CHAPTER X

CLUES FROM THE DUST

“In cases like this—” Goggles’ eyes bulged behind his thick glasses. His beak-like nose appeared to wrinkle and wriggle as a rabbit’s. “In a case like this,” he repeated, “one may learn a great deal from dust. Take a vacuum cleaner now. It’s queer. I’ve helped clean dozens of furnished houses and apartments after the tenants were gone. Some of them would scrub the place till it shone like a new dollar. But the vacuum cleaner! What do you think?” He paused. “Always half full of dust!

“And yes!” he exclaimed. “Same here. A good big lot of dust. I’m prepared. See!” He drew a stout paper sack from his pocket. Unfastening the cloth dust-bag from the vacuum cleaner, he proceeded to empty its contents into the paper sack.

“Dust?” said Johnny, “What can you do with dust?”

“You wait,” said Goggles, “You’ll see.”

“Well, you can have your dust,” Johnny grumbled. “Can’t see how that can help any.”

Since his visit to the landing field, Johnny had been more convinced than ever that the presence of that airplane above Hillcrest baseball grounds on that day when the mysterious “Prince” had somehow been forced from the mound, had meant something very strange.

“Up to something, that’s what they were!” he had told himself. “And I’m going to find out what.”

Recalling Goggles’ suggestion regarding the manner in which these men might be found, he hunted him up on the following day.

“Found out anything?” he asked.

“No, but I’m going to,” Goggles replied. “It should not be hard. They live here. They’re strangers in town. They’d rent furnished rooms. All we have to do is to check up on rentals.”

They had checked up and they had, they believed, found the very place they were looking for. The description of the two men who had rented a small furnished bungalow tallied with that of the men they sought.

There was only one hitch—the men had checked out of the bungalow.

“That’s too bad!” Johnny had mourned. “I hoped to catch up with them. It’s not so much what they’ve done as what they may do. It’s my theory that they have a grudge of some sort against the ‘Prince.’ He’s got to pitch some more games for us if we are to win. Those men will do something more, perhaps something a great deal worse.”

“What will we do if we find them?” Goggles had asked. “You can’t prove anything.”

“Proof is what we want.”

“You can find clues in an empty house,” Goggles had declared. “Plenty of them. It doesn’t matter that they’re gone. Left all sorts of clues behind. Take dust, for instance. You get the keys and we’ll go right over there.”

So here they were in the recently deserted bungalow. Here was Goggles industriously collecting dust while Johnny tiptoed softly from room to room, pulling out drawers without a sound and, after peering within, softly closing them again.

“Dust!” he mumbled, “What good is a lot of dust? You’d think—”

He broke off short to stare. In the drawer just before him his eyes took in two objects. One was a small dry battery of an unusual shape. On the end of this was a threaded attachment that apparently just fitted into the small end of the other object. This second object was a funnel-shaped tube a foot long. It was an inch across at one end and three inches at the other. The inside of this tube shone with an unusual brilliancy.

“Queer business!” Johnny murmured. These objects were quickly transferred to the inner pocket of his coat. The drawer was softly closed.

It would seem that he was not a second too soon, for from below came the sound of an opening door, then a gruff voice:

“Well son, you’re cleanin’ the place up a bit.”

The voice sent a chill coursing up Johnny’s spine. It was the voice of a stranger. He was talking to Goggles.

“Yes, I—” Goggles’ answering voice sounded unsteady and weak. “I do this sort of thing quite—quite a lot. Sort of—of dust up a bit.”

“Well now that’s fine!” (It did not sound fine to Johnny.) “But me and my pardners here moved out of this place a short while back. We came here to get a few things we forgot, didn’t we Joe?”

“Yep, that’s right,” a second gruff voice replied.

“Them shoes now,” the first voice went on. “We left ’em. See you got ’em all cleaned up for us.” Goggles had found a pair of shoes and had scraped the mud from them in search of clues.

