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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 43677 ***
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+      Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
+
+
+
+
+
+A Mystery Story for Boys
+
+WHISPERS AT DAWN
+
+or The Eye
+
+by
+
+ROY J. SNELL
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+The Reilly & Lee Co.
+Chicago
+
+Copyright, 1934
+by the Reilly & Lee Co.
+Printed in the U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+_AUTHOR'S NOTE:_
+
+
+_Fantastic as the happenings recorded in this book may at times seem,
+they are, nevertheless, a fairly exact recording of the feats of magic
+already accomplished by the electrical wizards of our time._
+
+                                                           Roy J. Snell.
+
+
+
+
+                                CONTENTS
+
+
+  CHAPTER                                                           PAGE
+  I Three Black Boxes                                                 11
+  II Something Rather Terrible                                        28
+  III The Battle                                                      39
+  IV Back in the Old Shack                                            48
+  V Past and Present                                                  57
+  VI A Store in Chicago                                               62
+  VII The Unholy Five                                                 73
+  VIII Down a Beam of Light                                           78
+  IX Cut Adrift                                                       85
+  X A Runaway Captured                                                92
+  XI A Room of Strange Magic                                         103
+  XII The Whisperer Returns                                          109
+  XIII So Long as God Gives Us Breath                                124
+  XIV A Human Spider                                                 134
+  XV A Living Picture                                                145
+  XVI A Strange Treasure                                             155
+  XVII "The Eye"                                                     164
+  XVIII The Trap Is Sprung                                           171
+  XIX A Whisper from Afar                                            183
+  XX The Sky Slider                                                  193
+  XXI Christmas Eve                                                  204
+  XXII The Warning                                                   214
+  XXIII A Promise That Is a Threat                                   221
+  XXIV A Strange Victory                                             231
+  XXV The Whisperer Talks                                            240
+
+
+
+
+                            WHISPERS AT DAWN
+                              or _The Eye_
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER I
+                           THREE BLACK BOXES
+
+
+As Johnny Thompson put out a hand to ring the door bell of that
+brownstone house facing the deserted grounds of the Chicago Century of
+Progress and the lake, the door opened without a sound. He looked up,
+expecting to see a face, hear a voice, perhaps. The voice came: "Step
+inside, please." But there was no face. The space before him was empty.
+
+A little puzzled, he stepped into the narrow passageway. Instantly in a
+slow, silent manner that seemed ominous, the door closed behind him.
+
+The place was all but dark. Certainly there was no lamp; only a curious
+blue illumination everywhere. A little frightened, he put out a hand to
+grip the door knob. It did not give to his touch. Indeed it was immovable
+as the branch of an oak.
+
+"Locked!" he muttered. Then for a space of seconds his heart went wild.
+From the wall to the right of him had flashed a pencil of white light.
+Like an accusing finger it fell upon something on the opposite wall. And
+that something was an eye, an eye in the wall,--or so it seemed to the
+boy. And even as he stared, with lips parted, breath coming short and
+quick, the thing appeared to wink.
+
+"The eye!" he whispered, and again, "the eye!"
+
+For a space of many seconds, like a bird charmed by a snake, he stood
+staring at that eye.
+
+And then cold terror seized him. In the corner of the place he had
+detected some movement. It was off to his right. Whirling about, he found
+himself staring at--of all the terrible things in that eerie light--a
+skeleton.
+
+And even as he stared, ready to sink to the floor in sheer terror, the
+skeleton appeared to move, to tremble, to open and close its fleshless
+hands.
+
+He watched the thing for ten terrible seconds. Then a thought struck him
+with the force of a blow.
+
+"That--" he whispered as if afraid the thing might hear, "that is me!
+That is my own skeleton!"
+
+Of this there could be no doubt. For, as he lifted his right hand, the
+skeleton did the same. As he bobbed his head, the thing before him
+bobbed. And if further evidence were lacking, the thing had a crooked
+third finger, and so had he.
+
+Then, as if ashamed of being discovered, the terrifying image vanished
+and the eye in the wall blinked out. Instantly the door at the inner end
+of the hall opened. There, standing in a flood of mellow light, was a
+girl of about his own age. She was smiling at him and shaking her mass of
+golden hair.
+
+"Come in," she welcomed. "But--but you seem so frightened!" She stared at
+him for a second.
+
+"Oh!" There was consternation in her tone. "Felix left that terrible
+thing on! How can you ever forgive us?
+
+"But please do come in." Her tone changed. "You came about Father's
+books? How generous of you. Poor Father! His head is so full of things!
+He is always forgetting."
+
+Johnny stepped inside. The door closed itself noiselessly.
+
+"What kind of a house of magic is this?" he asked himself. "Doors close
+themselves. Eyes gleam at you from the wall. You see your own skeleton in
+the dark!"
+
+The room he had entered seemed ordinary enough--plain furniture, a
+davenport, chairs, a table. But the light! He stared about him. The room
+was filled with mellow light, yet there was not a single lamp to be seen.
+
+"Comes from everywhere and nowhere, that light," he whispered to himself.
+
+"Let me take your hat." The girl held out her hand. She seemed a nice
+sort of girl, rather boyish. When she walked it was with a long stride,
+as if she were wearing knickers on a hike.
+
+"I--I'll call Father." She marched across the floor.
+
+Johnny started from his chair, then settled back. Had he caught the gleam
+of an eye blinking from the wall? He thought so. But now it had vanished.
+
+The girl was still three paces from the door at the back of the room
+when, with a silence that was startling, that door swung open.
+
+Johnny looked closely. The hall beyond was lighted. There was no one to
+be seen.
+
+As if this was quite the usual thing, the girl marched straight through
+the open door. At once it closed behind her.
+
+Johnny was alone.
+
+If you have followed his career in our other books you will know that
+Johnny is no coward. He had been in tight places more than once. Persons
+much older than he had said he bore up under strain remarkably well. For
+all that, this place gave him the creeps. That it was not in the best
+part of the city he knew well enough. This brownstone house, as we have
+already said, was just across from the deserted Century of Progress
+grounds, and faced the lake. Back of it were shabby tenements and dingy
+shops where second-hand goods were sold and where auctioneers hung out
+their red flags.
+
+"Rather senseless, the whole business," he mumbled to himself. "Fellow
+gets into all sorts of strange messes trying to fight other people's
+battles for them. And yet--"
+
+His thoughts broke off. A small red light like an evil eye flashed above
+the outer door, then blinked out. A faint buzzing sound came from a
+clock-like affair on the wall. Then all was silent as before.
+
+"The professor's house," he muttered. "Queer place! Why did I come?
+Couldn't help it really. It was the boxes--the three black boxes."
+
+Ah yes, those three black boxes! First they had intrigued him, then they
+had aroused his interest and sympathy. After that there was just nothing
+to it. He had invested all but his last dollar in those three black
+boxes. Now he was trying to get his money back and do someone else a good
+turn as well.
+
+"But it seems," he whispered to himself, "there are dragons in the way,
+gleaming eyes, skeletons. All--"
+
+The red light flashed again, three times. The clock buzzed louder.
+
+"Wish she'd come."
+
+He rose to pace slowly back and forth across this room of many mysteries.
+
+It was truly strange, he thought, the course of events leading up to this
+moment. After a considerable stay in the wilds of Michigan he had
+returned to the city of Chicago. On his arrival he had gone at once to
+the shack. The shack, on Grand Avenue, as you will know if you have read
+"Arrow of Fire," was occupied by Drew Lane, a keen young city detective,
+and such of his friends as happened to be about.
+
+To his great disappointment, Johnny had found the shades down, the door
+locked. "Must be away," he told himself. At once he found himself all but
+overcome by a feeling of loneliness. Who can blame him? What is lonelier
+than a city where one has not a single friend?
+
+Johnny had other friends in Chicago. Doubtless he would chance upon them
+in time. For the present he was completely alone.
+
+"Be rather amusing," he told himself, "to try going it alone. Wonder how
+long it will be before someone will slap me on the back and shout,
+'Hello, Johnny Thompson!'"
+
+Having recalled the fact that at noon on every Tuesday of the year a
+rather unusual auction was held, he had decided to dispel his loneliness
+by mingling in the motley mob that attended that auction.
+
+There for an hour he had watched without any great interest the
+auctioneer's hammer rise and fall as he sold a bicycle, a box of clocks,
+a damaged coffin, an artificial arm, three trunks with contents, if any,
+two white puppies in a crate and a bird in a cage--all lost or damaged
+while being carried by a great express company.
+
+It was only when the Three Black Boxes were trundled out that his
+interest was aroused.
+
+"This," he heard the auctioneer say in a low tone to a man seated near,
+"is a professor's library. He hasn't come to claim the shipment, so we
+are forced to sell his books."
+
+"A professor's library! Poor fellow! What will he do without his books?"
+Johnny had said to the man next to him. "A professor without books is
+like a juggler without hands."
+
+"A professor's library." The words had intrigued him. The very word
+professor had a glorious sound to him. They had been so good to him, the
+professors of his college.
+
+Without more than half willing it, he had begun bidding on those three
+heavy black boxes filled with books. In the end they were his, and his
+pockets were all but empty.
+
+After the affair was over he had hunted up the auctioneer and secured the
+name and address of the professor.
+
+"I'll sell the books back to him," he said to the auctioneer. "Surely he
+_must_ have some money, or will have in a month or two."
+
+"Well, maybe." The auctioneer had shaken his head. "Lots of folks pretty
+poor these days. Too bad!"
+
+"And this," Johnny told himself as he continued to pace the floor of that
+mysterious room, "is the professor's house. Seems more like the haunts of
+an evil genius."
+
+He felt an almost irresistible desire to find his way out of the place
+and make a dash for it. But there were the books. He must manage to get
+his money back somehow. He had hoped the professor might be able to pay
+him the money and take the library.
+
+"Cost hundreds of dollars in the first place, those books," he murmured.
+"You'd think--"
+
+Again he broke off to listen and stare. Strange noises, curious flashes
+of light, and then the door swung open. The golden-haired girl appeared.
+The door closed behind her.
+
+"He--he'll be here soon." She seemed breathless. "He--he's working at
+something, a--a sort of trap. Do you know," she whispered, "this is a
+terrible neighborhood--truly frightful! That is why we live here."
+
+"Curious sort of reason," the boy thought, but he said never a word, for
+at that instant the clock-like affair on the wall began buzzing loudly,
+the red light blinked six times in quick succession.
+
+"Oh!" There was consternation in the girl's voice.
+
+Seizing the astonished boy by the arm, she dragged him to a corner of the
+room. There he found himself looking at what appeared to be a narrow
+strip of mirror.
+
+Upon that mirror moving objects began to appear. Before his astonished
+eyes these spots arranged themselves into the form of two skeletons, one
+tall, one short. Dangling from the hip-bone of the tall skeleton was what
+appeared to be a long knife. Again the girl whispered, "Oh!"
+
+But the short skeleton! Trembling so it appeared to dance, it slipped a
+knife along its bony wrist to at last grip it firmly in its skeleton
+fingers.
+
+The girl touched a button here, another there. The thing on the wall
+buzzed. Words were spoken outside the door, indistinct words. The
+skeletons disappeared. There came the sound of a door closing.
+
+"They--they're gone!" The girl sighed.
+
+Catching a slight sound of movement behind him, Jimmy whirled about to
+find himself looking into a pair of smiling blue eyes. "Here," he thought
+to himself, "is the girl's father, the professor." There were the same
+features, the same shock of golden hair.
+
+"I am Professor Van Loon," the man said in a voice that was low,
+melodious and dreamy.
+
+"Beth here tells me you bought my books," he went on. "That was kind of
+you. We've been moving about a great deal. The books have followed us
+here and there. Charges piled up. Until quite recently money has been
+scarce. Then, I confess, I forgot. In these days one is likely to forget
+his choicest treasures."
+
+He turned to the girl. "Beth, who was at the door just now?"
+
+"Two men." She trembled slightly. "They carried knives, so I opened the
+door on the outside. They--they hurried away."
+
+"I dare say!" The professor chuckled dryly.
+
+"Press the button, Beth," the professor said, nodding his head toward the
+right wall. "Our guest will stay for cocoa and cakes, I am sure. That
+right?" he asked, turning to Johnny.
+
+"I will, yes," Johnny agreed.
+
+The girl pressed a button like a lamp switch in the wall.
+
+The boy's feelings were mixed. He wanted to stay. These people interested
+him and there were a hundred mysteries to solve,--living skeletons, eyes
+blinking from the walls, self-opening doors, lights that gleamed and
+clocks that buzzed.
+
+A fresh mystery was added when five minutes later the girl pressed a
+second button and a tray laden with cups, saucers, a plate of cakes and a
+pot of steaming cocoa appeared.
+
+"The 'Eye' did it for us," the professor explained in a matter-of-fact
+tone. "In these days one scarcely needs a servant even when he is able to
+afford one."
+
+Perhaps Johnny would have said, "What is the 'Eye'?" but at that moment
+the door at the rear opened and a tall youth with tumbled red hair
+appeared.
+
+The professor rose. "Son, meet Johnny Thompson. Now we are all here."
+
+When, two hours later, Johnny left this place of enchantment, his head
+was in a whirl.
+
+"Just goes to show," he chuckled to himself, "that when you do an unusual
+stunt anything may happen--just anything at all."
+
+Several things _had_ happened in the last two hours. He had come to have
+a high regard for the professor and his family. He had received payment
+in full for the professor's library and a ten dollar bill thrown in for
+good measure.
+
+"Boy alive!" the professor had exclaimed when he hesitated to accept this
+extra ten. "If some shark that haunts those auctions had got my books it
+would have cost me a small fortune to redeem them."
+
+All this had happened, and much more.
+
+"Best of all," Johnny whispered to himself, "I am no longer alone. I've
+made a place for myself." Just what sort of place it was, he did not
+surely know.
+
+"I should like to have you cast in your lot with us," the professor had
+said. "A boy who thinks of others, as you have done in this library
+affair, is sure to be of service anywhere.
+
+"We do strange and interesting things here." The professor's eyes had
+twinkled. "Sometimes they are useful and practical; sometimes they are
+not. Always they are absorbing, at times quite too startling. At times we
+have money, at others none. Just now we are quite rich." He chuckled.
+"Someone offered us a great deal of money for an electric contraption
+that sorts beans, sorts a car load a day. Who wants that many beans?" He
+chuckled again. "Anyway we have money and they can sort beans. Money
+means material, equipment for fresh experiments. You will come with us?"
+He squinted at Johnny.
+
+"Yes. Yes, sure." Johnny scarcely knew what leg he was standing on.
+"Queer business!" was his mental comment.
+
+"We will exact only one promise," the professor continued. "You'll not
+pry into our secrets. Such secrets as we entrust to you you will divulge
+to no man. Do you promise?"
+
+"I promise."
+
+"You'll learn a lot and enjoy the work a heap," the son had said to
+Johnny.
+
+"I want you to know," the professor had added in a sober tone, "that if
+you come with us you may be in some danger; in fact I'm quite certain
+that I can promise it, yet it will never be foolhardy nor reckless
+danger. You'll come to live with us. That is necessary."
+
+"That's O.K.," Johnny had agreed.
+
+And now Johnny found himself outside in the cool air of night, the lake
+breeze fanning his cheek, wondering if it all--the living skeletons, eyes
+blinking in the wall, the self-closing doors--all had been a dream.
+
+"No!" He crushed the roll of bills in his pocket. "No, it was real
+enough. I--"
+
+Suddenly two shadows materialized from a doorway, one tall, one short.
+
+"The--the two men of the living skeletons, the ones that girl and I saw
+in the mirror!" he whispered, catching his breath sharply. If there had
+been any question in his mind regarding this last conclusion it was
+dispelled instantly. An inch of white steel, a knife blade, protruded
+from the short person's sleeve as he muttered menacingly, "Stand where
+you are!"
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER II
+                       SOMETHING RATHER TERRIBLE
+
+
+Johnny Thompson was no weakling. He was a lightweight boxer. He had made
+his way over the frozen wastes of Alaska and through the jungles of
+Central America and many other wild places as well. This city held little
+terror for him.
+
+As he faced the two strangers in the semi-darkness of the street, he
+considered tackling the little man.
+
+"If I tackle low I'll catch him off his guard, bowl him over like a
+tenpin. But the other, the tall one?" Ah, there was the rub! He carried a
+knife at his belt.
+
+The boy could run, but at thought of that he seemed to feel a twinge of
+pain from a knife in his back.
+
+As he stood there, nerves all aquiver, oddly enough he thought of the
+mysterious eye blinking out of the wall back there in the hall. He
+wondered vaguely what it all meant and how this affair was to end.
+
+And then quite suddenly the affair of the moment ended. The tall man
+uttered a low grumble which Johnny did not understand. Next instant the
+pair faded into the darkness, leaving him free to go his way in peace.
+
+"Strange business, all of this," he murmured to himself. He felt for the
+roll of bills that had been paid him for the professor's library. Yes,
+they were still there.
+
+"He said, 'Come back tomorrow.' The professor said that," he mumbled as
+he hurried away. "Said I would meet dangers. W-e-l-l--"
+
+He walked three blocks in deep thought. The whole business had thus far
+been very strange. What of the future?
+
+How little he knew! Tomorrow lay before him, and after that tomorrow and
+another tomorrow. The task he had agreed to undertake was strange beyond
+belief.
+
+Yet, for the most part ignorant of all this, he slept well that night and
+appeared next morning, suitcase in hand, ready for work at the door of
+that mystery house. In the broad light of day the place had lost much of
+its air of mystery.
+
+He was relieved to find Felix Van Loon sitting on the doorstep waiting
+for him.
+
+"Won't have to run the gauntlet of eyes in the wall and submit my
+skeleton for inspection this time," he whispered to himself.
+
+"Come on in and have a cup of coffee with me before we get down to work,"
+the other boy welcomed.
+
+"Be glad to," Johnny answered.
+
+"Watch!" Felix said a moment later. He pressed a button, then shot a
+wooden panel to one side, revealing a recess.
+
+In that dark hole in the wall things began to happen. Two electric coils
+began to light up. At the same time Johnny noted with a start that two
+red eyes were gleaming from the darkest corner.
+
+"Eyes," Felix murmured. "They'll do your work if you let them."
+
+Felix made no further comment. Johnny did not feel free to ask questions
+about the riddle of the "Eye."
+
+Dropping into a chair, Felix stared for a full two minutes at a crack in
+the floor. Then with a start he sprang to his feet, threw open a second
+panel and proceeded to draw forth a steaming pot of coffee and a plate of
+toast. Johnny recalled the professor's remarks regarding the "Eye" but
+said nothing.
+
+"It's a queer place," he told himself.
+
+As if reading his thoughts, Felix put down his cup. "Father's what they
+call an electrical wizard," he said. "He does things no one dreams of.
+Enjoys it a lot, he does. So do I. But Father has a deep purpose in it
+all, thinks electricity may help to save the race; anyway that's what he
+calls it."
+
+Once more he lapsed into silence. Johnny searched the dark corners of the
+room for peering eyes, but could find none.
+
+"Through?" Felix asked quite suddenly. "All right then, let's be on our
+way." He strode across the room to catch up a kit of tools.
+
+A moment more and they were in the street marching south. They had passed
+one brownstone building and were approaching a second when Felix drew
+Johnny into a doorway.
+
+"Ought to tell you, I guess." His voice was low. "Sort of warn you in
+case anything happens. Bit irregular, the thing we are about to do. If it
+frightens you after I've told you, just say so. Every fellow has a right!
+
+"You see," he got a fresh start, "Father was once in the secret service.
+He became interested at that time in working out devices for trapping
+criminals. And they _should_ be trapped." His voice rose. "Ninety per
+cent of all crimes are committed by men who never work. Professional
+criminals, they make life unsafe for everyone. But Father doesn't trap
+'em. He just works out the traps. He's too much interested in making
+things to think much about using them himself. See that brick place,
+second door over?" His voice dropped. "Some queer ones live there--a tall
+one and a short one."
+
+"Tall one and a short--! I--"
+
+"Not much time." Felix held up a hand. "Sleep late, those two, but not
+too late. Got to get in and do some things before they come downstairs.
+
+"We're supposed to be changing some electric light switch boxes, you and
+I. That is, if we're caught. You're my helper. No breaking in or anything
+like that. Got the key from the owner. But if they come down, that tall
+one and the short one, they might get a little rough. See? Question is,
+are you still with me?" he concluded.
+
+"Hundred per cent!" There was no hesitation in Johnny's tone. For all
+that, there was a sense of dizziness in his head. He was seeing again the
+living skeletons, one with a knife on its hip, the other with a blade
+hanging from its bony fingers.
+
+"All right," said Felix, "let's go!"
+
+"But why should we change the switch boxes in that place?" Johnny asked.
+
+"Rule one of our clan is, 'No questions asked'!" Felix chuckled.
+
+A moment more and a key turned in a lock. They found themselves in an
+ancient parlor. The place was dark and silent, reeking with mystery.
+
+"Here you are." Felix handed Johnny a large flashlight. "Just focus that
+on my hands while I work. Won't try to raise the shades. Might disturb
+our friends upstairs. Might--Sh! Listen!" The red-haired boy backed
+against the wall.
+
+Involuntarily Johnny gripped the handle of a hammer with his free hand.
+The memory of a knife blade protruding from a sleeve was fresh in his
+mind.
+
+For a space of seconds the two boys remained motionless.
+
+"Thought I heard something." Felix moved forward. A moment more and his
+long capable fingers, trembling slightly, were busy removing an electric
+punch button from the wall.
+
+"Good!" he whispered. "Hole's large enough."
+
+Diving into his kit, he brought out a small metal box wrapped about with
+wires.
+
+After unwinding these wires, he stood again at attention. Catching no
+sound, he resumed his work. Pushing the wires through the hole left by
+the removal of the punch button, he slid them down between the walls,
+then prepared to fit the black box into position.
+
+"Perfect," he sighed. "Couldn't have been better! I--"
+
+He held up a finger for silence. There had come a faint sound from above.
+
+"Like a bare foot touching the floor," Johnny thought. Once more he
+gripped his hammer handle hard. If they were attacked he would do his
+bit. But would that be enough? Strange business this! A chill crept up
+his spine.
+
+Felix resumed his work. His fingers flew. "There!" he sighed. "They'd
+never know a thing has been changed. And yet--"
+
+A moment later he disappeared into the depths of a large closet. What he
+did there Johnny was not permitted to know. For a full quarter of an
+hour, alternately chilling and thrilling at every sound that reached his
+ears, Johnny stood there on guard.
+
+"Now," the other boy at last whispered in his ear, "we go this way." They
+passed through a door and down a stair into a cellar dark as night.
+
+"One minute here, and then for the outer air." Felix moved forward
+cautiously. For all that, his foot struck some object that gave forth a
+low, hollow roar. At the same instant there came from above an
+unmistakable sound of movement.
+
+"Coming down the stairs," Felix breathed. "Going out to breakfast,
+perhaps. If they don't, we're trapped like rats!"
+
+Five long minutes they cowered there in the dark. Then, satisfied that
+all was well, Felix tucked some wires through a crack in the wall, and
+they were away.
+
+"You're all right!" A moment later in the broad light of the street the
+inventor's son offered Johnny a slim hand. "I--I just wanted to make
+sure. You weren't much afraid, were you?"
+
+"Do you mean--" The muscles in Johnny's face hardened. "Mean to say there
+really wasn't any danger back there?"
+
+"Danger?" Felix stared. "Of course there was danger! Those men were
+there, somewhere, no doubt about that. They're bad ones too! Up to
+something rather terrible, I imagine. But then," he added as a sort of
+afterthought, "we're not detectives. I only wanted to get some things in
+there to try them out. You may have a chance to help at that. There's a
+lot of things to do.
+
+"But not tomorrow." His brow wrinkled in thought. "Father and I will be
+away tomorrow. Tell you what--that'll be all for today. Why don't you
+come back day after tomorrow? We'll try something out then, something
+rather thrilling, I'd say."
+
+It was to be thrilling, that thing they were to try out; but the thrill
+was to be of a different sort than that expected by Felix. Fate too would
+step in and change the date for them. Fate has a way of doing that little
+thing, as Johnny had long since learned.
+
+Gripping Felix's hand, Johnny hurried away to catch a bus.
+
+"Just in time for one more auction," he thought to himself. "That other
+auction brought me luck and promise of adventure. Why might not another
+do the same? Might go to the shack and see if Drew Lane is there," he
+told himself. "Do that after the auction is over."
+
+He was going to the shack right enough, but not in just the manner he
+would have chosen.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER III
+                               THE BATTLE
+
+
+"There! That's the one! The one up next!" Johnny sat up with a start.
