“Want you to know, Johnny,” he went on, “Want all the boys to know this paper’s for ’em. We want you to have that ball field, have it always.”
“Than—thanks, C.K.,” Johnny stammered. “That’s sure kind of you.”
“And look here, son!” The editor put a hand on his shoulder. “This stuff shows real talent. Keep on writing like this and you’ll get somewhere.”
“I—” Johnny had it on the end of his tongue to say, “I didn’t write it.” Fake glory was one thing Johnny had never craved. But then, if he did not write it, who did? That would require much explaining. He decided to leave well enough alone. “I—I thank you,” he muttered uncertainly. Then he was gone.
That evening he went to the Chinese Chamber of Commerce and sat near to the rich and silent wise one, Wung Lu, for a long time. He liked this quiet place, full of treasures from the past. He loved to sit looking at that green-eyed dragon more than two thousand years old. He wondered what those green eyes could have seen when the world was very young. He wondered many things. But he did not forget to point his thought-camera at the silent, wise Wung Lu and to record his thoughts. He wondered what those thoughts were. This was not given to him to know. Wung Lu thought in Chinese. Only Tao Sing would read these. This made Johnny uneasy. He was almost ready to return the thought-camera to its owner—almost but not quite.
There were many things that might be done with that thought-camera. There were mysteries to be solved. Perhaps some day he would point it at that strange pitcher over at the laboratories. He wanted terribly to know his secret. And yet—one does not spy upon his friends. This young man promised to become a friend of Hillcrest and that meant he must be Johnny’s friend as well.
“Anyway,” he told himself, “I’ll keep it for another day or two.”
He carried the small round box containing the rich Wung Lu’s think-o-graph to the little room at the back of the Chinese spice store. There, in the semi-darkness, Tao Sing’s claw-like hand grasped it with such a nervous tenseness that Johnny was actually startled.
“Very good! Very good!” the little Chinaman cackled. “You will go again and again. Wung Lu is very wise. Soon we shall all be wise. Here are more—many more.” He pressed a bag of small metal boxes into Johnny’s hand.
As Johnny left the place to step into the cool air of night, he felt himself all but over-powered by a strange sense of Oriental intrigue and mystery. “Perhaps I shouldn’t be doing any of this,” he told himself. In the end, however, he succeeded in overcoming his misgivings.