CHAPTER VII

BIG TIMERS STAGE A REHEARSAL

"What's that you were saying about wanting a camera with a telescopic lens?" Scottie asked Jimmie next morning.

"Said I'd give anything I own for a telescopic lens to fit my candid camera," Jimmie replied.

"Oh! That's it," Scottie exclaimed. "Then your possessions are safe enough. They don't make a telescopic lens for a toy camera. Not yet."

"It's no toy," Jimmie protested. "Remember that enlargement you made for me?"

"Sure."

"Well, it's important evidence. Tom Howe told me so. In the end it may help send a man to the jug."

"Well, if Tom says that it must be so," replied Scottie. "Tom's Irish and I'm Scotch. But the Micks and Macks won the great war, so they say, and we still march side by side.

"But that," he added, "won't get you a telescopic lens for your camera, for there's never a one that'll fit it.

"Nevertheless," he glanced in the corner, "there's a box camera over there I once rigged up with a telescopic lens. The lens is still on it. All you have to do is to look at the ground glass in the back to get your focus. That is, if it's less than a hundred feet. If it's more you don't have to look. I don't mind lending it to you for a few days."

"Say! That will be great!" Jimmie enthused. "I--I'll show you some real stuff."

"I hope so, my boy. I sure do hope so," said Scottie.

Scottie was growing old. All too soon another would be taking his place. He loved boys though he had none of his own. Deep down in his heart he had hid a warm spot for Jimmie. "He'll do," he murmured to himself as Jimmie marched proudly away with his new-found treasure, "He'll get there. Never doubt it."

The two days that followed were busy ones for Jimmie. One of the copy boys was sick, another on a vacation. Jimmie was obliged to resume his regular place in line and answer once more to the call of "Boy."

This he did not entirely regret. He was able to look with new eyes upon the great institution to which he belonged. Since his little excursions to the outside, the make-up room, the thundering press room and the quiet offices of special editors all had a new meaning for him.

"We're all working with one end in view," said Mr. Strong, the editor, taking a moment from his many busy hours to chat with him. "We're keeping the public informed regarding important matters. We're helping to fight crime and trying to encourage people to live decent and respectable lives."

"Yes, sir," replied Jimmie, too much awed by the greatness of the man to say more.

Important things did happen despite the boy's busy days. He and John had their dinner with Harm Stark, the silver-fox king. Such a dinner it was! A private dining room with paneled walls such as Jimmie had never seen before. Real, solid silver service there was too. And such food! Chicken legs encased in fancy paper at the ends, mashed potatoes, yellow with butter, and side dishes the boy could not so much as name.

Harm Stark, in his own broad, open-hearted way, gave John a real story. He told of his early struggle and final success, told how acres of fox farms had widened and how they were fenced and guarded. He told of feeding, training and selecting the foxes.

"And after that," he sighed, "comes the harvest. They're all here and sold, a half million dollars worth. Here right in the city. Some day I'll give you a ring on the phone and take you over to see them. Of course, they're not mine any more, but Solomon Zimmerman won't mind showing them. He's as proud of them as I am."

Jimmie hoped the ring on the phone might come very soon. Had he but known it, that particular phone call, costing only one buffalo nickel, was to be of the utmost importance to him. It is often so in life, a simple lifting of the receiver, a murmur, "Give me Randolph 1223," may mean success or failure, victory or defeat, even life or death to someone. You may be sure that when that call did come Jimmie was ready to listen.

One other thing occurred which, strange to say, was in the end to be closely connected with the silver fox king's phone call. It happened during the noon lunch hour when Tom Howe came over to make his report.

"Your scratch clue was a real one," Tom said with a friendly smile.

"My scratch clue?" Jimmie stared at him in surprise. Then, of a sudden, he remembered. When he had accompanied Tom to the scene of that safe-robbery, he had taken pictures other than those required by his paper. On the section of the steel door, cut away with the use of an oxyacetylene torch, he had discovered some scratches. Having recently read a book on strange clues, he had thought it worth while to photograph these scratches. When the picture had been enlarged they stood out very plainly. It was this that had led him to print the picture of Tom Howe looking at that broken bit of steel and, supposedly, discovering fresh clues. As he recalled all this he smiled as he said:

"I'm glad they were the real thing. What did you do about it?"

"First thing I did was to scrape the surface of the safe where those scratches showed," said Tom.

"What for?" Jimmie asked eagerly.

"It's a well known fact," Tom replied, "that, even if one of two metals is much harder than the other, when one scratches the other some of it comes off.