+Arrived at the auction house where all manner of strange things lost,
+damaged or stolen, are sold, he had taken his place among the bidders. He
+had found himself crowded in between a thin man and a stout one. He knew
+the stout one slightly; they called him John. The slim man was new and
+quite strange for such a place. His clothes were new and very well kept.
+His face was dark. His lips were twitchy, his slim fingers ever in
+motion. There was on his left cheek a peculiar scar. Two marks, like a
+cross, as if someone had branded him, so Johnny thought.
+
+And now, to his great astonishment, after dozing through a half hour of
+uninteresting auction, he found this stranger whispering shrilly in his
+ear. Before the whisper had come he felt a sharp punch in the ribs. The
+punch may have been made with a sharp elbow. Johnny had an uncomfortable
+feeling that the business end of some sort of short gun had been stuck
+into his side.
+
+"Say!" he whispered back. "What's the big idea? This is an auction house;
+not a hop joint!"
+
+"I know! I know!" came in an excited whisper from the slender,
+nervous-eyed man. "But listen to me!" One more prod in the ribs. "You'll
+remember it the longest day you live! You _bid_ on that next package! And
+_get_ it! Take it away from 'em, see? Take it away! Me? I'm broke," the
+stranger went on hurriedly. "But I got a hunch. An' my hunches, they're
+open and shut, open and shut. Just like that! So you bid! See?"
+
+The package in question seemed about as uninteresting as it well could
+be--a, plain corrugated box tied round with a stout hempen cord. There
+were scores quite like it. Some were larger, some thinner, some thicker.
+Johnny had seen many such packages opened.
+
+"Broken bits of statuary," he thought to himself, "or old clothes, like
+as not, or jars of cheap cosmetics. What do I want of that package?"
+
+But the stranger was insisting. "Bid! Bid! See, I got a hunch!"
+
+"Bid?" Johnny grumbled in a whisper. "What for?"
+
+The auction room was warm. He guessed he must have fallen asleep. Always
+after a nap he felt cross. He wouldn't bid on the silly package. What if
+this fellow did have a hunch? He had a mind to tell him so.
+
+Strange to say, when the package went up, he did bid. "One dollar! Two!
+Three dollars!" And he had it.
+
+He turned about to look into the slim stranger's face; wanted to see how
+he felt about it. To his surprise he found the seat empty.
+
+"That's queer!" he thought with a start. "Perhaps I dreamed the whole
+thing!... No, not all of it," he amended ten seconds later. "Here comes
+the collector after my deposit. I've got a good mind to tell him I didn't
+buy the package."
+
+This notion too he abandoned. Digging into his watch-pocket, he dragged
+forth a crumpled dollar bill.
+
+"O.K., Buddie, you get your package after the auction." The collector
+went his way.
+
+Johnny had not meant to stay the auction through. Now he must, or forfeit
+his dollar. He debated this problem and decided to stay. The package did
+not interest him overmuch, but his money was up. He would have a look.
+
+Losing all interest in the auction, he spent his time thinking through
+his unusual adventures of the night before. Closing his eyes, he seemed
+to see again that frightful wavering skeleton which in time he came to
+believe was his own. Two other skeletons he saw, one with a long-bladed
+knife wavering in its hand.
+
+"I saw them later on the streets, those men," he told himself, "only they
+were all dressed up in flesh and had their skins on--clothes too. It's a
+queer business! Eyes staring at a fellow from the wall!" He shuddered.
+"Fairly gives you the creeps! Wonder why I agreed to join up with such an
+outfit as that old professor and his children."
+
+"People," he whispered after a long period of deep thinking, "certain
+people have a way of getting inside of you and making you like them. They
+may be very good and they may be very bad, in certain ways, but you like
+them all the same. And you'll follow them as a dog follows his master.
+Queer old world! The professor is like that, and so's his daughter.
+Fellow'd come to like the boy too.
+
+"Wonder what we were up to in that strange house," he mused. "Good thing
+we got out of that cellar before anyone showed up! I doubt if that boy's
+much of a fighter.
+
+"Dumb!" He stirred impatiently in his seat. "Got a lot more to sell at
+this auction. Radios, somebody's trunks, 'with contents if any,' some
+puppies--hear 'em squeal!--pop-corn in a sack, six broken lamps and a
+hundred more things. Guess I'll get out. Buzz around here after awhile
+and pick up that package."
+
+When he returned to the auction room two hours later darkness was
+falling. A dull, drab fog had come creeping in from the lake. Lights
+glowed through it like great staring eyes. They reminded him of the eyes
+in the wall at the professor's house.
+
+"Bought a package here," he grumbled to the clerk. "Some busted thing, I
+guess. Here's the ticket and the rest of the money."
+
+"Here you are!" The parcel man handed out his prize package.
+
+The thing was heavier than he had expected. Prying up a corner of the
+box, he thrust in a hand. He touched something round, smooth and hard.
+"Like a skull," he whispered.
+
+"Only some sort of electric lamp," he decided after further exploring.
+"Metal affair made like a jug; broken, probably. Oh well, might as well
+take it along."
+
+Leaving the auction room, he came out into the street and headed west.
+
+That portion of the city is not inviting, nor does it seem particularly
+friendly to well-dressed strangers. During the day, when the weather is
+fair, the cross streets swarm with men who once worked, who may work
+again, but who for the present stand and idly stare or wander up and
+down.
+
+This night was damp and chill. The street was all but deserted. Halfway
+through a block a chance flash of light from a passing car revealed four
+well-dressed men standing at the entrance to an alley.
+
+One look, and Johnny sprang back. The movement was purely instinctive. He
+had seen faces like theirs before, in court rooms and behind iron bars.
+Three of the men were in full view, one in the shadow.
+
+Unfortunately the chance revelation of that passing car came too late.
+Before he could turn and show them his heels, they had him surrounded.
+
+That there would be a fight he did not question. Why? He had not the
+remotest idea.
+
+Johnny did not mind a fight, a clean fight. He kept himself fit for just
+such an occasion as this. He was always in training.
+
+"But four of them!" He groaned.
+
+No ringside rules here. One of the men was fat. Like a battering-ram,
+Johnny aimed his head square at that one's stomach. The man went over
+with a groan. But not Johnny. Regaining his balance in a flash, he swung
+his good right arm to bring his heavy package squarely down upon a second
+man's head.
+
+The package flew from his hand. In a fair fight with one man, or even
+two, Johnny needed only two well-formed fists. As the third man sprang at
+him, he squared away to give him an uppercut under the chin that closed
+his jaws with the snap of a steel trap and put him out for a count of
+twice ten.
+
+But at that instant something crashed down upon Johnny's skull. The
+fourth member of the gang, he who had hovered in the shadows, had gone
+into action.
+
+Ten minutes later when a detective threw the beam of his flashlight down
+that alley it fell upon a lone figure huddled against the wall.
+
+He was about to pass on, thinking it was some poor wanderer fast asleep,
+when something about the person's clothes caused him to look again. Two
+long strides and he was beside the prostrate form.
+
+"Johnny Thompson, as I live!" he muttered after bending over for a look.
+
+"And somebody's got him! I wonder if it's for keeps?"
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER IV
+                         BACK IN THE OLD SHACK
+
+
+Johnny was not out for good. But his return to consciousness was gradual.
+He began to hear things dimly as in a dream. There was a certain melody
+and harmony about the sounds, like a pipe organ played softly at night.
+This was shot through at times by a loud pop-pop-crack. Had memory
+returned, the boy might have thought they were fighting it out over his
+prostrate form, those men and the police.
+
+Memory did not return. A drowsy feeling of painless well-being swallowed
+him up. He did not struggle against it, did not so much as wish to
+struggle. For all that, his eyes began seeing things--one more step on
+the way to full consciousness.
+
+Like someone seen dimly in the clouds, as they do it in the movies, a
+vaguely familiar face appeared above him. A narrow, rather dark, tense
+face it was, with large eyes that seemed to burn with a strange fire.
+
+"Joy--Joyce Mills," his lips whispered.
+
+"Yes, Johnny. We're glad you're back."
+
+"Back?" He pondered that last word. "Back to what?"
+
+He began to feel things--a third step in his return to the realm of
+reality. The cold fog was gone, he knew that. The darkness too was gone.
+A subdued light was all about him.
+
+"Back," he thought once more, "back to what?"
+
+Then, as if reading this thought, the girl said, "You are back in the
+shack on Grand Avenue. Don't you remember?"
+
+At that all his memories came flooding in. The shack, Drew Lane and Tom
+Howe, keen young detectives, his staunch friends; Newton Mills, the
+one-time derelict and veteran detective, and Joyce Mills, his vivacious,
+ambitious daughter who at times had proven herself the keenest detective
+of them all.
+
+"The shack!" he exclaimed, making a brave attempt to sit up. "The shack!
+How--how wonderful!" He sank back dizzily. A sharp pain had shot across
+his temples.
+
+When this pain was gone, he gave himself over entirely to memories. The
+girl's face had vanished. Something told him, however, that she was
+seated close by his side.
+
+Memories, gorgeous, thrilling memories! They would be with him until he
+died. He and this slim, dark-haired girl had not been lovers; much more
+than that, very much more. They had been pals. And as pals they had
+shared dangers. They had dared together and had won. Drew Lane had been
+with them, Newton Mills too, and Tom Howe. Men there had been who would
+gladly have killed them. Yet, standing side by side and fighting for the
+good of all, they had won.
+
+"And now?" He said the words aloud.
+
+"Now you have only to rest," came in that same melodious voice. "Someone
+hit you rather hard on the head. That's what you get for going it alone.
+You might have known we were still in Chicago. You did not look us up.
+You can't go it alone. No one can--not in this world of today. We stand
+shoulder to shoulder, or we don't stand at all.
+
+"But now--" the girl's voice fell. "Now you are here in the shack and
+Drew Lane is here. Others are not far away. You must rest." Her voice
+trailed off into silence.
+
+Johnny wanted to tell her he had tried to find Drew Lane at the shack and
+had failed; that he had not wished to go it alone, that he did appreciate
+his friends. But somehow the words would not come. His thoughts were all
+mixed up with dreams, dreams of eyes blinking from the wall, animated
+skeletons and mysterious packages. Truth was, he had fallen asleep.
+
+                            * * * * * * * *
+
+"I went to an auction." Five hours Johnny had slept on a cot in the
+corner of the large room at the back of the shack. Now he was sitting up
+on the cot, talking eagerly. From beneath his crown of bandages his two
+eyes gleamed like twin stars. "I bought a library, a professor's library,
+bought it at auction. Because he was a professor I had to get it back to
+him.
+
+"I found his address. I went there. I was in the hall. Eyes gleamed at
+me. A skeleton danced before me, my skeleton. I--"
+
+"Your skeleton?" Drew Lane, the keen detective, grinned at him.
+
+"Sure it was my skeleton! Don't you suppose a fellow knows his skeleton
+when he sees it?"
+
+Drew Lane laughed, a low laugh, but made no reply.
+
+"Then," Johnny went on rapidly, "a girl opened the door, a taffy-haired,
+boyish sort of girl, and said she was sorry. It is a house of magic, the
+'House of a Thousand Eyes.'"
+
+"Eyes?" Joyce Mills leaned forward eagerly. "What sort of eyes?"
+
+"That," said Johnny, "is what I don't know. They seem to do things, those
+eyes, open doors and shut 'em, make coffee maybe, I don't know. That's
+why I'm going back. I want to know. Oh! Don't I though!"
+
+"So you're going back?" Drew smiled.
+
+A large man sitting before the fire, a man Johnny had never seen until
+that night, turned and looked at him in a strange way.
+
+"Sure I'm going back. I'm to help them!"
+
+"Help them at what?" Drew Lane was curious.
+
+"Don't know." Johnny's brow wrinkled.
+
+Had Johnny been a little wider awake and a little more alive, he would
+have realized that the young detective and Joyce Mills were humoring him
+as they might a drunken man. "He was hit on the head in that alley--I
+found him and brought him here," Drew was saying to himself. "He's
+slightly cuckoo from that terrible bump he got. All this stuff he's
+talking is sheer nonsense. He's delirious. He'll come round all right."
+Joyce Mills was thinking much the same. Not knowing their thoughts,
+Johnny rambled on:
+
+"We put some wires and things in a place nearby. Two queer ones live
+there, a long one and a short one. One carries a knife up his sleeve."
+
+"Nice friendly sort." Drew grinned. "Was he the fellow that hit you?"
+
+"Hit me?" Johnny's hand went to his head. "I--I doubt that. It--it was a
+different place."
+
+"Of course," he added thoughtfully, "they might have followed me all that
+time. But why? I hadn't done anything to them--not yet."
+
+"Not yet? Are you going to later?" Joyce Mills gave him a look.
+
+"Something tells me I am. Fellow gets hunches, you know that. That old
+professor interests me and so does that 'House of a Thousand Eyes.' He
+said there'd be danger. But who cares for danger?" Once more his hand
+went to his head. "They--they didn't get me, not yet. But if I find that
+fellow who hit me with that iron bar--and I _will_ find him, don't doubt
+that--when I find him, well--" He did not finish.
+
+"Did you see him?" Drew asked eagerly.
+
+"Not out there in--"
+
+"In the 'Wild Garden of Despair'?" Drew laughed low. "That's what they
+call West Madison Street. You didn't see him there, did you?"
+
+Drew was beginning to believe that Johnny was all right in his head after
+all.
+
+"He's the only one I didn't see." Johnny's tone was thoughtful. "All the
+same, I have a notion I've seen him right enough. Unless I've got him all
+wrong, he sat beside me in that auction house and prodded me in the ribs,
+telling me to bid on a package I had no notion of buying."
+
+"Did you buy it?"
+
+"Sure did."
+
+Johnny told of his experience in the auction house, then of the battle in
+the "Garden of Despair."
+
+"Perhaps you're right," Drew said slowly when the story was told. "The
+fellow who talked you into buying that package may have belonged to the
+gang that beat you up in that alley. Package was gone right enough when I
+found you. You're sure there was nothing in that box but a broken lamp?"
+
+"I wouldn't swear to that." Johnny dropped back to his place on the cot.
+"I didn't untie it; just explored it with my hands."
+
+"It's a toss-up," Drew concluded. "Man who carries a knife up his sleeve,
+or the fellow who made you buy what you didn't want. One of these hit
+you. Which one? Nice little riddle. We'll help you solve it, won't we,
+Joyce?"
+
+"Yes, and let me in on it!" The large man by the fire stood up.
+
+"Johnny," Drew said, and there was a note of deep respect in his voice,
+"this is Captain Burns, a chief in the detective bureau. He--he seems to
+like being here in our shack now and then. But keep it dark," he warned.
+"There are people who would like to meet the Captain here in a very
+unsocial way--boys of the under-world who've felt his steel. Right,
+Captain?"
+
+"Maybe so," the Captain rumbled. "Anyway, I wouldn't want our happy
+retreat broken up.
+
+"But this 'House of a Thousand Eyes'?" He turned to Johnny. "Tell me more
+about it."
+
+"I will," said Johnny with a broad grin, "when I have more to tell."
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER V
+                            PAST AND PRESENT
+
+
+Several hours later, having quite recovered from his severe headache, and
+apparently not so very much the worse for the terrible thump he had
+received on the head, Johnny sat before the open fireplace in Drew Lane's
+shack on Grand Avenue. About that same fire were gathered his friends of
+other days, Drew Lane, Tom Howe and Joyce Mills. With them was the
+ruddy-faced, smiling Captain Burns, one of the best known and most feared
+officers of the law in that city.
+
+If you have read "Arrow of Fire" you will know that the "Shack" was the
+one remaining structure of days long gone by when the east end of Grand
+Avenue--which, after all, has never been very grand--was at the edge of a
+sandy marsh where in the autumn one might hunt wild ducks.
+
+This shack was now surrounded by tall warehouses. Hidden away and quite
+forgotten, it made a perfect meeting place for such as Drew Lane and his
+little group of crime hunters.
+
+Drew Lane was still young. With his derby hat, bright tie and natty suit,
+he looked still very much the college boy he had been. Endowed with great
+strength, trained to the limit, with a brain like a brightly burning
+lamp, he was the despair of evil doers. Scarcely less effective was his
+team-mate, Tom Howe. Small, freckled, active as a cat, silent, full of
+thoughts, Tom planned, while, more often than not, Drew executed.
+
+Joyce Mills, as you may know, had become a member of this group quite by
+accident. Her father, Newton Mills, after many years of distinguished
+service as a detective in New York, had at last fallen a prey to strong
+drink. Johnny and Drew had found him in Chicago drinking his life away.
+They had saved him to a life of further usefulness. Joyce, deeply
+grateful, and always at heart a "lady cop," had cast her lot with them.
+And now here she was.
+
+"But your father?" Johnny was saying to her at this moment, "where is
+he?"
+
+A shadow passed over the girl's dark face. "Haven't seen him for two
+months.
+
+"But then," she added in a lighter tone, "you know him. Gets going on
+something and forgets everything else. He'll show up."
+
+"Yes," Johnny agreed, "he's bound to."
+
+Johnny was thinking of the time the veteran detective had turned himself
+into a gray shadow and had, all unknown, dogged Johnny's heels, saving
+him from all manner of terrible deaths. The time was to come, and that
+soon enough, when he was to wish the "Gray Shadow" back on his trail.
+
+"Drew," Johnny said, turning to his sturdy young friend, "I came here the
+moment I reached the city. How come the place was locked up and dark?"
+
+"Been on a vacation; just got back." Drew's face lighted. "Went to the
+Rockies. Had some wonderful hunting--grizzly bears. Can't say that's more
+exciting than hunting crooks, though," he laughed.
+
+"Met a girl you'd like on the way back." Drew Lane turned to Joyce. "Came
+on the bus. People in a bus, traveling far, get to be like one big
+family. Funny part was--" He gave a low chuckle. "She's coming here to
+help her uncle. He has a store on Maxwell Street. Maxwell Street! Can you
+imagine?"
+
+"Rags, scrap-iron, poultry in crates, fish smells and noise--that's what
+Maxwell Street means to me!" Joyce shuddered.
+
+"Just that!" Drew agreed. "This truly nice girl from somewhere in Kansas
+is going there to help in her uncle's store. She doesn't know a thing
+about Chicago. Thinks Maxwell Street is all the same as State Street, I'm
+sure. Believes her uncle's store is anyway six stories high. Well, she's
+in for a terrible shock. I feel sorry for her. Have to get round and see
+her--gave me the address. She asked me what I did in Chicago." Drew
+chuckled once more.
+
+"What did you tell her?" Joyce asked.
+
+"Said I looked after people, lots of them."
+
+"And for once you told the truth," Johnny laughed.
+
+"But Johnny!" Joyce exclaimed. "Tell me some more about this 'House of
+Magic' you've discovered. Sounds frightfully interesting. We all thought
+you were a little delirious when you first talked of it. But now--"
+
+"Now you begin to believe me." Johnny's eyes shone. "It's a truly
+wonderful place."
+
+"Tell us about it." Captain Burns insisted from his corner. "Heard about
+some of these things before. Shouldn't wonder if they'd do things in the
+end to lift the load off us poor, over-worked detectives."
+
+"I'll tell you all I know, which isn't much," Johnny agreed.
+
+And here I think we may safely leave our friends for a little time while
+we look in upon Grace Krowl, the girl from somewhere in Kansas. She had
+found her uncle's store on Maxwell Street. And how she had found it!
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER VI
+                           A STORE IN CHICAGO
+
+
+A slender mite of a girl, barely past her eighteenth birthday, Grace
+Krowl was possessed of an indomitable spirit and a will of her own; else
+she would not have been walking down Maxwell Street in Chicago hundreds
+of miles from her home, in Kansas.
+
+The look in her eyes as she marched down that street where all manner of
+junk and rags are mingled with much that, after all, is pleasant and
+desirable, was one of utter surprise.
+
+"A store," she murmured, more than once, "a store in Chicago. And Maxwell
+Street. I am sure I can't be wrong. And yet--"
+
+Arrived at the street number written on a slip of paper in her hand, she
+stood staring at the narrow, two-story building with its blank windows
+and unpainted walls for a full moment. Then, a spirit of desperation
+seizing her, she sprang up the low steps, grasped the doorknob, then
+stepped resolutely inside.
+
+Once inside, she stood quite still. Never in any place had she witnessed
+such confusion. What place could this be? Her mind was in a whirl. Then,
+like a flash, her eyes fell upon an object that threw her into action.
+With a startled cry, she sprang at a group of women.
+
+She snatched a tortoise shell comb from a huge black woman's hand just as
+she was about to try it in her kinky hair. She dragged a pink kimono from
+beneath a tall, slim woman's arm and, diving all but headforemost,
+gathered in a whole armful of garments that an astonished little lady had
+been hugging tight.
+
+By this time the battle turned. She found herself at the center of a
+concerted attack. The black woman banged at her with a picture frame, the
+tall, thin one jabbed her with sharp elbows and the little lady made a
+grab at her hair.
+
+"Ladies! Ladies!" came in a protesting man's voice. "Why must you fight
+in my store?"
+
+"Fight? Who wants to fight!" the tall woman screamed. "Here we are
+peaceful folks looking over the goods in your store, and here comes this
+one!" She pointed an accusing finger at Grace. "She comes in grabbing and
+snatching, that's what she does!"
+
+"Store! Goods!" Grace's head was in a whirl. How could they call this a
+store? It was a place where people robbed strangers,--stole their trunks
+and rifled them. Surely there could be no mistaking that. Were not the
+trunks open there before her, a half dozen or more of them? And was not
+her own modest steamer trunk among them? Had she not caught them going
+through her trunk? Were not the articles in her arms, the tortoise shell
+comb, the kimono and those other garments her very own? Goods? Store?
+What could it all mean? Her head was dizzy.
+
+"A store," she whispered to herself, "my uncle's store in Chicago. He
+gave me this address. He must be in the business of stealing trunks and
+selling their contents!" She felt, of a sudden, all hollow inside, and
+dropping like an empty sack, half sat upon a partially emptied trunk.
+
+"Miss! Why do you do this?" The bearded man who now spoke was almost
+apologetic in his approach. "Why do you do this in my store? Many years
+I, Nicholas Fischer, have sold goods here and never before have I seen
+such as this!"
+
+"Nich--Nicholas Fischer!" The girl's eyes widened. "Then _you_ are
+Nicholas Fischer. And _this_ is your store? STORE!" she fairly screamed.
+
+She wanted to rise and flee, but she was half stuck in the trunk and her
+wobbly legs would not lift her out, so she said shakily:
+
+"I did it be--because that's my trunk. I--I am Grace Krowl, your niece
+who came from Camden Center, Kansas, to help you keep your store. But I
+won't, I won't stay a moment. I'll never, never, never help a thief!"
+
+"You?" The bearded man's face was a study. Surprise, mortification
+registered themselves on his face. "Grace Krowl, my niece," he murmured.
+"Her trunk! It is her trunk! A thief it is she says I am--I, Nicholas
+Fischer, who never stole a penny! Tell me, what is all this?" He stared
+from face to face as if expecting an answer. But no answer came.
+
+And then a slow smile overspread his face. "Now I begin to understand,"
+he murmured. "It is all a mistake, a terrible mistake!
+
+"Ladies," he said, turning pleading eyes on the group of customers, "will
+you please put back into that little trunk everything you have taken out?
+And if any have paid for a thing, I will repay. It is my niece's trunk.
+It is one terrible mistake." He began rocking backwards and forwards like
+one in great pain.
+
+"A thief, she said," he murmured. "But who would not have thought it?"
+His eyes took in the half-empty trunks all about him, then he murmured
+again, "Who would not have thought it?"
+
+Four hours later, just after darkness had fallen, this same girl, Grace
+Krowl, found herself walking the most unusual street in America, Maxwell
+Street in Chicago. She found it interesting, amusing, sometimes a little
+startling, and always unspeakably sad, this place where a strange sort of
+bedlam reigns.
+
+Here, as she passed along, fat Jewish women held up flimsy silk stockings
+to her view, screaming, "Buy, Miss, buy now! The price goes up! Cheap!
+Cheap!" Here a man seized her rudely by the shoulder, turned her half
+around and all but shoved her into a narrow shop, where gaudy dresses
+were displayed. This made her angry. She wanted to fight.
+
+"I fight?" She laughed softly to herself. "I, who have always lived in
+Camden Center! A sort of madness comes over one in such a place as this,
+I guess." Recalling her fight earlier in the day, her cheeks crimsoned,
+and she hurried on.
+
+"What a jumble!" she exclaimed aloud as she turned her attention once
+more to Maxwell Street. "Shoes, scissors, radios, geese, cabbages, rags
+and more rags, rusty hardware, musical instruments. Where does it all
+come from, and who will buy it?"
+
+She paused to look at a crate of cute white puppies with pink noses.
