“That you helped me a lot last night, that I can find out anything that any person is thinking, and that at this moment I’m scared stiff.” With a heavy sigh Johnny dropped to a place beside her.
“Why, Johnny?” She gripped his arm. “Why are you frightened?”
“It’s that Chinaman, Tao Sing! There’s a tong war, and I’m in the midst of it—or at least I’m likely to be. But then—” Johnny checked this wild flow of words. “I’d better start at the beginning. It all began when that little Chinaman loaned me that thought-camera.”
“Thought-camera!” Meggy stared.
“I—I’ll tell you all about it.” So, seated there in the sun with only a robin and a squirrel, as he supposed, listening in, he told Meg the amazing story of Tao Sing’s great invention and some of its startling revelations.
“And last night,” he said, pausing to catch his breath, “last night I squinted the thought-camera first at the Federal agent, and then at that wise old owl Wung Lu up there in the Chinese Chamber of Commerce. Then, after I’d been chased and almost captured by some wild-eyed Chinks, I sneaked along home to develop those last think-o-graphs. And what do you suppose the thoughts of that Federal agent told me?”
“What?” Meggy’s breath came quick.
“That a Chinese tong war has started with half a hundred Chinamen carrying big blue pistols, and any one of these ready to start popping at any moment, and—”
Johnny broke off abruptly. “What was that?”
“What?” Meggy was all aquiver.