“It has, sir—silver mines. To make matters worse—but no—I’ll tell it this way. I particularly wanted to meet Janet last Thursday, because I had been told the day before by the head of our New York office that I was to be transferred to Lima, Peru. The boat that I’m scheduled to sail on, leaves this coming Saturday. I was fearfully pepped up about it. I’m going down there as assistant manager of our Lima office, the job carries a considerable increase in salary, and, if I make good, a fine future with the firm. My plan was to get Janet to marry me, with or without her father’s consent, and to take her to Lima with me. I couldn’t bear to think of leaving her to the kind of existence she’d had before I’d known her—and with no way of correspondence—Well, I waited for over an hour in the lobby of the theatre but she didn’t come. At last I went up to my apartment.”
“Why didn’t you phone her?” asked Dorothy, who was nothing if not direct.
“Because Janet had asked me never to do that. She said if her father knew she had a boy friend, he’d pack her off somewhere, and we’d never be able to meet again.”
“Nice papa—I don’t think!” observed Bill Bolton.
“No comments now, please,” said Sanborn. “Go on, Howard. If you couldn’t talk to Janet, how did you find out that she was a prisoner?”
Howard smiled. “But we were able to talk to each other, Mr. Sanborn. About the time we became engaged, I fixed that. My small flat is on the ninth floor of the building, the Jordans’ on the seventh. My three rooms have windows on an air shaft. The Jordans’ back bedroom and bath overlook the same airshaft and are directly opposite my sitting room, two flights below. The shaft is only twenty feet wide, so I bought one of those headphone sets that are used in airplanes for conversation between the cockpits of a plane while it is being flown. I lengthened the wires of course, and got a long, collapsible pole. After dark, Janet would come to her window, I’d pass her headphone set down to her, hooked on to the end of the pole, and we would hold long conversations across the court without anybody being the wiser. When we were through talking, I’d pass the pole over to her and draw it back when she’d attached her headset.”
“By Jingoes!” cried Bill. “I’ll say that’s clever!”
“It sure is, Howard!” Dorothy was quite as enthusiastic. “You certainly deserve to get Janet after that.”
Howard shook his head. “We’ll have to do something really clever to get her away from the bunch who are holding her prisoner. Well,—as I say, when I got to my flat, I sat down by my sitting room window, and pretended to read a book. In reality, of course, I was watching Janet’s window. Presently she appeared. Even at that distance, I could see that she had been crying. She held up a slate, for we never dared to use the headphones in the day time, and slates are a good medium for short messages. On it she had written, ‘After dark.’ Well, that was one of the longest afternoons I’d ever put in. About five-thirty, she came back to her window and I passed over the headgear. When I heard her story, I went half crazy, and I guess I’ve been pretty much that way ever since.
“You see, Mr. Sanborn, Janet has told me that occasionally she walks in her sleep, especially when she isn’t feeling very well. The evening before, that was a week ago Wednesday night, she had a headache and went to bed early. When she awoke, she was terrified to find herself seated on the floor of their living room, behind a large Chinese screen. There seemed to be seven or eight men in the room, including her father. Of course, she could not see them, but she could hear every word they said. By the clock on the wall above her head, she saw that it was one in the morning. She soon realized that this was a meeting of the heads of some large society or organization and that these men had come there from all parts of the world. There was an air of mystery about them and their talk. No names were mentioned but they addressed each other by number. Mr. Jordan was Number 5; Number 2, who spoke with a foreign accent, was evidently conducting the meeting, in place of the absent Number 1, whom they all seemed to hold in great awe. Janet realized that she must have entered the room before the meeting started, while she was still asleep. She saw that so long as the meeting lasted, there would be no way of escape. Gradually she became terrified at her predicament, and—”