two small men with sharp eyes and nervous, twitching fingers, sidled from their table to pay their check and leave the room. As they gained the street, the shorter of the two placed a hand to his mouth to say in a hoarse whisper:
 
“Marked money.”
 
Unconscious of all this, Johnny went on with his story. By a telephone call to the office of the Air Mail station he had secured some details regarding the packages that had disappeared with the young pilot.
 
“It seems,” he said, “that one package carried the heaviest insurance possible on a registered package, and that it was mailed to a rather dingy section of the city. That in itself seems strange.”
 
“It does.” Joyce sat up with sudden interest. “Unless you know some things. Would you believe it? I can almost name the consignee of that package.”
 
“You?” Johnny’s face showed his astonishment.
 
“I might, if I would,” she replied soberly.
 
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“You see,” her eyes glowed with fresh fire, “I’ve all but turned radical. It’s working in the store that’s done it, I guess. When you see girls, fine young things with splendid bodies and keen minds, working for fifteen or eighteen dollars a week and trying to make a go of it, it sort of makes you hate the millionaires who own that pile of brick and stone and merchandise they call a store.
 
“Look at that thing of marble out on the lake front.” Her eyes burned like fire. “That place where they keep fish, live fish for folks to look at! It cost a million, they say. Built by a man who ran a big store. Built for a monument to his name, and paid for by the labor of ten thousand folks just like me! Who wouldn’t be a radical?”
 
“I know,” Johnny agreed quietly. “I’ve felt that way myself. And yet it is so easy to go too far.”
 
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“I know,” the girl sighed a trifle wearily. “I’ve thought of that, and I’ve about given the radicals up. Not till I became a Comrade, though. And I happen to know that they were expecting a priceless package. And the address is about where you say it would be.”
 
“They did?” Johnny leaned forward. “That’s something worth knowing!
 
“But look here!” he exclaimed. “They wouldn’t endanger an Air Mail pilot’s life by forcing him to land in a pasture at night!”
 
“There’s no telling what they would do.” The girl paused to consider. “To them the ‘cause,’ as they call it, is all important. Everything and everybody must be sacrificed to that. But where would they get an airplane and a pilot, much less a radio station? Well, they might—”
 
“Try to find out.” Johnny gripped her hand.
 
“I’ll do anything for you.” The girl’s eyes were frank and fearless.
 
Then suddenly her face was clouded.
 
“Johnny,” she cried, “where is my father? I have not seen him for days. I am worried, frightened for him!”
 
“I don’t know.”
 
“Help me find him.” Her words were a cry of pain.
 
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“I will do my best.”
 
“One more thing, Johnny.” She leaned over to whisper in his ear before they parted. “I am not a book sales person at the store. That is a blind. I am a store detective.”
 
Before Johnny could recover from his astonishment at this fresh revelation, she was gone.
 
“Well,” he thought to himself, “so that dark-eyed girl has put one over on me. She’s a store detective!”
 
After sober reflection he realized that the thing was logical enough. The girl was born a detective. Her father, one of the greatest of them all, had always inspired her. Girl though she was, she had resolved to follow in his footsteps.
 
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“Of course,” he told himself, “she couldn’t get on the city force. Too young for that. But a great store; that’s different. They use the material they have at hand. And a young girl, even in her late teens, would be of service to them. The shoplifters, the purse snatchers, all that light-fingered tribe, would hardly suspect her of being a dangerous person. Even her fellow employees would not suspect her.” Full well Johnny knew that all too often youthful employees of a great store, dazzled by all the wealth and splendor about them, fell before temptation and began secretly carrying away small articles of merchandise for their own use.
 
“And that makes it hard for the honest ones,” he told himself.
 
He paid his check and was about to leave the place when, to his surprise, a young man tapped him on the shoulder.
 
“You’ll excuse me, I’m sure.” The other’s tone was apologetic. “I’m Mike Martin from the World. Reporter, you know.”
 
Johnny recognized him on the instant. He it had been who stood behind the Chief, whispering in his ear while Drew Lane and Tom Howe were being so neatly shelved.
 
He felt an instinctive dislike for the man, and yet he was obliged to admit that he knew nothing against him.
 
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“Sit down, won’t you?” The reporter led him to a corner of the room. “I want to tell you some things that will be for your good.
 
“Of course you know,” he smiled deprecatingly, “we reporters get into all sorts of strange places. We meet all kinds of curious people; have to know them. That’s our job. Crooks, judges, police captains, Senators, all the rest. The more we know the more news we get and the straighter we have it.
 
“So you see it happens I know a lot about you.” He tapped Johnny on the knee.
 
“Me?” Johnny stared. “Why me?”
 
“Some people are more important than they appear to be. Some little people, if they blunder about, cause a great deal of trouble.
 
“You’re interested in Drew Lane and Tom Howe.” His tone had changed.
 
“Why yes, I—they’re my friends. They—”
 
“That’s well enough. But you think they’ve been unjustly treated. You think you can stir matters up and have things changed.
 
“Have a care!” He leaned forward with a hand held up for warning. “You may change things in a manner that will get you in bad. Very bad indeed.”
 
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“Just what do you mean by that?” Johnny was on the defensive.
 
“Don’t ask me how I know.” The reporter leaned forward to whisper in his ear. “It is the business of a reporter to know much and write what he thinks is safe; at least that’s best for him. And in this world it’s every man for himself.
 
“Now I happen to know,” his voice dropped still lower, “that you have in your possession a roll of marked money.”
 
Marked money! There it was again. Johnny started. How could this reporter know so much?
 
“That money,” the reporter went on, “will be your undoing. Unless you walk a very straight and narrow path, you are going to suffer. You will sing your psalms on Sunday behind iron bars and make shoes or clothes-pins during the week.”
 
“Prison,” the boy thought with a shudder. The money appeared to burn a hole in his pocket. “Why did I take it? I’ll get rid of it at once.”
 
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The reporter appeared to read his mind. “Won’t do a bit of good to dispose of it now. Those men have witnesses to swear you took it, and others who will say under oath that they saw you with it later. That’s evidence enough.
 
“Mind you,” he went on smoothly, “I am not threatening you. Why should I? I am only a reporter who knows things. I am telling you what is safe. All you have to do is to drop this whole affair; forget it. Take the money. Go on a fishing trip. Have a good time; you’ll not be molested.”
 
“I don’t want the money!” Johnny protested indignantly. “I—”
 
“Don’t say it.” The reporter put a hand on his arm. “Think it over. Iron bars; work in a shoe factory run by the State, behind iron bars.”
 
He was gone.
 
“Well, I’ll be—” Johnny stared after him. What did it all mean, anyway? A whispering reporter with such a warning.
 
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Just what Johnny thought of this whole affair after ten minutes of reflection may be judged by what he did.
 
Pulling his cap down over his eyes in a determined way he made for the street.
 
“Shoes,” he grumbled. “Always did want to know how to make a pair of shoes. Lots of people can write a book or paint a picture. How many of them could make a pair of shoes. And you can learn all that for practically nothing.” He chuckled in a mirthless sort of way.
 
“I’ll find that missing aviator,” he told himself. “And then, we’ll—then we’ll see.”
CHAPTER XIII  SECRET SERVICE
 The young Air Mail pilot whom Johnny had, for the tenth time that day, decided to search out, had not been idle.
 
Two long hours he had crouched beside the wall of the museum waiting for the one who had robbed him of the precious, mysterious package. He waited in vain. At last he gave up hope.
 
With leaden feet and drooping spirits he left the park in search of a restaurant.
 
A hot breakfast revived his spirits. “I’ll go back and face the music,” he told himself with a grim set of his jaw. “What I did was, I judged, for the greatest good of all, and no man can do more than that.”
 
He climbed a stairway, boarded an elevated train and went rattling away toward the distant airport.
 
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He settled back in his place for half an hour’s ride and allowed his thoughts to wander. They were long, long thoughts. He was the youngest air pilot in the mail service. He had worked hard to reach that goal. The money for his flying instruction had been saved bit by bit. When he had earned an air pilot’s license he still had a long way to go. Little by little, he had piled up hours of successful flight until he was considered eligible for the Air Mail service. Months as a substitute, with an occasional flight, had preceded his regular commission.
 
“And now this!” he groaned.
 
He had not entered the service through a desire for adventure alone. He wished to serve his country. Knowing how rapidly the air service was developing, he had decided that there lay his great opportunity.
 
“Romance, adventure,” he murmured, “that’s all some people see in this airplane business.” He had once heard Lindbergh say that piloting a great passenger plane was about as exciting as driving a truck.
 
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“And yet,” he smiled grimly, “the last few hours have shown me adventure enough. Forced down by an unknown pilot in the night.” He wondered now who his assailants could have been. He no longer believed they had been after the priceless violin.
 
“It was that other package sent by one radical group to another. But what did it contain? What must it contain to incite men to such reckless deeds of intrigue?”
 
He saw now where he had made his mistake. Having learned from the noted violinist, Fritz Lieber, something of the nature of the package he was carrying and of the people to whom it was addressed, he should have moved with greater caution.
 
“Too late to think about that now,” he told himself. “Have to go to Crane and tell my story.”
 
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Robert Crane, Jr., was District Manager of the Air Transportation Company. He was young, a college graduate, and son of a rich man. Curlie had seen little of him but had always feared him. Old men of long experience, whatever their importance in the world of affairs, never frightened him. But of a young man in a high position he simply did not know what to expect, that was all.
 
Thus it was with many misgivings that he sought out the young manager’s office.
 
Robert Crane sprang to his feet the instant the boy entered the door.
 
“Where have you been?” he demanded.
 
“I—”
 
“Delivering the mail in person, I am told. Since when has our company held that contract?”
 
“In an emergency,” Curlie was getting control of himself, “when there is great need one does what seems best.”
 
“Sit down!” The manager indicated a chair. Curlie sat down. “Now tell me about it, but be brief. There’s a man from the Government Secret Service waiting in the back office.”
 
Curlie shuddered, cleared his throat twice, spoke a few words, choked up, took a fresh start. Then securing a firm grip on himself he proceeded to tell his story.
 
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The young manager sat erect in his chair. The clock ticked off the seconds. From somewhere far away came the rumble of an airplane motor. When the boy had finished he was aware that he had told his story well.
 
“That—ah—” The young manager started to speak as Curlie finished, then stopped to stare at the ceiling. He punched two holes through a blotter, looked up, then punched three more.
 
“Undecided,” the boy thought to himself. “He’s young. That’s the trouble. An older man would know exactly what to do. I—”
 
“We’ll talk to that man.” Robert Crane broke in on his thoughts. He rang a bell. A girl appeared.
 
“Show in Mr. Simons.”
 
A moment later a short, stout man with bristling gray hair appeared.
 
“This is Curlie Carson,” said the manager, “our man.” Curlie liked the way he said “our.” “Sit down. I’ll tell you about it.”
 
Simons sat down. “Secret Service,” Curlie thought, and shuddered anew.
 
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In the five minutes that followed Curlie’s admiration for Robert Crane grew by leaps and bounds. He told Curlie’s story to the Secret Service man, told it as the boy could not have told it, and all in the space of five minutes.
 
“What if he is a rich man’s son?” Curlie said to himself. “He’s not to blame for that. He has his work to do in the world just as the rest of us have. He’ll do it, too.”
 
“That’s his story,” Robert Crane finished, “and don’t forget this; it’s our story as well. He is our man. We trust him; don’t hire a man we can’t. He’s our man. We’ll back him with the last resource we can command!”
 
A lump rose in Curlie’s throat. He felt that he was about to disgrace himself with tears. So this was Robert Crane, the young man he had feared!
 
Regaining control of himself, he turned to face the Secret Service man.
 
“Quite right, Mr. Crane, quite right,” Mr. Simons was saying. “But the young man’s conduct has been—well, irregular. One doesn’t open locked mailsacks with a knife, not as a common thing.
 
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“And this affair,” he leaned suddenly forward. “You are not aware, perhaps, that this innocent looking package contained a king’s ransom in jewels?”
 
Curlie stared. Crane started to speak, then stopped.
 
“Fact.” The Secret Service man’s voice cracked like a pistol. “Smuggled in. Part of the Crown Jewels of Russia. Reds over there had ’em. They decided to risk sneaking ’em here to be sold over the grapevine trail. Then, like as not, they’d spend the money trying to make this a Godless country without families or homes.
 
“And now,” he exclaimed, “for all we know they will succeed! Who has that package now? Tell me that! Who but some Bolshevik? Who dares even guess it is anyone else? And where is our Government’s rightful customs duty on those jewels? Gone. Hundreds of thousands, to say nothing of the inestimable harm that that money will do!”
 
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He reached for his hat. “Well, we’ve got to get that man!” He went stumping out of the room.
 
“Guess that’s about all.” There was a kindly look on the young manager’s face, as he turned to Curlie. “You need sleep. Better get some. And don’t worry. We’ll fix it, we and God. Don’t ever forget that God is in on every transaction, either for or against us. We try to be on His side.”
 
Curlie did not speak. He could not. He turned and walked slowly from the room.
 
He was hardly out of the door when he was confronted by an eager-faced young lady.
 
“If you please,” she said, “is Mr. Carson in there?”
 
“I am Curlie Carson.”
 
“Now what?” the boy thought to himself.
 
“I am Grace Palmer,” said the girl, “and I wanted so much to see you.”
 
Grace Palmer. Worse and worse. He had never heard of her. Here was fresh mystery.
 
Yet, if he had but known it, this sudden meeting was to figure largely in his destiny.
 
CHAPTER XIV  “THE VOICE”
 In this life of ours, years become months, months become weeks, weeks narrow down to days, days dwindle to hours, hours to minutes; then the unexpected happens.
 
Johnny Thompson was about to meet his one time pal. Once more their lives were to be joined in a great adventure. But not yet. Years, months, weeks, days had dwindled, but hours had not yet become moments in the hourglass of fate.
 
Johnny was on his way to Curlie’s airport. He stood on the curb, waiting for the westbound car, when someone touched his elbow and demanded in some surprise:
 
“What’s happened?”
 
It was “The Ferret,” the silent worker of the detective world.
 
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“Enough has happened,” Johnny answered, not at all displeased by this surprise meeting. “Drew and Tom have been shelved. Greasy Thumb has been found and turned loose. I am shortly to take a course in shoemaking behind iron bars. And—”
 
“Hold on!” “The Ferret” stopped him. “It can’t be as bad as that. Give me a few details. Come on in here. It’s a crooked dump of a place, but I’m known, or at least they think they know me.” He smiled a twisted smile. “Anyway, it’s an off hour. There’s sure to be no one here.”
 
He was right. The small, barn-like room they entered was deserted. Doors on three sides were closed. For all this, Johnny felt that they were watched.
 
“Speak low,” “The Ferret” said, as he took a place beside a table worn smooth by cards and dice. “No one will hear.”
 
Johnny told all that had happened.
 
“They won’t do that!” “The Ferret” declared when Johnny spoke of the marked money. “They wouldn’t dare try it. Send you to prison? That’s a huge joke!
 
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“They might put you on the spot, or take you for a ride. Hardly that, though. Not yet. You’ve not caused them enough trouble. But watch out. When the heavy hand falls, it falls hard.”
 
For a time he sat in an attitude of deep thought.
 
“So they’ve shelved Lane and Howe!” Johnny heard him mutter. “There’s something for the Voice. I’ll give it to him. And how he’ll love it! How he’ll ride ’em for it! Great boy, the Voice! But it’s a dangerous game. Suppose they find out. Just suppose they do?” He shrugged his shoulders, then shuddered.
 
