CHAPTER XXIII

THE FACE IN THE NIGHT

Johnny Thompson possessed a robust body. Proper food, plenty of sleep, plain living and clean thinking had kept it so. Few there are who could have endured his harrowing experience in the tunnel without a prolonged visit to the hospital.

Johnny did not entirely escape. On the second day following, a low fever set in. His doctor ordered him to bed until the fever abated. It lasted for an entire week. Such a week, for a person endowed with a boundless supply of nervous energy, was a great trial.

It did, however, give him time for thinking. And his thoughts were long, long thoughts.

Often he found them returning to the youth with the burning eyes. Over and over again he seemed to hear him say: “It is time for some who are honest, good and clean to die.”

Curiously enough, it was while listening to the Voice, which came on exactly at ten o’clock each evening, that he thought oftenest of those words. There was something about the earnest tones of that mysterious unknown voice that reminded him of the nameless one. “And may he not be the same person?” he asked himself one night.

But when he thought of it more soberly, the thing seemed absurd. “In a city of millions, how could it be?” he asked himself. Then he dismissed the matter from his mind.

There were other matters requiring consideration. And these made him restless, impatient to be up and away. Some of his friends were in trouble. Curlie Carson had opened a registered mail sack; had made himself liable to arrest; might even yet be arrested and thrown into prison by the Federal authorities if the priceless package were not found and returned.

“And how is it to be found?” he asked himself. “Find the man who took it and make him confess, to be sure. How simple!”

Strangely enough, while Johnny was still confined to his bed and might well have been thinking of this very matter, Grace Palmer received a letter which for a time puzzled her greatly.

Addressed to her at her home, it contained the simple statement:

“_The man you are looking for will be at the turn of the breakwater on the island at ten o’clock P. M., Wednesday, this week._”

The note, which was unsigned, reached her on Tuesday. She racked her mind for its meaning. She had often gone to this man-made island, but never in search of a man.

“Except—” Her heart beat double time. “Except on that night with the young Air Mail pilot.

“I wonder—”

She went to the phone and got Curlie on the wire. She told him of the note.

“It’s a chance,” he said, growing quite excited. “Shall we go?”

“Yes.” She did not hesitate. “I’ll bring father’s gun.”

“Gun? Oh, certainly!”

“You know,” she supplemented, “I am really a good shot. And we may need it.” They had reason later to regret not having used it on the offensive instead of on the defensive as they had feared they might be obliged to do.

They went to the island half an hour early. In a narrow space, just wide enough to afford them a place of concealment, jammed between two huge squares of limestone with another as their resting place and a fourth forming a sort of fortification before them, they waited while Curlie’s watch ticked the half hour away.

The night was chill. There was no moon. For all that, a sort of half light reflected from the city’s street lights made it possible for them to see a moving object at some distance.

At exactly the hour of ten an object appeared on the narrow stretch of sand that lay beyond the breakwater.

From Curlie’s position it was impossible for him to tell whether it was a man or some prowling dog. He believed it to be a dog.

The girl had placed a big, blue, long-barreled revolver on the rocks before them. The manner in which her nervous fingers gripped it, together with the rapid beating of her heart which he could feel through her shoulder pressed against his own, told him plainer than words that she believed it to be a man.

Some twenty feet of tumbled rocks lay between them and the sand. Having crossed the sand, the figure proceeded to clamber over the rocks. They lay directly in his path. Curlie drew in a long breath. With her free hand, the girl gripped his arm.

“She’s not really afraid,” he told himself in some surprise. “A college girl, a professor’s daughter, too, and a real sport!”

There was little time for further thought. The man, if man it was, was coming fast. Now he had covered a quarter of the distance, now half. Now—

Curlie’s lips were formed for the word, “Stop!” when one of those curious bits of circumstance which so often bring our lives to an abrupt turn, came to pass. The searchlight from some boat out on the lake played for just a fraction of a second on the spot.

In that split second Curlie saw that the figure was that of a man; saw, too, that he was short and round shouldered, that his hair was curly and that his left ear was entirely missing.

So much for well trained eyes. No man may hope to be an Air Mail pilot unless he possesses such eyes.

A split second, then the light was gone. But what was far more startling, the figure, too, was gone.

“He—he’s not there!” the girl whispered.

Curlie placed his hand gently over her mouth.

For five full minutes, with the girl’s vibrant shoulder against his own, he lay motionless. When he spoke it was still in a whisper:

“You keep the place covered with the gun. I—I’m going over the rocks.”

For a moment her hand on his arm held him back. When her grip relaxed, he went over—and found not a trace of the man!

“What a pity!” he exclaimed. “We had him in our power. Now he is gone. We should have covered him and made him surrender.”

“Yes,” she agreed, “we should have. But who would have thought he would disappear?”

“The light. I know. By the way,” he chuckled, “what did we mean to do?”

“Yes. What? But was he the man?”

“Who knows?”

“And if he was, what could he be doing here?”

“Check,” said Curlie.

“Who wrote that letter, and why?” she asked again.

“Double check,” Curlie laughed. “Let’s go home.”

“Do you think that was the man who took the package?” Grace Palmer asked as they rode home.

“I think it may have been. I didn’t see his face clearly. It was too dark that morning. But his figure was much the same.”

“You had better tell your friend, Johnny Thompson, about this. Describe him. His ear was gone.”

“Cut clean off.”

Curlie did tell Johnny. Johnny told some one else, and something worth while came of it.