CHAPTER XVIII

D.X.123

“There it is. Or is it?” Rodney Angel turned enquiring eyes upon June Travis. They had traveled by the third-rail line twenty miles into the country. There before them stood a large stone building topped by a circular tower. Rodney held his breath. If the girl said “No,” all this work had gone for nothing.

June half closed her eyes. A dreamy expression overspread her face. Once again she was thinking back, back, back, into the dim, misty realm of her childhood.

“Yes,” she said quite simply, “yes, that is the tower. I have seen it before. That must have been when I was very young.”

“Then—” the word was said with a shout of joy. “Then right over there is the brick house you once lived in with your father.”

“Our house!” Who can describe the emotions that throbbed through June’s being as she looked upon the home of her earliest childhood?

She was not given long to dream. “Come on,” said Rodney. “There is a little cottage next door to it. Looks as if it were half a century old and been owned by the same person all the time. That person should be able to help us.”

“That person” turned out to be a little old dried up man with a hooked nose.

“Do I know who lived in the red brick house ten years ago?” He grinned at Rodney. “Yes, and forty years ago. There was Joe Green and Sam Hicks, and—”

“But _ten_ years ago!” Rodney insisted.

“Oh, yes. Now let me think. It was a—oh, yes! That was John Travis.”

“J—John Travis!” June stammered, fairly overcome with joy. “Oh, Rodney, you surely are a wonder!

“Please!” There were tears in her eyes as she turned to the old man. “Please tell me all about him! He—he is my father.”

“Your father? Yes, so he might be. There was a small child and a woman, a little old woman that wasn’t his wife nor his mother—

“But I can’t tell you much, miss,” he went on, “not a whole lot. He didn’t live here long. Wanderin’ sort, he was. A gold prospector, he was. Made a heap of money at it. Short, jolly sort of man, he was, short and jolly.”

“See?” Rodney reminded her, “Your memory was O. K.”

“Short and jolly—” June murmured, “I can’t understand. In the crystal ball—”

The little old man was talking again. “He seemed to like me, this John Travis. When he went away in an airplane, he—”

“Airplane!” June breathed.

“Why, yes, child! Didn’t you know? He went in an airplane. He invited me to the airport. I saw him off. Just such a day as this one, fine and clear, few white clouds afloatin’. I can see that plane sailin’ away. Recollect the number of it even. It was D.X.123.

“And they say,” he added slowly, “that he never came back!”

“Wh—where was he going?” June’s voice was husky.

“That’s what I don’t know. He never told me that.” The old man looked away at the sky as if he would call that airplane back.

“And that,” he added after a time, “is just about all I can tell you.”

That too was all they found out from anyone that day. The other people living close to the red brick house were recent arrivals. They knew nothing of John Travis.

When June, weary and sleepy from travel and excitement, arrived at her home, she found a telephone number in her letter box.

“Florence wants me to call,” she thought. “Wonder if she’s found out something important. I’ll have a cup of tea to get my nerves right. Then I’ll give her a ring.”