“Who’s he talking about now?” Johnny wondered to himself. He wanted to ask who this Voice might be. He did not quite dare. So there, for a time, the matter dropped. But not for good nor for long. A new, powerful and altogether strange force was about to enter this uncertain and apparently uneven battle for the right.
CHAPTER XV  A HEAVY DATE
 Grace Palmer, Curlie Carson learned at once, was the daughter of Professor Palmer, and sister to the child whose life he had done much to save.
 
“You brought her medicine. You saved her life. She is my only sister.” The young eyes were filled with honest tears of gratitude.
 
Curlie hated tears. They made him feel awkward and out of place.
 
But Grace Palmer was not one to spill them needlessly. She was a girl of purpose and strength. Grace Palmer, Curlie would discover soon enough, was not the average type of girl. Reared beneath the shadows of stately university buildings, she had unconsciously acquired something of their quiet dignity. At this moment she wore a hand-tailored suit of dark blue broadcloth. The suit made her appear a good deal older than she really was.
 
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Yes, Grace Palmer was a dignified person. She was possessed of a good mind, and her father had seen to it that her mind was trained in the art of thinking. For all that, beneath the almost severe broadcloth coat there was a heart that was capable of beating very fast at the thought of mystery and adventure. She was not sorry to be on her present mission.
 
“Father has classes,” she explained. “He teaches. I am studying, but my periods are all in the afternoon. He asked me to drive out here and thank you. He—he also wanted me to ask you if the—the way you delivered our package got you into any trouble.”
 
“It has,” Curlie said, rather bluntly. “Plenty.” He was tired; wanted to clean up and rest. Anyway, what could a girl do?
 
“My troubles,” he said, taking a step toward the door, “don’t matter.”
 
“Oh, but they do!” Impulsively her hand gripped his arm. “We—we owe you so much. We can help, I am sure. Won’t you let us? Won’t you tell me about it?”
 
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Curlie could not resist this appeal.
 
“Oh, all right,” he said. “I’ll tell you.
 
“But,” he added, as a ghost of a smile flitted across his face, “if I fall asleep, you must waken me.”
 
He led the way to the fresh outdoor air. There he dropped upon a bench.
 
He told his story briefly. But to his own surprise, led on by the girl’s expressions of sympathy, excitement and consternation, he told it well.
 
“And,” she exclaimed as he finished, “you say the man went east from the museum? Perhaps he went over to the island.”
 
“Island?” Curlie stared. “There is no island off that shore.”
 
“Oh, but there is one, a mile and a half long. There are to be others. Men make them with dredges and dump trucks.
 
“It’s really quite an old island,” she continued. “Trees on it twenty feet tall and some shacks where men live; three or four shacks.”
 
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“Shacks? Men?” Curlie’s voice was full of suppressed excitement. “Perhaps the man who stole that package lives there. Perhaps the package is there still.”
 
“Yes,” she agreed, “that may be true. Shall we go and see?”
 
Curlie paused for thought. A film seemed to close over his eyes.
 
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “No. Not now. I’ve reached my limit. I’m no good.”
 
“You need rest,” she said quickly. “But can’t I come back for you later? It’s really considerable of an island. I go there often. And truly I think it’s worth looking into.”
 
“Yes,” Curlie acquiesced, “you come. Any time after six.”
 
Ten minutes later in the airport bunkroom he lay quite still, lost in deep sleep.
 
He was awakened in mid-afternoon by a newsboy calling his papers. As he listened, still half asleep, he thought he caught words that sounded like “Air Mail.”
 
He was out of his bunk at once. Had it appeared in the papers—his story?
 
He threw up his window and sent a coin rattling to the pavement below.
 
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“Bring one up,” he shouted. The boy pocketed the coin, waved and disappeared.
 
He reappeared almost at once by the bunkroom door, with a cheerful:
 
“Here y’are, mister. All about the Air Mail robbery.”
 
Curlie dropped down on his bunk and stared in amazement. There it was, on the front page of the afternoon scream-sheet. Two planes in mid-air; this drawn by a staff artist. His own plane on the ground; a real photograph. And his picture in the oval inset.
 
He read the story breathlessly. There was much there that he did not know. His plane, so the story ran, had been rescued and brought into port. No damage had been done. The number of mailsacks taken was not yet known.
 
The story made him out quite a hero. He flushed when he thought how he had bungled matters in the end.
 
“No clue as to the assailants,” he read on. “An unlicensed radio station, surprised and overhauled in the vicinity of the attack, offered no real clue.
 
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“One thousand dollars reward offered by the air transport company for return of the missing package.”
 
“Kind of them to make the offer,” he thought. “But that’s one reward that will go unearned.” Little he knew!
 
The picture that interested him most was one running entirely across the top of the second page. In this were shown the smiling, happy faces of scores of crippled children.
 
“Their concert saved,” was the caption.
 
“That,” he said with conviction, “is even worth going to jail for.”
 
Of a sudden he recalled his engagement with Grace Palmer to visit that island. He looked at his watch.
 
“Time to dress and have a bite to eat,” he told himself, as he began hurrying into his clothes.
 
As he stepped out of the airport on his way to the lunch room across the street, he all but collided with an old time pal.
 
“Johnny Thompson, as I live!” he exclaimed.
 
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“Curlie Carson!” Johnny gripped his hand.
 
The invisible threads of silken dreams that had been drawing them closer and closer had brought them together at last.
 
They talked for a moment or two of old times and far-away places.
 
Then all of a sudden, Johnny started. “But I can’t talk any more now.” He turned about. “Came here to find an Air Mail pilot.”
 
“What’s his name?”
 
“Don’t know.”
 
“Describe him.”
 
“I can’t.”
 
“Then what—?” Curlie stared at him.
 
“He brought the mail from New York. Was forced down; plane robbed. He—”
 
“Spare your breath,” Curlie grinned. “I’m the guy.”
 
“You?” Johnny stared in astonishment.
 
“Surest thing in the world!”
 
“Then,” said Johnny, “I’m in luck.”
 
“Come on over and have a cup of coffee. Got a heavy date with a lady.”
 
“A lady?”
 
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“Professor’s daughter. Thinking of taking a course in something or other myself,” Curlie bantered. “Come on. Let’s go.”
 
Seated on lunch counter stools, devouring ham and egg sandwiches and drinking coffee, the one time pals told of their experiences.
 
Johnny listened in silence to Curlie’s account of his narrow escape, his forced landing, his night wanderings as a messenger boy, his thrilling adventures in the tunnel beneath the city. When he came to the point where he had lost the trail of the one who had snatched the package of rare jewels (if, indeed, the Secret Service man’s statement were correct) he straightened up and put a hand on Curlie’s arm.
 
“I’ll tell you what I think.” He was in deadly earnest. “That fellow never left the tunnel. Why should he? Finest hiding place in the world. What?”
 
“No doubt about it. For all that, I think he did leave it.”
 
“You’re wrong. Come with me to the tunnel, and we’ll find him.”
 
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“Can’t. Got a date to search an island; date with that college girl, Grace Palmer.”
 
“An island?” Johnny pondered. “Oh, yes, I remember.”
 
Johnny did remember many things about that island. Thrilling adventures had come to him there when the island was younger, as you will recall if you have read the book called The Fire Bug.
 
“Might be something to it,” he said thoughtfully. “Well, you look that place over and I’ll take a look at the tunnel. Somehow, we must find that man.
 
“Old Greasy Thumb and his pals were at the bottom of this Air Mail robbery, or I’m a green one. Thing to do is to get evidence, then get them. Next time they’ll stay in jail.
 
“One thing troubles me most of all.” His brow wrinkled. “That’s the way the Chief acts about the whole affair. Then, too, there’s that reporter. He’s certainly a queer one. You don’t expect to find anything wrong with a reporter from a paper like the World. They’re always on the side of decency, and honest reform. Oh, well, we may be all wrong about everything. Time’ll tell.
 
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“You’d better hurry over and keep your date. I hope we’re going to be seeing a lot of each other.”
 
“Hope so.” Curlie hastened away.
 
They were indeed, and the result was to be adventure such as seldom comes to any one.
CHAPTER XVI  AN ISLE OF MYSTERIES
 Grace Palmer arrived late. It was growing dark when her car pulled up before the hangar. She came alone. Curlie was surprised. He had expected her to bring the chauffeur.
 
“You’ll have to pardon me.” She smiled as she threw open the door. “Usually I arrive at the tick of the clock. But I had a blowout. The old bus described a parabola and nearly put me on the curb. But hop in. We’ll get there all right now.”
 
Curlie climbed in and they were away. He was beginning to have a comfortable feeling about this new friend. “Here,” he told himself, “is unexpected aid.” And aid was what he needed. In spite of the fact that his youthful employer had treated him in a magnanimous manner, he felt morally responsible for the return of that mysterious, and supposedly priceless, package.
 
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“If that Secret Service man knew what he was talking about,” he said to Grace Palmer, “those fellows were not only beating the Government out of thousands of dollars in customs duties, but were planning to use the whole proceeds for the purpose of striking what blows they might at the land that feeds, clothes and protects them. And if they get away with it, I’ll be to blame.”
 
“They won’t get away with it,” Grace Palmer said stoutly. “We will see to that!”
 
* * * * * * * *
 
In the meantime, Johnny Thompson had not been idle. He meant to enter the tunnel where Curlie had, quite by accident, lost himself and nearly lost his life in the bargain.
 
It was, he found soon enough, quite an unusual thing for the entrance to be left unguarded. When he tried to go down, a watchman stopped him.
 
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“Have to get a permit from Mr. Rusby,” he told the boy gruffly. “He’s the manager.”
 
“Where is he?”
 
“In the office.” The man jerked a thumb to the right. “No. Let’s see.” He consulted his watch.
 
“Nope. Gone home. You’ll have to come to-morrow.”
 
Johnny had no notion of waiting until to-morrow. The tunnel would, he reasoned, be used less at night. That would give him greater freedom in making his search.
 
“More than forty miles,” he grumbled. “Forty miles of tunnel. Like looking for a pearl in a gravel pit.”
 
For all that, he hurried to the office, caught a belated office girl, secured Mr. Rusby’s telephone number from her and then hurried to a drug store.
 
But there he came to a halt. Mr. Rusby, he was informed, was out and was not expected back before eleven o’clock. And no one at his home could tell where he was to be found.
 
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“So there you are.” Johnny banged down the receiver. “May as well go back to the shack and listen to a few tunes on the radio.”
 
He did just that. But he heard more than tunes on the radio that night. What he heard started a fresh mystery. It made him sit up and think sober thoughts, too. You may be very sure of that.
 
* * * * * * * *
 
Curlie and the college girl were on the island. A curious sort of island it was. The early explorers had not discovered it. There was reason enough for that; it had not been there.
 
Men had made that island, men and trucks, pile-drivers, dredgers, and more men. The refuse from a great city: ashes, old cans, glass, and the clay from beneath many a skyscraper had gone into its making. And with these, sand, much sand from the bottom of the lake.
 
It is strange how nature hates ugliness. Men had left this island ugly. Nature had added a touch of beauty. Wind had sifted sand over all. Cans, glass, ashes were buried. Trees and bushes had grown up. And now it was a place where one might stroll with pleasure.
 
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But Curlie and the girl, as you know, had not come here for a stroll.
 
Almost at once they stumbled upon something. What? They could not tell.
 
They had climbed over a great heap of rocks, used as a breakwater, and were about to descend an even higher pile when the girl gripped Curlie by the arm and pulled him back. At the same time she put a finger to his lips.
 
He listened. At first he heard nothing save the distant, indistinct murmur of the city. And then there came the sound of heavy footsteps. After that, silence.
 
And into that silence came a voice. Low but distinct, it said, “Shall we bury it here?”
 
The girl gripped Curlie’s arm till it hurt. Yet he made no sound.
 
His heart raced. Bury what? The package of jewels, to be sure. What luck! Or was it so lucky after all? They were not armed. These were likely to be desperate men—men who stop at nothing.
 
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What was to be done? They were in the midst of a pile of giant, jagged rocks. Beyond the rocks on one side was water, on the other, sand. On the sand, not five yards away were men, strange men. And in the darkness they were burying something.
 
“Can it be?” whispered the girl.
 
“Who knows?” Curlie whispered back.
 
He touched the girl’s arm for silence. What was to be done? The men were between them and the bridge that led to the island from the city.
 
It was a lonely spot. True enough, the lights of a great city, ten thousand lights, gleamed in the distance. But that distance was too great. The sandy surface of a man-made island, a deep lagoon and broad park spaces lay between.
 
“If we stir they will hear us,” the boy whispered. “Don’t move. They may go away.”
 
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They heard the sound of scraping in the sand and the puffs of exertion. Moments seemed hours. The girl felt a cramp taking possession of her right foot. She made a furtive attempt to relieve it. Then came catastrophe. A stone, dislodged by her foot, rolled down with a thud which in that silence seemed a crash.
 
A muttered exclamation was followed by heavy footsteps. Curlie seized the girl’s arm and fairly hurled her over the rocks. The next instant, with the men in hot pursuit, they were dashing away over the sand.
 
“Some building over there,” Curlie panted. “Have to try for that.”
 
They did try. But Curlie could fly better than he could run. He was short of breath. The men gained on them, a yard, two, three, five yards. They almost felt the breaths of their pursuers.
 
Curlie tried to think what it would mean if they should stumble.
 
They rounded a second breakwater and there stood the building. But such a building as it was! A low structure of many sides and a large dome. It seemed a tomb.
 
“And not a light!” The boy’s heart sank.
 
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There was nothing to be done but to race on. Heavy footsteps, labored breathing were behind them; the city was far away. They reached the wall of dark marble. No doors there. They began circling this astonishing edifice.
 
Their pursuers were all but upon them when they came at last to a door.
 
“It is not locked!” the girl said aloud. “It must not be!” She put out a hand and turned the knob. The door swung open. They tumbled in. Then, as if by magic, the door closed and locked itself.
 
Curlie knew it was locked, for a heavy hand on the outside knob failed to budge it.
 
The knob was all but wrenched away to no purpose. After that came silence, deep and ominous.
 
“Well,” the boy whispered with a nervous laugh, “here we are. But where are we?”
 
And where, indeed, were they? Aside from a tiny gleam of red light that seemed far away, the place was utterly dark. This feeble light, casting not the faintest shadow, appeared to make the darkness more intense.
 
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“Ah!” the girl exclaimed in an audible whisper.
 
“Ah—ah—ah,” came echoing back.
 
“Like some terrible cellar!” she whispered. “Let’s—let’s go back.”
 
Futile suggestion. This unusual door had locked itself automatically both within and without.
 
“We will go to the light,” Curlie said. “This way. We’ll find our way out.”
 
Straight toward the staring red eye they marched. Twice they bumped into stone pillars and were obliged to detour. But at last they reached the spot directly beneath the light.
 
“A door!” the boy exclaimed tensely.
 
“And not locked!” Grace Palmer had tried it.
 
The door opened and they passed beyond. Once more darkness confronted them, darkness and a stairway.
 
Up the stairway they went on hands and knees.
 
A third door, more darkness.
 
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But no, not complete darkness. Off to the right was an oblong of pale light.
 
Toward this they moved with caution.
 
The oblong of light formed an open doorway. The space beyond that door was more mysterious than anything they had yet seen. There were no lamps anywhere, but pale light was about them everywhere. A vast pale dome, like the sky, hung above them.
 
