As the boy sat there waiting his call he thought of these things. But most of all his mind was busy on the many mysteries that suddenly had thrust themselves into his life. What of that strange man whose picture he had twice taken? How could he, by a single gesture, put his victims to sleep, to rob them and leave them unconscious? Was this some strange new form of hypnotism? He did not think so. But what was it? One fact troubled him. He had been given an opportunity to study the man out at the ball park. He had failed to do so because he had not considered him important at the time. Then, too, he had been busy with his camera.
“I would recognize his voice on the instant,” he assured himself. “But his face. I wonder if I could recognize it again if I saw it. I wonder—” Had he but known it he was to look once more at this man and still be unable to picture him in his mind.
He was interested, too, in Tom Howe’s five “bad ones.” He wondered if any of those five desperate and cunning criminals had really taken part in the recent safe crackings. Tungsten Tom did appear to be involved in the first one. But the second, the diamond robbery? Only time could tell.
He wondered, in a vague sort of way, why those men had two trucks? What did they hope to carry away? Why did not Tom Howe and his associates arrest them at once and prevent them from committing other crimes?
“Wants to catch them with the goods on them,” he assured himself. “Wants to get them all and put them behind bars for a long time.”
“Behind bars,” he whispered. He tried to picture a great prison and could not, for he had never seen one. What a strange, fantastic place it must be! And what a queer, upside down world it was in which such terrible places were needed.
And then it was time to go home with John Nightingale, to enjoy a feast of bitter hot chocolate, beef-steak broiled over coals, baked potatoes and ginger snaps. What a strange, good, bad, sad, glad world it was! And how good it was to be alive and to have a job where you could be where so much was happening every day.
CHAPTER XI
STRANGE, WHITE BALLS
Supper was over in the hideout. A grand supper it had been. When time had come for bittersweet chocolate and cakes John had blown out the lamp. Only the gleams from the cracked stove-lids dancing on the wall dispelled the darkness of the room.
They remained seated there for a long time, the two of them, the boy and the man. Not a word was spoken. There is companionship in silence. It was Jimmie who first broke the silence.