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?”
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.”
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!
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.
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.