“Why! It is the sky!” whispered the girl. “See! There is the moon! And there the stars, pale stars!”
 
This seemed true. Surely there was the moon, and there the stars; yet Curlie was puzzled. The moon seemed too high, the stars too bright. What could it all mean? His head was in a whirl.
 
More was yet to come. As they stood there motionless, gazing upward, the entire firmament, the moon, the planets and the stars began to move.
 
“Oh!” breathed the girl.
 
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They did not move rapidly, this moon, these stars. There was something dignified and terrible about the slow and leisurely manner in which they traversed the great dome above.
 
For fully three minutes not a sound was uttered. But when the moon vanished beneath the horizon and a million stars shone with added brightness, the girl seized Curlie’s hand to drag him into the outer darkness.
 
She led on blindly until a second red light appeared. Followed by her companion, she passed through a door and mounted a long, winding stairway, to find herself at last out in the clear, cool air of night, with a very different sky above, a sky full of stars, all set with a gorgeous, golden moon that did not move, at least not so you could see it.
 
“Oh,” she breathed, “this is better!”
 
As Curlie, feeling the cool lake breeze on his cheek, gazed away at the island that lay before him and at the dark waters far and away beyond, he wondered what had really happened, after all.
 
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When they had regained their composure they began an investigation which told them they were on a narrow circular promenade some thirty feet above the surface of the island.
 
Fortunate for them was the fact that workmen engaged in mounting statues on the ledge had left their scaffold standing.
 
After a careful survey of the ground below, to make sure that their pursuers had left, they nimbly made their way down to earth and bounded away in a silent race for the car.
 
To their vast relief they found it unmolested.
 
“Well,” said Curlie, as they sat once more in the car, with the motor purring, ready for a dash at a moment’s notice, “what about that?”
 
“That,” said the girl, “is one of the strangest things I ever experienced. But of course,” she laughed softly, “you know what it was.”
 
“No,” said Curlie, slowly, “I don’t.”
 
“It’s a planetarium.”
 
“A what?”
 
“A planetarium. You may come here any day and see the stars, the moon, the sun and all the rest do their stuff. The old man who runs it must have been practicing up a bit.”
 
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Curlie was nonplussed. He was obliged to admit that the place had had him guessing.
 
“Anyway,” he said, “it was a refuge. Question is, what are we to do next?”
 
“We might let the police in on this.”
 
“I don’t want to. Guess the thing is safe enough till morning. Either it is an important discovery, or it isn’t. Either they buried it, or they didn’t. If they did they’re not going to dig it up the same night.”
 
This was the way they left it. The girl was to pick Curlie up at seven o’clock. Curlie was to arm himself, and they were to return to the island to make a more thorough investigation.
 
“I’ll bring a garden spade,” the girl said in parting.
 
“And I a gun,” Curlie chuckled. “Spades and guns. Regular pirates.”
CHAPTER XVII  JOHNNY HEARS THE VOICE
 That night Johnny Thompson went in search of a man. In making this search he met with adventure, such adventure as no person would go far to seek.
 
But before that he heard a voice. And that voice, coming as it did from the air, thrilled him to the very tips of his toes.
 
He was seated in the shack, the very shack you have come to know so well from reading The Arrow of Fire—the one Drew Lane had rented from nobody in particular. It was, you will recall, surrounded by brick structures of some size. But, like some stunted little pine among a forest of giants, a relic of the past, it had held its place during all the changing years.
 
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A fishing shack it had been at one time, perhaps, when the shore of the lake was several blocks closer to the heart of the city. Now it served as a home for Drew Lane and Johnny Thompson, together with anyone who might have met with misfortune and come under the observation of these youthful philanthropists.
 
At the moment Johnny was not thinking of philanthropy, but of crime. “Why is it,” he was asking himself, “that men are willing to place themselves outside the law? Why will they steal and kill? Why bring airplanes down in the night, or snatch a package from an honest boy who is trying to do his duty?
 
“Probably money,” he told himself. “But money for what purpose? To pay rent? Buy food? Not often. Money for pleasure, gambling, gaudy clothes, high-power cars, drink. These are what the money buys.
 
“Too often they wish to ape the rich. And what do the foolish sort of rich people do but put on a big show? Huh!”
 
He left the subject with disgust, to wonder about other matters. He thought again of that haunting Gray Shadow that, appearing and disappearing, seemed to guard his destiny.
 
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“An angel of light,” he murmured. “Wonder if I’ll ever see him face to face. I—”
 
He broke off short to listen. Just before the air of the room had been filled with the melodious notes of Titl’s Serenade. Now, as the notes died away, without announcement someone broke in with the words:
 
“I am the Voice.”
 
“The Voice!” Johnny exclaimed. “Where did I hear that expression before?”
 
But the voice was going on. It was telling the people of this great city, at an hour when they were at home and in a thoughtful mood, just what their city was like.
 
“I am the Voice.” The tones were low and mellow, a kindly, almost pleading voice. “This is your city and my city. It is our home. We have always lived here. We love it. And yet it is a graft-ridden, crime-ridden city.
 
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“I am the Voice. I must tell you of these things. I, the Voice, am hidden away. I will be hidden. No one knows my name. The announcer does not know, the station manager does not know. No one sees me. No one will see me. I am only a Voice. Each night at this hour I will tell you of our city. I will tell you many things that it is disturbing to hear; yet you must hear them. It is my duty to speak; yours to listen.”
 
Johnny thrilled and trembled at the sound of this Voice. It was as if the Voice was no real person, but one returned from the dead.
 
“Like the Gray Shadow,” he told himself. “So unreal.”
 
Though the Voice seemed unreal, the events it was to speak of next were real enough, as Johnny was in a position to know.
 
“Only one little group of facts to-night,” the Voice went on, “then I am done. A few hours ago, a known gunman was arrested. Damaging evidence was found on his person. Two young detectives who have built up an enviable record for themselves, brought him in. The evidence was placed before the Chief. The Chief returned the evidence. Why? A man whispered into his ear. Why? The gunman was released. Why?
 
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“The young detectives have been placed in a position where they can make no more arrests. Why?
 
“A certain reporter is said to have unusual influence and power with the City Council and civic officials. Why?
 
“I am the Voice. I bid you good-night.”
 
Once more the instrumental trio was on the air.
 
“Who is this Voice?” Johnny asked himself. “How did he know all that?”
 
He thought of “The Ferret.” Now he recalled that he had said something about the Voice. But what voice? Was it this voice? He could not be sure.
 
“Have to ask him,” he told himself. At that, he was not sure he would ask “The Ferret.” Some affairs are best left secret. This Johnny knew well enough.
 
He went to the telephone and called a number. Ten minutes later he was out of the shack and on his way to the entrance of the city’s freight subway. He had gained permission to spend the night there. And such a night as it was to be!
CHAPTER XVIII  IN THE TUNNEL AT NIGHT
 The narrow tunnels far beneath the din of this vast city’s streets were built in the main to serve great enterprises. The steel cars that rattle on and on through the night carry coal to factories and many-floored department stores. The lighter cars, with frames of wood, transport shipments of goods from the stores to outlying districts where they are loaded on trucks and delivered. Manufactured goods are hurried away to warehouses and depots.
 
Thus it happened that Johnny, entering as he did at the dead of night, found men still toiling in these narrow burrows where the light of day never comes.
 
There are many entrances to these tunnels. Most of these are elevators wide enough to lift two or three cars from the depths below to the street level above.
 
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The one chosen by Johnny that night led through a soap factory. There the air was heavy with the clean, perfumed scent of soap.
 
A man in a shabby sheepskin coat received him in silence, motioned him to a place at the corner of a loaded elevator, clanged an iron gate, and set the elevator to sinking into the earth.
 
There is something deeply depressing about being lowered beneath the natural surface of the earth. Whether it be a well, a mine, a cave or a tunnel, it is all the same. Johnny Thompson was not free from this feeling of depression. Indeed, so powerful was its influence that it was with the utmost difficulty that he resisted an impulse to go straight back to the surface. As you will see later, he was to have reason to regret resisting this impulse.
 
However, once he had accustomed his eyes to the weird green and red lights of the place, and his ears to the great din when a train passed and the vast silence when there was no train, he found himself feeling more at home than he had imagined possible.
 
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“One can see,” he told himself, “why men might even enjoy working here. The air, circulated by powerful fans, is pure. It is not hot in summer nor cold in winter. There is no glaring light and no real darkness.”
 
He was taken to the portion of the tunnel which he wished to inspect. This portion was the one nearest the museum.
 
“There will be no trains on the spur leading to the museum,” the trainman told him. “On that track you’ll be safe enough. If you wait for the green lights, you’ll be fairly safe on other tracks.”
 
After imparting this information the engineer threw on his switch and went rattling away, leaving Johnny to the silence of a night in a tunnel.
 
Night in a tunnel. What strange life exists here to come creeping boldly about at night. A black bat, snapping his teeth at who knows what insect, goes whirring by. A mouse comes creeping forth to munch some morsel that has fallen from a workman’s lunch box. Two squealing rats go scurrying away.
 
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“Night,” Johnny murmured. “Night, half darkness, bats and rats. And who knows what greater perils?” He shuddered, then hurried on. In his right hand he gripped a large revolver, a relic of one of the raids made by Drew Lane.
 
“I’d hate to have to fire it,” he murmured. “Wow! What a rumpus it would kick up down here!”
 
He did not know that ere the night was over he would hear an explosion which would make the sound of his gun seem but the low pop of a pea-shooter.
CHAPTER XIX  A NIGHT’S GRIM BATTLE
 Johnny’s journeys on foot that night were long and varied. In the spur leading to the museum there were no lights. He was obliged to depend upon his electric torch. This cast weird shadows. Every now and then he fancied he detected a crouching figure ahead. Each time as he advanced it proved to be only a pile of supplies in a niche in the wall, or a padlocked tool box.
 
“Probably no one anywhere,” he grumbled to himself. “Great waste of time.”
 
He was wrong. There was someone.
 
Coming at last to the end of the museum spur, he examined the elevator carefully. He did not attempt to ascend to the museum as Curlie had done. Instead, he turned and retraced his steps.
 
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On the return journey he did not exercise the caution resorted to on coming to the museum. It did not seem necessary. He was looking for someone who might be in hiding. The person had not been found. It was natural to suppose that on his return he would find no one.
 
In this world one must learn that nothing may be taken for granted. With his flashlight pointed at his toes, Johnny had not gone a hundred paces on his return journey before, to his vast surprise, a figure sprang up from the darkness directly before him and went sprinting down the track.
 
So astonished was he that for a full ten seconds he stood motionless. This gave the fugitive a start.
 
“Must have been following me,” Johnny’s mind registered at last. “Wonder why?”
 
The next thought was: “He may be my man!” This startled him into action. Throwing his light far ahead, he saw the man plainly, even his face, for just then he looked back.
 
It was a wild sort of face, with a stubby beard, unkempt hair and no hat.
 
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“That,” he thought, “is not my man. And yet—a day and a night in a tunnel. Who knows?”
 
At that he sprang away after the fugitive.
 
From the museum to the main line of tunnel is three eighths of a mile. The man was not a good runner. Johnny was. He gained. Foot by foot, yard by yard, rod by rod, he shortened the distance between them. Now he was five hundred feet behind, now three hundred, now two hundred, now—
 
But suddenly, as they neared the main line, the fugitive stopped. He appeared to place something in the center of the track. Then at redoubled speed he raced on.
 
At that moment Johnny seemed to hear a voice cry:
 
“Stop! Go back! Back!”
 
Was it a human voice? Was it a superhuman voice, or was it no voice at all? In the light of that which followed Johnny will always believe it to have been a human voice.
 
At any rate, he obeyed. He stopped.
 
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It was well that he did. Ten seconds had not passed when the whole world appeared to have been blown into fragments.
 
Johnny was thrown twenty feet, to go crashing against the wall. He rolled over once, then lay quite still.
 
For a short time the place remained in utter silence. Then there was a sound; but Johnny did not hear it. It was a most ominous sound. It increased in volume as the seconds passed. It was the sound of rushing water. Above the tunnel, between it and the surface of the street run the great water mains that quench the city’s thirst and protect it from devastating fires. The explosion had torn away the thin tunnel wall and had broken one of these water mains.
 
What would follow was a thing prearranged and quite automatic. Great iron doors at the end of the museum spur would close. This would confine the flood to the spur. The main tunnel would be safe from flood. In time the motor would be shut off and the main mended. Not, however, until the museum spur had been filled with water, perhaps for hours.
 
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In the meantime Johnny lay where he had fallen. He was quite still. Was it the stillness of death?
 
Before the low rising tide of water, rats, a whole army of them, went scurrying away. Some raced over the boy’s unconscious form. Still he did not stir. And Johnny had always held rats in great abhorrence.
 
Creeping like some vile reptile, the water advanced. Now at a depth of two inches, it reached the boy. It rose.
 
And now at last the prostrate form appeared to stir. High time, too!
 
Did he throw out an arm? No. It was but the water lifting the arm.
 
So this was the end. And such an end for so gallant a soul! Ever striving to be of service. Always on the side of the right. Forever fighting ignorance, cupidity and crime. What a pity! Well, they had got him at last. Put him on the spot, perhaps. Who knows?
 
The water became deeper. The silent form, even in its defeat, appeared to struggle against death. It rose and sank, rose and sank.
 
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But what is this? Comes a splashing. A figure is approaching, an odd figure, one clothed from head to toe in a long gray coat and a gray cap. His face is all but hidden by this cap and a gray beard.
 
Had Johnny’s lips moved, they would have said:
 
“The Gray Shadow.”
 
They did not move.
 
And now began one of the grimmest battles ever fought in the dark. From this spot to the main tunnel was but half a block. But there the door was closed. There appeared to remain but one hope, the museum end.
 
Seeming to realize this the strange being, who appeared possessed of great strength, lifted the boy to his shoulders and began making his way through the flood to that distant goal.
 
The distance was long. The water rose rapidly. Now the water rose to his knees, now to his thighs, now to his chest. He had covered but half the distance when he was lifted off his feet and obliged to swim.
 
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Undaunted, he struggled on; yet what hope was there? The water now filled half the tunnel. The end could be but a few moments away. To reach the museum was impossible. Yet the gallant Gray Shadow struggled on.
 
The space above the water narrowed. Now it was four feet, now three, now two. Death by drowning; what must it be in such a place?
 
At last the hands ceased to move. Was the battle over?
 
No. Not yet.
 
Into that darkness, from somewhere far above, stole a very feeble ray of light. What was it? Whence its origin? There were no other stations. The museum was far away. And yet here was light. One look, and the Shadow redoubled his efforts.
 
He had understood. This light was a ray of hope. Nor was hope entirely vain. A fresh avenue lay above him. When a new building is to be erected in the city and the excavation is going forward, a narrow chute is sunk to the tunnel. Down this chute the excess earth is run into cars and is thus carried away without cluttering up the streets.
 
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One of these chutes lay just above the Gray Shadow and his burden. Could he but drag the unconscious form into the chute they would be safe for the moment.
 
To tell of the struggles of this lone figure there in the night; how he tried five times to drag the body to safety, only to fail; how at last he succeeded in bringing his burden into the chute; how he struggled up and up; how the slippery clay more than once defeated his aim and threatened ultimate catastrophe; and how at last just as dawn was breaking, he emerged, an unrecognizable figure, dragging one quite as unrecognizable, would require many pages of print.
 