"I wanted to know whether there really was tungsten in that steel. I sent the scrapings to the laboratory. They burned it by electric arc and studied its spectrum. That's pretty scientific," he grinned. "There was tungsten all right. So I sent out Tungsten Tom's pictures to several manufacturers and I got my man; that is, I proved that he had worked at the Carter Machine-Tool Company's plant and that he did rob them."

"How'd they catch him," Jimmie asked.

"You'd be surprised," Tom laughed. "He was carrying it away in his card-board lunch box. They suspected that someone was doing that so they set a powerful electro magnet beside the narrow alley-way through which all employees must leave. When Tungsten Tom's lunch box came near it, that electro magnet smelled steel. It drew in Tungsten's lunch box and held it fast. So that was that."

"Pretty slick," Jimmie smiled in admiration.

"Thanks to your aid," the young detective went on. "We've got enough right now to make a good case against Tungsten. But we don't want to spring it. We want to get his whole gang. We----"

He broke short off to stare into the street. "Can you beat that?" he exclaimed. "There's one of those trucks now. Come on! we'll have to follow. This may be the big hour."

Seizing Jimmie by the arm he pushed him into a taxi and they were away.

"See that large, black truck up ahead?" Tom said to the driver.

"Yes, sir."

"Follow it. Don't lose it."

"Yes, sir."

They turned a corner, dodged a street car, got caught by a light, lost their scent for a time, then picked it up again.

"You remember that garage I was watching from my lofty perch?" said Tom.

"Sure, I do," said Jimmie.

"We're following one of the two trucks stored there by Tungsten and his gang. Crooks store trucks for a purpose. On the side you'll read the words:

TOWN'S END TRANSFER

"They'll transfer something, right enough," Tom laughed. "Perhaps today, though I doubt it. Not at noon. This may be a rehearsal."

"Rehearsal?" Jimmie stared at him.

"Sure. Crooks have to be up-to-date. No movie producer ever rehearsed an act oftener or more thoroughly than crooks do some big play they are going to make. Getting in, getting out, the cop on his beat, the number of people likely to be on the street, every curve that the car or truck must make, are important; those and a hundred other things. They----"

"There," he exclaimed, "they're pulling up to that place a half block ahead, preparing to back in.

"Stop here, driver," he commanded. "They can't see us. Here's your fare. Turn around and get away quietly."

"Right. Thanks." The taxi slid silently away.

"Here!" said Tom drawing something flat from his inside pocket and snapping it into the form of an oblong box. "Take this. It's your lunch box. At least we'll pretend it is." From another pocket he produced a paper bag. After inflating this he dropped it to his side.

"This," he said, "is a street of small factories for the most part. It is the noon hour. Slouch a little as you walk. We are workers going to eat our cold lunch with a cup of hot coffee at the place round the corner. Come on. We'll cross the street and walk down past where the truck stands."

Jimmie felt his blood tingle as they crossed the street then sauntered down the sidewalk. He was thinking of sudden sallies, burst of machine gun fire and all the rest.

Everything, however, was quiet enough. The street seemed almost deserted. It was an old section of the city. Four-story buildings lined the street on either side. On one was the sign of a candy manufacturer, on another that of a job printer and a third of some novelty dealer.

"Don't look like a place where big-time crooks could make a grand haul," said Tom, talking out of the side of his mouth. "Still you never can tell."

"Look," said Jimmie. "They're backing the truck into that alley."

"That's right," Tom's figure stiffened. "This may be something real after all."

"Two men are getting out," said Jimmie.

"Going inside. Perhaps it's only a rehearsal after all."

The men were gone for some time. The building on the corner, just ahead of Tom and his companion was vacant. Large, dusty windows on each side showed it to have been a store.

"Come on around the corner," said Tom. "We can watch through those windows without being seen."

Through those dusty windows they did watch but it was little enough they learned. In time the two men came out, carrying nothing. After they had climbed back into the truck, they drove away at a rapid rate.

"Just a rehearsal," said Tom. "Wish I'd been able to come close enough to get a real look at them, but I didn't dare."

"If I'd had my telescopic camera," said Jimmie, "I could have taken their pictures."

"Too bad you didn't," sighed the detective. "Well, better luck another time."

After that they folded up lunch box and paper bag and looked up a truly good eating place to enjoy a real lunch.

In Jimmie's room at home was a great, old-fashioned, over-stuffed rocking chair. It was frayed and moth-eaten but oh, so comfortable! When the day was over and supper done, Jimmie loved to sit in this chair with feet propped up on the window sill, there to listen to the robins chirp, to watch twilight darken into night, and think things through.

