CHAPTER V

MYSTERIOUS VIOLENCE

It was twenty minutes past twelve o'clock, ten minutes before closing time. At this precise moment a thing happened that was destined to change Johnny's whole career. It was to make him a hunter of men.

At this hour the radio studio in an out-of-the-way corner on the tenth floor of a great hotel was dimly lighted and spooky. The merry-makers in the studio beyond had long since departed. That room was completely dark. So, too, was the studio nearest Johnny. Even the dim shadows of musical instruments had faded into nothing. Two lights burned dimly, one over Johnny's head, the other directly before the operator who, half asleep, sat waiting for the moment when he might cut a distant ballroom orchestra off the air and follow his fellow workers home.

"No more calls tonight," Johnny was thinking to himself. "Quiet night, right enough; one holdup, two robberies and a shooting. Ho well, it's been interesting all the same. Fellow wouldn't--"

No, there it was again, one more call. Buzz, buzz, flash, flash.

He pressed his ear to the head phone, his lips to the mouthpiece. And then, like lightning from a clear sky, things began to happen. He was struck a murderous blow on the head. He was pitched violently forward. He had a vague sensation of something resembling a microphone glancing past him, then crashing violently against the wall. Other objects appeared to follow. A sudden shock of sound burst on his ears, filling the air.

"Shot," he thought to himself. "I'm shot!"

He experienced no pain. For all that, his mental light blinked out and he knew no more for some time.

In the meantime the operator in the glass cage was seeing and hearing such things as he had never so much as dreamed of.

His first intimation that something was wrong was when Johnny's microphone sent him a curious sound of warning. This was caused by someone grasping it in both hands. Compared to the sound that followed at once, this was as nothing. Had two freight engines entered the room from opposite directions and suddenly crashed they could not have produced a more deafening hubbub than that which came from the loud-speaker as the microphone, hurled by mysterious hands, crashed against the studio wall.

As the operator's startled senses directed his attention to Johnny's cubby-hole, and his eyes took in at a glance the full horror of the situation, he stood paralyzed with fear.

His chair overturned, Johnny Thompson lay crumpled on the floor. A shadowy figure reached up and crushed his light as a child might a bird's egg. The same figure seized the police gong and hurled it through a window. Broken glass flew in every direction. A telephone followed the gong. Then, as mysteriously as he had come, the sinister figure stepped once more into the dark, leaving wreck, ruin and perhaps death in his wake.

"Gone!" No, not quite. One more act of violence. Came a flash, a roar, and a bullet struck with a thud against the padded partition.

The operator promptly dropped flat upon the floor. Nor did he, being a prudent youth, rise until heavy feet came stamping up the stairs and three uniformed policemen, led by a youth in shirt sleeves, burst into the room.

The young man in shirt sleeves was Drew Lane.

From the moment Johnny took his first squad call, Drew had been listening in at his room. He had come to have a very great interest in Johnny. "Anyone of his courage, spirit and ambition, coupled with a desire to be of real service to others, will go far," he had told himself. "I'll just listen in tonight. He may make a slip or two. If he does I can set him right."

Johnny made no slips. In fact Drew was obliged to give him credit for a steady hand and a clear head. Drew had been thinking of throwing off the radio and turning in, when the crash of the wrecked microphone reached him through his loud-speaker in the shack.

With a mind well trained for sudden disaster, he knew on the instant that something unusual and terrible was happening in the studio. What it was he could not guess.

Grasping his automatic, without waiting to draw on his coat, he had dashed out of the shack, down one rickety stairway, up another, and raced. By good chance he had run squarely into a police squad car.

"Step on the gas, Mike!" he shouted, springing into the car. "East on Grand, then north on Lake Shore. Something gone wrong at the broadcasting studio!"

The motor purred, the gong sounded as they were away at sixty miles an hour.

"Heard it," Mike shouted above the din. "Guess your young friend dropped his 'mike'!"

"Worse than that," Drew came back. "I've heard that happen. This was different. Worse! Ten times worse!"

That he was telling the truth you already know.

And that was how it happened that Drew and the squad appeared on the scene, exactly six minutes after the destroyer had completed his work of demolition.

"Hey! What's this? Who's here?" bellowed Mike O'Hearne, the head of the squad, drawing his revolver and leading the way.

"He--he's gone!" The terrified operator rose shakily.

"Who's gone?"

"I--I don't know. Truly I don't. But look! Look what he's done!"

"Where's the light switch?" Mike advanced into the studio, tripped over a trap drum, dropped his gun; then said some words appropriate to the occasion.

"Here. Just a moment."

The operator, who was rapidly regaining the power of his senses, touched a switch and the room was flooded with light; so, too, was Johnny's cubby-hole.

"They--he shot at me," stammered the operator, once more thrown into confusion at sight of Johnny's still form crumpled up beneath the debris.

"Who shot?" demanded Mike.

"I--I don't know."

"You don't know much. Looks like they'd done for this boy here. And why, I wonder? That's always the question. Why? Here, give us a hand. Let's get him out of here. Somebody call the house doctor."

Relieved to find there was something definite he might do, the young operator got the doctor on the phone at once.

"He'll be up right away," he reported.

"Hm, let's see." Mike, the experienced police officer, who had examined a thousand cases, living and dead, turned Johnny over carefully.

"Lot of blood," he muttered. "Hit on the head. May come round. Doctor can tell. Bring some water."

The operator brought a pitcher of water. Mike bathed Johnny's forehead, then began washing away the blood. Johnny had just begun to stir a bit when the doctor arrived.

A full five minutes the doctor remained bent over the prostrate form.

"I hope he's going to come out of it," Drew said to a husky, grizzle-haired Irish sergeant named Herman McCarthey. "He's a game kid, and he's got right ideas. He'll go far. This was his first night."

At the end of that tense five minutes Johnny sat up unsteadily.

"He's reviving," said the doctor. "Let's have some air."

Windows were thrown up. Johnny opened his eyes and looked about him.

"Wha--where am I?" he half whispered.

"Right where you were," Drew chuckled. He was pleased to see the boy coming round so soon.

"I--I--" Johnny's eyes held an uncertain light. Then they cleared. "Something hit me. I--I went--went down. The microphone, the telephone, every--everything went--"

"That's all right," said Herman McCarthey quietly. "Just you take it easy. You'll be fine and dandy pretty soon. Then we'll take you home in the car and you can tell us all about it. He hit you, that's clear. Hit with his gun. Dent of the hammer's in your scalp. An' it's goin' to stay some time.

"He hit you. We don't know just why. But we'll find out, won't we, Drew?"

"You know we will!"

"And we'll find the man, won't we, Drew?"

"We sure will!"

"And when we do!"

"And when we do!" Drew Lane echoed with appropriate emphasis, and a light grip on his automatic.