It is enough that he did emerge triumphant; that he did find water in a pool and bathed the boy’s face as best he could; that he felt the pulse quicken, saw the eyes open; noted the approach of workmen to their day of toil, and then slunk once more into the shadows where he appeared to belong.
CHAPTER XX  “WE WILL DIG HERE”
 The forces of nature are never at rest. Man makes his mark upon the earth. Nature destroys it. A day may be required for the task, a year, a generation, a thousand years. It is all the same to nature. She wins at last and the man and his works are forgotten.
 
Shortly after Curlie Carson and the college girl left the island, a storm arose; not a violent storm, but a storm nevertheless. Storms are ever changing the face of nature, not alone in the sky, but on the earth as well. This storm set the waters of the lake into motion. Waves, with increasing violence, beat on the sandy shore that lay close to the breakwaters on which Curlie and the girl had stood. Tiny particles of sand were loosened from the mass and thrown high in air. The north wind caught them. Like a kitten with a ball, it teased them, tossing them about. In time it had a million of these racing about at its will.
 
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But now one particle, tiring of the play, dropped into a shovel mark and stayed there. Others followed and soon there was no mark. Some lodged in a footprint and in time the footprint joined the shovel mark in oblivion.
 
When Curlie and the girl, still troubled over the fact that the mysterious package had not been found, and that Curlie was responsible for the loss, and still wondering what those men had meant to bury and if after all they had buried it, arrived at the spot where the men had labored, they found it flat as a floor. Not a trace of any digging could be found.
 
“No one dug here,” said Grace Palmer in disgust. “We must have made a mistake.”
 
“No,” said Curlie, positively. “This is the place. Back here in the rocks is a piece of driftwood with a nail in it. I scratched myself on the nail.
 
“Here,” he said with a laugh, “is the scratch, and there the nail.”
 
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“We will dig here,” he said a moment later.
 
There was no mistaking the cause of the pick-up in their heart beats as Curlie threw out the first shovelful of sand. The girl had stayed up until the wee hours, reading in her father’s library. She had found there a description of the crown jewels of Russia. Curiously enough, the thing that had interested her most was the description of a tiny train, made of platinum and set with diamonds, that was made to fit snugly in a large golden egg. This she knew was a perfect model of the one time private railway train of the Czar. “Only a plaything for a prince,” she told herself. “But what a plaything!”
 
Now, as Curlie dug, her hopes rose and fell. So, too, did Curlie’s, for the success or failure of this enterprise meant much to him. True, his youthful employer had sworn to stand by him; but this did not remove from Curlie’s shoulders the responsibility of having allowed a priceless package to escape from the hands of the law and come into the possession of those who openly regard themselves as enemies of the Government he gladly served.
 
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For a long time the shovel uncovered nothing. They were beginning to despair when at last it touched something hard.
 
“At last!” Curlie breathed hard.
 
“If only it is!” The girl’s eyes shone.
 
A moment of furious digging and then they uncovered—not the parcel-post package, but something long and slim, done up in oilskin.
 
“That,” said Curlie in disgust, “may interest some one. It does not interest me.”
 
He threw it down on the sand.
 
The girl took the trouble to unwrap it, but was hardly more impressed when she found it contained a very old and much tarnished telescope.
 
“Oh, well,” she sighed, replacing it in its oilcloth covering, “we’ll take it along. May interest father.”
 
“We may as well have a look at that thing over there,” said Curlie with a sigh. “I don’t know of anything more exciting to do just now.”
 
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They made their way toward the Planetarium which in the light of day lost most of its mystery.
 
At their request the aged professor made the sun, moon, stars and planets do their little part in their artificial universe.
 
The Planetarium, as you doubtless know, consists for the most part of a great white dome. Inside this dome one may sit with comfort while a great bug-like affair made of steel and glass, winking and blinking through its scores of white eyes, reproduces for him the starry heavens and throws in the planets, the moon and the stars for good measure. It was in this dome that the boy and girl had strayed in their flight of the night before. They had chanced to arrive just as the professor was testing some new form of projector.
 
With the light of day outside, all this seemed rather commonplace. But when they showed the professor what they had found beneath the sand, he fairly sprang at them.
 
“Where did you get that?” he demanded.
 
“In the sand.” Grace stared at him.
 
“What sand?”
 
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“Out there.” She pointed out the window.
 
“It was stolen early last evening.” He took it from her as if afraid it would disappear again.
 
“This,” he said, handling it with real affection, “is one of the oldest telescopes in existence; perhaps the oldest. When you think how much the telescope has done to widen man’s knowledge of the universe, you will know how priceless it is.
 
“And now,” he added, “since you have done me and this institution I serve a very great service, what can I do for you?”
 
“One little thing,” the girl smiled. “Find us the crown jewels of Russia. You’ll know them when you see them. There is a tiny platinum train set with diamonds that is kept in a golden egg.”
 
The professor stared at her as if he believed she had lost her senses. But when the full story was told over a cup of coffee in the professor’s study, he readily enrolled himself as one of that growing band who were pledged to unravel the mystery of the missing parcel.
 
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The human mind behaves in a strange manner at times. Here were a boy and a girl who had come to a man-made island to search for stolen treasure. They had happened upon men who were burying an ancient telescope, and had been frightened away.
 
Returning next day when they might have searched the whole island at their leisure, they unearthed the telescope, returned it to the custodian, had their morning coffee, and went away.
 
The island with its grove of young cottonwoods, its many breakwaters, its drifting sands and its three shacks of driftwood built by men of strange names and no reputation, remained quite unsearched.
 
CHAPTER XXI  ONLY A VOICE
 Johnny Thompson’s recollection of that affair in the tunnel will always remain decidedly vague. A wild face, a fleeing form, a voice in the dark, a terrific explosion, and after that darkness and silence.
 
Some workmen saw a tall, mud-bedraggled figure emerging from the deep gash in the earth which formed the setting for their day of toil. By the time they had found Johnny, this mysterious figure had vanished.
 
Johnny was taken to the Jefferson Street First Aid Station. There it was found that he was suffering from nervous shock and a bump on the head. A warm room and a steaming cup of coffee did much to restore him. As for the bump, it might interfere with his hat for a day or two; otherwise it was not serious.
 
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“Where was I?” he asked of the nurse, when he felt himself capable of straight thinking.
 
“You were found in a hole where they are preparing to build a skyscraper.”
 
“But I was in the tunnel.”
 
“The tunnel?” The nurse had not heard of it.
 
Johnny told her about it. “It’s down forty feet underground,” he ended. “How could I have come to the top?”
 
“Probably swam,” the nurse laughed. “You’d better forget all about it.”
 
Johnny did not take her advice. He puzzled over the affair for some time. Later fortune would lead him to the spot where he had been found. After watching the workmen shovel earth into the hole that led to the tunnel, he would guess that he had come up through that hole. His manner of coming would remain a mystery for some time.
 
Late that afternoon Drew Lane brought Johnny a fresh suit of clothes. When he had dressed they went together to the shack which you will recall as their home.
 
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There they spent an evening in quiet talk. Drew Lane said things were no better at the police court. He and Tom Howe were kept standing around like old men with rheumatism, or racing around on errands like messenger boys.
 
“Marking time,” he sighed. “Doing nothing of real use. All our knowledge of crime and criminals going to waste. And still the crime wave goes merrily on. Three killings so far this week.
 
“Tom is thinking of asking for a transfer to outlying districts where he can walk a beat. Says there he can at least help little children over dangerous crossings, and that’s something.
 
“But I won’t do it.” He rose to pace the floor. “I’m going to stick it out. Things will change. You’ll see. We’ll get a break. We—”
 
He came to a sudden pause. He listened. The radio had been on—music, and they had not been conscious of it. But now, as on that other night, some one broke in with the words:
 
“I am the Voice.”
 
“The Voice.” Drew wrinkled his brow. “What voice?”
 
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“Listen!” Johnny held up a hand.
 
They did listen. For fifteen minutes not a sound was heard in the room save this voice coming in from the air.
 
This night the Voice told the people of the city what he thought of certain men they had elected to office: the mayor, certain aldermen, the heads of boards. He charged them with graft and corruption, of winking at thefts from the city treasury.
 
“Those are hard words!” was Drew Lane’s comment when the Voice had ended. “But every word is true. How does he get his facts, I wonder?”
 
“That fellow,” he added after a time, “will get himself bumped off. They’ll put him on the spot.”
 
“How can they, when he’s only a voice?”
 
“Only a voice? Who’s only a voice? They’ll find him.”
 
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“I don’t believe it. Do you know,” Johnny smiled, “the other night he talked about you and about Tom Howe, too? What he said then was true, too; only he didn’t go very far. If I only could, I’d tell him; but I can’t. He’s only a voice.”
 
“Only a voice,” Drew Lane mused. “Only a voice, and with many a great message to deliver to the countless thousands who listen in every night. What an opportunity! And yet, only a voice? It can’t be done. I tell you, Johnny, they are devils, these crooks! They’d hunt you out and put you on the spot, kill you. Know what I mean?”
 
“I hope they don’t.” Johnny’s words were almost a prayer.
CHAPTER XXII  THE NAMELESS ONE
 Next evening Johnny met some one who thrilled him to the very center of his being. And yet, when he thought of it quite soberly in the shack afterward, he could scarcely tell why.
 
He came, quite unexpectedly, upon “The Ferret.” It was in a little underground restaurant where the walls were of imitation stone and all the dishes of a curious Dutch pattern.
 
So much absorbed was “The Ferret” in something a youth about Johnny’s age was saying that he did not notice Johnny at once. When at last he did see him he sprang to his feet with an exclamation.
 
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“What a lucky meeting! Let me introduce my—” He broke off abruptly, appeared quite confused, then ended rather lamely, “Well—er—a friend who is very much one of us. He has, you might say, a burning desire to be of some service to his city.”
 
Johnny scarcely needed to be told that this youth was consumed by some great desire. He could read it in the two smouldering coals of fire that were his eyes. Indeed, as he recalled the meeting later and tried to summon a mental picture of this new-found friend, he could visualize only a pair of glowing eyes, that was all.
 
Johnny was invited to join them at their evening meal. What was said during that half hour Johnny does not recall. That it was unimportant is to be assumed. That which followed was important. The nameless youth invited him for a walk. And what a walk it turned out to be!
 
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At a rapid stride the stranger led the way straight out of the business section of the city into a wilderness of apartment houses. Nor did he pause here. On and on they went. A mile of streets filled with children, of apartments where home lights were glowing. Here, through some windows they caught glimpses of little circles gathered around the evening meal, of happy groups about a piano, or some elderly couple seated reading beside a lamp.
 
A mile of this, two miles, three. Few words were spoken. “And this is what he calls a little walk!” Johnny all but groaned aloud.
 
Still there was no pause. Four miles, then five and six. Johnny was beginning to believe it was a practical joke, when suddenly the strange youth turned upon him.
 
“Johnny Thompson,” he said, with his eyes fairly glowing in the night, “have you seen those homes?”
 
“Yes, I—”
 
“How many were there?”
 
“Thousands.”
 
“How many honest people live in them?”
 
“Most people are honest.”
 
“That’s it!” The boy’s tone was deeply earnest. “Here is a city filled for the most part by honest folks. Yet it is ridden by crooked politicians and grafters; it is in the grip of the criminal element. This grip cannot, or at least has not been shaken.
 
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“Do you know what I believe, Johnny Thompson?” He gripped Johnny’s arm. “I believe that this world was made for good, honest, generous, clean-minded people to live in, and that when it has become impossible for such people to live without being poisoned by moonshine, robbed by grafters or shot by holdup men, it is time for some of those who are honest and good and clean to die that their city may be made right again.”
 
“So that was it,” thought Johnny. “A sermon.
 
“Mighty impressive one, at least. And I believe he is sincere.”
 
“That’s all right,” Johnny replied a moment later, thinking things out as he went along. “It’s well enough to take a sporting chance, to join hands with those who endeavor to enforce the law, to help them try to work the thing out.
 
“But just to throw yourself in the face of certain death—if that’s what you mean—”
 
“I mean just that.”
 
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“Well, then,” Johnny drawled, “all I have to say is, life is mighty sweet to me. I like to see the sunrise over the water in some deep-shaded bay, to see it set amid the golden glory of the clouds, to see the stars come out one by one.
 
“I love music the best of all. I like to hear children sing and see them go skipping over the grass.
 
“No, my friend,” he added soberly, “I’m willing to take a chance. But when it is no longer a chance, when death becomes a grim certainty, I—I’m afraid you’d have to leave me out.”
 
The youth said not another word. They boarded a street car and went rattling back to the heart of the city. All the way the nameless one sat with chin on breast. The fire that was in his eyes appeared to have burned out.
 
And yet, as they left the car he exclaimed with renewed heat: “All the same, I am sure there is no other way!”
 
Johnny was to recall this statement long after, and marvel at it.
 
195
“Johnny,” the stranger said, as they stood at the parting of the ways, “Johnny,” his tone was very serious, “tell me about these two young detectives. Are they grandstand players?”
 
“Grandstand players!” Johnny’s tone showed his astonishment.
 
“Some one has said they are. I wouldn’t want—well, no matter what I wouldn’t want to do. But you know them. Tell me the truth.”
 
“Grandstand players!” Johnny was indignant. “If you were held up by a man whose criminal record for robbery and killing is as long as your arm; if you were off duty and armed only with a small pistol, while he had a regular cannon; if you tackled him alone in the dark, with no one to watch the play; if you fought him for ten minutes; if he got his gun to your head and pulled the trigger, but it failed to go off; if he bit you to the bone, fighting like a demon; if you won at last; if you got your man, would you call that grandstand stuff?”
 
“No,” said the boy solemnly, “I wouldn’t.”
 
196
“Drew Lane did that. And Tom Howe is not one inch behind him. If all the coppers in this town were as square and as fearless as Drew Lane and Tom Howe, this city would be clean.”
 
Johnny told the youth with the burning eyes much more about his two pals of the police department. To his surprise, he found him taking notes. This, too, he was to recall long after.
 
“Thanks. Er—thanks a heap! You’ve helped me no end,” the boy said at last. “Good-night.” And he was gone.
 
“That,” said Johnny, as he walked slowly down the boulevard and across the river, “is one queer chap. He’s up to something, I’ll be bound.
 
“But then, if he wasn’t on the up and up, ‘The Ferret’ would never have introduced him to me. And then again, I wonder if ‘The Ferret’ ever makes a mistake.”
CHAPTER XXIII  THE FACE IN THE NIGHT
 Johnny Thompson possessed a robust body. Proper food, plenty of sleep, plain living and clean thinking had kept it so. Few there are who could have endured his harrowing experience in the tunnel without a prolonged visit to the hospital.
 
Johnny did not entirely escape. On the second day following, a low fever set in. His doctor ordered him to bed until the fever abated. It lasted for an entire week. Such a week, for a person endowed with a boundless supply of nervous energy, was a great trial.
 
It did, however, give him time for thinking. And his thoughts were long, long thoughts.
 
Often he found them returning to the youth with the burning eyes. Over and over again he seemed to hear him say: “It is time for some who are honest, good and clean to die.”
 
198
Curiously enough, it was while listening to the Voice, which came on exactly at ten o’clock each evening, that he thought oftenest of those words. There was something about the earnest tones of that mysterious unknown voice that reminded him of the nameless one. “And may he not be the same person?” he asked himself one night.
 
But when he thought of it more soberly, the thing seemed absurd. “In a city of millions, how could it be?” he asked himself. Then he dismissed the matter from his mind.
 