+They, too, were for sale. Then, of a sudden, her face clouded.
+
+"Can I do it?" she muttered. "Can I? I--I must! But other people's
+things? So often the little treasures they prized! How can I?"
+
+That she might remove her thoughts from a painful subject, she forced her
+eyes to take in her present surroundings. Then, with a little cry, she
+sprang forward. "Books! 'Everything in books.'" She read the sign aloud.
+She disappeared through a dingy door into a room which was brightly
+lighted. The lights and the face that greeted her changed all. The madly
+fantastic world was, for the moment, quite shut out. She was at home with
+many books and with a girl whose face shone, she told herself, "like the
+sun."
+
+"A book?" this sales girl smiled. "Something entertaining? A novel,
+perhaps. Oh no, I don't think you'd like 'Portrait of a Man with Red
+Hair.' It's really rather terrible. One of the chief characters is a mad
+man who loves torturing people." The girl shuddered.
+
+"But this now--" She took up a well-thumbed volume. "'A Lantern in Her
+Hand.' It is truly lovely--the story of brave and simple people. I'm
+afraid we're neither very brave nor very simple these days. Do you feel
+that we are?"
+
+"She really is able to think clearly," Grace whispered to herself. "I am
+sure I am going to like her."
+
+"I'll take one, that one," she said putting out her hand for the book.
+And then, because she was alone in a great city, because she was bursting
+to confide in someone, she said, "He buys trunks, trunks full of other
+people's things. He takes the things out and sells them, other people's
+things. They packed them away with such care, and now--now he takes them
+out, throws them about and sells them!"
+
+"Who does?" The girl's eyes opened wide.
+
+"My uncle, Nicholas Fischer."
+
+"Oh, Nicholas Fischer." The girl's voice dropped. "But he is the kindest
+man! Comes here with books. He sells them to Mr. Morrow who owns this
+store--secondhand books. Perhaps they come from the trunks. And Mr.
+Morrow says he helps poor people, your uncle does, and he doesn't let
+anyone know who it is."
+
+"But he buys trunks, other people's trunks, and sells them!" Grace
+insisted.
+
+"Yes, buys them at auction, I guess. Several people on this street do
+that. Express auctions, railway auctions, storage house auctions and all
+that. And you are to help him open them up!" she exclaimed quite
+suddenly. "You are to explore them? How I envy you!"
+
+"Envy?" Grace stared in unbelief.
+
+"But why not? Think of the things you may find. Diamonds perhaps; stocks
+and bonds; rare old coins and rarer old books; ancient silver plate. Just
+think of the things people pack away in their trunks! Letters; diaries;
+quaint old pictures. It--why it's like a trip around the world!"
+
+"But it--it seems so unfair," Grace wavered.
+
+"You're not the one that's being unfair," the bright-eyed one reasoned.
+"Those people can't have their things in those trunks. Perhaps they are
+dead. In some cases they lost their trunks because they were too poor to
+pay storage or express charges. You can't well help that. So why think
+about it?"
+
+Grace Krowl _was_ to think about it many times and in the end to do
+something about it. That something was to draw her into a great deal of
+trouble. For the moment she left the little secondhand bookshop soothed,
+comforted, and filled with a desire to call again.
+
+"No doubt you think Maxwell Street a terrible place," the smiling girl
+said as she walked with her to the door, "and that your uncle's store is
+the worst on the street. But I could tell you--" A shadow fell across her
+face. "I could tell you things about grand stores on a very grand street
+in this city of ours. Per--perhaps I will sometime."
+
+Grace was startled as she looked into her face. It had suddenly become
+gray and old.
+
+"How strange," she murmured as, dodging a pushcart laden with geese, she
+hurried away toward Nicholas Fischer's place on Maxwell Street. "How
+strange. And how--how sort of terrible. And yet--"
+
+The words of a great man came to her. "No situation in life is ever so
+bad but that it might be worse."
+
+                            * * * * * * * *
+
+"What," you may be asking by this time, "have the adventures of a girl
+from Kansas to do with Johnny Thompson and his friends?" The answer is:
+"A great deal." In the first place, Drew Lane, having discovered this
+little lady while traveling in a bus, was not the sort to desert her in
+her plight. In the second place, an invisible finger of light moving
+across the sky was destined to join the fates of Johnny Thompson and
+Grace Krowl.
+
+However, for the time, we will return to Johnny and his friends.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VII
+                            THE UNHOLY FIVE
+
+
+During the course of their conversation about the open fire in Drew
+Lane's shack, Captain Burns took from his inside pocket a small package
+which proved to be five photographs pasted securely upon a strip of stout
+cloth in such a manner that they might be folded together in the form of
+a small book. "Ever see any of these?" he said to Johnny after spreading
+them out upon his knee.
+
+For a moment Johnny studied the pictures thoughtfully. Then he gave a
+sudden start. "That," he exclaimed, pointing a trembling finger at the
+third in the row, "is the man who sat beside me in the auction--who got
+me to bid in that package!"
+
+"Are you sure?" The Captain's tone was tense.
+
+"Can't be a doubt about it. See that scar like a cross? Couldn't well
+miss that, could I? He's the one all right. And, though I could never
+prove it, I'd swear he was the one who struck me from the dark.
+
+"And, by all that's good!" Johnny sprang to his feet. "I'll get that man!
+See if I don't! No man can strike me from the shadows and get away with
+it!"
+
+"Well, I guess that makes your friend Johnny here one of us. That right,
+Drew?" the Captain rumbled.
+
+Drew Lane nodded his head.
+
+"Sit down, son," said the Captain. "I'll tell you what those pictures
+mean. Drew here and Tom Howe carry those pictures with them always. So
+does Joyce, though I don't know quite where--in her stocking perhaps."
+
+Joyce smiled.
+
+"We joke at times," the Captain went on, "but this affair is no joke.
+Those men are our assignment. They are to be our assignment until every
+man of them is behind bars or in his grave. You may join us if you will."
+
+"I will." Johnny's voice was low.
+
+The Captain extended his hand as a solemn pledge.
+
+"You have a right to know," he went on, "just what men you are after, and
+what they have done.
+
+"They are hardened criminals, every one, public enemies of the worst
+sort. A little more than a month ago they sealed their fate--they killed
+a policeman, the finest copper that ever walked a beat."
+
+For a time the Captain stared at the fire. "My boy," he said at last, in
+a different voice, "I'm going to take you with me somewhere, sometime.
+The finest little family you ever saw!" he rumbled low as if talking to
+himself.
+
+Then, with a sudden start, he repeated, "They killed a policeman. Of
+course a policeman's no better than any other man. But with us there's an
+unwritten law that no officer shall go unavenged.
+
+"That wasn't all they did, this unholy five. They went to a banker's home
+at midnight and terrorized his family until morning. Man's wife was in
+ill health. But of course--" The Captain's voice rumbled with scorn and
+hate. "Of course you couldn't expect these robbers to take note of a
+little thing like that! What do they care for women and children?
+
+"When morning came they took the man to his bank. They compelled him to
+open the vault. They took the bank's securities, more than two hundred
+thousand dollars worth. Then, of course, they went away.
+
+"By some oversight, the bank's insurance had been allowed to lapse.
+Because of this heavy loss the bank was forced to close its doors. It was
+a working man's bank. Thousands of common folks lost their savings. These
+five men--no doubt they had a fine time with the currency they took!
+
+"But the bonds--" His voice rose again. "The bonds are hot. We've kept
+them hot. They dare not sell them. And we'll get them back yet, see if we
+don't!
+
+"And those are the men we're after!" he added a moment later. "Are you
+still with us?"
+
+"More than ever!" Johnny's voice was husky.
+
+Once again the Captain offered his hand. "You're a lad after my own
+heart," he rumbled. "I've two places I want to show you, and I'm sure
+you'll like them both."
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VIII
+                          DOWN A BEAM OF LIGHT
+
+
+Grace Krowl, the girl from Kansas, found plenty of things to occupy her
+thoughts as she sank into a chair in one of the two small rooms allotted
+to her on the upper floor of her uncle's store in Chicago.
+
+"A store in Chicago." She laughed low. Her uncle's store in Chicago. What
+dreams had she not dreamed of this store? Chicago was a grand city. His
+store must be a grand place. She had of late pictured it as a six-story
+building; pure fancy, for he had never written about its size or
+importance. In fact, he had not written at all until she had written
+first and asked for a position as clerk in his store. He had been married
+to her mother's sister. The sister was dead.
+
+When Grace had needed work badly she had written, and he had replied
+briefly: "I can give you work at fifteen dollars per week and board."
+
+So here she was. And her uncle's store was little more than a hole in the
+wall. No counters, no glass cases. Things piled in heaps, and all
+secondhand; glass dishes here, bed covers there, dresses, sheets, towels,
+everything. And in the corner, like so many skeletons, a great pile of
+bruised, battered and empty trunks.
+
+"He buys trunks, other people's trunks." She shuddered afresh.
+
+Then the words of her new-found friend of the bookstore came to her.
+"Diamonds, stocks and bonds." These were dreams. "But rare old books,
+wonderful bits of Irish lace, why not?" Perhaps, after all, she could
+drive away the ache that came in her throat at the thought that someone
+who truly loved these things had lost them because they were poor.
+
+She thought of her own trunk and laughed aloud. What a sight that must
+have been--she snatching at her prized possessions and those other women
+poking her and banging her on the head!
+
+Of course it had all been a mistake. She had come to Chicago by bus and
+had sent on her trunk by express. The van that went for her trunk had
+also picked up a half dozen others which her uncle had bought at auction.
+The trunks had become mixed. The lock had been pried off her own and the
+contents were being sold when she arrived. Everything had been retrieved
+except a pearl-backed brush she prized and a hideous vase she abhorred.
+
+"That did not turn out so badly," she assured herself. "Perhaps
+everything will come along quite as well." And yet, as she took a handful
+of silver coins and one paper dollar from her purse and added them up,
+her face was very sober. She was a long way from home, and there could be
+no retreat.
+
+The place she was to call home was above the store. Too tired and
+preoccupied to notice at first, she received a shock when she at
+last became conscious of her surroundings. The room in which she
+sat was a tiny parlor, all her own. Off from that was a bedroom.
+Everything--furniture, rugs, decorations,--was in exquisite taste and
+perfect harmony.
+
+"Contrast!" she exclaimed. "Who could ask for greater contrast? Rags
+below, and this above!" She stared in speechless surprise.
+
+One thing astonished her. Opposite the window in the parlor was an oval,
+concave mirror, like an old-fashioned light reflector. It was some two
+feet across.
+
+"I wonder why it is here," she murmured. She was to wonder more as the
+days passed.
+
+When she had prepared herself for the night's rest, she snapped out the
+light, then stood for a brief time at the open window looking out into
+the night. She was on the second floor of her uncle's small building.
+Before her were the low, flat roofs of some one-story shacks. Looking far
+beyond these, she saw squares of light against the night sky. These she
+knew were lighted windows of distant skyscrapers. There were thousands of
+these windows.
+
+"What can they all do at night?" she asked herself. "Struggling to make
+money, to get on, to keep their families housed and fed," the answer came
+to her. Then, strangely enough, her mind carried her back over the trail
+that had brought her to this city. It had been an interesting adventure,
+that long bus ride. Six of the passengers, including herself, had ridden
+hundreds of miles together. They had become like a little community.
+
+"It was as if these were pioneer days," she told herself now. "As if we
+were journeying in covered wagons in a strange new land." One of these
+long distance passengers, as you will know, had been a young man. In his
+golf knickers and soft, gray cap, he had seemed a college boy. But he was
+not. "Out of college and at work," was the way he had expressed it.
+
+"What work do you do?" she had asked.
+
+He had hesitated before replying. Then his answer had been vague. "Oh, I
+just look after people."
+
+"Look after people?"
+
+"Lots of people. All sorts." A queer smile had played about the corners
+of his mouth.
+
+She had not pressed the question further. But now, standing there looking
+out into his city at night, she whispered, "His name was Drew Lane.
+Wonder if I'll ever see him again? I hope so. He seemed a nice boy, and I
+should love to know how he looks after 'lots of people--all sorts.'"
+
+She looked again at the many lighted windows. Suddenly those who toiled
+there seemed very near to her. She found a strange comfort in this.
+
+"I, too, must do my best," she told herself. "God help me to be wise and
+strong, helpful to others and kind to all!" she prayed as she gave
+herself over to sleep.
+
+She was wakened at dawn by a whisper. At first, so closely did dream life
+blend with the life of day, it seemed natural that she should be
+listening to this whisper. When she had come into full consciousness she
+sprang out of bed with a start.
+
+"Good morning!" The words came in slowly, a distinct whisper. "We hope
+you are happy this morning. Cheerio! That's the word!"
+
+"When you have dressed," the whisper continued, "won't you just step out
+into the little parlor and take a seat by the table? It will be good to
+have a look at your shining face."
+
+"Someone in my little parlor! I don't like it. And that whisper!"
+
+She dressed hurriedly, then stepped through the door. What sort of person
+had she expected to see? Probably she could not have told. What she did
+see was _an empty room_.
+
+Greatly astonished, hardly knowing why she obeyed the whispered orders,
+she took a seat by the table. Instantly the whisper began once more:
+
+"Ah! There you are! I am talking to you over a beam of light. I am a mile
+away. I have interesting things to tell you. You are going to aid me."
+
+For a brief space of time the whisper ended. The girl's mind was in a
+whirl. "Talking down a beam of light!" she thought. "What nonsense! Going
+to aid that whisperer?" Here surely was some strange mystery.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER IX
+                               CUT ADRIFT
+
+
+For some time Grace Krowl remained at her small table awaiting some
+further message from the mysterious whisperer. No further message came.
+Had this whisper told the truth? Was he a mile away? She could not
+believe it.
+
+On descending to the floor below, she found her strange uncle prepared to
+leave his odd store.
+
+"Today I go to an auction," he said to her with a smile. "Today there is
+nothing to unpack. Not many people will come. They come only when there
+are trunks. Tomorrow there will be trunks, perhaps many trunks."
+
+"Trunks," Grace thought with an involuntary shudder.
+
+"Today," her uncle went on, "Margot will tend store." He nodded toward an
+aged woman bending over a pile of soiled garments. "Today you are free.
+You may make yourself at home in your new place."
+
+All that day in her little parlor, Grace had one ear open for the
+Whisperer. She heard nothing. He spoke, apparently, only at dawn. The day
+was, for her, quite uneventful.
+
+The same could not be said for our young friend Johnny. Late that day,
+with a narrow bandage still about his head, he returned to the "House of
+Magic." And, almost at once, adventure struck him squarely between the
+eyes.
+
+"You are just in time!" Felix, the inventor's son, greeted him. "I have
+not tried that new thing. We will begin at dusk, in an hour or two in a
+captive balloon,--"
+
+"A captive balloon!" Johnny felt a thrill course up his spine.
+
+"On the Fair grounds," Felix added. "There is one over there. The grounds
+are deserted. I have permission to use the balloon. I have had it
+inflated. No one will bother us there."
+
+It is better sometimes to do things where there are crowds. Felix was to
+learn this. There is safety in numbers.
+
+At the gate of the deserted Fair grounds Felix presented his pass. They
+were admitted.
+
+"Sent the equipment over in a small truck," he explained to Johnny.
+"Rather heavy."
+
+"What equipment?" The words were on Johnny's tongue. He did not say them.
+Just in time he recollected that he was to look, listen, help all he
+could and not ask questions. "I'll be told all I need to know in good
+time," he assured himself. Had he but known it, that night he was to need
+wisdom not written in any book.
+
+The streets they were passing through now were strange. The falling
+darkness gave to everything an air of mystery. Here some great man-made
+dragon opened its mouth as if to swallow them, there a tattered sign
+fluttered and cracked in the wind. "The great Century of Progress!"
+Johnny whispered. "Here thousands swarmed along the Midway. Now all is
+still. Now--
+
+"What was that?" He stopped dead in his tracks. Had he caught the sound
+of scurrying feet? Yes, he was sure of it. And there, well defined
+against a wall, were the shadows of two half crouching figures. One was
+tall, the other short. Johnny felt a chill run up his spine.
+
+Felix apparently had seen nothing, heard nothing. He had gone plodding
+stolidly on into the gathering darkness; was at this moment all but lost
+from sight.
+
+With a little cry of consternation, Johnny sprang after him.
+
+By the time he caught up to him they were at the spot where the balloon
+was kept.
+
+"We just release this clutch when we are ready to go up," Felix
+explained, "then up we go. There is a time arrangement that will set the
+electrically operated drum, winding us back down again in two hours. We
+only go up about three hundred feet. Cable holds us. Quite safe tonight,
+no wind to speak of."
+
+Johnny thought this a rather strange arrangement. "No guard here?" he
+asked.
+
+"No need. No one's allowed in the grounds unless they have a pass. Climb
+in. All set."
+
+Johnny did climb in, and up they went.
+
+Johnny had been in the air many times. For all that, he experienced a
+strange sense of insecurity as they rose a hundred, two hundred, three
+hundred feet into the murky air of night. "Pooh!" he exclaimed in a low
+breath. "It is nothing!"
+
+That he might throw off this feeling of dread, he busied himself with
+other thoughts. His gaze swept the city where lights were gleaming.
+"Where," he thought, "are Drew and Tom? Hunting pickpockets perhaps. And
+where is Captain Burns? I'm going to like him, I'm sure. He is so solid
+and real; but jovial for all that. He said he'd take me places. What
+places? I wonder. Dangerous places? He said--"
+
+His thoughts were broken in upon by Felix's voice:
+
+"Here we are at the top. Now for the test."
+
+The young inventor flashed on a powerful searchlight. "All I have to do
+is to connect this through a switch, aim my light at a window in our
+house, take up this microphone and say, 'Hello father!' He hears me and
+no one else in the world can. He--
+
+"What!" he exclaimed in consternation. "The current is off. Someone cut
+the light cable!"
+
+"More than that!" Johnny's tone was sober. He was looking over the side
+of the balloon basket in which they rode. "The cable that holds us has
+been cut! We're drifting!"
+
+"You're right!" Consternation sounded in the older boy's voice. "We're
+going out into the night, over black waters. And there is no ballast!"
+
+"They got us, those two!" Johnny muttered.
+
+"What two?" Felix demanded.
+
+"I saw them on the grounds, a tall one and a short one--anyway I saw
+their shadows. Should have told you."
+
+"Oh!" Felix groaned. "Wonder what we've done to them. But they haven't
+got us--not yet!" There was courage and high resolve in Felix Van Loon's
+tone. "We'll beat them yet. You'll see!"
+
+Would they? Johnny silently wondered.
+
+Strangely enough, at that moment thoughts not related at all to this
+adventure passed through his mind. He was once more in that place of
+mystery, the professor's house, in the hallway seeing eyes in the wall,
+shuddering at sight of his own skeleton. "How could all that have
+happened?" he asked himself.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER X
+                           A RUNAWAY CAPTURED
+
+
+Johnny had known a thrill or two, but none quite like drifting through
+the night in a balloon that was not meant for drifting.
+
+"Not an ounce of ballast!" Felix groaned. "And the night so dark we may
+plunge without a moment's notice into those cold, black waters. And
+then--oh well, what's the good of thinking about that?"
+
+There truly was no use at all of thinking about it. If worse came to
+worst and they were able to tell the moment of great danger, they might
+throw his instruments and the searchlight over to lighten the balloon.
+
+"All this equipment," Felix moaned, "cost plenty of money!"
+
+In spite of their predicament, Johnny found himself wondering about that
+equipment and what they had been about to do.
+
+For a time Johnny was silent. Then of a sudden he exclaimed, "Felix, we
+are drifting northeast! That means we'll be over the lake for hours. If
+the wind rises, if a strong gust drags us down, or if the gas bag leaks
+and we are plunged into the lake we are lost! A three hundred foot cable
+hangs beneath this balloon. It is weighting us down. Suppose we could cut
+it away?"
+
+"It's an idea!" Felix was all alert. "But it hangs from below. How'll you
+reach it?"
+
+"Here's a rope. I'll go over the side. You hang on to the rope."
+
+"That," said Felix slowly, "will be taking a long chance."
+
+"Whole thing's a chance." Johnny was tying a loop in the rope. "Now I'll
+put a foot in this loop, hold to the rope with one hand and work with the
+other. Flashlight will tell me all I need to know. Can hold the light in
+my teeth."
+
+"You should be in a circus." Felix laughed. For all that, he made the
+other end of the rope fast, then prepared to lower his companion.
+
+As he climbed up and over, Johnny felt his heart miss a beat. It was
+strange, this crawling out into space. All was dark below. Was the water
+a hundred or a thousand feet down? He could not tell. The majestic
+Lindbergh light swept the sky, but its rays did not touch them.
+
+"If only it did," he murmured, "someone would see us."
+
+Strangely enough, at this very moment the professor's golden-haired
+daughter, Beth, was making strenuous efforts to bring that very thing to
+pass, to get one of those eyes of the night, a powerful searchlight,
+focussed upon the runaway balloon.
+
+Her father, sensing that something had gone wrong with the balloon, had
+hurried her away to the spot from which the balloon had risen. Arrived
+there after a wild taxi ride, she had discovered on the instant what had
+happened.
+
+"Some--someone cut the cable with an electric torch!" In vain her eyes
+searched the sky for the balloon. She was about to hurry away when a hand
+gripped her arm.
+
+"Where would you go?"
+
+"Why! I--"
+
+Taking one look at the man, she sent forth an involuntary scream. She had
+seen that man before. He carried a knife in his sleeve. She was terribly
+afraid.
+
+Her scream had electrifying results. A huge bulk of a youth with tangled
+red hair emerged from somewhere.
+
+"Here you!" he growled, "Let her go!"
+
+Releasing the girl, the small dark man sprang at her protector.
+
+"Look out!" the girl screamed. "He--he has a knife!"
+
+Her warning was not needed. The little man's knife went coursing through
+the air. Next instant the little man followed it into the dark. The big
+fellow's fists had done all this.
+
+"Now, sister," the young giant turned to Beth, "where was it you wanted
+to go?"
+
+"The--the Skidmore Building."
+
+"The Skidmore? O.K."
+
+Fairly picking her up, he rushed her to the taxi that was waiting for
+her, then climbed in beside her. "Skidmore Building. Make it snappy!"
+
+Once in the taxi and speeding away, Beth was able to collect her
+thoughts. There was, at the top of the tall Skidmore Building, a
+searchlight. This was not always in operation, but was held in readiness
+for any emergency either on the water or in the air. If only she could
+get that light searching the air for the runaway balloon something, she
+felt sure, could be done about it.
+
+The taxi came to a sudden jarring halt.
+
+"Here you are!"
+
+"Here." She dropped a half dollar in the taxi driver's hand. At the same
+instant something was pressed into the palm of her left hand. She looked
+up. Her powerful young protector was gone. In her hand was a card.
+
+A moment later as she shot toward the stars in an elevator she looked at
+that card and smiled.
+
+"Gunderson Shotts, 22 Diversey Way" it read. And in the lower right hand
+corner, "Everybody's Business."
+
+She smiled in spite of herself as she murmured, "Gunderson Shotts,
+Everybody's Business. What a strange calling!"
+
+                            * * * * * * * *
+
+At that same moment Johnny was going over the side into the dark. It was
+strange, this adventure. "Must be careful," he told himself. And indeed
+he must. Dark waters awaited him. A drop from that height would probably
+kill or at least maim him.
+
+"No chance," he murmured.
+
+The bright lights of the city called to him from afar. He had seen much
+of that bright and terrible city; had meant to see much more. "Must see
+it all," he told himself.
+
+"But now I must forget it," he resolved.
+
+And surely he must, for now he was beneath the basket. The tiny finger of
+light from his electric torch shot about here and there.
+
+Steadying its motion, directing it toward the end of the cable, he began
+studying the problem at hand.
+
+And then--something happened. Did his hand slip? Did the noose about his
+foot give away? He will never know. Nor will he forget that instant when
+his flashlight, slipping from his chattering teeth, shot downward and he,
+by the merest chance, escaped following it.
+
+How it happened he will never be able to tell. This much he knew: he hung
+there in all that blackness supporting his weight by one desperately
+gripping hand.
+
+Somewhere below was the noose that should offer him footing. Somewhere
+far, far below were black waters waiting. And through his mind there
+flashed a thousand pictures of the bright and beautiful world he might,
+in ten seconds' time, leave behind.
+
+All this in the space of a split second, then groping madly, he found the
+rope with his other hand. After that began the heart-breaking task of
+groping in the dark with his foot for the dangling rope loop, while the
+muscles in his arms became burning bands of fire.
+
+"I must win!" he whispered. "I must!"
+
+"Johnny! Johnny Thompson!" came from above. "What has happened?"