“Yes, I—” Goggles’ voice faded out.

“Well that’s O.K., buddy,” said the first voice again. “We’ll just get on into the little bedroom and look for a thing or two.”

“The little bedroom.” That was where Johnny found himself at that instant. Like a rabbit that has sighted a dog, he was up and silently away. In truth he went out of the side door to vanish into the shadows of a broad old pine tree.

Well enough that he did too, for a moment later he heard one of the strangers say to Goggles in a tone not so friendly:

“Boy! We left something in a dresser drawer in that little bedroom. You cleaned in there yet?”

“No, I—I’ve not been out of this room.” Goggles stammered a little, but had spoken the simple truth.

After looking him over from head to foot, the speaker turned on his heel and left the house. He was followed by his pardner.

“Whew!” Goggles breathed five minutes later, “What do you think of that?”

“I think,” said Johnny, “think—. Come on! Let’s get out of here! I got ’em in my pocket.”

“Got what?”

“The things they came back after.”

“Let’s see!” Goggles held out a hand.

“Not now. I say, let’s go!”

“All right,” Goggles agreed reluctantly. “Guess I’ve got all the dust I need.”

After locking the door, they hurried away to Goggles’ basement where he had rigged up a sort of laboratory and workshop.

“Now,” Goggles breathed, snapping on the light, “we’ll have a look at that stuff from the sweeper.” He emptied the contents of the paper sack into a sheet of wrapping paper.

“Now.” With a needle set into the end of an old pen-holder, he began dragging the stuff about, at the same time naming his findings: “Hairs, dark ones, three or four of them. Their hair is dark. That don’t matter; but here’s some coarse sand they tracked in. Say! What color is the stuff they have out on the landing field?”

“Red sand,” Johnny replied. “Brought it in trucks.”

“And here it is, some of it!” Goggles was getting excited. “Let’s have a look at this other bag.” He dumped coarse dirt on a second paper. “Came from the bottom of those shoes,” he explained. “Yes, there it is—red sand, some oil mixed in—just what you’d find on a landing field. They’re the men all right.”

“Well, that’s something,” Johnny replied quietly.

“What are we going to do about it?” Goggles asked.

“Nothing just now. You can’t keep people from flying over your head.”

“But you’d think—Say!” Goggles’ tone changed. “There’s some sort of chemical in this dust from the sweeper. Two kinds. One’s coarse and gray. Other’s a fine white powder.

“Yes.” He examined the contents of a small envelope. “Some of the white powder is in the dust I took from the pocket of an old coat they left. Must have rubbed it off his hands into his pocket. People do that without thinking.”

“Goggles—” Johnny found it hard to control his voice, “could you make a bright light by touching off two powders?”

“I’ll say you could! All kinds of light.”

“Goggles—” Johnny’s tone was deeply serious, “you separate those chemicals from the rest of the dust as well as you can, then keep them—both kinds. It—it may be important.”

“I’ll do more than that,” Goggles agreed. “I’ll take them down to the laboratories. I’ll ask someone to test ’em out and tell me what they are. Maybe I’ll ask the ‘Prince.’”

“You know the ‘Prince’?” Johnny was surprised.

“Talked to him twice. He isn’t half bad,” admitted Goggles modestly.

“Who said he was? I think he’s great!” Johnny put his cap on. “All right. Got to get going. See you later.”

Back in his own room, Johnny drew two objects from his pocket and examined them.

Then he closed his eyes. “The eagle soared and dropped,” he murmured. “So did the airplane. The eagle got a rabbit. The airplane got a man. It was no accident that the ‘Prince’ had to give up pitching. I know why he did—and—and I can almost prove it.

“Those two men,” he said slowly, “have it in for the ‘Prince.’ I wonder why? They’ll do something more. I wonder what?

“One thing’s sure,” he said stoutly, “I’m for the ‘Prince’ a hundred percent!”