CHAPTER XVII

A NARROW ESCAPE

“Look, Meg!” Johnny’s voice was close to a whisper. “See those two slim fellows that seem to be just hanging around in front of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce?”

“Sure.” Meg’s eyes shone. “Who are they, Johnny?”

“Don’t matter just now.” Johnny’s tone was full of mystery. “I want you to do something for me. Those fellows are looking for a little Chinaman named Tao Sing. I want to know why. You ask them why for me, will you?”

“Sure, Johnny.” Meggy laughed. She thought he was joking. “And they’ll tell me just like that!”

“No.” Johnny was serious. “No, Meg, they won’t. They’ll not tell you, but they will tell me.”

“Tell you?” Meggy stared.

“Sure. You know when you ask a person about a thing, he is sure to _think_ the answer. He may not say it, but he thinks it all the same. That’s enough. I’ll be lurking in the shadow of that pillar. I’ll get the answer.”

Meggy gave him a long slow look. “Johnny, you’re queer! But I’ll do it.”

“Good!” Johnny gripped her hand. “Go ahead. I’ll be near by.”

Two minutes later, in her finest inquisitive-little-girl tone of voice, Meggy said to one of the strangers who, as you have guessed, was a Federal agent, “Mister, I heard you were looking for Tao Sing.”

“Yes.” The slender young man started. “Do you know where he is?”

“N-no,” Meg drawled, “not just now, I don’t. But I—I just wondered why you wanted that innocent looking little fellow.”

The Federal agent favored Meg with a searching glance. “Well, sister—” he returned her drawl. “Truth is that Tao Sing has been teaching all the little Chinks to play marbles for keeps. We don’t think it’s right to play marbles for keeps. Do we, Joe?”

“That’s right. We don’t.” His partner chuckled.

“Aw, you just don’t want to tell me.” Meggy put on a good imitation of goo-goo eyes. “What’ll you give me to find him for you?”

“Find him?” The agent was serious again. “Plenty, sister! Good and plenty! A new dress, a silk one, or a bicycle—anything. Just you bring him around.”

“All right. I’ll try.” Meggy glided away.

“Johnny,” she whispered a moment later, “did you get it? Did you read his thoughts?”

“Perhaps I did,” Johnny replied slowly. “And again, perhaps I didn’t.”

“Johnny, you’re queer.”

“Perhaps I am. Tell you what, Meg!” Johnny came to a sudden resolve. “Meet me at the heart of The Pines at eleven tomorrow morning. I’ll tell you a secret, Meg.”

“A secret?” Meggy thrilled. “How grand! I’ll be there, Johnny.” She vanished into the dark.

For days Johnny had been fairly bursting with his secret—the story of that strange and seemingly improbable, if not quite impossible, thing, the thought-camera. He could not bear to think of keeping that secret alone. He would tell Meggy.

Just now, however, a question was burning in his mind. Had he got a real picture of the thoughts in that Federal agent’s mind? Perhaps he should not have tried this. Perhaps it was his duty to walk right up to them and tell what he knew.

“May do that tomorrow,” he told himself.

Of a sudden Johnny felt a wave of loneliness sweep over him. He sensed the reason at once. Early that morning a great silver airplane had come swooping down from the sky. It had gathered up the Hillcrest ball players, Doug Danby, Fred Frame and all the rest. Goggles and Hop Horner had stored the steel-fingered mechanical pitcher in the wings of the plane, then had climbed into the cabin with the others.

“I don’t see the little dark man with you,” Johnny had laughed. “The one you know who took such an interest in Irons O.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Goggles bantered. “We’ve stowed Irons O away with the baggage in the wings.”

“All the same,” Johnny advised, “keep an eye out for him, and don’t take any wooden quarters at the gate. Goodbye and good luck!”

These last words had fairly stuck in his throat. How he wanted to join them on that trip! But that was impossible.

“Probably be exciting enough right here in old Hillcrest,” he now told himself philosophically. He was not wrong.

He had turned his steps toward home when the many-colored lights from the windows of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce fell upon his eye.

“I’ll just go in and have one more shot at that rich and wise old Wung Lu,” he told himself. “May be more to his thoughts than appears on the outside.”

He entered the big room just as he had done many times before. He found the rich and wise one sitting, as was his custom during the evening hours, contemplating the fat and smiling Buddha that stood against the wall.

Tonight, as he crept into a corner, Johnny thought there was in the smile of the Buddha something crafty and dangerous. This, of course, was pure imagination. The Buddha, which had been carved from the trunk of a great tree many centuries ago, had never been known to utter a word.

Johnny did not care so much for the Buddha. Banners and dragons interested him more. He liked to think of small Chinese ladies working over the banners that hung on the walls—days, months, perhaps years, drawing marvelous pictures in silk, stitch by stitch. “Every banner says something,” Wung Lu had told him once. Tonight, as he sat staring at a blue and white banner, Johnny was seized with a desire to know its meaning.

“Pardon me, Mr. Wung Lu,” he broke in upon the wise one’s meditations at last, “what does that banner say?”

“It says, my son,” replied the Chinese merchant soberly, “that he who gets knowledge and discovers secrets by hard labor shall reap a reward, but he who obtains them some easy way will have cause for regret!”

Johnny started and stared. Did Wung Lu know of the thought-camera? Was this some sort of warning? He could not so much as guess the answer, for Wung Lu’s round face was as silent and expressionless as a placid lake at sunset.

The thought disturbed him. Soon he excused himself and started for home. While still in Chinatown, passing a narrow alley, he was startled by two dark figures leaping at him from the dark. Johnny was quick. He could run and dodge like a hare. This was his golden opportunity. Dodging to the right, he missed the two figures only by inches, caught a glimpse of their tense yellow faces, then shot away at a desperate pace.

He would soon have outdistanced them but for one thing. So startled was he that he at once lost his direction. Before he realized it, with his pursuers hot on his tracks, he found himself in a blind corner. The street, ending in a wall, closed him in.

“Got—got to get out of here,” he thought with a touch of despair.

The steel frame of a building in process of erection loomed above him. Before him, erected to keep onlookers out, was a high board fence.

One thing saved him. A large sign, POST NO BILLS, had been nailed to this wall. More than an inch thick, the frame about this sign offered a precarious hand and foot hold. He went up and over like a cat.

There were, however, others with climbing ability. Before he could catch his breath and ask himself, “What can they want?” the foremost of the men was atop the fence.

Before Johnny was the steel framework of the new building. So, up he went, one story, two, three, with the little yellow men only one jump behind. At the top was a swinging crane. From it a long chain dangled. Across a narrow space, not fifteen feet away, was the roof of a building. “Get the chain swinging,” he thought excitedly. “Swing over. Jump.”

At once the chain began to swing. His pursuer’s hoarse breathing came to him as he let go and swung out over space.

A breath-taking second over a hard pavement, and he dropped, still clinging to the chain, safely upon the roof at the other side.

Wrapping the chain about a flagpole, without turning to look back, he disappeared among the chimneys at the top of the broad apartment building.

Ten minutes later, still breathing hard, he entered his own home and went at once to his room.

“I’d give a lot to know what they wanted,” he thought soberly. “But that’s one time when the old thought-camera didn’t help a bit.”

After a full hour of serious thinking he decided on a very definite course of action which, he assured himself, should be begun on the very next day.

He had decided to confide all his secrets to someone older and he believed, much wiser than himself. This, we have reason to believe, is a wise course of action for any boy who finds himself bewildered by the strange circumstances that surround his life.

“But first I’ll keep my promise to Meg,” he assured himself before he fell asleep.