+
+"Don't know. I--I'm dangling. Dra--draw me up if you can."
+
+Came a sudden tug on the rope that all but tore the rope from his grip.
+"No! No! Wait!"
+
+Once again he sought that noose with his toe.
+
+                            * * * * * * * *
+
+As for Beth, she had gone shooting up in that express elevator in the
+Skidmore Building.
+
+Like a rubber ball she bounded from the car, then raced for a cubby-hole
+in a corner where two men were standing.
+
+"The balloon!" she exclaimed. "The captive balloon! It's loose, drifting!
+You must find it with your light!"
+
+"What's that?" one man demanded sharply. "Impossible! There's no gale.
+That cable couldn't break!"
+
+"It's loose! Drifting!" the girl insisted. "They cut the cable, someone
+cut it. My brother and another boy are in the balloon. You must save
+them."
+
+One man glanced at the other. "All right, we better try it, Ben!"
+
+At that a long finger of white light began feeling its way through the
+blackness that is sky above Lake Michigan on a cloudy night.
+
+Johnny, unable to find the loop in the rope, feeling his strength unequal
+to a climb hand over hand, felt the muscles of his arms weaken until all
+seemed lost.
+
+And then, as if some miracle had been done, night turned into day. The
+powerful light had reached him only for a second, but that was enough.
+His keen eye had caught the loop in the rope. It was by his knee. A
+sudden fling and his knee was resting in that loop.
+
+"All--all right now!" he called. "Try to pull me up."
+
+And at that the gleam of that powerful searchlight returned to rest on
+the spot of air in which the runaway balloon hung.
+
+"I'll step over and call the sausage balloon, Ben," one of the men in the
+great steel tower said to the other as Beth, at sight of the balloon
+still drifting high, began breathing more easily. "They'll have to go to
+the rescue."
+
+One more fierce struggle and Johnny tumbled over the side into the
+balloon's basket.
+
+"It--it's put on with steel rings," he panted.
+
+"It--what is?" Felix stared.
+
+"The cable. What did you think?" Johnny laughed in spite of himself.
+"That's what I went over to see about."
+
+"Yes," Felix grinned. "But now they've found us. All the honest people in
+that great city will want to save us. Isn't it wonderful when you think
+of it?" he marveled. "So many good people in the world! So many willing
+to give a fellow a lift when he's in trouble. If only we could all pull
+together all the time, what a world this would be!"
+
+After that, each occupied with his own thoughts, they drifted on into the
+night.
+
+A half hour later a dark bulk came stealing toward them. This was a small
+dirigible balloon owned by an advertising firm. Soon they were alongside.
+Instruments were taken aboard, the runaway balloon deflated, then they
+went gliding back toward the city of a million lights.
+
+"Should have had this old sausage in the beginning," Felix grumbled.
+"Will next time perhaps."
+
+Johnny wondered if he would be invited to participate in that next
+endeavor and, if so, what he would learn.
+
+In due time they were back on good solid earth. But the day, for Johnny,
+was not yet over.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER XI
+                        A ROOM OF STRANGE MAGIC
+
+
+"Say!" Felix exclaimed as they boarded a car bound for home. "Wonder how
+it happened that searchlight fellow was looking for us."
+
+"Somebody told him," Johnny suggested.
+
+"Yes, and I know who!" The young inventor's face fairly shone. "It was
+Beth; couldn't have been anyone else. Fellow without a sister is just
+square out of luck, that's all. The way she gets me out of things! Say,
+man! It's great!"
+
+A half hour later, over cups of steaming chocolate produced, as before,
+by the mysterious "Eye," Beth told her story.
+
+"Gunderson Shotts," Felix murmured, examining the card Beth handed him.
+"'Everybody's Business.' Suppose that means he tends to everybody's
+business?"
+
+"Got quite a job on his hands," Johnny laughed.
+
+"He's big enough to take a huge load of it on his shoulders." Beth was
+staring into space.
+
+"Have to look him up and thank him," Felix drawled. Already the events of
+the day were fading from his memory. He was dreaming of some strange new
+contraption that might startle the world.
+
+"You'll stay with us tonight." Roused from his revery, he turned to
+Johnny.
+
+"Why I--"
+
+"Sure, sure you will. Show you the room right away. It's on the third
+floor; a little strange, you may find it, but comfortable, extra fine,
+I'd say." Felix favored him with a smile.
+
+The room they entered a few moments later was strange in two particulars.
+It was extremely tall. Johnny thought it must be fully twenty feet to the
+ceiling. "Queer way to build a room," was his mental comment. Like other
+rooms in the house, it was illuminated to the deepest corners; yet there
+were no lamps anywhere. "Odd place, this," he thought. Yet Felix had
+warned him. He had been given ample opportunity to say, "I don't like the
+looks of it." Now he shrugged his shoulders and asked no questions; that
+was Johnny's way.
+
+"Light begins to fade in twenty minutes," was Felix's only comment as he
+left the room.
+
+"Light begins to fade," Johnny grinned when the door had been closed.
+"Sure is a queer way to put it."
+
+Twenty minutes later he began to realize that the strange boy had spoken
+the exact truth. The light did begin to fade. At first the change was
+almost imperceptible, a mere deepening of shadows in remote corners.
+Then, little by little, the pictures that hung low on those tall walls
+began to fade. The windows too, short, low windows, too short, Johnny
+thought, for so tall a room, began letting in light about the shades, a
+very little light, but light all the same.
+
+Breaking the spell that had settled upon his drowsy senses, Johnny sprang
+to his feet, threw off his clothes, dragged on his sleeping garments,
+then crept beneath the covers of a most comfortable bed.
+
+"Light is fading," he murmured. He recalled the lights on the stage of
+the opera house. They had not blinked on and off. They faded like the
+coming of darkness on the broad prairies. "Sort of nice, I think," he
+murmured sleepily. "More natural. Like--like--"
+
+Well, after all, what did it matter what it was like. He had fallen
+asleep.
+
+How long we have slept we are seldom able to tell. At times an hour seems
+a whole night, at others four hours is but a dozen ticks of the clock.
+Johnny slept. He awoke. And at once his senses were conscious of some
+change going on in his room. He was seized with a foreboding of impending
+catastrophe.
+
+At first he was at a complete loss to know what this change was. There
+was the room. The low windows still admitted streaks of light. The
+chairs, his bed, the very low chest of drawers were in their accustomed
+places.
+
+"And yet--" He ran a hand across his eyes as if to clear his vision. And
+then like a flash it came to him. That exceedingly tall room was not so
+tall now--or was it?
+
+"Impossible! How absurd!" He sat up, determined to waken himself from a
+bad dream.
+
+But the thing was no dream. The ceiling _was_ lower, fully five feet
+lower. And--horror of horrors!--it was still moving downward, lower,
+lower, still lower.
+
+There was not the slightest sound, yet the boy seemed to feel the breath
+of moving air on his face.
+
+Too astonished and frightened to move, he sat there while that ceiling
+marched down over the pattern of a quite futuristic wall-paper.
+
+When at last questions formed themselves in his fear-frozen brain they
+were, "How far will it come? Will the posts of my bed arrest it? If the
+bed crashes under the weight, what then?"
+
+While he was revolving these questions in his mind and wondering in a
+vague sort of way what chance he had of escaping from one of those third
+story windows, he noted with a start that the ceiling had ceased moving.
+It was as if its desire to hide great stretches of wall paper had, for
+the time at least, been satisfied.
+
+The ceiling having settled nine feet or more, Johnny found himself in
+quite a normal bed chamber. Windows were the proper height, pictures
+correctly hung and furniture matching it all very well.
+
+He settled back on his bed. It had been a long day. He would just lie
+there and keep a wary eye on that playful ceiling.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XII
+                         THE WHISPERER RETURNS
+
+
+On the following morning at dawn the whisper returned to Grace Krowl's
+little parlor on Maxwell Street. She had just wakened and lay on her
+comfortable bed staring at the faint tracings of beautiful forms on her
+unusual walls, when she heard it.
+
+"A pleasant day to you! Here I am again, talking to you down a beam of
+light."
+
+Springing to her feet, she threw on a dressing gown and dashed into her
+parlor. She would trap the intruder. But she did not. As before, the room
+was empty.
+
+She took a seat by her table. "Ah! There you are!" There was a glad note
+in the whisper. "How beautiful is youth!" She flushed.
+
+"I have no message of importance for you today," the whisper went on
+steadily. "But tomorrow--who knows?
+
+"One request: do not disturb any object in your room. To do so may
+destroy the charm. And, in the end, you would regret it.
+
+"Let me assure you I am an honorable person. I am for the law--not
+against it. My motives are good. You may trust me. And you may believe me
+when I tell you I am more than a mile away."
+
+The girl started. There it was again. "More than a mile away. How could
+anyone be seen through a mile of space--much less send a whisper over
+that great distance?
+
+"A radio," she thought. A careful search revealed no sign of a radio.
+Only one object in her room was strange, the two foot reflector against
+the wall.
+
+"Dawn is passing," came once again in a whisper. "Like the fairies, I
+must be on my way. Cheerio, and a good day to you!" The room went
+suddenly silent. It was silence such as Grace Krowl had seldom
+experienced.
+
+Strangely enough, at the "House of Magic" in quite another section of the
+city, Johnny Thompson heard that same whisper. What was stranger still,
+the words were not the same. From this it might surely be learned that
+this was, at least, not a radio broadcast.
+
+He had fallen asleep staring at that magic ceiling that had a way of
+falling silently. He awoke at dawn, still staring at that ceiling. To his
+vast surprise, he found it now fully twenty feet above his head. "Was
+that way when I went to bed," he assured himself. "Must have dreamed
+it--must--"
+
+He broke short off to listen with all his ears. In a clear, distinct
+whisper had come a greeting:
+
+"Good morning, Johnny Thompson!"
+
+"Good--good morning," he faltered. He was conscious of a feeling that he
+was not heard. In this he was right.
+
+"We are glad you are back in the city, Johnny. You will tell your friend
+Drew Lane that we will soon have a definite message for him--one that has
+to do with his present mission. We will whisper it to you some day at
+dawn. That is your room. You must keep it. No harm will befall you there.
+And now, may your day be a busy and profitable one." The whisper ended.
+
+We might say that, though Johnny failed to notice it at that time, there
+was on the far side of his room a circular mirror or reflector, such as
+we have seen in Grace Krowl's room, and that his window was open toward
+the east.
+
+"A good day to you." Grace Krowl, the girl from Kansas, recalled these
+words, whispered to her "down a beam of light" many times during the
+trying hours of that day.
+
+"Whispers," she repeated to herself, "whispers at dawn. What does it
+mean? And this whisperer? Is it a man or a woman? Could one tell by the
+quality of tone?"
+
+The Whisperer had given her little intimation of his purpose. She had
+been assured that the purpose was honorable and kind. She had been
+requested to leave her room just as it was. This request had caused her
+to look at the strange oval reflector on the wall.
+
+At times she thought of telling her uncle all about it. "But no," she
+decided in the end, "this shall be my own small secret. What harm can
+come from a whisper? The Whisperer said that he would return. Well then,
+let him!" With that, for the time, she set the matter aside.
+
+After a hasty breakfast served by her uncle's aged housekeeper, she went
+down into the "store." "Look!" Her uncle pointed to a number of trunks
+standing on end just inside the door. "Yesterday was express auction day.
+It comes always on Tuesday. I have bought these trunks. What is there in
+them? How should I know? Probably wrags." Nicholas Fischer was very
+German in his speech.
+
+"But you will be surprised." His faded eyes brightened. "We have very
+swell customers on Wednesday. They come from the north side and from out
+by the University. They are curious. They want to see what they can buy
+cheap. And they buy, right from the trunks. You shall see.
+
+"You will be very helpful," he went on. "You are young. They will like a
+bright face. You shall wait on them. You will know them by their fine
+clothes, fur coats, all that. And I--" He looked over his cheap garments.
+"I shall wait on the poor ones, the ones who buy a few towels or some
+very poor dishes.
+
+"Yes, you wait on the fine ladies. Only--" he held up a finger, "always I
+make the price."
+
+An artist looking in upon this bewhiskered, shabbily dressed keeper of a
+second-hand store and his niece all pink and fresh in her spotless smock,
+would have found contrast to suit his taste.
+
+"See!" Nicholas Fischer spoke again, "I will break open the locks and
+lift the lids, but you must not unpack the trunks. Leave that to the fine
+ladies. They will tell you they are 'exploring.'"
+
+"But supposing they find something truly valuable--a--a diamond or
+something!" Grace protested.
+
+"If they find a diamond, then I drop dead. What will it matter?" Nicholas
+Fischer laughed hoarsely.
+
+"But you keep watch." His shrewd eyes gleamed. "If you find a diamond,
+then you and I will buy us a Christmas present."
+
+"Good!" It was the girl's turn to laugh. "Christmas will soon be here.
+I'll find the diamond, you'll see, and a few stocks and bonds for good
+measure."
+
+"Yes. Stocks and bonds." Seizing a hammer and chisel, Nicholas Fischer
+pried off the lock of a large, round-topped trunk. "The round-topped
+ones," he commented, "they come from the country. Sometimes there are
+very fine wool blankets in these. Then we make a few dollars."
+
+While her uncle was prying away at the locks, the girl had an opportunity
+to study the trunks that, standing as they did, huddled in a group and
+tipped this way and that, reminded her of a picture she had seen of six
+very tipsy men awaiting the police wagon.
+
+"Trunks," she told herself, "are like people. They have character. There
+is a big wardrobe--a trifle shabby to be sure, but still standing on its
+dignity. And there are three canvas covered ones, huddled together. Never
+been anybody in particular and never will be. There's that one with
+bright orange stripes running around it, like a delicate lady. There's
+that good solid citizen, oak ribs and stout metal edges. And there--"
+
+Having moved a little, she had caught sight of a tiny brown trunk that
+appeared to hide behind the "solid citizen."
+
+"Horsehair trunk," she whispered to herself. "Old as the hills. What must
+it contain?"
+
+And then her uncle, chisel in hand, approached.
+
+"Please!" Her cry was one almost of pain. "Are there not enough others?
+This little one must not have much in it. Let me look at it--alone
+tonight."
+
+Nicholas Fischer, looking into her pleading eyes, shook his head. "I am
+afraid you will wreck my business. You are too soft." Nevertheless, he
+spared the little trunk.
+
+Dropping his chisel in the corner, he threw a ragged blanket over it as
+he muttered, "Tomorrow will be time enough. But mind you, it must be
+tomorrow."
+
+The "ladies" came, just as her uncle had promised they would. They came
+dressed in furs--mink, marten and Hudson seal--for it was a bleak,
+blustery day. They picked their way daintily between piles of used
+bedding and soiled dresses, to pause at last before the open trunks.
+
+As they looked into the slim trunk with orange stripes about it, Grace
+was reminded of a picture she had seen of three vultures sitting on a
+rock peering into the distance.
+
+"Snoopers! How I hate them! Yet, I must serve them." Next moment she was
+wondering whether or not she was being quite fair to them. They had come
+where things were sold and had a right to inspect the wares.
+
+"But everything in that trunk belonged to a person who treasured it," she
+told herself. "Why must such rude hands unpack it, after it was packed
+with such care? Why must each one carry away the one treasure she most
+desires, while the rightful owner goes empty-handed?" To this question
+she could find no answer save one haunting verse she remembered from a
+very old book: "The destruction of the poor is their poverty."
+
+She summoned a friendly smile and assisted the "ladies" in emptying this
+trunk which had belonged to a young lady. When, however, Grace came to a
+drawer of photographs, letters and personal papers, she dumped them all
+into a card-board box and shoved them under the ragged quilt where the
+little horsehair trunk seemed to peek at her through the holes.
+
+The "ladies" turned from the next three trunks in disgust. Two men's, and
+one family trunk, they offered little more than dirty rags.
+
+"Why must people be so filthy," a fat "lady" in a mink coat complained.
+"If they must lose their things you'd think they might at least wash them
+before packing."
+
+The wardrobe trunk offered gaudy finery that did not interest the
+"ladies" overmuch. But the big square trunk Grace had named the
+"substantial citizen"--this one it was that brought a fresh ache to the
+girl's heart.
+
+It turned out to be a household trunk filled with bedding, linen and all
+sorts of fancy articles done by hand. Everything was scrupulously clean.
+And the bits of hand embroidery, the touches of lace, the glints of color
+all done with the finest thread, seemed to say, "I belong to a home. We
+all belong together. We rested beneath the lamp, above the fireplace in a
+room some people called home."
+
+She tried to picture that home. There was a man, a woman, and their
+children, a brother and a sister. The man read. The woman's fingers were
+busy with thread and needle. The children played with the cat before the
+fire.
+
+Her eyes filled with tears as she thought, "All this is being destroyed.
+All that is best in our good, brave land, a home, has become a wreck."
+
+But the "ladies"! How they babbled and screamed. "Oh Clara! Look! Isn't
+this a scream? Only look at this piece! Isn't it exquisite?" "Mary, just
+take a peek at this buffet runner. Two yards long! And all done by hand!
+It's a treasure. I'll offer the old man a half dollar for it. He'll take
+it. What does he know?"
+
+Grace listened and set her lips tight. Life, she could see, was going to
+be hard, but she would certainly see it through.
+
+She experienced a sense of contentment as she recalled the little
+horsehair trunk. Tonight she would spirit that away up to her room and
+there she would find adventure looking inside it. There would be letters,
+she told herself, and photographs--and--and perhaps some real treasure.
+
+At that moment her eyes caught a second box of keepsakes. These too she
+shoved away under the ragged quilt.
+
+"Tonight in my parlor," she told herself. She was rapidly coming to know
+that each trunk told the story of the owner. In her room she would read
+that story.
+
+Her parlor. Her brow wrinkled. What a mysterious room! So perfect, and in
+such a place. "And there's the concave mirror, and the whisper at dawn."
+She shuddered in spite of herself.
+
+Then she came out of her revery with a snap. The fat lady in the mink
+coat was approaching her uncle. She would offer half a dollar for the
+buffet runner. Gliding swiftly past, Grace whispered in her uncle's ear:
+
+"The price is three dollars."
+
+The "lady" gave her a suspicious glance. But the price _was_ three
+dollars. And in the end, three dollars the lady paid.
+
+"Is that all the trunks?" The fat lady turned a petulant, spoiled face
+toward the girl. "Are there no other trunks?" She snatched at the ragged
+blanket, but Grace was too quick for her, her foot was on its edge.
+
+"There are no other trunks to be opened today."
+
+"Oh--ah!" The "lady" sighed. "This has been such fun!"
+
+Fun? Grace turned away. And in turning she found herself presenting a
+tearful face to none other than Drew Lane her friend of the bus, who had
+entered unnoticed.
+
+"Well," he smiled, pretending not to see her tears. "How's the big store
+in Chicago?"
+
+"Great! Great!" She managed a smile.
+
+"How--how are all the people you look af--after?" she asked a bit
+unsteadily.
+
+"Oh, they're all right." He laughed a low laugh. "In fact--" His voice
+dropped to a hoarse whisper--"I've got some of them locked up. Quite a
+number. You see, I'm a city detective. This is part of my territory. I'll
+be seeing you often, I hope."
+
+She started and stared. That whisper! When one spoke out loud his voice
+could be recognized. She knew this. But a whisper? Could one truly
+recognize a whisper when he heard it the second time? It seemed
+incredible. And yet, Drew Lane's whisper was so like the one she had
+heard at dawn.
+
+"Impossible! A mere fancy!" She tried to free herself from this
+apparently unreasonable suspicion.
+
+"A penny for your thoughts," Drew Lane bantered.
+
+"No! No! Not for a dollar," was her quick reply.
+
+"All right," he laughed. "Anyway, I'll be seeing you. Got to hurry on
+down the street." He was gone, leaving the girl's head in a whirl.
+
+"Whispers at dawn?" she murmured as she made her way toward the horsehair
+trunk.
+
+"What about these?" She held the box of keepsakes from the big trunk up
+for her uncle's inspection.
+
+"What?" He stared.
+
+"These? Letters? Pictures?"
+
+He made a wry face. "Baby books, maybe. Who would buy these? Throw them
+in the alley. Black children live in the next street. They carry them
+off."
+
+"But look! Here is the croix de guerre. Some brave fellow fought to win
+that," she protested.
+
+"Yes! But did he keep it? No! Let some black boy wear it."
+
+"Then I may keep them? All these?"
+
+"If you wish."
+
+She rewarded him with a smile. After the evening meal she would read the
+stories recorded here and she would explore the little horsehair trunk.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XIII
+                     SO LONG AS GOD GIVES US BREATH
+
+
+That same morning as soon as he could gulp down his coffee, Johnny
+hastened over to the shack. He was full of talk about the whisperer and
+his message.
+
+"What do you make of a thing like that?" he demanded of Captain Burns.
+"It seemed to come right out of the sky!"
+
+"And why not?" The Captain smiled. "We are living in a strange world
+these days.
+
+"One thing's important," he said as he sat up in his chair, "you must not
+leave this 'House of Magic' as you call it; at least not for long. I have
+a feeling that this whisperer must be on our side, the side of law and
+justice, and that he may be some sort of undercover man who can give us
+just the information we need.
+
+"You see, Johnny--" He leaned forward in his chair. "That gang, the five
+public enemies, with Iggy the Snake at their head, is back in the city.
+They are sure, sooner or later, to sell some of these bonds they took
+from the bank. They are of small denominations and are negotiable. We
+have their serial numbers. The moment one of these bonds falls into the
+hands of an honest man, we will be hot on their trail. 'Where did you get
+it?' we will say to the honest man. He will tell us. We will go to the
+man who sold the bond and repeat, 'Where did you get it?' He may turn out
+to be honest and innocent too. But in the end we'll reach a crooked bond
+dealer who knew those bonds were 'hot' when he bought them. If he doesn't
+lead us to Iggy the Snake we'll send him up for ten years. The charge
+will be receiving stolen goods.
+
+"Oh, I tell you, Johnny!" he exclaimed, striking the arm of his chair,
+"we'll get 'em, Johnny! In the end we'll get 'em, you'll see.
+
+"But today, Johnny--" His voice took on a mellow tone. "While you and I
+are free, I'd like to take you to one of those places I spoke of the last
+time I saw you."
+
+"All--all right." Johnny wondered what sort of place that would be.
+
+In the Captain's long, powerful gray car they drove across the city and
+into the suburbs.
+
+At last they stopped before a home that was neither large nor showy--a
+bungalow with its broad side to the street, it stood in the midst of a
+clump of trees. Nature had planted the trees. Someone, admiring nature's
+work, had built his home there.
+
+Once inside that house, the good Captain heaved a sigh of content. A
+large open fire gave the tiny living room a feeling of luxurious
+grandeur. And yet there was about it an air of tidy comfort. The
+furniture was plain. Hard-bottomed rockers had been softened by handmade
+cushions, all in bright colors. A touch of lace and embroidery here and
+there on table and chairs told of fingers never still.
+
+A short, energetic little lady with flushed cheeks hastened from the
+kitchen at the back to greet them.
+
+"Well, how do you do, Captain Burns? How good it is to see you!"
+
+"It's good to be here," the Captain rumbled. "And this, Mrs. LeClare, is
+my good friend Johnny Thompson.
+
+"And here," the Captain chuckled, "here's Alice. Ah, Johnny, there's a
+girl you could love!"
+
+Johnny flushed. The girl who extended her hand laughed a merry laugh.
+"The Captain must have his jokes."
+
+The hand Johnny grasped was a chubby, capable little hand; the eyes he
+looked into were frank and clear. The girl's hair was black. There was a
+slight natural wave in it. Her eyebrows were black and thick. She was
+short like her mother. Like her too, she gave forth an air of boundless
+energy.
+
+"Alice LeClare," Johnny said, half to himself. "A pretty name."
+
+"We are French," Alice explained, "Canadian French."
+
+"If you looked over the list of Mounties that have come and gone up in
+the bleak northland of Canada, you'd find many a LeClare," the Captain
+explained. "They're that sort."
+
+Johnny saw a shadow pass over Mrs. LeClare's face. Alice looked quickly
+away.
+
+"You'll have to excuse us," Mrs. LeClare explained after a moment of
+silence. "We're in the midst of things. Make yourselves comfortable by
+the fire."
+
+Just what sort of things the ladies were in the midst of, Johnny could
+guess well enough. The kitchen was not too far away--one great advantage
+of a small house--and from it came savory odors, meat roasting, pumpkin
+pies baking, apple sauce simmering.
+
+"They can cook," said the Captain, dropping into a chair with the air of
+a contented dog. "These Canadian French can cook. And what workers they
+are, these people!
+
+"The boys will be here soon," he went on. "Madame LeClare's boys. They're
+out selling their magazines. Fine boys--poor old Jack's boys." His voice
+dropped.