There was plenty to think about these days. As he sat there a few hours after his truck chasing expedition with Tom, he found himself in a somber mood.

It was all well enough, he was thinking, to dream of having a part in bringing criminals to justice, but when you were up against the real thing----

"Ah, that's different," he sighed.

And then, of a sudden, his spirits and determination rose. "We'll get him!" he murmured. "We will!"

He was thinking of the Silent Terror. Even now a thrill ran up his spine as he seemed to hear those words, "As you are!"

His determination at this moment to do his full duty was stronger than ever, for the papers that day had carried broad headlines about the Silent Terror's last attack. Jimmie had read how a girl, little older than himself, had been sent from a laundry to bring the payroll. On her return she cut through an alley. They had found her four hours later wandering only half-conscious and hysterical, empty-handed and murmuring about a man and a bubble.

"What man? What bubble?" they had asked. To these questions she found no answer. But to all it was plain that the Silent Terror had struck again.

"I took his picture," Jimmie groaned. "And got only an ear. An ear! It may be well enough for a whiz of a detective like Tom Howe, but who else could tell that ear if he saw it? Practically no one."

Other matters called for thought. There were the five big-time crooks who, Tom thought, were preparing something big. Was Tom right? And had they, in following that truck, discovered the scene of that proposed big haul? In such a poor section? It did not seem possible. And yet----

"One thing's sure," Jimmie sighed. "We've got the goods on Tungsten Tom. He was in on that safe-breaking and I helped to prove it, my little candid camera and I." He got no little satisfaction from that. It is good to be really doing things. Was he to be in on the whole affair? Would he see them all dragged into the net, one at a time; Black Dolan, Piccalo, and all that ugly five? He hoped so. And yet, he shuddered at the thought.

He looked at his watch, nine o'clock. Time for sport flashes. He snapped on the radio to catch the commentator in the midst of his talk:

"Tomorrow," came from the radio, "will witness an event of unusual interest in the world of sport. If you have wondered what the city's richest people look like, the De Metzes, the Marmons, the Morton Armours, and all the rest, be sure to come to the ball game. They will all be there, right down in the box seats. Why? Because the young society baseball pitcher, J. Ogden Durant, is to start for the Bear-cats."

"Durant!" Jimmie exclaimed to the empty room. "Gee! Oh, gee!"

Just at that moment he wished he had no job. He was a great baseball fan. And never had there been a game he longed so to see. To sit up there and howl himself hoarse for his hero! Ah! That would be life. L-I-F-E spelled in big letters.

He scarcely heard the further comments of the announcer as he went on:

"Perhaps this is the first time in the history of baseball that a millionaire's son has risen to the rank of a big-leaguer. It surely is the first time one has stood in the pitcher's box. Give him a hand, ladies and gentlemen. Give him a hand. He deserves it."

All this time Jimmie sat with his eyes closed, seeing himself in the past, as a rather small boy. A golf course joined The Glen on the west. It was a large and expensive course, patronized, for the most part, by the rich of the near-by city. A patch of woods lined this course on one side. Into the tall grass of this little forest, golf balls often bounced and were lost. On a Saturday the village boys went there in search of balls.

One day Jimmie had pounced upon a ball, a split second before a larger boy had prepared to scoop it up. There had been an argument and a race. To escape his pursuer, Jimmie raced out upon the green. He was just in time to get in the way of a long drive. The golf ball struck him in the very tender portion of his anatomy.

With a howl he went into the air, then came down in a heap like a wounded soldier. He did not cry, not even when three of the foursome of rich young golf players that made up the party, let out loud roars of laughter. He arose stiffly and started back toward the forest.

Then it was that J. Ogden Durant, young son of a rich stockyards owner, and one of that party, had endeared himself to Jimmie's heart. He it was, of the four, who did not laugh. Though it had not been his shot that felled the boy, he hurried on ahead of his companions, caught up with Jimmie and said:

"Sorry, old man. That was a hard shot. They had no right to laugh. The thing might have been serious."

Then, in a way that no one could see, he had slipped two brand new golf balls into Jimmie's sweater pocket.

There are certain events in every small boy's life that he never forgets. This was one in Jimmie's. There was that in the face, the voice, the general action of J. Ogden Durant that marked him as a "real guy."

In the years that followed Jimmie had saved every picture of Durant appearing on the Society Page. He had followed his career with the keenest interest. And now----

"Aw, gee! What a break!" he groaned. He seemed to hear that call he had come to know so well, "Boy!" For once he almost hated it.