CHAPTER VI

BESIDE THE GREEN-EYED DRAGON

The days that followed were strange ones for Johnny. At the very beginning, in his enthusiasm for a new and quite wonderful thing, he nearly gave the secret of the thought-camera away.

“Penny for your thoughts!” he said as he met Meggy Strawn on the street the very next day.

“Not for a dollar!” Meg exclaimed.

“All the same, I shall have them!” declared Johnny.

“You never shall!” Meg laughed in his face.

“I have them right now,” Johnny said in a mysterious tone. “I’ll bring them round later.”

He did too. The result was rather surprising. As Meg read her own thoughts, copied by Johnny from the thought picture he had taken, she gave him a startled look. “Why you—” she broke off to stare at him for all the world as if she had never seen him before. For a full moment after that neither of them spoke. When Meg at last broke the silence, it was in a queer small voice.

“Johnny, don’t ever do that again! I don’t know how you did it—you don’t need to tell. But never, never, never do it again!”

“I won’t,” Johnny said soberly. “Here! Shake on it!” Their hands clasped for a space of seconds. Then, without another word, each turned and went his own way.

“Not so good,” was Johnny’s mental comment. “Swell way to lose a good friend.”

His experiment in recording his own thoughts worked out in a more satisfactory manner. Having built up in his own mind a tale of mystery about the new pitcher and, having visited the electric shop and watched Goggles’ mechanical umpire with forty eyes perform, he hurried home, set up the camera, then fixing his thoughts on the publicity he wished to create for the two ball games, he sat quite still, staring at the wall for a full ten minutes.

“There!” he breathed at last. “The cake is done.”

With ever increasing enthusiasm he developed and copied his own personal think-o-graph.

“Gee! This is great!” He paused at last to gloat over the nearly finished product. “Am I the thinker! If only I could write as well as I think I’d become a great author right away.”

He carried his stories of the two approaching ball games to the slow-going, genial editor of the weekly paper.

“Let’s see it.” The editor put on his glasses. “Same old stuff I suppose. Have to do it all over before I run it.”

“Maybe it is.” Johnny gave himself a mental hug.

A moment later he saw the editor pouring eagerly over his copy. “Whew!” the editor exclaimed under his breath. Then, “Great Jehosophat, Johnny! Didn’t know you had it in you! Been seein’ you around your grand-pap’s for a good many years. What paper you been workin’ on?”

“No paper.” Johnny grinned broadly.

“Well, I’m surprised, Johnny. This is fine copy. Run it just as it is. Get you some fine crowds. I’ll say it will!

“Want you to know, Johnny,” he went on, “Want all the boys to know this paper’s for ’em. We want you to have that ball field, have it always.”

“Than—thanks, C.K.,” Johnny stammered. “That’s sure kind of you.”

“And look here, son!” The editor put a hand on his shoulder. “This stuff shows real talent. Keep on writing like this and you’ll get somewhere.”

“I—” Johnny had it on the end of his tongue to say, “I didn’t write it.” Fake glory was one thing Johnny had never craved. But then, if he did not write it, who did? That would require much explaining. He decided to leave well enough alone. “I—I thank you,” he muttered uncertainly. Then he was gone.

That evening he went to the Chinese Chamber of Commerce and sat near to the rich and silent wise one, Wung Lu, for a long time. He liked this quiet place, full of treasures from the past. He loved to sit looking at that green-eyed dragon more than two thousand years old. He wondered what those green eyes could have seen when the world was very young. He wondered many things. But he did not forget to point his thought-camera at the silent, wise Wung Lu and to record his thoughts. He wondered what those thoughts were. This was not given to him to know. Wung Lu thought in Chinese. Only Tao Sing would read these. This made Johnny uneasy. He was almost ready to return the thought-camera to its owner—almost but not quite.

There were many things that might be done with that thought-camera. There were mysteries to be solved. Perhaps some day he would point it at that strange pitcher over at the laboratories. He wanted terribly to know his secret. And yet—one does not spy upon his friends. This young man promised to become a friend of Hillcrest and that meant he must be Johnny’s friend as well.

“Anyway,” he told himself, “I’ll keep it for another day or two.”

He carried the small round box containing the rich Wung Lu’s think-o-graph to the little room at the back of the Chinese spice store. There, in the semi-darkness, Tao Sing’s claw-like hand grasped it with such a nervous tenseness that Johnny was actually startled.

“Very good! Very good!” the little Chinaman cackled. “You will go again and again. Wung Lu is very wise. Soon we shall all be wise. Here are more—many more.” He pressed a bag of small metal boxes into Johnny’s hand.

As Johnny left the place to step into the cool air of night, he felt himself all but over-powered by a strange sense of Oriental intrigue and mystery. “Perhaps I shouldn’t be doing any of this,” he told himself. In the end, however, he succeeded in overcoming his misgivings.

The day for their second battle with the Centralia baseball team approached.

“We’ll win!” Johnny said to Meggy Strawn.

“We’ve got to,” was Meggy’s reply.

Johnny wondered if the thought-camera would help any. “Not a chance,” was his final decision. “But I’ll take it along anyway, just for company.”

Three times that week he sat in the great room with Wung Lu and the ancient dragon. Each time his uneasiness grew. Each time that he delivered the think-o-graphs, as he had come to call them, to the wrinkled Tao Sing, the little man’s enthusiasm increased.

“Wung Lu’s thoughts must be very wonderful,” was the boy’s mental comment. “And yet—” one more shudder. “Could it be that Tao Sing was learning things he had no right to know? And was he, Johnny, assisting him?” The thought gave him a start. “Secrets,” he whispered, “sometimes I think they’re no good.”