“Now what?” Tom thought. “Just one more of those newspaper half-truths, I suppose. I can’t say I like them.”

The fact is that that line beneath the picture told the whole truth, only it was done in advance of the discovery. With Jimmie’s help, Tom was to uncover a valuable clue from that same scrap of steel, though at that moment he knew nothing about it.

CHAPTER VI
JOHN’S HIDEOUT

Jimmie lived with his father and mother in an old-fashioned house in The Glen, a suburban village near the city.

John Nightingale, too, had a place in The Glen. And what a place it was! To the few who knew about it—and they were very few indeed—it was known as “John’s hideout.” It was well named. The Glen was an old village. One of the first settlers had been a Judge Stark, a man with grand and costly ideas. He had been fond of large rooms, fine horses, and trees. With plenty of money at hand, he had walled in ten rolling acres of land, built a huge castle-like house in the center and broad stables at the back, laid winding drives and paths all over it and planted it thick with all manner of trees.

The Judge had now been dead for many years. His two sons, preferring city penthouses to a tree-grown estate, had abandoned the great house. It had been closed for years and was showing signs of decay.

The Judge’s trees, planted with such care, had continued to thrive. In one corner of the estate, some distance from the house, was a thick clump of pines. So closely planted were they and so interlaced were their heavy branches that the space beneath them seemed dark even at noonday.

In the center of this cluster of pines was John’s hideout. Having made the acquaintance of one of the Judge’s sons, John had sought and received permission to erect a portable structure there. The hideout consisted of two small rooms made entirely of 2×2 timbers and three-ply boards. Even the roof was of ply-board, heavily painted. It resembled nothing quite so much as two huge packing boxes set up side by side. When an autumn rain came pelting down on the roof it was as if a hundred imps were beating upon it with drumsticks. Since Jimmie Drury was a normal boy with the blood of Robin Hood, Long John Silver and all the rest coursing through his veins, it was only natural that he should become very fond of John’s hideout.

Nor did his father object. John Nightingale was not a thrifty person, to be sure. He borrowed money three days before pay-day and his clothes were more often frayed than otherwise. But he was honest, clean, and friendly, the sort of fellow who makes a good and generous big brother. And to Jimmie’s father this was quite enough.

John was young, not yet twenty-five, but he had been places and seen things. There was nothing Jimmie liked quite so much as sitting by John’s glowing fire sipping a cup of his famous bitter-sweet chocolate, and listening to his low drawl as he told of crossing the ocean on a cattle ship or shipping as an able-bodied seaman earning his way peeling potatoes and washing dishes “down to Rio” or “across to Shanghai.”