+
+"Who is Jack?" Johnny asked.
+
+"What? Didn't I tell you?" The Captain sat up. "But of course I didn't.
+
+"They're not Jack's boys any more," he rumbled after a moment. "Poor old
+Jack is dead. Finest, squarest cop that ever walked a beat. Real name was
+Jacques--French you know. We called him Jack.
+
+"Wish you could have known him, Johnny. You'd have loved him." He stared
+at the fire.
+
+"Fine, big, strapping fellow," he went on after a while. "Six feet two,
+black hair and bushy eyebrows, like Alice, you know.
+
+"Women used to try to flirt with him. Stop their car, they would,--rich
+women in big cars, diamonds on their fingers. New-rich, young, fool
+women. No good--you know the kind? Well, maybe not. You will though. May
+God hasten the time when that sort get back to the dirty gutter where
+they belong!
+
+"But Jack--" The Captain laughed scornfully. "No danger! Jack sent them
+along fast enough. Jack had eyes for one and only one--his Marie." He
+nodded toward the kitchen. "He lived for her, Jack did, and for Alice and
+the boys--fine boys, Gluck and Lucian--" His voice trailed off.
+
+"But what--what happened to Jack?"
+
+Not seeming to hear, the Captain went on: "Straightest cop I ever
+knew--too straight you might say. When you walk a beat you look after
+things--naturally, that's part of your job. You try store doors to see if
+they're locked, watch for prowlers, all that. And if some good citizen
+drinks a bit too much and the night air gets the best of him, you escort
+him safely home--part of your job.
+
+"Grateful people, will hand a cop a dollar now and then. Why not? But do
+you think Jack would take it? Never a cent. No end polite the way he
+thanked them, but he took no money but what came to him on pay day. That
+was Jack. Said he was afraid it would lead him to accept 'dirty
+money'--you know, hush money--from real wrongdoers. And, man! How Jack
+hated dirty money!
+
+"Polite, honest to a fault, kind, always looking out after the
+unfortunate--and brave, absolutely fearless!--'Mountie' blood in his
+veins, way back. That was Jack." Again his voice trailed away.
+
+From the kitchen came the faintest snatch of some French song. The
+delicious aroma of coffee was added to that of meat, pie and sauce. From
+somewhere in the back came the scuffle and scrape of boyish feet.
+
+"All this was Jack's," the Captain rumbled, spreading his arms wide as if
+to embrace the whole world. "And then--" from his pocket he drew a narrow
+packet. This he unfolded, then spread it down the length of his knee. It
+was the photographs of public enemies.
+
+"These five--" his eyes shone with deep, abiding hate. "These five had
+been out riding in a costly car they had borrowed without leave. They had
+just kidnapped a banker and compelled him to open a safe. I told you that
+before. They'd got a lot of money and bonds. They were speeding west and
+tried to pass a stop-light. They skidded into another car. No real damage
+done. But that was Jack's corner. He wanted to know--his business to
+know--why they'd crashed the light.
+
+"All he said was, 'What the--' Then, without an instant's warning, they
+let him have it from the back seat--six shots.
+
+"And then they sped on. Jack, the squarest cop that ever breathed, was
+dead.
+
+"Johnny--" The Captain's voice was deep. "Don't ever for a moment think
+crime is romantic. It is not. It is dirty, rotten, selfish, beastly!
+
+"You might think to see one of these young crooks, dressed like 'Boul
+Mich' on parade, standing before the judge, that he was just a young
+adventurer. He's not. He's a dirty dog. He's never worked; never will. He
+sticks a gun in a working man's ribs and takes his money. Spends it for
+flashy clothes, furs and diamonds for his Moll--booze maybe, and
+gambling. And does he stop to ask, 'was this a rich or a poor man's
+money?' You better know he don't. What does it matter to him whose it
+was? It is his now. He took it.
+
+"And they shot him!" His voice dropped to such a solemn pitch that Johnny
+was reminded of some words spoken in a church. "They shot him," the
+Captain repeated slowly, "one of these five crooks, maybe Iggy the Snake
+shot poor old Jack. And by the Eternal!" He stood up, raising his hands
+high. "So long as God gives us breath, we'll hunt those men until the
+last one of them is dead or in jail for life. For life!" His hands
+dropped to his side and he sank into his chair.
+
+Then again Johnny was conscious of the low humming song, the aroma of
+fine food prepared by skillful hands and loving hearts--the distant
+scuffle of boyish feet.
+
+"So long as God gives us breath," he murmured low. It was like a sacred
+vow taken by some knight of King Arthur's court.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XIV
+                             A HUMAN SPIDER
+
+
+It was a wonderful dinner they enjoyed in Madame LeClare's snug little
+home. And not the least of the joys for the Captain on that
+occasion--Johnny was sure of this--were the smiling eyes of the kindly
+hostess. As for Johnny, he had more than one smile from another pair of
+dark eyes.
+
+Dinner over, they sat about the fire while Lucian, a slender boy of
+twelve, entertained them with quaint French melodies played upon an
+ancient violin that had been his grandfather's.
+
+"You are to be a musician," Johnny said to Lucian.
+
+"But what will you be?" He turned to Gluck, a sturdy boy of ten with
+flashing eyes.
+
+"Tell him, Gluck." There was pride in the mother's tone.
+
+"I am going to be an officer of the law, like my father." Gluck squared
+his shoulders.
+
+"That's the boy!" his mother applauded.
+
+"There's a woman for you!" the Captain murmured. His eyes glistened.
+"Gave her husband for our country's good. Now she offers her son. This
+country needs more mothers such as this."
+
+It was mid-afternoon when they bade Madame LeClare and her fine family a
+hearty farewell.
+
+"I wanted you to know them," the Captain rumbled as once more they
+entered the great city. "You are to be one of us. You may have an
+opportunity to be of great service. Danger and death may threaten you. It
+will help you to understand the war we are waging, and why we must win."
+
+"Thank you," said Johnny humbly. "I am sure it will."
+
+"This is a tough neighborhood," the Captain said a moment later as they
+rolled down a narrow street. "'Hell's Half Acre,' I guess you might call
+it.
+
+"I wonder what those young hoodlums are looking at." He slowed down his
+car to a crawl. At the corner of a five story apartment building a dozen
+or more of flashily dressed youths stood staring upward. From time to
+time one or the other of them might have been heard shouting something.
+
+Stopping his car, the Captain stepped out. Johnny followed.
+
+To their astonishment, they saw clinging to the bricks of the corner, and
+near to the very top of the building, a huge youth with a thick crop of
+hair. He was tossing his mane, laughing and roaring like a gorilla, which
+he resembled slightly.
+
+"Come down from there!" the Captain thundered.
+
+"Come and get me," the youth roared back.
+
+"Come down!" The Captain threw open his coat, revealing his star.
+
+"Oh! All right, I'll come." The young giant's face sobered. The crowd of
+flashily dressed youths vanished. At the same time a square of paper came
+fluttering to the pavement. Apparently it had fallen from the climber's
+pocket.
+
+Johnny picked it up and read:
+
+  "Gunderson Shotts,
+  22 Diversey Way.
+  Everybody's Business."
+
+"Why that," he said with a start, "must be the young savage with a stout
+heart who helped us out of a jam last night. Don't be too hard on him,
+Captain." Hastily he outlined the night's adventure with the runaway
+balloon, and the part this youth had played.
+
+"I'll not be too hard on him," the Captain promised. "In fact I think
+this may be the changing point in his career. Stranger things have
+happened.
+
+"What's your name?" he demanded as the young giant reached the pavement.
+
+"Gunderson Shotts, that's my name." The youth grinned broadly. "But they
+call me Spider. I can climb, climb just anything at all."
+
+"Spider," Johnny thought, "it's a name that will stick. Looks like a
+giant spider, long arms, long legs, hairy head, big eyes. Spider." He
+chuckled.
+
+"Don't you know," the Captain demanded of the one who called himself
+Spider, "that you're likely to break your neck?" He examined the lay of
+the bricks that had given the boy only an overlapping half inch at
+intervals of a foot, on which to cling and climb. "And if you fell, you'd
+like as not kill someone else in that fall."
+
+"They dared me, these--" He looked about in surprise. "Why! Where are
+they?"
+
+"They've blown," the Captain replied dryly. "Hawks go flapping away fast
+enough when a hunter comes round a corner. They're a bad lot, and this is
+no place for a lad like you. Hop into the car."
+
+"You--you're not going to take me to the station!" Spider's cheeks paled.
+
+"No," the Captain laughed, "not the station. Just to a shack we have for
+a hangout. We eat there sometimes. Like to eat?"
+
+"Do I? Try me!" The young giant grinned at his captors broadly.
+
+"We will."
+
+"Have much luck minding everybody's business?" the Captain asked as they
+paused for a red light.
+
+"Not much," the big boy chuckled, "but what's a fellow to do? No one
+would let me work for him, so I went to work for everybody."
+
+"Did yourself a good turn once anyway," said the Captain.
+
+"How's that?"
+
+The Captain reminded him of his adventure with Beth Van Loon.
+
+"That," the big boy chuckled, "was funny."
+
+"It might not have been. That fellow might have put his knife through
+your heart."
+
+"But he didn't." The big boy laughed hoarsely.
+
+They stopped at a delicatessen. Here Captain Burns purchased half a baked
+ham, piping hot, a huge loaf of rye bread and a gallon pot of coffee.
+
+Arrived at the shack, he spread this crude but wholesome meal out upon
+the table. He and Johnny drank coffee but ate little. When they had
+finished, save for the dishes, the board was clear.
+
+"Spider," the Captain said, slapping the big boy on the back, "you're a
+fighter, an eater, and a climber. That's all it takes to make a first
+class cop. Stick with me and I'll make you one."
+
+Spider stuck. And that, as you will see, is why certain things came out
+as they did in the unwinding of events that were to follow.
+
+                            * * * * * * * *
+
+It was with a guilty feeling that Grace Krowl that evening began delving
+into the personal letters and papers taken from the thin trunk with
+orange stripes.
+
+"It is as if someone were looking over my shoulder," she told herself,
+"saying, 'See here! Those are my letters! What right have you to read
+them?'
+
+"And yet," she philosophized, "if I am to help them in any way I must
+know something about these people."
+
+So she kept on reading. There were three bundles of letters and a diary.
+The more she read, the more deeply disgusted she became.
+
+"I did not dream there could be such a person as that girl is!" she
+exclaimed, throwing the letters back into the box and sliding it into a
+corner out of her sight. "That girl deserves nothing. False to her
+friends who try to help her, a flirt and a cheat. How--how terrible!"
+
+For some time she sat and stared into space. "I suppose," she murmured
+dejectedly, "that very few of them are worthy of any aid. And yet, there
+_must_ be some."
+
+She took up the box from the big family trunk. In this she read a
+beautiful sad story of a father, mother and two little girls. Their
+pictures were all there. So too were the girls' baby books and the
+father's sharp-shooter's badge.
+
+The letters told the story of a brave but futile fight against poverty
+that had advanced upon them like a storm in the night.
+
+"They lost their home," she whispered. "Next they lost their furniture,
+all those things that had become dear to them. And now, here, last of
+all, is their trunk. The wreck of the grandest thing God's eyes ever
+rested upon--a home.
+
+"But at least--" She clenched her hands fiercely. "At least they shall
+have these trophies back. I shall write to the mother and offer them to
+her without charge.
+
+"Why not in every deserving case?" she exclaimed, springing to her feet
+and hopping about the room. Here was a big idea. This should be a
+beginning. Perhaps in time she could arrange to hold the entire contents
+of a trunk until the real owner could redeem it.
+
+She fancied her uncle frowning upon this. "But let him frown!" she
+exclaimed belligerently.
+
+The thought was a comforting one. With it, after a trying day, she soon
+fell fast asleep.
+
+She was awakened, as on the previous day, by a whisper at dawn. There was
+no "Good morning," no "Cheerio!" this time. Words came short and quick.
+
+"I have just a moment." Thus the whisper began. "There is a girl," it
+went on. "Her name is Nida McFay. She works in the bookstore around the
+corner on Peoria Street."
+
+Grace started. "Why! That's the girl I know!" She spoke aloud, then ended
+abruptly.
+
+"Ah! I see you know her! Fine!" The whisper rose. "No, I didn't hear you.
+Had to read your lips. For the moment I am deaf. I am a mile away but I
+have eyes that see you and lips that speak to you down a beam of light.
+You cannot see me."
+
+"But perhaps I _have_ seen you." The thought popped unbidden into the
+girl's mind.
+
+"Listen carefully!" The whisperer's tone was insistent. "You are to
+become very well acquainted with this girl, Nida; so well that she will
+tell you her story. And let me assure you--she has a story to tell.
+
+"You must invite her to your room, seat her by your table, then induce
+her to tell the story."
+
+"But that would be spying!" the girl burst out.
+
+"Nothing dishonorable. Remember, I promise this. You like to help people.
+This is your chance. You may help many. Good morning."
+
+The whisper was gone, leaving the girl in a daze.
+
+"I must think," she told herself. "Think clearly."
+
+Then of a sudden her eyes fell upon the little horsehair trunk. "I forgot
+to open it! And uncle said I should have it only for a day. Just for a
+day!" She was filled with consternation.
+
+"He will have to give me one more day," she decided at last. "He just
+must! I can't turn it over to--to vandals."
+
+For one full moment after that she stood in sober thought. Nida McFay. So
+that was the girl's name. She was to win her confidence. Get her story.
+Would she do it? Something told her that she would. But why? Because the
+whisper requested. Who was the whisperer? At that she shook herself free
+from these thoughts and went off to breakfast.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER XV
+                            A LIVING PICTURE
+
+
+Johnny Thompson had always supposed he loved mysteries. But in the "House
+of Magic," the old professor's house, they came so thick and fast, and
+apparently without reason, that at times he felt dizzy in his head and
+ready enough to run away from it all.
+
+On the day following the visit to Madame LeClare's house, he was given a
+strange commission. It was Felix who said to him, "You will do us a great
+favor if you will sit and watch a certain picture on the wall."
+
+"Watch a picture?" Johnny exclaimed. "Is it worth a million dollars? And
+do you expect it to be stolen?"
+
+"It is worth," Felix said without breaking into a smile, "very little. I
+even doubt if you could sell it at all.
+
+"And yet," he added, "if you watch it long enough, something may come of
+it after all!"
+
+Something did come of it, you may be sure. But to Johnny, ever keen for
+action, this at first seemed a dull occupation.
+
+The picture was in his own room, the tall room that during his first
+night had shown an inclination to become a short one.
+
+"Nothing could be more stupid!" he told himself after a half hour of
+watching. "Picture isn't even halfway interesting."
+
+This was true. Though quite evidently an oil painting, this canvas within
+a narrow gilt frame was very dark. An old Dutch master, one would say; a
+suggestion of some cabin in the foreground, clumps of trees behind. There
+might have been a sunset in the beginning. If there were, time had taken
+care of the sunset. It had put out the sun.
+
+"Just to sit in this chair and look at that picture!" he grumbled to
+himself. "Nothing could be worse!"
+
+His eyes strayed to the far side of the room where the strange round
+reflector rested.
+
+"Whispers," he murmured. "Those whispers that wakened me at dawn. Wonder
+if they come from that thing? I feel sure they do. Person can tell what
+direction sound comes from. But who whispers? How? Why? That's what I'm
+going to find out." That the whisperer would speak again, that he would
+at last deliver some important message, perhaps many important messages,
+he did not doubt.
+
+But now-- It was with great reluctance that he dragged his eyes from this
+mysterious instrument to fix them once more upon the dull and quite
+commonplace Dutch master.
+
+When at last he accomplished the feat, he fairly bounced from his chair.
+The Dutch master was gone! In its stead was a square of glass. Out from
+that square, well down toward the left-hand corner, shone a yellow spot
+of light.
+
+"Like a moon in the midst of a black sky," he told himself. "What--"
+
+The spot of light began revolving. It broke itself up into a hundred
+yellow moons. It became a golden circle, a hundred golden circles. Then,
+to Johnny's utter astonishment, a face, a living face appeared in that
+frame.
+
+It was a wavering sort of face. Had Johnny been superstitious he might
+have said it was a ghost, for now the lips and eyes were distinct, and
+now they were irregular and all but lost.
+
+Then with a sharp cry Johnny sprang to his feet.
+
+"Where is he?" he cried. "I must find him!"
+
+He had recognized that face. It was the man who sat beside him at the
+auction, who had all but forced him to bid in that package containing the
+bronze lamp, who had later more than likely struck him over the head in
+that dark alley.
+
+"Iggy the Snake!" He fairly shouted the name aloud.
+
+That this was the living image of Iggy he could not doubt. He was
+blinking his eyes. He was talking to someone; that is, his lips moved,
+though no sound reached Johnny.
+
+That this was no mere moving picture Johnny knew well enough. That Iggy
+was not in the next room, looking in at him, he knew quite as well. Iggy
+could never have held the expression of quiet unconcern registered on his
+face had he known that any honest person, let alone Johnny, was looking
+upon him.
+
+"It's magic!" Johnny exclaimed. At the same instant he knew this was not
+true.
+
+"Where is he?" he exclaimed once again.
+
+He leaped for the door. It was locked. It was a massive door. He could
+not hope to break it down, even should he desire to do so.
+
+He raced to the window and threw up the sash. It was a quiet, sunshiny
+day. There were people passing in the street. To attract their attention
+would be an easy matter. But did he wish to do this? Had he a right to do
+so?
+
+"You will promise to betray none of our secrets?" the professor had said.
+He had promised. The outer air cooled his heated brow. Slowly he turned
+about, retraced his steps, then sank down in his chair. He would watch.
+That, after all, was what he had been told to do. Perhaps in the end he
+would learn a great deal, just watching.
+
+The hour that followed will stand out in Johnny's mind as a vivid memory
+as long as Johnny draws a breath. He was looking, he knew beyond the
+shadow of a doubt, upon the living image of the one man he most feared
+and hated, Iggy the Snake. He was watching his every gesture, every
+movement of his lips and eyes; yet he could not touch him nor speak to
+him. He could not say to the policeman on the corner, "Officer, this man
+is a thief and a murderer! Arrest him!" He did not know even where the
+man was. He might, for all he knew, be in the next room or a mile away.
+He could only watch.
+
+Watch he did, and that which he saw was well worth his hour of waiting.
+
+But to wait, powerless to act, to sit there biting his lips, clenching
+his fists, watching that smiling, grimacing image, that was terrible.
+
+For a long time there was only that face. Smiling, talking, bobbing his
+head, Iggy was beyond doubt telling a very interesting story. Once as he
+threw back his head his fist came swinging into view.
+
+"As if he were showing how he struck me!" Johnny sprang from his chair.
+Then, reluctantly, he settled back.
+
+Well that he did, for a moment later the man in that distorted living
+picture partially disappeared and a cardboard box came into view.
+
+"That's it," Johnny muttered, "that's the box I bought, the very one!"
+There could be no doubt about that. He could even distinguish the yellow
+express label.
+
+But this was not all, not nearly all. The package disappeared. Iggy's
+head bent low. Presently he held the metal lamp to view. He was laughing,
+was Iggy.
+
+It was strange, sitting there looking on. That laugh was so real, so
+uproarious, Johnny felt that he should hear it.
+
+"It's as if I were deaf," he told himself.
+
+But wait! There was still more. Once again "the Snake" bent his head.
+When his hands came up this time they were filled with bundles of paper.
+At first, with their edges toward him, Johnny could make nothing of this.
+But now Iggy's hand turned about, and Johnny saw.
+
+His mouth flew open in astonishment. Those papers were bonds. There were
+hundreds of them.
+
+"The stolen bonds!" he muttered. "The bonds that broke a bank and made
+paupers of thousands!" He could not believe his eyes. The bonds had been
+in that package! It had been his, his! He had bought it. Had he looked
+closely, he would have found those bonds. And now--
+
+A sinking feeling at the pit of his stomach caused him to double over. He
+saw it all now, clear as day. Those were "hot" bonds. Someone had taken
+them away, perhaps to New York. They had been frightened, had concealed
+them in that package and shipped them back. The person at the other end,
+more afraid than his confederate, had refused to accept the shipment. The
+package was to be sold at auction. Afraid to bid it in, Iggy had induced
+Johnny to buy it. When Johnny tried to take the package to his lodging,
+Iggy and his men had fallen upon him, robbed him of the package, and hit
+him on the head in the bargain.
+
+"That," Johnny hissed, "is Chapter One. There will be other chapters to
+this little romance of the underworld."
+
+Again his eyes were upon that square of glass. Iggy had, beyond doubt,
+replaced the treasure. He was smiling and going through the motions of
+drinking. A moment more and he was gone. The glass went black. The spot
+of yellow light reappeared. And then, to Johnny's vast amazement, he
+found himself looking once more at the uninteresting Dutch master.
+
+"Never mind." He sprang from his chair. "Felix will return. He will know
+where Iggy was when he put on this little show. I'll get Drew Lane and
+Tom Howe. We'll crash the door, and then perhaps--"
+
+He did not finish. Instead he sprang for the door. He was prepared now,
+if such a thing were possible, to break it down. He put his hand to the
+knob. It turned. The door opened. _It was not locked._
+
+He was a long time finding Felix; a much longer time finding Drew Lane
+and Tom Howe, who were out on a hot scent. It was dark when he at last
+led them to the street that faces the lake where the gaunt towers of the
+deserted Fair grounds hung dark against the sky.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XVI
+                           A STRANGE TREASURE
+
+
+In the meantime, the girl from Kansas who had found a home on Maxwell
+Street had made a rather wonderful discovery and found herself well on
+the road to adventure.
+
+At the moment Johnny and the two young detectives arrived at the street
+of the "House of Magic," far away on Maxwell Street Grace Krowl was
+staring into the friendly eyes of a white-haired book seller and saying,
+"Do--do you think it is val--valuable?"
+
+"Valuable!" Frank Morrow, the genial, white-haired proprietor of the
+little book shop on Peoria, just off Maxwell Street, stared at her over
+his glasses. "Valuable! My child, if that signature is genuine it is
+priceless." For the second time he held a ponderous volume, an ancient
+Bible with hand-tooled leather cover, to the light and read aloud:
+
+"'As a token of gratitude for a great service done to our nation and to
+the crown.
+
+Her Majesty, the Queen,
+
+                                                            Elizabeth.'"
+
+"If that signature is genuine," he repeated, "and I have little doubt of
+it, this book is worth thousands of dollars."
+
+"Thing is," Grace sighed, "to find the rightful owner."
+
+"Rightful owner!" Frank Morrow stared at her. Nida McFay, his assistant,
+joined in the stare. "Rightful owner!" Morrow repeated. "_You_ are the
+rightful owner. Your uncle bought that horsehair trunk at auction for
+three dollars. You purchased it from him for double that amount. This
+Bible was in the trunk. It is yours. The law will uphold you."
+
+"Yes. But is the law always right? Is there not a law higher than man's
+law?" Grace's tone was deeply serious.
+
+"That," said Frank Morrow, rather bluntly, "is for you to decide."
+
+"Decide," she thought, "all I've done since I came to Chicago has been to
+decide, de--"
+
+She broke off to stare at the door of the book shop. It had been quietly
+opened. A tall man stood there. He was well-dressed, far too well for
+Maxwell Street. He was neither young nor old. His features were regular.
+He seemed quite a gentleman. Then the girl got a look into his eyes. She
+shuddered. They were hard as steel.
+
+Next instant she was staring at Nida McFay. Her face had gone ashy white.
+She was grasping the table as if about to fall.
+
+When she was able to look again at the door, Grace found it closed. The
+man had vanished.
+
+"It--it's as if I had not seen him," she told herself. One look at Nida,
+who was very white, told her that for the time at least it was better
+that the man should remain unseen.
+
+"Whatever you do," Frank Morrow was saying--he had not seen the
+stranger--"you should guard this Bible with great care. Beyond doubt, it
+was given by Queen Elizabeth as a token of great esteem to some
+Protestant bishop. Someone doubtless inherited this Bible containing the
+Queen's signature and brought it to America. Where has it been since? Who
+knows? Enough that it is here and that many a collector of rare books
+would, even in these times, pay a king's ransom to possess it. So guard
+it with care!"
+
+"The Bi--Bible. Oh, yes." The girl put her hands upon it.
+
+That Bible had come from the little horsehair trunk she had saved from
+her uncle's purchase at an express auction.
+
+She had taken the trunk to her room, but in her excitement over other
+matters had failed to open it at her first opportunity.
+
+After looking at it a long time next day, without prying off the lock and
+peeking inside, she had decided that she must, if possible, have it for
+her very own. So she asked her uncle to sell her the trunk.