There were other matters requiring consideration. And these made him restless, impatient to be up and away. Some of his friends were in trouble. Curlie Carson had opened a registered mail sack; had made himself liable to arrest; might even yet be arrested and thrown into prison by the Federal authorities if the priceless package were not found and returned.
 
“And how is it to be found?” he asked himself. “Find the man who took it and make him confess, to be sure. How simple!”
 
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Strangely enough, while Johnny was still confined to his bed and might well have been thinking of this very matter, Grace Palmer received a letter which for a time puzzled her greatly.
 
Addressed to her at her home, it contained the simple statement:
 
“The man you are looking for will be at the turn of the breakwater on the island at ten o’clock P. M., Wednesday, this week.”
 
The note, which was unsigned, reached her on Tuesday. She racked her mind for its meaning. She had often gone to this man-made island, but never in search of a man.
 
“Except—” Her heart beat double time. “Except on that night with the young Air Mail pilot.
 
“I wonder—”
 
She went to the phone and got Curlie on the wire. She told him of the note.
 
“It’s a chance,” he said, growing quite excited. “Shall we go?”
 
“Yes.” She did not hesitate. “I’ll bring father’s gun.”
 
200
“Gun? Oh, certainly!”
 
“You know,” she supplemented, “I am really a good shot. And we may need it.” They had reason later to regret not having used it on the offensive instead of on the defensive as they had feared they might be obliged to do.
 
They went to the island half an hour early. In a narrow space, just wide enough to afford them a place of concealment, jammed between two huge squares of limestone with another as their resting place and a fourth forming a sort of fortification before them, they waited while Curlie’s watch ticked the half hour away.
 
The night was chill. There was no moon. For all that, a sort of half light reflected from the city’s street lights made it possible for them to see a moving object at some distance.
 
At exactly the hour of ten an object appeared on the narrow stretch of sand that lay beyond the breakwater.
 
From Curlie’s position it was impossible for him to tell whether it was a man or some prowling dog. He believed it to be a dog.
 
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The girl had placed a big, blue, long-barreled revolver on the rocks before them. The manner in which her nervous fingers gripped it, together with the rapid beating of her heart which he could feel through her shoulder pressed against his own, told him plainer than words that she believed it to be a man.
 
Some twenty feet of tumbled rocks lay between them and the sand. Having crossed the sand, the figure proceeded to clamber over the rocks. They lay directly in his path. Curlie drew in a long breath. With her free hand, the girl gripped his arm.
 
“She’s not really afraid,” he told himself in some surprise. “A college girl, a professor’s daughter, too, and a real sport!”
 
There was little time for further thought. The man, if man it was, was coming fast. Now he had covered a quarter of the distance, now half. Now—
 
Curlie’s lips were formed for the word, “Stop!” when one of those curious bits of circumstance which so often bring our lives to an abrupt turn, came to pass. The searchlight from some boat out on the lake played for just a fraction of a second on the spot.
 
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In that split second Curlie saw that the figure was that of a man; saw, too, that he was short and round shouldered, that his hair was curly and that his left ear was entirely missing.
 
So much for well trained eyes. No man may hope to be an Air Mail pilot unless he possesses such eyes.
 
A split second, then the light was gone. But what was far more startling, the figure, too, was gone.
 
“He—he’s not there!” the girl whispered.
 
Curlie placed his hand gently over her mouth.
 
For five full minutes, with the girl’s vibrant shoulder against his own, he lay motionless. When he spoke it was still in a whisper:
 
“You keep the place covered with the gun. I—I’m going over the rocks.”
 
For a moment her hand on his arm held him back. When her grip relaxed, he went over—and found not a trace of the man!
 
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“What a pity!” he exclaimed. “We had him in our power. Now he is gone. We should have covered him and made him surrender.”
 
“Yes,” she agreed, “we should have. But who would have thought he would disappear?”
 
“The light. I know. By the way,” he chuckled, “what did we mean to do?”
 
“Yes. What? But was he the man?”
 
“Who knows?”
 
“And if he was, what could he be doing here?”
 
“Check,” said Curlie.
 
“Who wrote that letter, and why?” she asked again.
 
“Double check,” Curlie laughed. “Let’s go home.”
 
“Do you think that was the man who took the package?” Grace Palmer asked as they rode home.
 
“I think it may have been. I didn’t see his face clearly. It was too dark that morning. But his figure was much the same.”
 
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“You had better tell your friend, Johnny Thompson, about this. Describe him. His ear was gone.”
 
“Cut clean off.”
 
Curlie did tell Johnny. Johnny told some one else, and something worth while came of it.
CHAPTER XXIV  A VISIT FROM “THE FERRET”
 Johnny did not lack friends. Those who visited him during his brief illness were an interesting lot.
 
On the third night, just after darkness had fallen, “The Ferret” appeared. With him was the nameless youth, he of the burning eyes.
 
“The Ferret” seemed nervous and ill at ease. Johnny thought this strange; it was not at all like him. In the light of what took place later it was not to seem so strange.
 
“This lad,” “The Ferret” explained, walking the floor the while, “wants to know more about the city, about men who break the law, and those who are appointed to defend her honest citizens. Particularly he wants to know more about your friends, Drew Lane and Tom Howe.”
 
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There was no subject closer to Johnny’s heart than the valor of his two young detective friends. So, while “The Ferret” slowly paced the floor, he filled the ears of the eager youth with tales of their daring.
 
“There! There!” “The Ferret” exclaimed at last. “You have told him enough. Knew too much before. You’ll get him killed. He—”
 
The youth shot him a look, and there the conversation ended. The extraordinary pair left soon after. Alone with his thoughts, Johnny meditated upon many matters of more or less importance.
 
“There is,” he told himself, “an indefinable relationship between those two. It is as if they had known each other always, but never too well; and yet as if an unbreakable bond linked them together for life. It is strange, for ‘The Ferret’ is a middle aged man; the other only a boy.”
 
That night he listened as always to the mysterious Voice of the air.
 
This night that earnest Voice made his remarks more sweeping, more pointed and scathing than ever.
 
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“This city is filled with traitors. And some are traitors who know it not.” Thus the voice of the unknown one rang out into the night, and a hundred thousand, listening, thrilled they knew not why.
 
“When an officer of the law,” he went on, “accepts money from a bootlegger, a gambler or any other law breaker, he is a traitor to the city he has sworn to serve.
 
“But these are not the only traitors.” The voice of the speaker was tense with emotion. “Everything goes out over the air.” This is a slogan of radio workers everywhere. Something was going out this night, memorable words that would not be forgotten.
 
“There are rich traitors,” the Voice went on. “When a rich man pays large sums to crooked politicians so that his taxes on his vast holdings may be reduced, he is a traitor.
 
“There are poor traitors, thousands of them. You may be one. If you have paid some one in your ward ten or twenty or forty dollars to have your taxes reduced, you, too, are a traitor.
 
208
“If taxes are unjust, fight them. Fight them in the courts. If the courts fail you, rise up and fight with rifles and machine guns. But never, never stoop to corruption to betray the city you should love.”
 
These were hard words. They were spoken in a tone that told of an earnest desire to serve. There were those listening who found themselves repeating those words of a great Master:
 
“Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killeth the prophets and stoneth them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not.” These said, “This city is no different from Jerusalem. This young prophet, too, will be killed.”
 
Many there were who became very angry. Rich men and poor men, politicians and crooks, were together in this one thing: they had been called traitors. And traitor is a hard word.
 
209
The telephone of that radio station rang again and again that night. Angry voices, sympathetic voices, voices filled with a consuming curiosity, were at the other end of the lines. One and all, they asked the same question:
 
“Who is this Voice?”
 
To them all came the same answer:
 
“We do not know. We know no more about the Voice than you do,” the announcer patiently explained. “He comes to us by remote control. We throw in a switch, and his voice is here.”
 
“Is he in this city?”
 
“We do not know. Perhaps he is not human at all, but only a voice from another world.”
 
These words had their effect. There were some who at heart had meant to be honest. These put their receivers down softly and went into conference with their own hearts. Some made high resolves.
 
There were those, too, whose hearts were as stone, whose whole beings were filled with hate and greed. These slammed down the receivers and vowed revenge.
 
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But what revenge, and how? How did one punish a voice?
 
“That fellow will get himself killed,” was Johnny’s comment. “And what a pity!”
 
There were honest folk who thought the words of this young prophet too harsh. There were those who hoped for a regeneration of their city. There were those who despaired. And there were all too many who asked for nothing so loudly as they did for the silencing of this mysterious Voice, which was, they averred, worse than an accusing conscience.
 
On this particular night the Voice went from these broad statements to specific cases. He told of many honest and sincere servants of the people who had endeavored to do their full duty; told also how they had been crowded back into places of little or no importance.
 
He spoke of police officers sent to the “sticks” because of their sincere attempts to enforce the law.
 
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He came at last to the case of Drew Lane and Tom Howe. By this time one of the great newspapers of the city had taken up the fight. It had devoted two full columns to their defense. The Voice spoke of this, and then launched upon a recital of their many acts of danger and daring.
 
As Johnny listened his cheeks burned. Twice he clapped his hands and shouted.
 
“Bravo! Great! Great! Go to it, old top!”
 
But again he grew very sober. How could this Voice know all these facts? There was something very intimate and personal about it all.
 
“Perhaps ‘The Ferret’ told him,” he murmured. And then a thought struck him. “What if he is—”
 
He did not finish. The thing seemed quite improbable. But if it were true, how had “The Ferret” happened upon him?
 
“A strange fellow, that Ferret!” he said to himself aloud. “Always has plenty of money, yet he does not appear to be employed by anyone. They say he is rich, or has a rich friend. Who knows? Perhaps both statements are true. Of one thing I am sure. He is sincere.”
CHAPTER XXV  THE SHADOW PASSES
 On the fifth day the doctor granted Johnny permission to dress and move about his room. But under no circumstances was he to “leave the room or transact important business.”
 
“As if I had important business to transact!” Johnny laughed to himself.
 
For all that, he sat a long time in a brown study. There are times for all of us when we appear to feel the shadows of tremendous events hanging over us. It was so now with Johnny. For some time he had been on the trail of something big. His old pal, Curlie, was under the shadows. He had broken the postal regulations; had opened a registered mail sack and had removed three valuable packages. One package, perhaps the most valuable of all, was missing. Until this was found, Federal operators would dog his trail. In time he might lose his position and his standing as a pilot.
 
213
Closely connected with this, as it seemed to Johnny, was the disgrace and shelving of Drew Lane and Tom Howe.
 
“If only we could find that man who lost an ear, the one Curlie and that girl saw,” he told himself. “If we could get him to talk; if we could bring him and Greasy Thumb with all his gang into court, we’d show some people up!” Without really meaning to, he thought of the Chief and of that whispering reporter from The World.
 
“And in time we will get that man!” he told himself with conviction. “We’ll find the crown jewels of Russia, if that is what the package truly contained. That will clear Curlie.
 
“And when certain people are properly shown up, there will be a new deal all around. Then Drew and Tom will be happy again. They will be back downtown, close on the heels of every crook who dares to show his face.”
 
214
He was still thinking of these coming events which appeared to cast their shadows before them, when the regular evening shadows began to fall.
 
It was at this hour that one who was very welcome indeed darkened the door of the shack and said, after a low bow:
 
“May I come in?”
 
“You need never ask,” Johnny exclaimed, as he recognized the caller. “The latch string is always out and the door stands always ajar for you!”
 
It was Joyce Mills. She took a seat in silence. For fully five minutes neither spoke. Silence is the test of true friendship. A superficial friendship is often filled with much clatter and many words without meaning. Only the tightest, truest bond of friendship grows stronger during a long period of eloquent silence.
 
“Johnny,” the girl spoke at last, “I miss my father terribly. Where can he have gone? Why can’t you find him for me?”
 
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“Tell you what!” Johnny leaned forward with a smile. “You find the man who stole a registered package from Curlie Carson, and I will find your father.”
 
“Done!” The girl put out a slim hand. Johnny gripped it hard.
 
Newton Mills, this girl’s father, as you probably know, had for many years been one of New York’s best known city detectives. The life of such a man is hard. To catch criminals it is necessary to live the life they live, or so it has always been believed. This means long hours in dark and doubtful places at night. At times it means drinking and even drugs. The life had demoralized Newton Mills at last.
 
Johnny had found him a derelict. He had pulled this derelict to port and had for a time at least rendered it seaworthy. Newton Mills had once more worked wonders.
 
Now he was gone. He had vanished one fine morning without word or sign. That had been many days ago.
 
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As he sat there now with Joyce Mills, the great detective’s capable daughter, so near him, Johnny thought of the times they had enjoyed together. Kindred spirits they had been.
 
“I must find him!” he said, thinking aloud.
 
“Yes, Johnny, you must!” The girl’s tone carried an appeal.
 
“But tell me.” She brightened. “What sort of a man am I to look for—this one who snatched the registered package?”
 
“That man? Why, somehow Curlie’s got the notion that he’s rather short and round shouldered, with curly hair and one ear missing. Queer business, that ear. Uncommon, I’d say.”
 
“Yes, it is,” the girl replied quite calmly. “Lost it trying to hold some one up, I believe. The man resisted. This holdup fellow was pushed off. The car started. He was caught in the fender and dragged a long way. Tore his ear right off.”
 
Johnny stared at her in astonishment. “So he’s a friend of yours?”
 
“Not quite that.
 
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“Of course,” she added thoughtfully, “it may not be the same man. Not likely to be two men like that in the world, though.
 
“And Johnny.” She leaned forward eagerly. “If I find him I can make him talk!
 
“You may not know it, but every truly great detective holds certain men absolutely within his power. Newton Mills, my father, was a great detective. This man with but one ear is a man who fears him more than death. And I am the daughter of Newton Mills. It is only necessary that I whisper in his one good ear, and every secret of your old friend Greasy Thumb, yes, and of your whispering reporter and your Chief of uncertain character, will lie before you like an open book.
 
“And Johnny, I will find him!” She rose to go.
 
“More power to you!” Johnny, too, stood up.
 
“But Johnny!” A sudden thought seized her. “That was not the man who set off the bomb in the tunnel!”
 
“No,” said Johnny. “That was quite another person, a wild-eyed man with tangled hair.”
 
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“That,” laughed the girl, “is next to no description at all. I know a hundred such.
 
“All the same, who knows but that these radicals lost their faith in the postal service at the last moment and decided to take matters in their own hands? Who will say that they might not have hired an airplane that night to bring Curlie down? There are plenty for hire. I am told that big crooks leave the city often in airplanes. Who knows but that it was their man who trailed Curlie and took the package from him? His identification of the man is far from complete.”
 
“But there is the note to Grace Palmer saying that the one-eared man is the man.”
 
“Might not mean a thing. You have no notion of the length those crooked ones will go in order to cast suspicion on one enemy or throw another off the track. Perhaps in this case they feel they have succeeded in doing both.”
 
“You told me a few days ago that you had been mixing a little with the radicals.”
 
“I have.”
 
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“Believe in their stuff?” Johnny asked anxiously.
 
“No. They can’t think straight. No use following people like that.”
 
“But you’re still in good standing with them?”
 
“I suppose so.”
 
“Then why not keep an eye on that angle of the case? Go to a meeting. Listen to their talk. They may let something slip. If one of their members took the package from Curlie, you may find it out. If they did not get the package there will be more and more of a row about it, I’d say. They should be like a nest of disturbed bumble-bees.”
 
