CHAPTER XXVIII

TAKEN FOR A RIDE

As often happens when men have a good piece of work well off their hands, Drew Lane and Newton Mills went to bed almost at once, and were soon fast asleep.

Not so Johnny. He sat in a chair thinking. The room was dark. That did not matter. The men he had most feared were in prison and in the hospital. One was dead. He had not seen the dead man, nor his accomplice who surrendered. As one will, he had assumed that one of these was the man with a hole in his hand. What could be more natural? Those two, the youth of the mask-like face, and he of the hole in his hand, had been together on every other occasion.

As Johnny thought the thing through now, the whole affair seemed clear. On the night he had been attacked in the studio, this gang had planned to rob a theatre. Two had come up to silence the radio. Another pair had pulled off the robbery.

On the second occasion they had not dared to enter the radio studio, so had planned to cut the private wire of the police. In doing this they had frightened Rosy, and shot her, either without purpose or to cover their escape.

On this, the third night, they had feared to approach the radio station. Without doubt they knew that now the station was strongly guarded. They had disregarded the peril of a squad call and had staged the robbery with all hands on board.

In drawing these conclusions, Johnny may have been partly right. In one matter he was completely wrong. The man with the hole in his hand had not been captured.

As Johnny was thinking of retiring he touched a pocket. The pocket gave forth a crackling sound.

"A letter," he thought. "Meant to mail it. Forgot. May as well take it to the box now."

As we have said, Johnny believed the entire gang that had been troubling them were in jail. He had no fear of the dark and empty street. Indeed, as he walked the two blocks that lay between the shack and the mail box, he was thinking of that dark fishing hole on the far shores of Lake Huron where the black bass lurk.

He did not note the two men who lay in hiding beneath the shadows of the Ramacciotti cottage. Nor was he conscious of their presence as they pussyfooted along after him. Only when he was within ten paces of the mail box did he turn his head half about, to see them out of the corner of an eye.

It was with the greatest difficulty that he suppressed a start.

"The bullets!" he thought. "They know. They are after the bullets."

What should he do? Like a flash a plan of action came to his mind. Quickening his pace a little, he allowed his left hand to drop to his side, revealing the letter. At the same time his right sought the inner pocket of his coat.

Arrived at the mail box, he put up both hands, as one will; one to lift the metal flap, the other to drop the letter. All this was true to form, except that he dropped two parcels instead of one.

As he turned about he was seized from behind. A car glided to the curb. Three men sprang out. He was overpowered, gagged and thrown into the car.

Just as the motor purred a shadowy figure sprang from the darkness, to leap upon the spare tires which this car carried, and cling there as the car sped away.

"Well," Johnny thought grimly, "they have me; but they won't get the bullets. The trial will go on."

The next instant he received a shock. As the light from a passing auto flashed upon them, the man at the wheel of the car shifted his position and Johnny saw his hand. He was the man with a hole in his hand.

As the car sped swiftly westward, Johnny realized that he was, in the language of gang-land, being "taken for a ride."

His heart stood still. He felt a sudden chill pass over him and the terror of it all came to him. To-day, to-morrow, perhaps the next day his bullet-ridden or fire-charred body would be found beside some deserted road. That was how they did it. They were possessed of no heart, no compassion, no conscience. "Dead men tell no tales."

No greater falsehood was ever uttered than this. Dead men have told many tales. More than once a dead man's tales have brought men to the gallows. But gangsters have not learned this. They are a stupid lot.

One fact consoled Johnny. These gangsters wanted something. They wanted the telltale bullets that were capable of sending their fellow gangster, him of the masked face, to the electric chair or to prison for life. These they would have at all cost. They undoubtedly expected to find them on Johnny's person.

"They will question me," Johnny told himself. "I can stall; hold them off. They may torture me!" He shuddered and turned his thoughts to other channels.

He thought of that slim, dark-eyed girl, Joyce Mills. Drew had told him all about her. He was sure he would have enjoyed knowing her. Frank, friendly, fearless, she would have made a great pal. He regretted not having seen her. Had she gone to her cousin's in Naperville? Somehow he doubted that. She had said she could help her father; that she _would_. She had seemed very determined about this. Was she trying to help? How? He had seen no sign of it.

At that moment they approached the end of a street. A blank brick wall loomed darkly before them. Of a sudden, above the blur of white caused by the car's lights, there appeared a spot of vivid red which formed itself into an arrow of fire, then as quickly lost form and vanished.

At the same instant the car swerved sharply to the right and missed an iron post by a narrow margin.

The man sitting beside the driver seized the wheel with a curse.

The driver muttered something about the "arrow of fire," then settled down once more to steady driving.

The thing puzzled Johnny. At the same time it cheered him. He had not forgotten the words of Drew Lane: "Justice is an arrow of fire." It seemed to him that he felt the presence of someone hovering near him, someone who cared and would help if such a thing were possible.

The shadowy creature that had sprung out to attach itself to the spare tires when the car started, still clung there.