+
+"What!" he exclaimed, "you have opened that little trunk? You have found
+a diamond, or maybe some stocks and bonds? Now you want to buy it for a
+little." His small, hard eyes gleamed.
+
+"No." She had held her ground. "I have not opened it. You may go and see
+that it is still locked. But I--I like the trunk and I--I'm sure I should
+have loved its owner. That--that's why I want to buy it."
+
+"All right." He had smiled broadly. "But I must have a profit. Six
+dollars. You may have it for that. I will take it from your pay.
+
+"But, my child--" He had laid a hand gently on her arm. "You must not do
+these things. They make you soft. And soft you must not be in this
+business."
+
+Nevertheless, she had remained "soft." She had purchased the trunk "with
+contents, if any." She had picked the lock with a hairpin and had spent
+three happy, tearful hours poring over its contents. The person who lost
+the trunk was named Emily Anne Sheldon. She had two sisters. Their
+pictures were all there.
+
+"The sweetest little old ladies one may ever hope to see," Grace had
+assured herself. "What a shame that this trunk should have been lost!"
+
+There were bundles of letters tied with faded ribbons. The letters were
+like a beautiful song, sung at sunset. "If only the whole world were like
+these three dear old ladies," she had sighed.
+
+The blankets in that trunk were of finest wool, and very old. Perhaps
+they had been hand-woven. She could not tell. There was a blue and white
+bedspread that was hand-woven, she was sure of that. "And it's worth
+several times what I paid for the trunk," she told herself. "But I won't
+sell it. I'll get in touch with Emily Anne and send it all back for a
+Christmas present."
+
+In the very bottom of the trunk she had found the ancient family Bible.
+For a long time she had left it there. Then she had decided to show it to
+Frank Morrow and his assistant, Nida McFay, and here she was. And Frank
+Morrow was telling her it was worth many hundreds of dollars!
+
+"Wr--wrap it up." She all but shuddered at thought of the wealth she was
+about to bear away under her arm. "Wrap it up and I'll take it home."
+
+Now wondering at Nida's sudden fear at sight of the stranger, and now
+puzzling over the problem of the apparently priceless book, Grace left
+the store to walk slowly down Maxwell Street.
+
+At once her mind was filled with a hundred thoughts. "This," she
+whispered, "is my crowded hour." And indeed, since that strange day when
+she had walked into her uncle's unusual store and had begun a fight for
+her few possessions, every hour had seemed crowded.
+
+There was the mysterious "Whisperer" and his strange visits at dawn. How
+did his whisper come to her? She had tried in every way to trap him, but
+with no success. Did he indeed talk to her "down a beam of light" from
+the window of a skyscraper a mile away? And could he see that far too? It
+seemed preposterous. And yet--
+
+Drew Lane had visited the store three times. Always he wore the jaunty
+clothes of a college boy. But once she had gripped his arm and found it
+hard as steel. He was a man, no mistaking that, and a city detective of
+the highest type. Was he the Whisperer? It seemed absurd to suspect him.
+"We all whisper alike," she had told herself.
+
+So, quite unconscious of her surroundings, she walked on, thinking hard.
+She had covered two blocks when of a sudden she felt a hand on her arm
+and heard in a low, chilling tone:
+
+"Just a moment, please."
+
+Next instant she found herself looking into the face of the man who, a
+half hour before, had so frightened Nida McFay.
+
+Never in all her life had she wanted so much to scream. The precious
+Bible was still under her arm. Those cold eyes were fixed upon her.
+
+Ten seconds of thought assured her that she was in no immediate danger.
+The shops were still open. She was surrounded by friends. In her brief
+stay on the street she had made many friends. Max Schmalgemeire, the
+baker, stood in his door; so too did Mamma Lebed, who sold geese. Peter
+Rapport was turning his hot dogs. Even Madam Jakolev, the gypsy
+fortune-teller, whom she strongly suspected of carrying a dagger up her
+sleeve, was a welcome sight at that moment.
+
+"I merely wanted to ask you a question." The man was polite enough. "Do
+you know," his words were distinct and cold, "this girl Nida McFay is a
+police character?"
+
+"Po--Police?" Grace stared.
+
+"Practically that. Frank Morrow's is the only place she could sell books
+in this city. He is stubborn, foolhardy. Just thought I'd warn you. I am
+J. Templeton Semp, a detective."
+
+He tipped his hat and was gone, leaving Grace with a sinking sensation at
+the pit of her stomach.
+
+"A police character!" she whispered. "How could she be?"
+
+She was to hear more of Nida next morning, for the "Whisperer" was to be
+with her once more at dawn.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XVII
+                               "THE EYE"
+
+
+As we have said, it was dark when Johnny Thompson finally returned to the
+"Street of Mystery," as he had come to call it. Felix's answer to his
+excited questioning at an earlier hour had been strange. Yes, he knew
+where the men were that Johnny had seen in that animated picture--at
+least, he knew where they had been when Johnny looked at them; they were
+in the house down the street where he and Johnny had planted wires and
+instruments. Had Johnny really seen the men?
+
+"Seen them!" Johnny fairly raved. "I recognized one of them as surely as
+if he had been my brother!"
+
+"That's fine!" Felix smiled blandly. "That proves the thing will work."
+
+"But these men!" Johnny exploded. "We must get them!"
+
+"Oh, must we?" Felix showed surprise.
+
+"Sure we must. They are robbers, murderers. They have bonds in their
+possession that broke a bank."
+
+"Oh!" Felix stared. "Well--that's not in our field. We are inventors, not
+detectives."
+
+"I will get Drew Lane, Tom Howe and Captain Burns." Johnny was poised to
+rush away.
+
+"As you like. Here's the key." Felix extended his hand. "Be sure to lock
+the door. We are responsible for that."
+
+"Lock the door," Johnny grumbled to himself as he hurried away "Queerest
+fellow I ever saw, that Felix. Smart, though. Shouldn't wonder if his
+inventions would do a lot of good. Think of being able to look right in
+upon a pack of thieves and you half a block or half a mile away!
+
+"Lock the door!" he repeated. "May be so riddled with bullets before we
+get through that it won't even shut."
+
+In this last he was wrong. When the little band, Johnny, Drew, Tom and
+the hulking Spider, reached the place, they found it dark. There was no
+answer to the bell, nor to repeated rapping. When they unlocked the door
+and, flashlights in left hands, guns in right, made the rounds of the
+place, they found it deserted and still. The rooms were rented furnished.
+The furniture was there, but not a garment, not a scrap of paper, not a
+single article that told of occupation.
+
+"They are gone for good," was Drew's pronouncement.
+
+"And yet I saw them this very afternoon," Johnny said soberly. "Saw the
+bonds, too. To think I once had them and I lost them so easily!"
+
+"We all make mistakes," Drew consoled. "We're getting hotter and hotter
+on their trail. We'll get them, you'll see, and that very soon."
+
+They left the place in silence, locking the door behind them.
+
+They made their way to the "House of Magic," where Felix joined them.
+
+"Find anyone?" he asked.
+
+"Gone!" was Johnny's reply.
+
+"I was afraid they might be. But that thing worked--that's the best of
+it. A little more work on it and we'll be ready to turn it over to those
+who can make the best use of it."
+
+"By the way, Johnny," Drew Lane put in, "you should have a phone in your
+room. You may have something to report any time."
+
+Johnny had not told Felix of the Whisperer's message. Felix had many
+secrets, why not he?
+
+"I'll put a phone in at once," Felix assured him.
+
+"Well, goodnight, then." Drew Lane and his companions disappeared into
+the dark, leaving Johnny and Felix standing on the steps of the "House of
+Magic."
+
+"Easy to put a phone in," Felix said. "House is full of wires."
+
+"And of eyes," Johnny added.
+
+"Yes--'House of a Thousand Eyes,'" Felix chuckled. "Want to know about
+'em?"
+
+"Do I!"
+
+"Well, watch." Felix rang the bell. The door opened itself. "An eye did
+that," he said quietly. "An electric eye. Step inside."
+
+Johnny did so. As on that other occasion, the narrow space was filled
+with a strange light; then he saw skeletons, his own and Felix's,
+wavering before him.
+
+"Eye does that," Felix explained again. "The electric eye and X-ray. Eye
+turns on the current that starts the X-ray going. Quite a convenience. If
+your would-be visitors carry hard things like guns or knives, you see
+them and need not admit them unless you want to.
+
+"We are seeing ourselves now," he chuckled, "as we have never been, but
+as we shall be. Come inside." The skeletons vanished. The next door
+opened.
+
+"In five minutes the 'eye' will have made us a cup of cocoa." Felix sat
+down.
+
+"It's really very simple," he went on after a moment. "The electric eye,
+or photo-electric cell, is a vacuum tube treated chemically on the
+inside. A peep hole admits light. When light strikes the chemicals it
+starts a small electric discharge. This electric discharge, when stepped
+up, will start any piece of mechanism you may wish it to.
+
+"It works as well when I cut off the light as when I turn it on. So, when
+I pass before a light in the wall that plays on one electric eye, it
+causes the door to open. Another closes the door, and so forth.
+
+"Just now an 'eye' turned on the current under a pan of milk. When the
+milk is hot and rises in the pan, a second eye slides the pan aside and
+adds the cocoa and sugar. So we have steaming cocoa with no trouble at
+all.
+
+"Impractical?" He threw back his head and laughed. "Yes, but it's lots of
+fun.
+
+"But the eye is revolutionizing the world, for all that!" he added,
+handing Johnny his cocoa. "I told you we fixed up a rig for sorting a
+carload of beans a day. That is done by thousands of electric eyes.
+Pineapples are sorted the same way. In school rooms an eye watches the
+light. When it gets too dark the eye throws on the lighting switch. The
+eye umpires bowling matches and would umpire a baseball game, call a ball
+a ball, a strike a strike, and never be wrong. And that certainly would
+be something!
+
+"Guess that's enough for tonight. I'll get that phone." He hurried away.
+
+It was not enough, not half enough for Johnny. He wanted to ask if the
+eye had helped him see what he had seen that afternoon, if the eye could
+have anything to do with the whispers at dawn. He wanted to ask a hundred
+questions. But Felix was gone.
+
+When Johnny mounted to his room, he found the telephone in its place on a
+stand by his bed, but Felix was nowhere to be seen.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XVIII
+                           THE TRAP IS SPRUNG
+
+
+As a rule, Johnny was a heavy sleeper. All the strange doings of the past
+few days must have gotten on his nerves, for next morning, more than an
+hour before dawn, he found himself lying in bed wide awake, thinking.
+
+The ceiling of his room, he noticed, had dropped again during the night.
+This neither surprised nor disturbed him. In fact, in this strange house
+had the attraction of gravity been reversed and had he found his bed
+resting on the ceiling instead of the floor, he would not have been
+greatly surprised.
+
+He was, however, curious about many things. This room that had a way of
+growing small, with its strange light where there were no lamps,
+intrigued him.
+
+The matter of the locked door of the previous day had been solved. Felix
+had been experimenting with a new type of time lock and had forgotten to
+throw the electrical switch that controlled it.
+
+"But that living picture on the wall!" Johnny thought to himself. "How is
+one to explain that?
+
+"And the whisper? Where does that come from? It can't be a broadcast, and
+he can't be close at hand." Drew had told him the evening before that
+Grace Krowl had said she had heard the Whisperer in her room more than a
+mile away.
+
+"The message was not the same," he told himself. "Not nearly the same.
+She did not get my message. I did not get hers. He is a very particular
+person, this Whisperer."
+
+His thoughts went back to that day he bought the express package that had
+come so near causing his death.
+
+"And I had those bonds!" he groaned aloud. How was this affair to end?
+Would Drew Lane and his band come up with these outlaws? Would there be a
+battle? Would he, Johnny Thompson, be in at the finish? He devoutly hoped
+so. He thought again of Madame LeClare and her fine children who had lost
+a father. He saw the dark, smiling eyes of Alice. "As long as God gives
+us breath!" he repeated. It was a pledge and a prayer.
+
+His thoughts had returned to the mysterious Whisperer when he was given a
+sudden start by the loud jangle of a bell.
+
+He sprang out of bed. The bell appeared to be in the room. "Like an alarm
+clock," he told himself. "But there is no clock."
+
+He looked at the reflector on the wall. The moonlight was falling upon
+it--or was that some other form of light? He could not tell. The sound
+seemed to come from there.
+
+He began pacing the room. The bell still jangled. But of a sudden he
+halted in amazement. As he crossed before the reflector the sound had
+ceased for the space of a second, then began again. He tried it again and
+got the same result.
+
+"That's strange!" he told himself.
+
+Just then the jangling ceased and in its stead came the familiar voice of
+the Whisperer:
+
+"Johnny! Johnny Thompson! Are you there? Are you awake?"
+
+"The Whisperer?" Johnny breathed.
+
+"Johnny," the message went on, "I have an important message for your
+friends. Phone them at once. The men they want are at 1046 Blair Street.
+They are in a small, yellow sedan. They are in a garage, having their car
+repaired. Hurry!"
+
+Johnny did hurry. He called the shack and had Drew on the wire at once.
+
+"Yes," Drew said, "Tom is here with me, and so are the Captain and
+Spider. Thanks for the tip, Johnny. We are on our way at once."
+
+"Well, that's that!" Johnny sighed. He knew, though he regretted it
+tremendously, that he could not hope to join them in this adventure.
+
+"Stay here and wait for any further message," he told himself. "Wonder if
+Drew and the rest will really come up to Iggy and his gang? If they do,
+man! oh, man!" He could just hear the guns popping.
+
+There was, however, no such luck, at least for the moment. As the happy,
+fighting four, Drew and his band, neared the garage at 1046 Blair Street,
+they saw a low, yellow sedan pop out of the garage door and go speeding
+north.
+
+"That's sure to be them. After them! Give her the gas!" the Captain
+shouted.
+
+Drew sent the Captain's powerful car speeding after.
+
+The yellow car shot straight north for a mile. Then it whirled round a
+corner on two wheels.
+
+When Drew and his band rounded that corner there was no car in
+sight--only a huge, lumbering moving-van two blocks to the east.
+
+"Street ends two blocks west," the Captain snapped. "Must have gone east.
+Drive slow and watch the north and south streets."
+
+This they did. They were still going slow as they passed the van. Spider,
+who had been sitting in the back seat with Tom Howe, was startled a
+moment later to find that Tom was no longer with him. He was not in the
+car. He was gone.
+
+                            * * * * * * * *
+
+In the meantime, Johnny Thompson was in the midst of a strange discovery.
+Ten minutes after the first message had been delivered, the bell began
+its jangle once more.
+
+"Hello!" Johnny exclaimed. "Big Ben again!"
+
+Springing to his feet, he began walking back and forth before the round
+reflector. As on the other occasion, the bell ceased jangling as he
+passed.
+
+A series of rapid experiments with a hat held in his hand showed him he
+could shut off the bell by holding the hat in certain positions. These
+positions, he found, must be higher and higher as he receded from the
+reflector toward the window.
+
+"One thing I know," he assured himself. "That sound is produced by some
+force outside my window. And the person who produces it must be very high
+up.
+
+"In fact--" He caught his breath as he looked out of the window and away
+to the east. "There is but one place it could come from. That is the top
+of the six hundred foot tower of the Sky Ride on those deserted Century
+of Progress grounds. The Whisperer--"
+
+He broke off short to listen with all his ears. The ringing of that bell
+ceased, the whispered message was beginning.
+
+                            * * * * * * * *
+
+What had happened to the slender young detective, Tom Howe? Something
+rather strange, I assure you.
+
+Having slipped from the slowly moving police car, he had mounted the
+running board of the vast lumbering van. From this point he slid to a
+position beside the driver. As he did this he prodded the driver in the
+ribs with an automatic and whispered, "You will drive as I say and where
+I say, or you are a dead man!"
+
+The driver never took his eye from the road. He drove straight on.
+
+                            * * * * * * * *
+
+The message Johnny Thompson received after the second ringing of the bell
+was but a repetition of the first, so his mind was soon put to rest. He
+was left with plenty to wonder about, for all that.
+
+But dawn was now breaking. Like departing fairies, the Whisperer had
+other business that must be attended to. He was heard next in Grace
+Krowl's little parlor on Maxwell Street.
+
+"Christmas Eve will be here in three more days," he was saying. "On
+Christmas Eve everyone is in a mellow mood. That is the time for
+confiding secrets. On that evening, my friend Grace, you are to invite
+Nida McFay to your room, seat her beside your table and induce her to
+tell her story. I shall be looking in upon you from my high tower a mile
+away."
+
+"High tower, a mile away!" she thought. "How can one see that far? And
+the shade is always half drawn. It is impossible!" And yet, the Whisperer
+had more than once convinced her that he did see her face.
+
+"But Christmas Eve!" she exclaimed indignantly. "How can one ask another
+to bare her life's secrets at such a time?"
+
+It was a sober-faced Grace Krowl who seated herself before the table for
+a few moments of quiet thought. In the days just past she had tried out
+her plan of writing to people whose stories she had found in lost trunks.
+She had offered to return all their little treasures without cost. The
+results had been disappointing and disheartening. Their attitude she had
+found difficult to understand. In their letters they seemed to say, "You
+have all the things in my trunk. You have a right to none of them." She
+had returned the pictures and letters from six trunks. She had paid the
+express charges out of her own meager funds. Not one of them all had made
+an effort to repay these charges.
+
+"Not one returned to thank me." She stared at the wall. "Can it be that
+uncle is right? That I am merely letting myself get 'soft'?"
+
+She thought of the priceless Bible tucked away at the bottom of the
+little horsehair trunk. Is it strange that a half-formed hope should
+enter her mind, the hope that no one would appear to claim that treasure,
+and that she might have it for her very own?
+
+"A fortune! Thousands of dollars!" she whispered. "And yet--"
+
+                            * * * * * * * *
+
+When Tom Howe mounted to the seat of that lumbering van he took one look
+through a narrow slit of a window behind the driver. The inside of the
+van at that time was completely dark.
+
+After riding with the driver for fully two miles and directing his course
+all this time, Tom cast another sidewise look through that window. His
+lips parted in an unuttered exclamation. The back of the van was now
+open, the gate was down, and back two blocks, just turning the corner,
+was a low, yellow sedan.
+
+His face was a mask as he turned his attention once more to the street
+that lay ahead. Two blocks before them a red crossing light gleamed. As
+the van paused for this light, he sprang from the seat and was away like
+a shot.
+
+"Well! What became of you?" the Captain roared as a half hour later he
+entered the shack.
+
+"You lost their trail?" Tom grinned.
+
+"I'll say we did!"
+
+"So did I," Tom said quietly. "In the end I did. But I stayed with them
+longer than you did."
+
+"You stayed?" Drew exploded.
+
+"Sure I did. You remember that van on the street? They were in there, car
+and all! Pulled a swift one on us. Driver lowered the back gate and they
+drove up and in. Then he lifted the gate.
+
+"I had 'em trapped like rats, I thought. I'd have made the driver take
+that van right into our squad-car garage. And then, would there have been
+fun!"
+
+"But what happened?" Drew was staring now.
+
+"Near as I can find out, the driver released the gate with some foot
+control. Iggy and his gang took the hint and backed right out while we
+were going. I saw them shoot round a corner. The trap was sprung, no rat
+in it--so I came home.
+
+"How about a cup of coffee?" He moved toward the stove in the corner.
+
+"Well that," Drew said slowly, "is something!"
+
+"There'll be another day," the Captain grumbled.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XIX
+                          A WHISPER FROM AFAR
+
+
+Late that afternoon Captain Burns' car came to a stop before the "House
+of Magic."
+
+"Hop in," he said to Johnny when the boy appeared. "Want to take you
+somewhere. Been working on clues all day. Tired. Need rest. Need good
+company. Come along."
+
+Johnny, who had spent a quiet day with Felix, being led further into the
+magic of the electric eye, but being told nothing at all about the
+mysteries that most intrigued him, was ready enough to go.
+
+"Queer boy, that Felix," he said to the Captain as the car sped on
+through the city. "Didn't really tell me a thing I wanted to know.
+
+"Oh, yes," he corrected himself, "he did say that the light about the
+place was made by neon tubes set in the walls and that the light entered
+the room through a million pin-pricks in the canvas covering of the
+walls; also that this light came in slowly because it was filtered
+through bulbs very like radio tubes."
+
+"Interesting, but not so terribly important," the Captain rumbled.
+
+"Same with that business of my room getting tall and short," Johnny went
+on. "Seems his father thinks there's a lot of waste space in modern
+homes. Bed chambers stand empty all day, living-rooms all night, and
+there is never enough air space in either. So he's experimenting on
+floors built like elevators. You flatten out the bedroom furniture and
+raise the floor; that gives you a tall living-room during the day. By
+lowering the same floor at night you get a tall bedroom."
+
+"In any case," the Captain laughed, "you're not likely to bump your
+head."
+
+"Seems," Johnny concluded, "I had a room intended in the beginning for a
+sort of parlor. They needed the space above, so they let down the floor.
+Not a bad arrangement, only they ought to have let a fellow know. These
+inventors' heads are so full of things, they forget."
+
+They were now well out of the city, speeding along a country road.
+
+Thirty miles from the heart of the city they swung through a gateway and
+came to a stop before a small, low-roofed cottage.
+
+It was now dark. The place seemed cold and deserted.
+
+"You'll not find any ceilings falling on you here," Captain Burns
+chuckled. "This was my boyhood home."
+
+"Your boyhood home!" Johnny surveyed the narrow yard surrounded by
+ancient maples. He looked at the insignificant dwelling towered over by a
+giant cottonwood tree.
+
+"And you rose from this," he said in an awed whisper.
+
+"No, Johnny," the Captain replied quickly. "I didn't rise. No one ever
+rises above his boyhood home. It is the grandest place on earth. Come on
+in."
+
+The place they entered was the kitchen. It had a low ceiling. In a corner
+stood a small wood-burning kitchen range with a top that was warped and
+cracked.
+
+"That's the very stove," the Captain said proudly, touching a match to
+shavings and watching yellow flames spread. "I cut wood for it more than
+thirty years ago.
+
+"I was away from this place a long, long time, Johnny. When I got some
+money I bought it for a sort of retreat. When I am poor again it shall be
+the last of my treasured possessions to go--my boyhood home!" he ended
+reverently.
+
+"When I think--" There was a rumble in the Captain's throat as he began
+to speak after some moments of silence. "When I think of the good,
+simple, happy times we had here, I wonder--" He did not finish, but sat
+smiling and looking at the glowing hearth of the little, old, cracked
+kitchen stove.
+
+"I was raised in this one small room," he began once more. "Oh, yes, we
+slept upstairs. No fire up there, not a spark. Cold!" He chuckled.
+"Twenty below sometimes.
+
+"But this room, it was home to us. Home." He said it softly. "I can see
+it now. The table there and the yellow glow of a kerosene lamp. Father
+dozing by the fire. Brother Tom reading. He was a scholar, Tom was. Made
+a fine man, he would, if--" Once more he did not finish.
+
+"Father was a pious man," he rumbled on after a time. "Wonder how many
+sons of truly pious men make their mark in the world? Many of them, I
+believe.
+
+"We always had prayers on our knees before we went upstairs. Father's
+prayer was always much the same. One sentence I remember well: 'We thank
+Thee, our Father, that it is well with us as it is.' It wasn't very well
+with us all the time. But we had peace. The doors were never locked.
+Precious little to steal, and no one to steal it.
+
+"Peace!" he mused. "Sometimes I wonder whether this eternal struggle is
+worth the cost. When I got older and went out with my father to help with
+the work, when we came rattling home in the dark in our old lumber wagon,
+we had peace. No one wanted to kill us. But now--"
+
+Once again he did not finish. There was no need. Full well Johnny knew
+that there were those who wished this faithful officer beneath the sod.
+
+"But when the city gets you--" The Captain's tone had changed. "When it
+gets you, there's no turning back. The noise, the rush, the excitement of
+life that flows on and on like a torrent--it _gets_ you, and you never,
+never turn back.
+
+"Remember the story of poor old Lot?"
+
+"Yes, I remember." Johnny knew that great old book.
+
+"I've always felt sorry for Lot." The Captain chuckled. "Country chap
+come to the city to live. Got his wife turned to salt, he did. Lost about
+all he had. But he couldn't help it. City got him. Sodom got him.
+Chicago's got you and me, Johnny. And Chicago won't let us go until they
+bring us out to some spot like the one we passed a mile from here, and
+put us away where the hemlocks sing and sigh over the marble that is
+white in the moonlight.
+
+"So we'll fight on, Johnny." He prodded the fire. "We won't accomplish
+much. No one ever does. But we'll do our bit--do it like men.