“That’s a good hunch. I’ll follow it up. I’ll get your man, be it one or the other.
 
“And Johnny,” the girl’s tones became almost solemn as her thoughts returned to her missing father, “you must not forget your share of the contract.”
 
“I will not forget. For the sake of Newton Mills and his wonderful daughter, I will not.”
 
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The girl flushed. Nevertheless, she put out a hand, and they entered into a handclasp that was the seal of a pledge.
 
Then the tall, slim, dark-eyed daughter of Newton Mills, keen as a razor and hard as steel, marched down one rickety stairway and up another, and was gone.
 
Half an hour later it was quite dark. Johnny as he sat there alone with no lights, thought he heard those rude stairways creak. Creeping noiselessly to the window, he looked out. The light was very uncertain. But through the shadows he saw a tall figure, dressed all in gray, pass up one stairway and down the other. This the figure repeated twice, then vanished into the night.
 
“The Gray Shadow passes,” Johnny murmured, then shuddered, he knew not why.
CHAPTER XXVI  THE RISING TIDE OF ANGER
 Each night found the Voice at the microphone. Ever faithful to the task set before him, he denounced in no uncertain tones the ways of a city too long sold body and soul to vice and corruption.
 
Night after night the station phone rang, and angry people demanded to know who this Voice was. The answer was ever the same: “No one about the station knows the answer to that question. This is a regularly incorporated station. Our business is that of selling time on the air. This hour has been paid for. We are not permitted to tell who pays for this time. The broadcast comes in by remote control. We have no notion where the speaker may be reached.”
 
222
So, night after night, perhaps from some small and dingy office, perhaps from a hall bedroom or the study of a palatial home, the Voice sent his message out to the listening world.
 
And the world did listen. Thousands of letters poured in. Many commended the speaker. Some were sharp in their condemnation. But the Voice never faltered.
 
Strange men were at times found prowling about the station. Wires were cut and tapped. Some one with power behind him was conducting a thorough search for the mysterious prophet of the air.
 
“And if they find him!” Johnny said to himself, and shuddered.
 
The day came when Johnny was able to go about his business once more. And on that day Curlie visited the shack.
 
For some time the two boys talked of other days and the adventures that had brought joy and sorrow, thrills and terror to them both.
 
223
When at last the conversation turned to the future, Curlie’s face fell. Many days had passed. No trace of the missing package had been found. The city police were optimistic. They were following clews. The hard-headed Federal men were quite the reverse. They had made no noteworthy discoveries and, as time passed, had grown cross and surly about the whole affair.
 
“I go on again to-morrow.” There was more than a touch of gloom in Curlie’s voice. “Take the mail to New York. Hope it’s a fine day for flying. May be my last trip. The company’s been fine about it; truly sporting. But if the Federal men demand my dismissal I’ll have to go.
 
“And think what it means to leave the air!” He grew suddenly eloquent. “Up with the dawn. The cool damp of night still all about you. Leaping away into the clouds that are all red and gold with the dawn. Sweeping over broad stretches of green and brown and gray, of the dull, slow-going earth.
 
“And again to do battle with wind and rain, lightning, sleet and hail. To soar aloft above it all; to glory in wings, in flight; to be a bird, a bloomin’ wild duck, free as the air!
 
224
“And then to think,” his tone changed, “to think of leaving it all for this dull, dusty earth again.”
 
“You won’t!” said Johnny, springing to his feet. “We’ll get that man, yes, and the jewels with him! You’ll see!”
 
Perhaps Curlie’s description of flying made the room seem stuffy. At least Johnny threw up a window. The stiff north wind entering at his bidding, caught a bit of paper and sent it fluttering to the floor. Another and yet another followed.
 
“What’s this?” Curlie leaned over to pick up the first one. “Money! A twenty, a ten and another twenty. And here comes a five. Why, man! You’re lousy with money!”
 
“That,” said Johnny rather soberly, “is marked money. I’ve not quite decided what to do with it. There’s something over a hundred and fifty dollars in all. When I was washed out of the tunnel, or carried out by some mysterious being, the roll got soggy wet. I put it up on the shelf there to dry and forgot it.
 
225
“Listen. I’ll tell you about it. Then you tell me what to do. I’d thought about giving part of it to that truck farmer who gambled and lost, but I’ll follow your advice.”
 
When Johnny had finished the story of his adventures on the carnival grounds, Curlie sat for a time in a brown study. “Of course,” he said at last, “you could give it back to that gambling truck farmer, if you succeeded in finding him. Fine chance, though. May have come twenty miles to that carnival.
 
“Besides, what’s the good? The poor goof would just throw up his hands and shout: ‘Boy, I’m lucky! I’ll say I’m lucky!’ Then he’d go somewhere else and lose it gambling. The real gambling habit is an incurable disease.
 
“On the other hand—” His face lit up with a kindly smile. “I know another farmer who never gambles, except as everyone does who plants a crop. He has a little girl, a cripple; but the cutest, most cheerful cripple in the world.
 
“You know—the one I was going to send a doll and doll buggy by parachute.
 
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“Tell you what!” He sprang to his feet. “If you really must get rid of that money, give it to them. They need it. Crops have been bad; burned out. I’ll take you along in the plane and drop you off in a parachute, you and the money, just as I planned to throw over the doll.”
 
“Mebby you will!” Johnny’s tone was doubtful. “How far do you drop?”
 
“Far as you like, two thousand, three, five, ten thousand feet. It’s all the same to me.”
 
“‘And he probably was dead long before he touched the ground.’” Johnny groaned as he quoted an oft repeated expression.
 
“That,” said Curlie in disgust, “is all rot! I’ve dropped eight thousand feet straight down, then opened my parachute. Felt fine all the way down. Breath normal, hearing, eyesight, everything just as now. I tell you it was swell! Like diving off a high board into water, only there was no splash, and no chill. You don’t know what I’m offering you. It will give you a fresh glimpse of life.
 
227
“Besides,” he added after a moment, “you have been hanging around this dirty, noisy, crime-ridden city too long. You need a glimpse of the way life may be lived in plain comfort and peace.”
 
There was more talk and still more explaining. But in the end it was agreed that Johnny was to accompany Curlie on his flight and that, weather permitting, there should be a parachute jump with Johnny in the harness the very next day.
CHAPTER XXVII  THE CREAKING STAIRS
 The cackling of geese saved Rome. A spider by his patience once gave the immortal Bruce the courage needed to win a great victory. Even a mouse may cause a deal of disturbance; Joyce Mills was to discover this on the very night that Johnny and Curlie sat planning their flight.
 
That night she visited the camp of the Bolsheviks. In spite of all that Johnny had said, she still believed that these radicals who were bent on destroying the present form of government in America had robbed the Air Mail.
 
229
“They are shrewd people,” she told herself. “They have members, yes, and spies, in every corner of our land. They were expecting the package. The American Secret Service men learned of its arrival. They had planned to seize it the moment it arrived in this city. What was to hinder the radical spies from finding out that the Secret Service men were after their Russian Crown jewels? What more natural than that they make a bold attempt to re-take the jewels before it was too late?”
 
Thus she reasoned as she made her way alone down the city street that led to the radical center.
 
As she neared the place she shuddered a little. She had attended many of these meetings, and yet the thought of them always affected her in the same way. “As if I had seen a snake in the grass,” she told herself.
 
The building occupied by this radical group was long and low. A one-storied structure, it ran the length of the block, but extended back from the street only about sixty feet.
 
During a great fair there had been many small shops there. After the fair, the store-rooms had been transformed into cheap studios. Here musicians of a sort and artists who painted futuristic daubs and other strange distortions of art lived.
 
230
In one of these buildings lived Brother Krosky. It was in his studio that the brethren of his set met.
 
His studio was divided into two rooms, a large front room and a very secret back room. Besides these, there was a cubbyhole of a place where one prepared a meal.
 
Many times Joyce Mills had been admitted to the front room. There, in uncomfortable chairs, over very weak tea, all sorts of people, young students with bright, simple faces, old artists with long hair, middle-aged women with clicking false teeth, and many others mouthed big words and looking wise as owls proceeded to solve all the problems of a great nation at a single sitting.
 
231
They had interested Joyce a little and had often amused her. But now she was in deadly earnest. She had never been in that secret back room. To-night, whether invited or not, she meant to go in. For to this room, she knew right well, a certain little group of dark and gloomy-faced individuals including Brother Krosky retired at a rather late hour to discuss matters of weight and importance. The subjects talked of so freely in the outer room were of a general nature, the discussions rather vague. She guessed that in the back room all high sounding talk ceased and the brethren “got down to brass tacks.”
 
“If the package of jewels is still missing from their treasure house, there is sure to be some discussion regarding it. And that is exactly what I want to hear,” she told herself.
 
So, when the hour had grown late and the tea very thin indeed, she seized upon a moment when a certain brother held the others spellbound with his eloquent discussion of the rights of the proletariat, to slip through the door into the secret chamber. She was more than a little frightened at first. The place was completely dark. How was she to find a place of hiding?
 
Fortune favored her, for almost at once her hand came into contact with a long davenport. At once she dropped on her knees to feel beneath.
 
“Just room,” she breathed. “Glad I’m thin as a rail.”
 
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Ten seconds later found her flat on her stomach beneath that davenport, waiting patiently for secret matters to transpire.
 
* * * * * * * *
 
At this same hour a plainly dressed youth was preparing to enter a dingy brick building in an unlovely section of the great city. With his hand on the knob, he glanced right and left. As if apprehensive of being followed, he lingered on the threshold.
 
Seeing no one, he disappeared quickly within. At once there came the sound of a key being turned in a lock.
 
This ceremony performed, he proceeded in a leisurely manner up seven flights of grimy, unscrubbed wooden stairs to a small room beneath the eaves.
 
This youth was none other than the one of the burning eyes—the one who, having been introduced to Johnny Thompson by “The Ferret,” had taken him for an eight mile walk with no apparent reason except that he wished Johnny to know that hundreds of thousands of honest people lived in the city. To-night his eyes appeared to shine in the dark.
 
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That he had reason for apprehension on this particular night might easily have been discovered by anyone who chanced to linger near that street doorway. Hardly had the boy’s footsteps died away than a short, dark individual, whose features were all but hidden by a turned-up collar and a pulled down cap, moved stealthily toward the same door.
 
Having applied an ear to the keyhole, he remained motionless for the space of sixty seconds. After that he tried the door. Finding it locked, he produced a prodigious bunch of keys. He studied them critically for a moment, and then selecting three, applied the first of them to the keyhole.
 
With a grunt of disapproval, he discarded this to try the second. No better result. The third did the trick. The lock clicked, the door swung open. More silent than a mouse, the man slipped inside.
 
“Always,” he whispered, “it is the third one.”
 
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Sitting down on the first step he removed his shoes. Having tied the strings together, he threw them over his shoulder. After that, with no sound at all save the occasional creak of a board that roused him to silent profanity, he ascended the seven flights of stairs.
 
Arrived at the last landing, he paused to listen. Like those of certain wild animals, his ears appeared to rise to the sound that came from within.
 
Some one was talking; yet, when the youth had entered he had found no one there. The room had no other entrance. No words could be distinguished. Still, by the manner in which the speaker went steadily, endlessly on and on, one might have judged that he was deeply in earnest.
 
The “Spy”—for such was the name given to him long ago by the underworld—listened at the keyhole but for a single moment. Then, cocking his head on one side, he twisted his face into a smile that was a horrible thing to see and uttered a sound half aloud:
 
“Uh huh! Uh huh!”
 
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The sound coming through his nose resembled nothing quite so much as the grunt of a satisfied pig. He repeated it once again:
 
“Uh huh!”
 
Then, turning, he crept noiselessly down the stairs.
 
At the first landing he paused to rub his hands and mutter aloud:
 
“Five grand! Five thousand dollars. And so easy. So easy!”
 
As if the thing pleased him immensely, he paused at each landing to repeat this little ceremony, which in the darkness resembled an obeisance to some ancient god of evil.
 
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The “Spy” belonged to the underworld. He was by nature a spy. Never in his whole life had he committed a crime, as we think of crimes. He had never snatched a purse, robbed a safe, nor held a man up on the street. Yet he had assisted in many such events, and always for pay. The “Spy” had but one god. That was money. He had but one talent; that was for spying. He never sold his services to the city or the State. All his life he had worked for evil doers. When a bank was to be robbed, the “Spy” looked into all such matters as burglar alarms, late working clerks and watchmen. It was the same with a payroll holdup. He smoothed the way. And always, as I have said, for pay.
 
The creatures of the underworld did not love him. They hated and despised him; yet, because of his art of spying, they used him. The officers of the law feared and hated him. Gladly would they have flung him into jail. But until now they had found no charge against him.
 
Now, as it would seem, he was embarked upon an enterprise of no inconsiderable importance. His fee was to be five thousand dollars. A tidy sum. A year’s pay for a bright and capable man. Yet, by the mere climbing of seven flights of stairs he considered it earned.
 
There are times when that which seems earned is not really earned at all. By labor and pain man earns his bread. In this case, as we shall see, the pain outweighed the labor.
 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII  TWO ANKLES AND A SCREAM
 Joyce Mills waited long in her uncomfortable place beneath the long davenport in the secret chamber of Brother Krosky. Some very open-mouthed and big-eyed students from a near-by university were eager to hear a certain brother direct from Russia tell his philosophy of life, and he was quite as eager to talk. So the slim, muscular, nervous girl beneath the davenport eased her cramped muscles and steadied her jumpy nerves as best she could and patiently awaited events.
 
At last Brother Krosky closed the front door behind the last student, and accompanied by four ponderous gentlemen and two equally ponderous women, retired to the back room.
 
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Joyce fairly held her breath as they entered. There was, however, little need for that. Brother Krosky produced a dark bottle which decidedly did not contain weak tea. There was a clinking of glasses, and after that a babble of voices.
 
“That black bottle loosed their tongues,” the girl thought with an inward groan. “Now it will be another hour before they settle down to business. By that time I’ll be so like a mummy that I shan’t be able to move.”
 
Move? A thought struck her squarely. How was she to get out of this place, anyway? How did she know the brothers wouldn’t sleep in this very room?
 
Had there been some little black imp about he would doubtless have whispered in her ear:
 
“You’d be surprised!”
 
There was no imp about. But a creature much more real was. Suddenly she felt something touch her ankle. With great difficulty she held perfectly still and did not utter a sound.
 
“What was that?” She shuddered.
 
Her nerves steadied again. “Old imagination at work again,” she told herself. “Too much tea.”
 
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To get her mind away from unpleasant speculations, she fixed her thoughts on her surroundings. Before her, easily within reach, were two pairs of fat ankles. The women of the party had chosen the davenport as their seat.
 
From the way the shadows flickered, she guessed that candles were being used to give the place “atmosphere.” From the position of these shadows on the floor, she guessed that the candles rested on a small table directly before the worthy ladies.
 
Little did she dream how these facts were to serve her later.
 
“Ladies and gentlemen!” Brother Krosky beat on the table with his fist. “We have gathered here to discuss matters of grave importance.” A hush fell over the room. He rose heavily, crossed the floor unsteadily and closed and locked the outer door.
 
Joyce felt her heart sink. The trap was growing tighter.
 
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“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began again, “on the twentieth of last month there left Moscow a very precious package. The Third International expected great things from this priceless package.”
 
A murmur, half assent, half admiration, followed.
 
“It arrived in New York. It left New York two days later. Sent by a trusted brother, it was insured for one thousand dollars.”
 
