CHAPTER XIX

A BULLET

Johnny Thompson was not at the telephone for more than the space of one minute. When he returned to the porch where Herman McCarthey sat placidly smoking, he was choked with emotion.

"It's Rosy," he said in a scarcely audible voice, "Rosy! They have shot her!"

"Who?" Herman sprang to his feet.

"The crooks!"

"Where?"

"At the radio station."

"Why?"

"No one knows. A wire was cut. The private wire of the police. She was shot. No one was seen by anyone but Rosy."

For one distressing moment they stood there silent. Then a voice came from the half darkness of the house door.

"The bullet!" that voice said. "Have they found the bullet?"

No one answered. They were too greatly astonished. Standing there in the doorway, before Johnny and Herman, looking like a ghost, dressed in a white bathrobe as he was, and with white hair flying, stood Newton Mills, the derelict detective.

"I say!" his voice rose shrilly insistent. "Have they saved the bullet?"

"Here!" said Herman McCarthey a trifle shakily, "let's have a light."

"There! That's better."

He peered into the face of Newton Mills. The face was wan, ghastly. But the eyes! a fresh fire burned there.

"They didn't tell you, did they?" Herman said, speaking quietly to Johnny.

"Tell me?"

"The bullet."

"They didn't say anything about a bullet." Johnny was at a loss to know what it was all about.

"You must call them," said the gray detective. "Tell them to preserve it carefully."

"I will call them at once." Herman McCarthey's tone was that used by a subordinate officer to his chief. He went to the telephone immediately.

He got Drew on the phone, talked with him for a little time, then ended by saying, "We will drive in at once. Yes, at once."

"She's not dead. The doctor says there is hope." There was relief in his tone. "She has been conscious for a brief time. The man who fired the shot was a youth with a mask-like face."

"A mask!" Johnny exclaimed.

"You have heard of him?"

"More than that. Seen him. He and another crook nearly waylaid me on the Drive."

"You have the best of me. I never saw him. But I fancy the fellow has a record. Question is, what were the rascals about?

"And the other man," he exclaimed quite abruptly, "was the man with a hole in his hand! He was the one who beat you up. Matters appear to have come to a head. We will put all these together and arrive at something."

"And the bullet?" It was Newton Mills again.

"I was unable to learn anything. However, I cautioned them to save the bullet."

"Good!" muttered Mills.

"We are driving to the city at once," said Herman. "Shall you go with us? May I ask you to assist us in this case?"

Newton Mills' slight form stiffened perceptibly. "I will gladly do all I can."

Johnny understood. He loved Herman McCarthey for his generosity, his foresight, his extreme benevolence.

"It may save this man Mills for a great service," he told himself, "and who knows better than he how to bring these inhuman ones to justice?"

In an incredibly short time Newton Mills was clothed and ready to go. He took the seat beside Herman McCarthey. Johnny sprang into the back seat. The motor purred and they were away.

As they sped toward the city Johnny sat hunched up in one end of the seat, the greater part of the time immersed in deep meditation. From time to time Newton Mills leaned over to speak to Herman McCarthey. Johnny caught snatches of the conversation. Always it had to do with bullets.

"Bullets?" Johnny said to himself. "What can one learn from a spent bullet?"

So they sped on through the night. As the hand on the dial of the great illuminated clock that overlooked the city pointed to 1:00 they slid into Grand Avenue and came to a stop before the shack.

As they passed the Ramacciotti cottage on their way to the shack, Johnny noted that the place was illumined by a single tiny lamp.

"Rosy is dead!" was his melancholy thought. "That is the light of the death watch."

This was not true. Rosy was in the hospital. Her mother had gone to her bedside. That she might not be obliged to re-enter her cottage in darkness, she had left the light.

Drew awaited them in the shack. The tragic story was soon told. The birthday party, the new dress, the return to work, the silent house, the strange men, the hand with a hole at its center, the face that was a mask; the scream, the shot--no detail was omitted.

"And now," concluded Drew, "the poor girl hovers between life and death."

"And the bullet?" insisted Newton Mills excitedly.

"It has been removed. I have it. Here it is." Drew dropped a pellet of lead into the trembling hand of the old-time detective.

Johnny shuddered and turned away at sight of it.

Holding it between thumb and finger, as a jeweler might a pearl, Newton Mills examined it with a critical eye. He turned it over and over. He studied it from every possible angle.

"The forceps," he commented at last, "have done harm, but not too much."

"This," he said, turning it over once again, "is a precious thing."

Thrusting his hand in his pocket, he drew forth a small leather pouch. From this he poured a handful of coins. He put the bullet in their place, wrote a few words on a slip of paper and thrust it after the bullet.

"There must be no mistake," he murmured as he drew the strings of the pouch tight and put it back into his pocket.

As if to say, "Money is of little consequence," he scooped up the coins and dumped them loose into another pocket.

Then Herman McCarthey, Drew, and the strangely reclaimed derelict sat down to discuss the various aspects of the case and map out plans.

As for Johnny, he felt a need for solitude. He left the shack, made his way to the street level, and there wandered amid the shadows that are a city street three hours before dawn.

For a long time he found himself incapable of thinking in a rational manner. The whole affair had come to him with the force of a blow on the head. That such a thing could have happened in a city in a civilized country seemed incredible, monstrous.

"A girl!" he fairly cried aloud, "A mere child in a birthday dress. She is at her post of duty. She sees a hand, a face. She is frightened. She screams. She is shot!"

In an instant his mind was made up. He would leave this city. He would leave all cities. Cities were all bad. Man has made them. Man is evil. God made the country. God is good.

"But no!" he cried. "I will not leave. I will never, never go from this city until those monsters are trapped like the beasts they are, and punished!"

Calmed by the firm resolve, he returned to the shack. There he listened quietly to the council of seasoned warriors as they mapped out a campaign in which he was to have a definite part.

When at last they all tumbled down upon bunks or in great chairs for a few winks of sleep, Johnny's eyes did not close at once. He was still thinking of the man with the hole in his hand. He had conceived a great and, beyond doubt, a just hatred for that man.

Upon what was this hatred based? Three counts. First, he had beaten Johnny up when his back was turned. He had not given him the least shade of a fighting chance. No person had so much as attempted this before. It should not go unpunished.

Far mightier was the second count. This man with his accomplice, the youth of the masked face, had shot a defenseless girl, and for no better reason than that she had screamed. The shot might prove fatal. For this, whether the girl died or not, these men deserved the electric chair.

Third, and most important of all, based not at all upon revenge, but upon a desire for the good of all,--these were dangerous men. The man-killing tiger in his jungle is not more deadly. For this reason they must be speedily brought to justice.

Has anyone in all the world ever known better reasons for wishing to accomplish a given task than Johnny had as he entered upon this new field of endeavor?