+
+"But, Johnny--" He rose and stretched himself. "It helps to come out here
+now and then where I have known so much peace. Just to sit by this old,
+cracked stove, to listen to the whisper of the wind, the song of the tree
+toads and the whoo-whooting of some owl, and dream I am a boy again, just
+a boy. Ah, son, that's good.
+
+"We'll go back to the city in a little while," he went on after a time.
+"Get a good bed somewhere in town.
+
+"And that reminds me, Johnny. I want you out here on Christmas Eve. We'll
+make up a party and stay all night. Hang up our stockings just as we boys
+used to do. We'll bring out Drew and Tom, Joyce Mills, Mrs. LeClare and
+Alice; yes, and Spider--only we'll have a whole turkey for Spider," he
+chuckled. "We--we'll have a grand time Christmas Eve and all day
+Christmas. And such a dinner! I've bought a turkey, twenty-five pounds,
+Johnny.
+
+"Come in here." He took up a kerosene lamp and led the way into a second
+small room.
+
+"This was our parlor. Only lit the fire on Sundays. Such Sundays as those
+were! Happy days, Johnny! Happy days!"
+
+"But what's this?" Johnny asked suddenly. "Surely this does not belong to
+those days."
+
+"No." There was a queer look on the Captain's face. "Fellow I know, man I
+would trust with my life, asked permission to put that in here." They
+were looking at a two-foot wide reflector such as was to be found in
+Johnny's room in the "House of Magic."
+
+"He said," the Captain went on, "that if the time came when I was badly
+needed in the city, a message would come to me through that thing. How? I
+can't say. Up until now it hasn't uttered a squawk. It--"
+
+Suddenly Johnny held up a hand. There was no need. The Captain was
+listening with all his ears, for, into that room there on the lonely
+prairie, had stolen a whisper.
+
+"Captain Burns!" The words were very distinct. "I wish to inform you that
+a packet of stolen bonds you are seeking have been sold to Joseph Gregg
+of 3200 South Kemp Street. Gregg is an honest man. But back of him--" The
+whisper faded.
+
+"That," exclaimed the Captain, "is all I need to know!"
+
+Racing for his coat and hat, he led the way to his car. A moment more and
+they were speeding back to the city.
+
+"Johnny," said the Captain, "do you believe that whisper came all the way
+from the city?"
+
+"I am sure of it."
+
+"A broadcast?"
+
+"No, not a broadcast. I feel sure no one in the world, save us, heard
+it."
+
+"Wonderful, if true--a revolutionary idea!" the Captain exclaimed.
+
+"I think," said Johnny, "that I could name the very spot from which that
+message came--the top of the Sky Ride tower." He told the Captain of his
+discovery regarding the whisper he had heard that morning.
+
+"We'll have to look into that," was the Captain's only comment.
+
+That very night Johnny attempted to "look into that," with such results
+as you shall see.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER XX
+                             THE SKY SLIDER
+
+
+Having secured Spider as his special bodyguard and obtained permission to
+enter the deserted grounds of the Century of Progress, Johnny set out on
+his mission of discovery. He was determined to learn what he could about
+the mysterious Whisperer.
+
+It was a dark night. Clouds hid the moon. One of those cold, gusty nights
+it was, when fine siftings of snow creep and tremble about your feet,
+when sharp gusts of wind shooting out from unexpected angles blow fine
+particles of ice upon your cheek, and you say with a start, "Some devil
+of the north has been let loose to blow his breath upon me."
+
+"Boo!" Spider shuddered. "How cold it is!"
+
+"Yes, and ghostly!" Johnny added. They were on the old Fair grounds.
+"When you think what this place has been, so full of light and sunshine,
+so hilarious with the screams and shouts of jolly revelers, every corner
+seems to hide a ghost."
+
+"Yes." Spider quickened his pace. "There's the place where they had all
+those freaks--tall, skinny men, short, crooked ones, two headed, one
+legged--all sorts of funny and distorted humans. Gee! Johnny, what a joy
+to have two legs and two arms, eyes, ears and all that!"
+
+"Yes, and what poor use some of us make of them!" Johnny grumbled.
+
+"Look." Spider was full of recollections. "There's where they kept that
+huge snake. Suppose he's in there now, all coiled up, torpid for his
+winter's sleep?" The thought caused him to veer sharply to the left.
+
+"Ghosts, all right," Johnny said quietly. "Ghosts of those who stood in
+these places hour by hour, patiently doing their duty, roasting hot dogs,
+guarding jewels, changing money, selling tickets. Ghosts too of
+performers on this hilarious Midway."
+
+"And ghosts of those who came to see," Spider chuckled genially.
+
+"But look!" Johnny's voice rose. He gripped Spider's arm. "Do I see a
+light up there, or don't I?"
+
+"Up where?"
+
+"Tower of the Sky Ride."
+
+A gaunt skeleton of steel, the towers of the Sky Ride where, in the days
+of wild joy at the Century of Progress three million thrill seekers had
+shot upward to go gliding and bumping across the sky! And, yes, there at
+the very top of the left-hand tower a pale yellow light shone.
+
+"The Whisperer!" Johnny's voice was husky with emotion. "We've found
+him."
+
+"But that place--" There was doubt in Spider's tone. "That place has been
+locked for months. Electric current is probably turned off. How'd he get
+up there? Six hundred feet and more!" There was awe in his tone. He was a
+climber, was Spider--none better, so he had supposed. Had he come upon
+the tracks of one more skillful than he?
+
+"I could do it," he muttered beneath his breath. "I could climb that
+tower. Six hundred feet. Bah! What's the diff? Two hundred, three
+hundred, or six, it's all the same.
+
+"But that man?" He turned to Johnny. "He can't just pucker up his lips
+and whisper a mile, can he? Takes machines, instruments, whatever you may
+call it, don't it?"
+
+"Yes, I'm sure it does," Johnny agreed. "I don't know a lot about it
+myself. It's all like magic to me. But it must take a lot of mechanisms
+and a strong electric current.
+
+"Of course," he added thoughtfully, as they walked slowly forward, "the
+Sky Ride's in somebody's care. Bound to be. The managers of next year's
+Fair are going to operate it. And if someone had some sort of a pull he
+could get permission to turn on the current and set an elevator running.
+He could get up and down that way. And what a place he'd have for
+whispering! Whisper all over the world, I'd say. I'd like to have a
+picture of that man--if it _is_ a man."
+
+"If it is?" Spider laughed. "You don't think he's an ape, or something?"
+
+"Might be a woman," said Johnny seriously.
+
+"Yeah, a woman! Fine chance!" Spider scoffed.
+
+"Tell you what!" he exclaimed suddenly. "I'll take that dare!"
+
+"What dare?" Johnny stopped short in his tracks.
+
+"I'll get you his picture, and if it's a lady, I'll take two pictures."
+
+"You mean you'll climb that tower? Six hundred feet! You--you've not been
+drinking, Spider?"
+
+"Drinking, Johnny?" There was a deep note of reproach in Spider's voice.
+"Whatever else I am, Johnny, I'm not a fool. Only a fool drinks. And a
+fellow who climbs is a double fool if he drinks. Drink, Johnny, makes you
+feel as if you could fly. And that's a fatal feeling when you're up in
+the air.
+
+"No, Johnny, I'm sober. You want to know what that man looks like, what
+he's doing up there. So do I. The elevator may be working. Who knows? If
+not--up I go."
+
+"All right," Johnny agreed reluctantly. Full well he knew how futile it
+is to argue with a person of Spider's nature. "You'll know when you've
+had enough, won't you? You'll give it up if it's sort of getting the best
+of you?"
+
+The Spider's reply was a guttural mutter.
+
+"All the same, you promise!" Johnny insisted.
+
+"Have it your way," Spider mumbled. "But just you watch this flashlight.
+I'll fasten it to my belt, behind. It will be shining straight down.
+Guess you'll be able to see it all the way up. It's pretty bright. When
+you see it up there at the top you'll know I'm there.
+
+"And--when you see a white flash you'll know I've got the picture. Always
+carry a flash-bulb and a little camera, I do. Get some great pictures in
+all sorts of places."
+
+"Yes," Johnny grumbled, "and some time you'll get your head blown off in
+the bargain!"
+
+"Oh, yeah?" Spider laughed a crackly sort of laugh.
+
+The elevator to the Sky Ride tower might or might not have been working.
+The two boys had no way to tell. The door to the place was locked and
+bolted, apparently from within.
+
+"Just as well pleased," Spider chuckled. "Always have wanted to climb
+that thing since I saw the first two sections sticking up out of the snow
+in 1933--so here goes!" He was away up the steel frame, like a monkey.
+
+It was with a feeling akin to awe that Johnny saw that small, wavering
+spot of yellow light mount up, up, up toward the spot where some bright
+star lay hidden behind a cloud.
+
+"He'll never climb so high," he muttered. "I shouldn't have let him try.
+And yet--" There was a mystery to be solved, and mysteries at times are
+to be solved only by deeds of daring. So he watched the light at Spider's
+back mount and mount until it was but a tiny speck of yellow light that,
+winking and blinking, rose ever higher and higher.
+
+As for Spider, he was not disturbed. A climber from the age of six, he
+had within him supreme self-confidence. What is distance anyway? If you
+fall at fifty feet you will die. Can six hundred be worse? Thus he
+reasoned and, mounting higher and higher, thought only of his goal. He
+would have a look into that room of mystery. He'd surprise someone at his
+work and, be he man, woman or devil--flash! There would be a picture.
+
+He was right in part--at least, the flash was not lacking; for, having at
+last scaled the height, he stood upon a steel cross-beam to draw his chin
+above a steel window frame. And there he hung, drinking in with his eyes
+the scene that lay before him.
+
+The right-hand corner of a broad, glass-enclosed space had been roughly
+partitioned off into a small room. At the center of this narrow space,
+bending over some curious instrument, was a tall, thin man.
+
+That he was not conscious of prying eyes was at once apparent, for, after
+a moment, partially straightening up, he switched on a powerful lamp,
+thus sending a sharp pencil of illumination through the clouds that hung
+over the city.
+
+This accomplished, he turned half about.
+
+Spider dropped low, he might be seen.
+
+When next he dared bring his eyes above the edge of the window frame he
+found the man facing a peculiar square of metal attached to a low
+pedestal.
+
+"A microphone! He's talking into it. The Whisperer!" Spider breathed.
+
+Then with the force of a blow it came to him that here was his chance.
+
+"The picture," he muttered low.
+
+Twisting an arm about a steel beam, with no thought of the dizzy depths
+below, with fingers that trembled ever so slightly, he adjusted an
+electric light bulb, half filled with a sort of tinfoil, to his
+flashlight. Then adjusting his small camera, he shifted his position,
+held camera and flashlight high, then pressed a button.
+
+The result was most astonishing. A bright flash was to be expected. The
+tinfoil filled bulb was such as newspaper photographers use for taking
+flashlight pictures. Yes, that first bright flash was to be expected. The
+second, following closely upon the first and accompanied by a sharp
+report, had not been anticipated. A bullet burned Spider's ear. With a
+cry of consternation, he released his grip, dropped a short way toward
+the black depths below, struck a steel beam, threw out his hands,
+clutched something cold and substantial, then hung there between heaven
+and earth.
+
+The first indication that all had not gone well came to Johnny when some
+object falling from the sky crashed upon a square of wind-blown pavement
+not twenty feet from where he stood.
+
+Springing forward, he cast the light of his electric torch upon some
+black fragments scattered over the spot where the thing had struck.
+
+"The--the camera!" he whispered. "Spider's camera. There'll be no
+picture. But Spider. What of him?"
+
+The wind that whistled about the foot of the Sky Ride tower brought him
+no answer.
+
+He had been watching the top of that tower for a full five minutes when
+some object, gliding along a cluster of four cables closely set together
+and running at a broad angle from the top of the tower to the ground,
+suddenly caught his attention.
+
+"Can that be a man?" he asked himself, staring with all his eyes as the
+thing moved downward.
+
+"If it's a man, is it Spider or the Whisperer?" he asked himself a moment
+later.
+
+Determined to know, he went racing away toward the end of the cable, some
+three blocks away.
+
+He arrived just in time to see the slider drop to earth. It was Spider.
+
+"Quite a sky-slider, I am!" he chuckled.
+
+"Well done!" exclaimed Johnny. "Did you see him?"
+
+"Not very clearly. He's a man, all right. And he's a tiger. Nearly got
+me. Never again!"
+
+Spider led the way off the grounds.
+
+And so for the time the mystery of the Whisperer remained unsolved. Only
+this was known with a fair degree of certainty: his place of retreat was
+one high tower of the Sky Ride.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XXI
+                             CHRISTMAS EVE
+
+
+The dawn of the day before Christmas arrived and with it, in Grace
+Krowl's tiny parlor, came the hoarse whisper of the mysterious one:
+
+"Tonight," it insisted, "you will not fail me. It is for the good of all.
+You owe us more than you know. It is we who beautified your living
+quarters. Your coming disturbed our plans. But if you do this thing for
+us you shall be forgiven."
+
+"Plans." It was her turn to whisper. "What plans?" She wanted to know.
+
+A half hour later, when she descended to the street she found Drew Lane
+standing by the store door.
+
+"Saw a small leather bag through the window," he explained. "Think I'd
+like it."
+
+With some irrelevance Grace said quickly:
+
+"Drew Lane, how could anyone see you a mile away?"
+
+"Powerful telescope, perhaps." He gave her a strange look.
+
+"But in your room, with the shade half drawn?"
+
+"No, not possible. Television, possibly that." His voice dropped to a
+near whisper. "They do strange things with that, I'm told.
+
+"What is it?" He looked her squarely in the eye. "That Whisperer again?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And does he claim to see you as well as talk to you?"
+
+"He does see me. I'm sure of it."
+
+"That's strange!" Drew Lane did not appear to be shamming.
+
+"Can it be," she asked herself, "that this young man is not the
+Whisperer, and that he knows nothing about it?"
+
+As for Drew, he stood there considering the advisability of inviting this
+girl to the Captain's Christmas party. He left without having arrived at
+a definite decision. Some hours later he was to be devoutly thankful that
+he had not given the invitation.
+
+Christmas Eve came. By nine o'clock the tracks of two large automobiles
+might have been seen winding through the freshly fallen snow before the
+Captain's boyhood home, and from there away to the shed serving as a
+garage at the right of the house.
+
+From the windows there stole a mellow light. Caught and flung high, curls
+of blue wood smoke rose from the chimneys.
+
+The guests were seated in the tiny parlor of their beloved Captain's old
+home. There were two young detectives, Drew Lane and Tom Howe, with their
+youthful understudies, Johnny Thompson and Spider. Madame LeClare was
+there too with Alice, her daughter, and Joyce Mills. Quite a jolly party
+they were on this Christmas Eve. Only one thought marred their
+pleasure--the Captain was not with them.
+
+"It's tough," he had said to them at the last moment. "Something big just
+broke. I've got to get on the trail while it's hot. But you folks go
+right along out. Hang your stockings up behind the old stove like good
+little children, and maybe you'll catch me filling them when you get up
+in the morning. And if you don't--may that Christmas turkey be tender!"
+
+Those had been his words. Now, as Johnny sat dreaming beside the cracked
+stove that, despite its age, sent forth a cheering glow, he imagined the
+Captain skulking down some dark alley in quest of those who would disturb
+the tranquillity of Christmas Eve.
+
+"Almost wish I were with him," he thought. "And yet--"
+
+There was a sharp wind blowing. The snow was drifting. Outside, close to
+the road, a windmill stood on its tall, steel tower. From time to time
+the wind, giving this mill a twist, caused it to send forth a sharp,
+grating scream that seemed a human cry of pain.
+
+"Boo!" Johnny whispered. "There's something spooky about a lonely country
+place at night."
+
+A moment more and his thoughts were back with the Captain. "The wind," he
+thought, "will be whistling about the corners of skyscrapers tonight. The
+snow will go scooting and whirling away and away just as it does among
+the crags of the Rockies. Cities are like that. Wonder where the Captain
+is now?"
+
+Then again he seemed to hear the Captain's rumbling voice as in this very
+room he told of his boyhood days.
+
+"That is the very stove--" He spoke aloud now. Pretty Alice LeClare
+turned her shining black eyes upon him. "It's the very stove that burned
+here many years ago when the Captain was a boy. He found it in the barn
+loft.
+
+"And these chairs," he went on, "are the very chairs on which he hung his
+stockings so long ago. He found them in the attic, bottoms gone, some
+broken. He had them restored. Seems--" His voice went husky. "Seems
+almost a sacred place."
+
+"It _is_ sacred," Alice whispered back. "The boyhood home of a good man,
+the things he loved, are _always_ sacred."
+
+Johnny could have loved the little French Canadian for that speech.
+
+"And what a privilege," Alice murmured low, "just for one night to live
+as he lived, so simple, so plain, so true. To hang up our stockings,
+feeling that they will be filled, not by lavish hands, but by loving
+ones, with the simple things that only real love can find."
+
+"But listen!" Johnny touched her arm. "How that windmill screams! It
+seems a--a sort of warning. Perhaps our night will not be so serene after
+all. Per--"
+
+He broke short off. From the wall where the broad reflector stood facing
+the open window there had come a sound.
+
+"Like a whisper," Johnny thought. Whisper or not, it made no sense. So
+again the room fell into silence. Only the crackle of the fire, the
+racing tick-tock, tick-tock of the little clock on the mantel told that
+this little gray house was still the habitation of man.
+
+                            * * * * * * * *
+
+That night, over a cup of tea in Grace Krowl's parlor, with the Whisperer
+looking on "from his tower a mile away" Nida McFay told her story. It was
+a strange story filled with smiles and tears.
+
+For three glorious years she had worked in the book department of one of
+America's most beautiful stores. Surrounded by books, with congenial
+fellow workers and cultured customers, she had learned what it meant to
+truly live.
+
+"And then--" The little book seller looked away. "Then a man, a very
+little, wistful old man who lived in my rooming house, brought me some
+books from his library; anyway, he said they were from his library. He
+asked me to sell them for him at a second-hand store.
+
+"They were valuable books. I--I sold them."
+
+She paused to sit for a time staring into her tea cup. It was as if she
+sensed the fact that someone was looking in upon them from afar, and that
+she dreaded to go on.
+
+From the reflector in the corner came a strange sound. "Like someone
+stifling a cough," Grace thought with a shudder.
+
+"The books--they had been stolen from our store," Nida went on after a
+time. "A detective was put on my trail. The little old man disappeared.
+A--a house detective, with eyes like steel blades, accused me of stealing
+the books!"
+
+"I think I know him," Grace broke in. "He looked into Frank Morrow's shop
+one night."
+
+"Yes--yes, that was the man! He calls himself J. Templeton Semp." Nida's
+eyes were wild for an instant.
+
+"He made me sign a paper," she went on. "I learned later it was a
+confession. They discharged me. I went to other places and asked for
+work, many places. Everywhere the answer was the same:
+
+"'You worked at K----'s. We cannot employ you.'
+
+"You see--" Her voice broke. "I had been put on the black list. I--I
+wouldn't do that to anyone!
+
+"Well," she sighed at last, "that's all. Good old Frank Morrow took me in
+spite of the list. And here I am." She forced a smile.
+
+Five minutes later Nida was gone. Grace sat staring at the curious
+reflector on the wall. "That," she whispered, "is Nida's story. And all
+the time she was talking someone was looking, listening. I am sure of
+that. I wonder how? Television? I wonder what that really is?"
+
+Finding herself enshrouded in a cloud of gloom, she drew on her coat and,
+taking up a basket filled with small boxes, she went out on Maxwell
+Street.
+
+Moving along from door to door, she made brief Christmas Eve calls on the
+simple, kindly people she had learned to love. The small boxes contained
+homemade candy. She left one at every door.
+
+She found Mamma Lebed busy decorating a tiny tree for her two dark-haired
+little ones. "It's not much we can give them," she beamed. "But the dear
+ones, how they will dance and prattle when morning comes!" She brushed a
+tear from her broad cheek.
+
+"Merry Christmas!" Grace whispered.
+
+"Same to you!" Mamma Lebed gripped her hand hard.
+
+Grossmuter Schmalgemeire was filling stockings. There was no fireplace in
+her tiny home back of the shop, but a straight-backed chair did as well.
+
+"He said a mouse would come in through the hole in the toe, Hans did,"
+she laughed. "But I told him an orange would fill it up. And so it shall.
+I found one in the street that is not too bad."
+
+And so Grace found them, these friends, on every hand. Poor, but making
+much of the little they had, and all filled to overflowing with the
+spirit of Christmas.
+
+When she returned to her rooms, her cheeks were glowing. "Tonight," she
+whispered, "I am like the moon, filled with light. The light of
+happiness. It is reflected happiness, but happiness all the same."
+
+And then, into her mind there flashed questions that had grown old, but
+were ever new: "Who is the Whisperer? Where is he? Why does he want
+Nida's story?"
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XXII
+                              THE WARNING
+
+
+In the meantime tremendous things were doing in the little house where
+Captain Burns had spent his childhood.
+
+For a time, it is true, the silence in that little gray home out where
+the snow lay white and glistening on field and road continued.
+
+Madame LeClare sat by the narrow drop-leaf table knitting. Joyce Mills,
+with a big black cat on her lap, seemed more than half asleep.
+Dark-haired Alice had curled herself up on two cushions beside the fire.
+The others sat in dreamy silence. It did not seem a time for small talk,
+this Christmas Eve. Were their thoughts busy with other Christmas Eves?
+Who can say? Were they thinking of the future, of the approaching New
+Year and what it would bring to them? Did they think at times of the five
+public enemies still at large and free to follow their evil ways?
+Perhaps, at times, all these. At any rate, they were silent.
+
+Into that silence there crept a whisper. The effect was electric! Madame
+dropped her knitting. Joyce started so violently that the cat bounced
+from her lap. With an involuntary motion Drew Lane reached for his gun.
+"Lanan--" the whisper began, "Lanan Road, attention! Those in Captain
+Burns' old home, attention!" The whisper was like a call "To Arms!"
+
+"You are in grave danger. Grave danger! The report is just that. I can
+tell you no more. Be on your guard!"
+
+The whisper ceased. The clock ticked on. From without came the hoarse
+scream of the rusty windmill. The black cat, walking across the floor,
+settled himself beside Alice among the cushions.
+
+As if directed by a common impulse, Drew and Tom removed their
+automatics, examined them with care, then dropped them with a little chug
+back into their places.
+
+"Peace on earth, good will toward men!" Drew quoted dryly. "In such a
+world as ours there can be no peace."
+
+"Grave danger," Johnny thought to himself. He was looking through the
+window to the white silence outside. "Danger? It does not seems possible!
+Captain Burns has kept this place a secret. We came here in a very
+round-about way. Surely no one followed us.
+
+"And yet--" A thought struck him squarely between the eyes. "And yet, the
+Whisperer, alone in his tower among the stars--he knows!
+
+"The Whisperer--who can he be?" He said the words aloud.
+
+Alice, who sat almost at his feet, shook her head. She did not know. No
+one did, at least almost no one.
+
+Was he a friend of the law, or its enemy? A friend, Johnny would have
+said. And yet, as he recalled how Spider had barely escaped death when he
+attempted to take a picture of that mysterious man of the tower, he could
+not be sure. Spider had not repeated his hair-raising experiment.
+
+Curiously enough, it did not occur to one of them that they might slip
+out quietly, pile into their cars and go speeding back to the city. They
+had come here with a plan. They were to hang up their stockings, each of
+them, as if he were once more a small child. They were to stay all night,
+the ladies sleeping upstairs, the men and boys in two tiny downstairs
+bedrooms. There was to be joy in the morning and feasting at noonday; a
+twenty-five pound turkey awaited Madame's skill at stuffing and baking.
+Who should interfere with these glorious plans? No one, surely!
+
+                            * * * * * * * *
+
+In the meantime, Grace Krowl in her parlor in the distant city had
+received a strange visitor.
+
+Hardly had she returned from her little journey dispensing Christmas
+cheer, when there came a knock at her door.
+
+"Who can that be?"
+
+Springing up, she threw open the door, and there before her, smiling like
+some fairy, was a tiny little lady all dressed in furs.
+
+"I received your letter." She stepped inside. "I came to see about the
+little trunk."
+
+"But you--you're not Emily Anne!" Grace stared with all her eyes.
+
+"Oh, dear, no!" The little lady's laugh was like the jingle of a silver
+bell. "I am her niece, Miss Baxter. Aunt Emily is dead, I am sorry to
+say--has been for two years."
+
+"Oh!" There was a note of genuine sadness in Grace's voice. "Ex--excuse
+me!" she apologized. "But I came almost to know her by the lovely things
+in her trunk."
+
+"I am sure you did." The little lady beamed. "She was a choice soul, Aunt
+Emily Anne!