Once more a murmur.
 
Joyce was listening breathlessly. Her nerves were also at work. They reported that some moving object, like the priceless package, was making progress. Starting at her ankle, it had passed up to her knee, then to her thigh. It had made a successful passage over the rocky ridge that was her spinal column.
 
She had guessed what this creature was. All her life, from the time of faintest recollection, she had feared a mouse. Gangsters, thieves, hoodlums of all sorts, held no terror for her. But a mouse! The blood was frozen in her veins. She was a mummy indeed. But not quite.
 
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“Ladies and gentlemen,” the sonorous voice of Brother Krosky continued, “that package began its journey to this city.”
 
Ah, at last, here was the story! But no. At this instant there came an audible gasp.
 
The ladies stared. The gentlemen stared. Krosky stared. Whence had come that sound!
 
Joyce could have told them. It had come from her lips. The mouse had leaped from her shoulder to her ear. That she could not stand.
 
She knew what the result would be: a search. A search! And then? There must be no search.
 
She was a person of action. Those tempting fat ankles were still before her. In front of them were the table and the candles.
 
Timing herself exactly, she seized an ankle in each hand and screamed.
 
The result was more than she had expected. The ladies screamed and plunged headlong. The table went over. The davenport went over. The candles went out. And in the darkness that followed, Joyce unlocked the door and vanished.
 
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Ten minutes later found her quietly strolling down a path in the park.
 
“It is astonishing how still a place like this can be at night,” she told herself.
 
“But what rotten luck I’ve had!” she exclaimed a moment later. “All that fuss and I really found out nothing. I wonder what earthly use a mouse could be put to anyway? If I knew of any I’d buy half a dozen white ones and put them to work, just for revenge.”
 
* * * * * * * *
 
If you have read much in the ancient writings you will recall the story of the wilderness prophet who lived on locusts and wild honey. You will remember, too, that when he was asked who he was, he replied: “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness.”
 
A queen heard of that voice and became very angry because of its utterances. Which all goes to prove that even in those days, a voice had influence and power. How much more so to-day, when a voice on the air, sounding over thousands of miles, spans oceans, continents, and speaks to millions!
 
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The Voice, with which Johnny had become so familiar, continued its nightly messages to the people of the great city. And with each passing night the anger of some, the approval of many, grew. It became no infrequent occurrence for people to overhear on street car, in shop, factory, or store, the words: “Did you hear him? Did you hear the Voice last night? Isn’t he grand? Doesn’t he speak the truth?”
 
Such was the enthusiasm of many. Many there were, too, who attempted to discover his identity; but all in vain.
 
Some there were, sober minded ones of long experience, who shook their heads sadly and murmured low:
 
“He speaks truth. But it is rash. The world has never loved its prophets. It stoned them in olden times. What less can be expected to-day?”
 
But all unheeding, the Voice went steadily, fearlessly on.
 
CHAPTER XXIX  JOYCE FRAMES ONE
 
 
For Johnny, the next day was one of experiences both fantastic and thrilling. He had ridden in an airplane many times. But a parachute—that was something different. So, too, was a glider. But Johnny was not the one who rode in the glider.
 
They rose from the earth, those two good pals, Johnny and Curlie, just as the sun was putting the last golden touch to the fleecy clouds of morning.
 
“What could be grander!” Johnny thought to himself as they glided up—up—up until they were in the very midst of a glowing mist.
 
They emerged to go skimming away toward a larger, denser cloud that seemed a huge pillow suspended on high.
 
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“If we hit it,” Johnny thought, “it seems that we must bury ourselves and be sent bounding back like a rubber ball.”
 
He was, of course, only using his imagination. He was not surprised in the least as they passed through it, to emerge once more into the glorious sunshine of a new day.
 
It was no time at all, however, before he found himself suspecting that he had fallen into a day dream from which he could not awaken.
 
They were some time reaching the next cloud. As they approached it he seemed to see a dark object moving along its edge. At first he thought this was a trick of the imagination. As they came nearer, he was sure that it was not.
 
“How odd!” he exclaimed. “Can’t be a bird. Too big. Can’t be an airplane. Doesn’t move fast enough. Even if its motor were stopped it would sink rapidly. But there it moves on like a bird, soaring, soaring always. And we must be all of five thousand feet up.” He fairly gasped with astonishment.
 
This was as nothing compared to what followed shortly.
 
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As they came rapidly nearer and Johnny could make out a figure at the wheel, he concluded that this was one of those new machines that had recently come to be so much the thing—a glider.
 
“But five thousand feet in the air!” He was truly astonished. “Could only reach that height by tying on to an airplane. And that’s forbidden. Too dangerous.”
 
A final shock was to follow. As they neared the glider he recognized the figure seated serenely there. A tall, gaunt figure it was. A long gray coat was draped about its body. A gray cap hid its eyes. Its gray beard shone in the sun.
 
“The Gray Shadow!” he gasped.
 
As if he had heard these words, which was not possible, of course, with the thundering of the motors, the lone glider turned his machine directly about and at once lost himself in the great white morning cloud.
 
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“It is strange,” Johnny mused, as they went thundering on their way. “That person, or spirit, or whatever he may be, appears to haunt my path. I cannot escape him. On the carnival grounds, in a tunnel, at the shack, in the air, it is always the same.
 
“And after all,” he philosophized, “what’s the use of wanting to escape him. No harm has come from his presence. Good may yet come. Who knows?”
 
And in this last he was more accurate than he knew.
 
* * * * * * * *
 
Joyce Mills had arrived at her room none the worse for her experience with the sofa, two pairs of fat ankles and a mouse.
 
She lay awake long that night, wondering about the missing package, the brethren of the radical cult, the man with the missing ear, Johnny’s Gray Shadow, the Voice of the air, and many other more or less mysterious persons and things.
 
For all this, she woke with the rising sun ready for one more day at the store. And an eventful day it was to be.
 
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She punched the clock promptly at the hour of nine, filled in the cards of her salesbook—which was, as we have said, only a blind to hide her real mission at the store—and then stood waiting, as it seemed, for a customer, but in reality with eyes wide open looking for trouble.
 
This morning trouble came sooner than she expected. But it was, you might say, trouble of her own making.
 
She had wandered out of the book section for a moment and drifted into the store’s little world of rare perfumes, when suddenly a man caught her attention. He was leaning on a counter, staring apparently at nothing. The man had a familiar look. Where had she seen him before? She racked her brain in vain. She took a turn to the right for a better view. Then, with the force of a blow, it came to her. At this point she saw the other side of the man’s face. On this side there was no ear.
 
“He’s my man!” she fairly hissed. “But how am I to get him?”
 
Joyce was a fast thinker. In a moment she had formed a plan.
 
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Before her on the counter stood a vial of perfume. The price was, she knew, fifteen dollars. The girl at the counter turned to wait on a customer. In that instant the vial of perfume vanished. So, too, did our young lady detective. She brushed lightly past the man who still leaned on the counter staring at nothing.
 
When she returned a moment later a sturdy, middle-aged man accompanied her—the first assistant house detective.
 
“Are you sure?” he demanded in an undertone.
 
“Positive.”
 
“But perfume!”
 
“For his best girl. Can’t you see?” Her tone showed impatience. “It’s in his left hand coat pocket.”
 
“Oh! All right.”
 
The detective stepped up to the man leaning on the counter. “Sorry,” he half apologized, “but we can’t have this sort of thing!” He deftly extracted a vial of rare perfume from the man’s pocket.
 
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Turning his head about as if he had not heard aright and staring at the bottle of perfume, the man stammered:
 
“Do—do you think I’d take that stuff?”
 
“Of course you would!” Joyce Mills broke in almost fiercely. “You’d take anything. See here, you!” She fixed her burning black eyes upon him. “Do you remember Newton Mills, the New York City detective?”
 
The man shrank back.
 
“Well, I’m his daughter! And he’s here in this city. Now, tell this gentleman again that you wouldn’t steal perfume.”
 
“It—it’s all right,” the man with the missing ear stammered. “I’ll go with you.”
 
“Let me have him,” Joyce Mills whispered in the detective’s ear.
 
“But that’s not the custom. You’re only a slip of a girl.”
 
“Let me have him,” she insisted. Her voice was filled with a fierce determination.
 
“It’s all right, mister,” the other broke in. “I’ll go with her. Give you my word of honor.”
 
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“Your word of honor!” scoffed the detective. “Oh, all right, take him,” he said, turning to Joyce. “And take this,” he slipped a small revolver into her jacket pocket, “and keep your eyes open!”
 
“My eyes and my ears.” The girl actually laughed as she marched away with her prisoner.
 
“You framed me!” the man grumbled, as they reached the outer door.
 
“Yes,” she replied, “I framed you. But there’s a reason. You’ll see!”
 
“You don’t know—”
 
“I know plenty. Come on! Let’s go.”
 
They left the store and lost themselves in the throng that milled along the busiest street in the world.
CHAPTER XXX  FROM OUT THE CLOUDS
 Johnny Thompson saw no more of the mysterious Gray Shadow among the clouds that morning. He was soon enough to forget all about him, for fresh adventure lay before him.
 
Hardly had they left the Shadow and his cloud behind than he began thinking of his promise to Curlie. He had agreed to drop from the sky and to play the part of good fairy to a crippled child.
 
Johnny was very fond of small children, crippled children most of all. But as the plane sped on high in the air, as they came nearer and nearer to the place where Curlie must turn and give him the signal to prepare for the leap, he found himself wishing that the sky lay close to the ground where one might step off at any time.
 
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“Well,” he sighed at last, “there must always be a first time.
 
“And,” he groaned a moment later, “if anything goes wrong, the first is last and the last is first.”
 
At that he began thinking of Curlie’s instructions: “Walk out on the wing. Watch your balance. Play you are on a diving board. Make a dive. Count five. Pull the cord. The parachute will do the rest. Only, when you come close to the earth, see that your knees are bent. Don’t land stiff-legged. That’s dangerous.”
 
Buttoned inside of Johnny’s jacket was a doll. Wrapped about the doll was the marked money.
 
“Anyway,” he sighed, “I’ll be through with that money. They’ll never suspect this trick of ours. And they’ll never find it. This is once in my life when I do the Robin Hood.”
 
Hardly had he thought this through than Curlie turned his head about to nod. He held up three fingers.
 
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“Three fingers. Three minutes!” Johnny’s mind went into a whirl. Three minutes of sunshine and fleecy clouds. Three minutes of glorious freedom and life. And after that?
 
He rose stiffly to his place. As he put out a hand to steady himself it seemed that he was stiff as a wooden soldier.
 
“What nonsense!” He got a grip on himself. “Gotta go through! Lots of fellows have.”
 
At this he felt better. He moved carefully a little way out on the wing, looked to the straps about his body, allowed his eyes to circle the sky; then, putting his hands together, he made a perfect dive.
 
At once he was shocked because there was no shock. He was going down. But what a glorious sensation! Like real flying, a bird’s way.
 
“One. Two. Three. Four. Five!”
 
He pulled the cord. More gliding downward. A slight shock that told him the parachute was open; then the earth came up to meet him.
 
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At first a blurred impression, it resolved itself into fields and pastures, an orchard, a farmhouse, and last of all, a small girl dressed in red.
 
Johnny came down standing. He ran a few steps. His parachute folded up. He lurched a step or two, then stood still not thirty feet from a very much surprised little girl who fairly danced, in spite of her crutches.
 
“Where did you come from?” she demanded. “I looked, and you were not there. Then I looked again and you were. How funny!”
 
“Yes,” said Johnny, “it is strange. But then, this is a strange world.
 
“I came down from the air to bring you a doll. Curlie sent it—Curlie Carson.”
 
“Curlie Carson! A doll!”
 
“Yes,” said Johnny. “She shuts her eyes when she sleeps. And she can talk a little. But the best part is her dress. See! It is all made of real money! There is another dress underneath. So tell your daddy to take off this green dress and use it buying things for you.”
 
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“Oh!” The little girl stared. She did not understand all this. But she took the doll.
 
“Her father may not understand it either,” Johnny told himself. “Guess I’ll leave it that way, at that.”
 
“Good-bye, little girl. Have a good time.”
 
He gathered up his parachute and started for the road.
 
“Aren’t you going back into the air?” she asked.
 
“Not to-day. Some other time.”
 
He climbed over the fence, caught a ride on a passing truck, and was gone.
 
That night there was surprise and great rejoicing in the little unpainted farmhouse that lay beneath the great Air Mail route to New York. And many were the happy days that followed.
 
It is safe to say that Greasy Thumb and his gang never guessed the final disposition of their ill-gotten gain—their marked money.
CHAPTER XXXI  THE TRAIL LEADS NORTH
 Johnny Thompson was back at the shack in the city. Drew Lane and Tom Howe were there. So too was “The Ferret,” and two heavy-set Federal men. But the center of attention was a certain slim miss in a plain, dark gray suit—Joyce Mills.
 
“I have the whole story,” she said impressively, as the last man to arrive drew up a chair. “The trail leads north to the woods and lakes of Michigan.”
 
“Did he tell you where the loot is hidden?” It was a Federal man who spoke.
 
“He did not, because he could not. He didn’t know. He gave the package to another man.”
 
“And where is he now?”
 
Joyce Mills shrugged her shoulders. “How should I know? In the city somewhere.”
 
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“You let him go!” The Federal man’s tone held guarded scorn.
 
“I did. On his own word that he would not leave the city, nor get in touch with those in the north woods.”
 
“His word!” The Federal man’s scorn was unveiled.
 
“Yes, his word!” The girl’s black eyes flashed. “And if you wish to use the information I have, you will treat me as a lady should be treated!”
 
The Federal man recoiled. For a moment there was silence in the room.
 
“I—I—” The pompous Federal man unbent. “I apologize. Please go on.”
 
“That man,” Joyce Mills said slowly, “the one with one ear gone, was a stool pigeon for my father. My father has things on him that would send him to prison for years or get him shot in twenty-four hours. He told me the whole truth. He did not dare do otherwise. The trail leads north. He does not know where the package is. Those who do are up there. We must get those men.”
 
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Those who listened knew well enough the men she meant; knew, too, that they were dangerous characters. Yet there was not one of them who was not eager to follow her into the forest. For now, at last, they felt themselves close to the end of the trail. Not one of them questioned this slim girl’s statement that she had, in a manner all her own, discovered the whereabouts of the earless one and obtained from him the full story of how Curlie Carson was forced to earth in his Air Mail plane and later robbed of his priceless package. Drew Lane and Tom Howe would be vindicated. They would have a new deal. Curlie Carson’s name would be cleared. The city they loved would be freed from a dangerous band of outlaws.
 
“Lead on!” Drew Lane’s tone was impressive. “We will follow.”
 
So, one by one, with a slim girl in the lead, they filed out of the shack.
 
CHAPTER XXXII  THE PLACE OF RENDEZVOUS
 At an hour after darkness had fallen, had you happened upon a certain rather large cabin on a point of land where many islands and this point form a bay on the shore of Lake Huron, and had you chanced to look through a crack in the rough board shutters, you might have witnessed an impressive sight.
 
The room was large, twice as large as the average living room. It was not ceiled. The single fluttering candle formed grotesque shadows among its rafters of round cedar logs.
 
The place was devoid of furniture. In lieu of a chair, the present occupants had brought in from out of doors blocks of wood, an orange crate and some nail kegs found on the beach.
 
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Seated as they were in a half circle about the candle, with revolvers strapped about waists and rifles across knees, they looked grim and determined.
 
There was Drew Lane with stiff hat still on one side, and Tom Howe, silent as ever. There was “The Ferret,” shrinking into the darkest corner. There were the two over-stout Federal men. There, too, was Johnny, eager and expectant; and close beside him, as if trusting him most of all, as in truth she did, was Joyce Mills. So, for a time, they sat in silence awaiting the zero hour. For directly across the bay about half an hour’s row, was a hunting lodge which was to be the center of their attack.
 
“Do you see this cabin?” The voice of “The Ferret” sounded strange, coming as it did from his dark corner. There was no answer. None was expected. “It has seen much of life, this cabin has. It has known life and death, love and hate, fear and defiance. And now comes the law to claim its humble protection.
 
“It’s a ragged old cabin; yet how many homes have witnessed more of life than it has?
 
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“Do you see those papers pasted close to the peak? They are old. If you climbed up there as I did when I was sort of looking round up here a few weeks ago (I’ve always suspected that lodge over yonder), you’d find that they were printed thirty-five years ago.
 
“It was a homestead cabin, this. Old Heintz Webber, a German, a stolid fellow, took up land and brought a bright young bride here to pine away with loneliness. She died when the child came. He found a hard woman to take her place. The two hard ones reared the child in their hard way. And she came to hate them both. So the cabin which had witnessed death came to witness hate. When she was seventeen she ran away with a man twice her age; not because she loved him, but to get away.
 
“The two hard ones sold out for a hard price. Then the cabin was alone for a long time. A very lonesome place it was, too. The moon looked down over the fir trees as it might over a graveyard. The wild deer—”
 
He broke off short. “What was that?”
 
A curious sound reached their ears. “Covey—covey—covey.”
 
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“Only a porcupine talking to his mate,” Johnny chuckled, “Go on.”
 
“Well, one day a young soldier back from the war saw this place and came to love it as he did the girl he meant to make his wife. He built a rustic porch and covered it with balsam boughs. He made a bed of cedar poles and a table of white birch. And here for one short month they lived, those two, the soldier and his bride. The song-sparrow built his nest in the balsam boughs over the porch and sang them to sleep at night. The sound of waves rushing on the shore mingled with their dreams. The sun over the cedars awakened them. And so this old cabin at last came to witness true love.
 
“But now!” His tone changed. “Now the hour has come. The law must have its turn. And may justice triumph. Come, gentlemen, and you, Miss Joyce, we must be on our way.”
 
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This was the most dramatic moment in Joyce Mills’ life. She had promised Johnny that she would find the man who had snatched the package from Curlie Carson on the dim-lit streets of the city. She had made good. Coming upon him in the very store in which she worked, she had “planted” a bottle of costly perfume on his person by slipping it in his pocket. When she had caused his arrest she had forced him, by telling him she was Newton Mills’ daughter, to confess his part in the affair that had thrown a shadow over Curlie Carson’s life and had placed Drew Lane and Tom Howe practically in retirement.
 
The affair, he had confessed, had been pulled off by Greasy Thumb, Three Fingers and their gang. That gang was now hiding in the far north woods. The priceless package was hidden, he knew not where.
 
So now they were here at the dead of night, prepared to march against an enemy whose numbers they did not know.
 
“Let’s go!” Johnny whispered in her ear. “We’ll get ’em! All bad men are cowards at heart. We’ll get ’em, you’ll see!”
CHAPTER XXXIII  THE SHADOW FALLS
 As long as he lives, Johnny will not forget that ride across the bay. There was no moon. The water was black as ink. They were all crowded into one flat-bottomed boat. A wave would have thrown them all into the lake. But there were no waves. The water was still as the grave. He was crowded in close to Joyce Mills. He could feel her very heart beat. She said nothing but for all that, he knew what she thought. She was thinking of her father; of how he would love to be here, and wondering a bit sadly where he was and if he were living at all.
 
Had she but known!
 
The boat grounded at last quite noiselessly on a sandy shore. A few whispered instructions and they were away single file over a winding moss-padded trail.
 
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At last the lights of the lodge began to shine through the trees. They scattered, circling the place. Weapons in hand, they waited. Came the sharp command of the Federal officer. He called upon those in the lodge to surrender.
 
All that followed will remain forever blurred in Johnny’s memory. A figure rose from the bush to leap at Joyce Mills. Instinctively he sprang at the figure. They went down together. They rolled over and over, fighting hard. For one brief second he was under, pinned down. Cold steel pressed against his temple.
 
“This is the end!” he thought.
 
Then something, a gray shape, came hurtling over him. A shot rang out, something crashed into him. His light went out.
 
He could not have been unconscious more than ten minutes. When he came to, the forest was silent once more. A figure lay beside him, a man with a gray beard, his figure enshrouded in a long gray coat.
 
“The Gray Shadow!” he thought with a start. “At last he is still.”
 
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Joyce Mills was hovering over him. When he sat up dizzily, she gave a sharp cry of joy.
 
Heavy footsteps came crashing through the brush. Drew Lane, Tom Howe and “The Ferret” were there.
 
“What happened?” Drew demanded. “They surrendered tamely enough, old Greasy Thumb and Three Fingers. The Chief was with them and—”
 
“The Chief!” Johnny could not conceal his surprise.
 
“Yes, and his whispering reporter. But what is this? And who are these?”
 
He pointed first to the Gray Shadow; then to a dark form huddled in the weeds.
 
“The Ferret” played the light of his electric torch on the dark huddled form.
 
“That,” he said impressively, “is the Spy—the worst man that ever lived. And he’s done for. Thank God! A bullet in his head.”
 
“And this,” said Johnny, tearing away a fake beard, “is Newton Mills.”
 
As he said this, Joyce Mills threw up her hands to utter a low cry.
 
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“Let’s see!” “The Ferret” crowded in. He played the light on the pale, blood-stained face. He bent over it for an instant.
 
“Some one bring water,” he said in a business-like voice. “It’s only a scalp wound. He’ll be around directly.”
 
Johnny, watching Joyce Mills, admired her more than ever. For, after all, it was her father, the man she loved more than life, who lay there before her. She swayed back and forth once or twice; then turning to Johnny, she said a bit unsteadily, “I hope that we are going to have chicken dinner together in the shack to-morrow, father and Drew, Tom and I.”
 
“Why not in the cabin that has seen love and hate, life and death?” asked Johnny, finding it hard to control his emotions.
 
The hunting lodge was large. When Newton Mills came to, he was comfortably stowed away in one of its many beds. Joyce Mills was left there with him.
 
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The others gathered about a great fireplace. The prisoners, Greasy Thumb and his pal, were not handcuffed. The windows were heavily shuttered from without, and a Federal officer sat on guard at the door.
 
“Nice night,” said Johnny, seating himself beside Drew Lane.
 
Across the fire the Chief scowled at him.
 
A radio was at Johnny’s elbow. He turned the dial.
 
“Just in time to hear the Voice.”
 
“The Ferret” started. The Chief’s scowl deepened. The whispering reporter moved uneasily in his place.
 
* * * * * * * *
 
Meanwhile, Grace Palmer, the college girl, had received a second mysterious letter. It came this time by messenger. It read:
 
“The package you seek is hidden among the rocks of the breakwater on the island, just at the point where it turns from east to north.”
 
She read this with no little astonishment.
 
“The Crown Jewels!” she murmured.
 
She looked at her watch. It was nearly ten o’clock, a moonless night.
 
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For a moment she hesitated, a moment only. Then she went to the telephone.
 
She got Curlie on the wire. He was back from his trip. She read the note.
 
“But would you go there to-night?” he asked.
 
“With you, yes. To-morrow may be too late.”
 
“O.K. Meet me at the west entrance of the 12th Street Station.”
 
“I’ll be there.”
 
She hung up. Five minutes later her car slid out of the driveway and went gliding down the boulevard.
 
CHAPTER XXXIV  THE PASSING OF THE VOICE
 A strangely tense bit of drama was being enacted in that hunting lodge in the north woods.
 
Johnny, you will recall, had turned on the radio. For a space of three minutes they listened to a familiar tune. Then, as Johnny held up his watch, pointing to the hour of ten, the place grew so silent that the far-away throb of an outboard motor seemed strangely loud.
 
“The Voice!” Johnny announced huskily.
 
But the voice did not sound. A moment passed; another and yet another. The silence grew oppressive.
 
Then suddenly a voice boomed out with startling clearness.
 
But what was this! This was not the old familiar voice. And what was it saying?
 
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“We are sorry to announce that there will be no Voice to-night. A terrible thing has happened.”
 
“The Ferret” started from his chair. The Chief and his whispering reporter shrank into the shadows.
 
“The Voice,” the announcer continued, “has been—”
 
At that instant there came a strange sputtering.
 
Something had gone wrong. Was it the distant station or the radio at Johnny’s elbow? He turned the dial and at once there came to the ears of the listeners the faint, mournful, melodious notes of a pipe organ.
 
Ever endowed with a sense of what is fitting in life, Johnny allowed this second station to continue its sweet, sad dirge.
 
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“It is for the Voice,” he told himself. “He is dead.” At once a feeling of infinite sadness came over him. The Voice was dead. Little enough he knew about this strange person and yet he had come to love him, as had hundreds of thousands of others. “He was young,” he whispered, “and now he is dead. The beautiful world with its sunshine and flowers, its singing birds and laughing children is lost to him forever.”
 
That every person in the room shared his opinion, he did not doubt. It was a strange situation. Perhaps the very persons who had plotted the murder, yes, and paid well for it, were in this very room. Greasy Thumb and his confederates had committed deeds as evil in the past. They appeared to cower now.
 
Then, too, there was “The Ferret.” He had always displayed an extraordinary interest in the Voice. What did he know of him? Was he possessed of secrets hidden from the others? Certainly at this moment he was behaving strangely. The look on his face was a terrible thing to see. Yet his manner was controlled. Though small of stature and mean of feature, “The Ferret” was every inch a man. He had a brain that could think, a heart that could feel, and a will that was ever in action.
 
“Chief,” he said as he advanced to the corner, “you are going to resign! To-night! Now!”
 
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In his righteous indignation, the little man appeared literally to tower. He pointed at a phone.
 
The Chief, moving heavily toward the instrument, called for long distance and asked for a number. He waited while the clock ticked three minutes away, then mumbled some words too low to be understood, and returned to his place. An hour later every radio station in operation, and all the late newsboys were announcing to the astonished city that the Chief of Police had resigned.
 
“As for you,” said “The Ferret,” turning his attention to the reporter, “you are going to vanish. You may choose your own method. I’ve enough on you for your double-crossing, your play between honest work and the worst form of double dealing, to put you away for ten years. But you’ve a good mother. I would spare her. The Canadian border is but twenty miles away.” He pointed toward the door.
 
Gone was the smirking smile of the reporter who had turned traitor, as he shuffled toward the door.
 
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“Do you think the Chief has been crooked?” Johnny whispered, as “The Ferret” returned to his place.
 
“It is not for me to say.” The little man sank deep into his chair. “The city officials can find out. It is their duty to find out.
 
“All I know is that he held up his hand and in solemn oath swore to protect my boy and every other honest boy in our great city. And he failed! Failed!”
 
“You—your boy?”
 
“Yes. My boy. Didn’t you know? The fine boy I introduced to you that night, who took you for that long walk—that was my only son. None ever had higher ideals and nobler ambition than he. He was the Voice. And now he is—”
 
At that instant Johnny held up a hand. A moment before he had turned the dial back. A sound now came from the radio. The same booming voice sounded again:
 
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“Ladies and gentlemen, you must pardon the interruption. A thunderstorm crippled our power station. We were off the air for a time. As we were about to say, some time back, there will be no message from the Voice to-night, nor, indeed, on any other night.”
 
“The Ferret” sank lower in his chair.
 
“As I was saying,” the announcer went on, “a terrible thing has happened. An attempt was made upon this brave young man’s life, he who was known as the Voice. Fortunately, this was an unsuccessful attempt. His wounds are of little consequence. The assailant—”
 
At that “The Ferret” sprang up with a cry:
 
“He lives! He lives! Thank God, he lives!”
 
The assailant, Johnny gathered from what followed, had been captured by a private detective employed to guard the Voice.
 
“The man who had betrayed the brave youth, the man known to the underworld only as the Spy, is reported killed in the north woods.”
 
“Yes, thank God! He is!” “The Ferret” said fervently.
 
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“In the future,” the announcer went on, “there will be no Voice. Those who have promoted this noble undertaking feel that the young man, whose name must remain unknown, should not further risk his life.
 
“So now it is up to you, fellow citizens,” he went on earnestly, “to carry forward the work which he has so nobly begun!”
 
“They will!” said “The Ferret” fervently. “They will! This is the dawn of a new day.”
 
“And for my friends, Drew Lane and Tom Howe, there will be a new deal,” said Johnny.
 
“Yes,” said “The Ferret,” “a new deal; an opportunity to use the talents they possess in the service of their city.”
CHAPTER XXXV  GOOD NEWS
 At midnight Johnny received a long distance call from the city. Curlie was on the wire. He and Grace Palmer, following the tip from the mysterious note, had gone to the breakwater and there retrieved the registered package with its seal unbroken.
 
“And they are all there, the jewels,” Grace Palmer broke in over his shoulder. “The little diamond and platinum train and all the rest. And there will be a reward, such a reward! Oh, how big! And we’ll share it, we four, Curlie, Joyce and you and I.”
 
* * * * * * * *
 
“So it was you, Greasy Thumb, and your gang!” “The Ferret” said, after receiving the good news. “It was you, and not the radicals, who robbed the Air Mail! And I haven’t the least doubt that it was your money the dead Spy gripped in his hand! Blood money for betraying my boy!
 
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“Oh, you’ll get your due now! We’ll have you before an honest judge. And the world will not see you again until your hair is white.”
 
Once more he lapsed into silence.
 
And so, before a great fire, they spent the night, until dawn and a strong power boat came together to light the waters and to bear guards and prisoners back to the city.
 
* * * * * * * *
 
Evening of that day found three people standing before the cabin that had known love and hate, life and death. There was a gray haired man and a boy. And between them a slim, dark-eyed girl. Johnny, Joyce and Newton Mills.
 
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Having recovered from his injuries, save for a scalp wound that would soon heal, the veteran detective had told, amid laughter and tears, how he had concealed his identity under a gray coat and whiskers so that he might better play the part of protector to his young friend, Johnny.
 
The affair in the tunnel had been a high spot. He it had been who had warned Johnny and saved him from drowning.
 
The affair of the glider among the clouds was merely the result of a freak of fancy.
 
He had come alone to the north woods and had arrived just in time to save the boy from the murderous assault of the Spy.
 
“Who,” asked Joyce as the three stood watching the sun go down over the bay, “wrote those notes to Grace Palmer?”
 
“No one knows,” was Johnny’s reply. “Perhaps none of us ever will know. Some enemy of Greasy Thumb, perhaps. Every bad man has his enemies. And they are, more often than not, his undoing.”
 
For a time after that there was silence. Then, as she laid a hand gently on a shoulder of each of her companions, the girl spoke again:
 
“When do we go back?”
 
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“We don’t go back.” Johnny’s voice was husky. “We go on into the silent north, perhaps. It may be that we shall find a land where men are just and merciful and kind.”
 
“Is there such a land?” she whispered.
 
“Who knows, unless he goes to see?”
 
Did they go on? Or did they go back? If you wish to know, you will find the answer in our next book entitled: Riddle of the Storm.

The End