+
+"But tell me--" She dropped into a chair. "Your letter interested me _so_
+much. Won't you tell me how you came into possession of this trunk, and
+how you came to write that wonderful letter?"
+
+"Wonderful letter?" the girl thought. "At last one has returned to give
+thanks. How gorgeous!"
+
+She did tell Miss Baxter all she wished to know about the trunk and the
+letters.
+
+"But this Bible?" The little lady's eyes gleamed. "You say it is worth
+several thousands of dollars?"
+
+"I am sure of it." Grace nodded her head. "I've had the signature
+verified. It is genuine."
+
+"Then," said Miss Baxter, "let us form a society, you and I--a 'Society
+for the Return of Lost and Strayed Trunks.' How does that sound? There is
+a 'Society for the Return of Lost and Strayed Cats.' Trunks are more
+important than cats, much more!"
+
+"But you are the only one who returned to thank me. Besides," said Grace,
+"I don't quite understand."
+
+"Oh! The plans," the little lady smiled, "we must work them out little by
+little. We shall sell the Bible. I will add to that fund. This will give
+us working capital. You shall be the secretary, and do a great deal of
+the work."
+
+"Nothing could be more wonderful," Grace murmured, too overcome for
+speech.
+
+"And now!" Miss Baxter sprang to her feet. "This is Christmas Eve, and I
+must be on my way. I'll see you again soon!"
+
+With a wave of her hand, as if she might be a feminine Santa Claus, she
+was gone, leaving the astonished Grace to stare after her.
+
+"Life," she thought, "is strange, so very strange, so much mystery!" She
+closed the door, but did not stir from her place. She was thinking, and
+they were long, long thoughts.
+
+These thoughts were broken in upon by a second knock on the door. No
+light tap of a sparrow's wing, this knock, but one like the thump of a
+policeman demanding admittance in the name of the law. Her hand trembled
+as she gripped the knob.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXIII
+                       A PROMISE THAT IS A THREAT
+
+
+The silence in that little gray home out there on the snow-blown prairies
+lasted for ten long moments. To those who waited time seemed to creep at
+a snail's pace. Drew Lane, shifting uneasily in his chair, was about to
+suggest something--he will never know what--when, sudden as before, all
+thoughts were drawn to the mysterious talking reflector against the wall.
+
+The instant a voice broke the silence in that corner, Drew Lane leaped to
+his feet. Tom Howe, crouching like a cat, remained motionless in his
+chair. There was something menacing, sinister, altogether terrible about
+that voice. The words, more spoken than whispered, caused Johnny's blood
+to freeze in his veins.
+
+"Listen, you Hell hounds!" Those were the words. "Listen! You whisper, do
+you? Well, so do we! You narrow-cast, and you think we can't listen.
+Well, we can!
+
+"Listen!" The voice became more terrible. "You have been on our trail
+long enough! Public enemies! Bah!"
+
+As if choked with words, the voice ceased for a second. Everyone in the
+room had turned into a statue. Only the cat was unconscious of it all. He
+purred loudly in his place among the cushions. And the windmill, poor
+thing of rusty steel, it uttered one more unearthly scream.
+
+"Listen!" The voice was hoarse with hate. "We got you, see? Got all of
+you. You'll never leave that place, see? Not one of you all! Christmas
+Eve. It's a laugh!" There came a hoarse chuckle that was terrible to
+hear. "Hang up your stockings! Get 'em up quick! We're coming to fill
+'em, and we'll fill 'em right with machine gun slugs! That's how they'll
+be filled!
+
+"Good-night, everyone!" The speaker's voice dropped to a mocking
+imitation of a radio announcer. "Good-night. And a Merry Christmas to
+all!"
+
+For a full moment the silence in that little parlor, that through the
+years had witnessed so much of joy and sorrow, was profound.
+
+"It's a joke," Spider said hoarsely at last.
+
+"It's no joke!" Drew Lane's lips were white. "I know that voice.
+
+"I only wish," he said slowly, "that you ladies were out of it. Those
+fellows have machine guns. If they cut loose, they'll riddle this place."
+
+"I'm a detective's daughter." Joyce Mills stood up square shouldered and
+slim.
+
+"And I a slain policeman's widow." Madame LeClare stood up at her side.
+
+"And I his child." Alice was not smiling as she joined the two. There was
+a glint of fire in her dark eyes.
+
+"Is--is that Iggy the Snake?" Madame LeClare asked.
+
+"Beyond doubt it is." Drew's eyes were gleaming. "He and his gang, the
+men who killed Jack LeClare, the men we swore to get. And with God's help
+we'll get them yet!" He set his teeth hard.
+
+"You ladies can shoot?" he said in a changed voice.
+
+"As well as any man!" Madame held up her head proudly.
+
+"That's good! Let's see." Drew moved to the cupboard by the stairs. "The
+Captain showed me a new sort of gas bomb. Yes, here it is. Puts 'em out
+completely for a full half hour. Be swell if we could use it."
+
+"But they'll be a respectful distance away," Tom Howe objected. "How can
+we?"
+
+"That's right. Have to trust our automatics, I guess. Here!" Drew handed
+one of his guns to Johnny.
+
+"And you." Tom passed a thing of blue metal to Madame LeClare as if it
+were a bouquet of roses. She accepted it with a bow.
+
+"There's no phone--no way of spreading an alarm." Drew spoke calmly. "No
+one passes this way at night. They've got till morning. Johnny, has the
+place a cellar?"
+
+"Only a hole for vegetables--no windows."
+
+"No use to us. They'd burn the house. Smother us like rats. We'll have to
+stand our ground, every one at a window. This is the way our forefathers
+fought savages." His voice had grown husky.
+
+"These are more savage than they!" Madame LeClare added.
+
+"We might make a dash for it. Try getting away in the cars," Tom Howe
+suggested.
+
+"They may be all set to mow us down as we come out," Drew objected.
+"We've not been watching, you know. But we'd better be, right now!" His
+tone changed. "We'll set a watch at the windows. There's one on every
+side. We'll watch in pairs. Misery loves company. You and you there; you
+and you--" He pointed them to their places rapidly.
+
+Johnny found himself settled upon a cushion behind the low window in the
+small southwest room. At his side, so close he fancied he felt her heart
+beat, was Alice LeClare. He thanked Drew for that. If the watch were to
+be long, here was pleasant company. Then, too, he had learned by the
+glint in her dark eyes that, if worse came to worst, if he were wounded,
+out of the combat, this splendid girl would fight over him as bravely and
+savagely as any Indian fighter's wife had fought over her fallen man.
+
+It was strange, the silence of the place, once they were all settled and
+the lights out. The fire in the cracked old stove shone red. The little
+clock that had ticked the good Captain's boyhood quite away, as if it
+would end the suspense and bring the dawn at once, raced more furiously
+than before. The girl at Johnny's side breathed steadily, evenly, as if
+this were but the night before Christmas and she waiting for Santa Claus
+in the dark.
+
+"What a girl!" Johnny thought.
+
+His eyes strayed through the open door at his back. Through it he caught
+the square of light from the north window. A semi-circle of shadow above
+its sill he knew to be Spider's head. Spider was watching there alone.
+His post was an important one. That window looked out upon a small barn
+and the towering cottonwood tree. The tree was fully six feet through.
+The Captain had told of swinging from its branches as a child.
+
+"It's strange," Johnny whispered to the girl, "sitting here in this quiet
+little gray house where men and women have lived their lives away without
+a breath to disturb their calm, waiting for an attack. It--why, it's like
+the silence that must have hung over the fields of poppies in France
+during the Great War."
+
+"Do you think they'll truly come?" Alice whispered back. "Or was it just
+a scare? They may be in Chicago, you know. The Whisperer is."
+
+"They are not a mile away. They will come. Drew believes they'll come,
+and Drew seldom makes a mistake."
+
+"Promise me--" She pressed his arm. "If I go to--to--to the Last Round-Up
+and you--you are spared, you'll look after the boys and--and help Gluck
+to be a good brave cop when he grows up." There was a little tremor in
+her voice.
+
+"I promise!" Johnny whispered huskily.
+
+A moment later Johnny's eyes swept the wide white field before him, then
+the narrow road that lay beyond. For a space of seconds his eyes remained
+fixed upon a dark spot on that road. "Does it move?" he asked himself. In
+the end he decided that it did not.
+
+Breathing more easily, he turned to look through the door at his back,
+into the room beyond. He started and stared. Something was missing. The
+dark semi-circle that had been Spider's head was gone.
+
+"That's queer!" he muttered low. To Alice he whispered: "Keep a sharp
+watch. I'll be back." Next instant he was gliding noiselessly across the
+floor.
+
+Ten seconds and he was staring at a vacant spot where the other boy had
+been. "Spider!" He all but said the name aloud. "Spider! He is gone!"
+
+Instinctively his hand sought the latch to the door close beside that
+north window. It gave to his hand. "It--it's not locked," he whispered.
+"But it _was_ locked. I locked it myself." Spider was gone, sure enough,
+not alone from his post, but out of the building.
+
+At once his head was in a whirl. What was he to make of it? Was Spider
+yellow, after all? Had he decided to make a break all by himself? With
+his uncanny power of climbing, of getting through places unobserved, he
+would almost surely escape. "And yet--" he whispered, "is that like
+Spider?" He could not feel that it was. He recalled times when the boy
+had appeared utterly fearless, absolutely loyal.
+
+"And yet, he was only a boy from the city streets. Supposing--" Doubt
+assailed him. Supposing Spider had only pretended to be loyal. Supposing
+that during all this time he had been in league with Iggy the Snake and
+his gang? Supposing it had been he who had tipped off the gang to their
+plans for a Christmas party!
+
+"Yes, and suppose it wasn't!" he whispered almost fiercely.
+
+One fact stood out clearly. Spider's post was vacant. It must be filled
+at once.
+
+After locking the door, he slid over to Drew's side.
+
+"Spider's gone," he said.
+
+"Gone? Where?" Drew did not raise his voice.
+
+"Who knows? His place is empty."
+
+"You take it," was Drew's instant command. "Take Alice with you. I'll
+move over where you were.
+
+"Gone!" he murmured as Johnny glided away into the darkness. "Spider's
+gone!"
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XXIV
+                           A STRANGE VICTORY
+
+
+Apparently it is true that, under certain circumstances at least, one can
+recognize a person by his whisper. Certain it is that Grace Krowl, upon
+opening her door for a second time that night and upon hearing the
+whispered message, "Merry Christmas, Grace Krowl," said without a
+moment's hesitation:
+
+"_You are the Whisperer._"
+
+"I am." The slim, gray-haired man before her smiled. "May I come in?"
+
+She stepped aside. He entered and took a seat.
+
+"It was generous of you to trust me," he said. "You will not regret it.
+
+"You see--" His eyes strayed about the place. "I fitted these rooms up
+for myself. Then, for reasons you shall know of later, I was obliged to
+leave them. When I learned of your presence here, I decided to trust you,
+and to use you. I-- You have Nida's story?"
+
+Grace nodded.
+
+"She is the daughter of a very old friend." The little, gray-haired man
+leaned forward. "Will you tell me the story?"
+
+Grace told the story as best she could.
+
+"It is as I thought." The Whisperer sprang to his feet. "That man, J.
+Templeton Semp, is a rascal. He tried to hide his evil deeds by
+persecuting others. I must go!" He seized his hat.
+
+"But who--who are you?" Grace cried.
+
+"I--" He smiled. "I am Newton Mills." Then he was gone.
+
+What a commotion that declaration would have caused among the watchers in
+the little gray house on the prairies! Newton Mills, Joyce Mills' father,
+boon companion of Drew Lane, Tom Howe and Johnny Thompson--Newton Mills
+come to life and he, of all men, the Whisperer! But no word of this could
+reach them now.
+
+                            * * * * * * * *
+
+It was cold over there by the north window of the little gray house.
+Before he and Alice established themselves there, Johnny gathered up his
+heavy coat and wrapped it about the girl. He was very close to her now,
+this brave and beautiful child of a slain policeman. They were facing
+death together, these two. And death drew them closer.
+
+Bleak night was outside, and out there somewhere in hiding, creeping up
+behind that barn or the grove where the Captain had played as a boy, or
+perhaps behind the great cottonwood just before them, death was coming
+nearer. Johnny was seized with an involuntary shudder.
+
+"What is it, my friend Johnny?" The little Canadian's shoulder touched
+his.
+
+"Nothing. Only thinking." He laughed a low, uncertain laugh.
+
+"Do you know," he said a moment later in a voice that was all but a
+whisper, "that old barn behind the cottonwood was standing when the
+Captain was a boy? On rainy days they played in the hay, climbed high and
+pushed one another down, made swings of the hay ropes and leaped into the
+mow from twenty feet in air. They played hide and seek, boys and girls
+together. Sounds sort of peaceful and joyous, doesn't it? Not--not like
+this."
+
+"You make it seem so real. Perhaps, after all, this is only a dream. Or,
+or only a trick to frighten us. Christmas morning will come as it came in
+those good days. Stockings all in a row." Her voice was dreamy.
+"Presents, and a fire laughing up the chimney. All that and--
+
+"Johnny!" She broke off suddenly to grip his arm. "What was that? A
+shot?"
+
+"I--I don't know."
+
+Johnny's right hand gripped his automatic. Surely there had come a sharp
+crack. It sounded strange in the night.
+
+"Board nails snapping in the frost perhaps." He relaxed a little.
+
+"Look, Johnny!" She gripped his arm till it hurt. "Look! Some dark object
+tumbling about under that huge tree. It--I think it looks like a man!"
+
+Johnny was on his feet. "Drew! Drew Lane! Come here quick!" He all but
+shouted the words.
+
+Before the call died on his lips, Drew was at his side. By that time not
+one dark object, but three were to be seen tumbling about on the snow
+beneath the giant cottonwood. Their antics were grotesque in the
+extreme--like men sewed into canvas sacks.
+
+"Something's happening," Johnny hazarded.
+
+"Or it's a decoy to call us out," Drew replied dryly.
+
+What was to be done? Surely here was a quandary. One of the figures had
+stiffened and lay quite still like a corpse.
+
+"May be faked," Drew said grimly. "But a fellow has to see." One hand on
+the door, the other gripping his automatic, he was prepared for a dash,
+when Johnny pulled him back.
+
+"No! No! Let me go! You are older. If anything goes wrong, you'll be
+needed here. You must remember the women."
+
+"All--all right." Drew backed away reluctantly. Then, standing up at full
+height, ready for instant action, he prepared to protect Johnny as best
+he might.
+
+Johnny was out of the door and away like a shot. Not so fast, however,
+but that a dark, muffled figure followed him.
+
+Reaching the first prostrate form, he uttered a low exclamation. It was a
+man. Apparently quite unconscious, he lay there, his face half buried in
+the snow. There was a curious odor about the place. Johnny felt a faint
+dizziness in his head.
+
+He stepped to the next figure. To his surprise and horror he saw it was
+Spider. He too lay motionless.
+
+"Gas!" a voice said in his ear. "Can't you see they've been gassed?"
+
+He wheeled about to find himself staring in the face of the little French
+Canadian girl, Alice.
+
+"You!" he murmured.
+
+"Come out of it!" She dragged him away. "There is still some of that gas
+in the air."
+
+Johnny had got a little more of that gas than he thought. He did not lose
+consciousness, but he did have only a hazy notion of that which went on
+about him. It will always remain so--how the other members of the party
+came swarming out, how they found four members of the "Massacre Parade"
+prostrate on the snow, and Spider beside them on the ground with a broken
+arm--all this will always be a dream to Johnny. So too will be the story
+of how Drew and Tom went after the missing Iggy, who was not one of the
+four under the tree, and how they found him waiting in a high-powered
+car, and, having been fired upon, how they mowed him down with the very
+machine gun that had been loaded for the purpose of massacring women, men
+and girls alike.
+
+The effect of the gas did not last more than twenty minutes. The words
+used by the four would-be savage massacre men when they found handcuffs
+on their wrists and clothes-line rope bound round their legs, were
+scarcely in keeping with the spirit of Christmas. It will not seem
+strange that no one cared.
+
+As for Spider, he had some explaining to do. When a doctor had set his
+broken arm and he had fully recovered from his share of the gas, he told
+a strange story.
+
+He had caught a glimpse of someone dodging behind the old barn. Putting
+the whole thing together, he had decided that the men with machine guns
+would take their stand behind the giant cottonwood. Its thick base would
+offer perfect protection from bullets.
+
+"I thought," he went on, "if only I can beat them to the tree and climb
+it, with that gas bomb on my back, I'll be in a position to put them all
+to sleep at once. There wasn't a minute to lose, so, without saying
+anything, I made a dash for it."
+
+"But it's twenty feet to the first branch!" Johnny protested. "How'd you
+make it?"
+
+"The bark of that old tree," said Spider with a smile, "is like the edge
+of inch-thick boards sticking out. Nothing easier than getting a grip and
+going up."
+
+"For you," Johnny agreed. "But you were found on the ground," he
+objected.
+
+"Things didn't go just right." Spider indulged in a wry smile. "I got up
+the tree all right. They did their part, came and got under. Then I saw
+something I hadn't counted on--saw the tops of heads, yours and Alice's
+by that window.
+
+"Ten seconds more, and they'd have riddled you with bullets. Guess I got
+excited; must have moved. Anyway, one of 'em spotted me and fired.
+
+"Bullet hit my arm. Lost my balance, and down I came, gas bomb and all.
+The bomb burst all right. And, well, you know the rest."
+
+"Alice!" Johnny was looking into the little Canadian's eyes. He was
+thinking, "What if that machine gun had stuttered just once!"
+
+When he realized that in the face of death Alice had followed him into
+the night, he wanted awfully to cry, then to seize the little Canadian
+and kiss her on both cheeks. Being a modest youth, he merely flushed and
+did neither the one nor the other, which was just as well, since Alice
+could understand blushes quite as readily as tears and other things.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XXV
+                          THE WHISPERER TALKS
+
+
+Routing out a farmer a half mile north of the Captain's old home, Drew
+Lane got the local sheriff on the wire and told him what had been done.
+An hour later the four prisoners were behind bars in the county jail, and
+Iggy the Snake, who had put an end to a half-score of useful men, was in
+the morgue.
+
+The clock was striking midnight when Drew got Captain Burns on the wire.
+
+"What luck?" he asked the Captain with a voice hard to control.
+
+"Some luck, Drew," the Captain answered. "Tell you about it later.
+Thought I had something more. It went up like old St. Nick's reindeers,
+straight into thin air!"
+
+"Drive out early in the morning." There was suppressed animation in
+Drew's tone. "We got some Christmas presents for you."
+
+"Not what we been after?"
+
+"The same."
+
+"No--N-o-o!" The Captain fairly stuttered.
+
+"All five. One tried, condemned and executed; four behind the bars.
+
+"Turkey weighs twenty-five pounds." He changed his tone hastily. "It'll
+be stuffed with oysters and other things. You'll be out?"
+
+"Before you're up," the Captain rumbled. "Merry Christmas!" He hung up.
+
+"It _is_ Christmas at that," Drew murmured after consulting his watch.
+
+It was late when the stockings were filled that night. Is it any wonder
+that presents were sadly mixed, that Johnny received a powder-puff and
+Alice a bright and shiny toy pistol? But what did it matter?
+
+The sun was high when the young people piled out of their bunks in the
+cold little bedrooms. Already the savory odors of a feast, of a turkey
+roasting, cranberries stewing, mince pie baking, was in the air. What did
+presents matter? A feast, and joyous and more peaceful times were just
+ahead.
+
+The Captain did not keep his promise. He arrived at ten o'clock instead
+of at dawn.
+
+"Had to wait for this young lady," he explained, helping Grace Krowl out
+of his car. "Wanted her to have a look at one of your friends," he
+chuckled. "No time to talk of crooks, but that man J. Templeton Semp, the
+dutiful house detective, is none other than Dapper Dan Drew in other
+circles, and Dapper Dan, as you know, is one of the men you have in jail.
+
+"It often happens," he added when the surprise had subsided, "that men
+who are so very good at enforcing little unimportant regulations, such as
+the J. Templeton Semp Black List, are very bad in other ways.
+
+"But wait!" the Captain exclaimed. "I have still another guest." He gave
+Joyce Mills a strange look, then he roared:
+
+"Old Man, come out!"
+
+Out stepped Newton Mills. Like a flash, his daughter was in his arms.
+
+"And might I add," said Grace Krowl, "that he is also the mysterious
+Whisperer of the air!"
+
+"That," said the Captain, "calls for a lot of explaining. Suppose we
+retire to the parlor?"
+
+"There's really nothing very mysterious about that whisper business,"
+said Newton Mills when they were all gathered about the fire. "I became
+interested in something they call narrow-casting. It's one of the uses of
+the electric eye. You really talk down a beam of light."
+
+"Talk down a beam of light!" someone exclaimed.
+
+"Surely." He smiled. "It's really very simple. You talk into a
+microphone. An instrument takes up the sound impulses of your voice and
+changes them to light impulses. These impulses may be sent down a beam of
+light a mile, ten, twenty, thirty miles. How far? No one knows.
+
+"A very special reflector catches those light impulses. A mechanism
+containing an electric eye changes those light impulses back into sound
+impulses. And then you hear my voice thirty miles away.
+
+"The wonderful part is, Captain--" He leaned forward eagerly. "Only a
+person with the proper mechanism in the line of that ray of light can
+hear them! Think of being able to sit in my high tower and send secret
+messages to a score of my fellow detectives, and never a crook listening
+in! I tell you it is going to be a great thing for crime hunters in the
+future!"
+
+"Do you know," Johnny asked, "that you in your high tower came near being
+the end of this young giant?" He nodded toward Spider.
+
+Newton Mills stared in surprise. Then he said, dryly, "A caller should
+send in his card."
+
+"But how was it you could see me as well as speak to me?" Grace Krowl
+asked.
+
+"Television." Newton Mills smiled afresh. "I'd had a set installed in
+that room. It's a rather crude set. But you can see a person well enough
+to recognize him even now."
+
+"And that must have been why I could see Iggy the Snake and the stolen
+bonds back there in the 'House of Magic,'" Johnny put in.
+
+"Probably was," Newton Mills agreed.
+
+"Speaking of those bonds," said Captain Burns, "last night I recovered
+all but a few of them. Great luck! Fine Christmas present for that closed
+bank!"
+
+"And for the depositors," Drew Lane added.
+
+"And now," said Madame LeClare, appearing in the doorway, "soup's on!"
+
+"On with the feast!" cried the Captain.
+
+A moment later they were all seated about a broad table that groaned
+under its weight of good things to eat.
+
+Bowing their heads, they sang their grace before meat.
+
+"Peace on earth, good will toward men!" the Captain rumbled.
+
+"If only the men of this earth had good will toward one another, we could
+throw away our sticks and guns and come to a peaceful spot like this to
+live all our days."
+
+It was a very merry time they had in the Captain's boyhood home that
+Christmas day and a joyous journey they made back to the city. And why
+not? Had they not been sentenced to death by their enemies and the
+enemies of all honest men, and had they not escaped and triumphed?
+
+Next day Johnny returned to the "House of Magic." He found, however, that
+much of its charm had gone with the solving of its many mysteries.
+
+"Yes. It was television that made it possible for you to see your friend
+Iggy and the stolen bonds," Felix admitted freely enough. "It is very
+imperfect at present. The time will come, however, when you will be able
+to look in upon wrongdoers from some spot miles away, and perhaps," he
+added with a chuckle, "we will be able to look right through walls of
+cement, stone or steel. Who dares say we won't?
+
+"I suppose," he went on a moment later, "you'd like to know what we were
+about in that balloon when the long one and the short one, who beyond
+doubt were Iggy and one of his pals, cut us loose in that balloon. We
+were about to talk down a beam of light. Shortly after that I made the
+acquaintance of Newton Mills. He told me he had been working on that. We
+arranged to complete the experiment from the Sky Ride tower. He swore me
+to secrecy--so you see I couldn't well take you in on it."
+
+"Well," yawned Johnny, "looks as if it were going to be a trifle dull
+around here for a time."
+
+"Might be and might not," the inventor's son grinned. "Father is working
+on some marvelous things. Don't go far from here without leaving your
+address. We may need you."
+
+"I'll keep in touch," Johnny agreed.
+
+Unfortunately the peace and good will the brave Captain spoke of over the
+Christmas feast in his old home does not yet exist. The world is still at
+war with itself. Because of this we are likely to have more to tell our
+young adventurers in the near future. If this proves true, you will find
+it recorded in a book called _Wings of Mystery_.
+
+
+
+
+      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+--Copyright notice provided as in the original printed text--this e-text
+  is public domain in the country of publication.
+
+--Obvious typographical errors were corrected without comment.
+
+--Variant spellings and dialect were left unchanged.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 43677 ***