His whole being was stirred. It was not that he suspected any wrong of those who worked behind heavily glazed windows in the laboratories. Far from that. Colonel Chamberlain had always been counted among Hillcrest’s foremost citizens. The laboratories belonged to him.
“I’ll have to hunt up Goggles,” Johnny told himself. “Wonder where he went? He always knows a lot. He may know more than I do about this pitcher.”
Goggles was a thinker. He was the only boy ever entrusted with Colonel Chamberlain’s secrets. He alone, of all the town’s boys, had crossed the threshold of the laboratories. Only he had seen something of that which went on inside.
“They test all sorts of things in there,” he had confided to Johnny one day, “soap and silk, dyes, and all sorts of powerful drugs. They try to find things out, to do things that have never been done before, like making rubber out of crude petroleum or paper out of sunflower stalks. They succeed sometimes, too. See!” He had pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket. “Made from a sunflower stalk. Pretty good paper, eh?
“When they make a real discovery,” he went on, “they sell it to some great manufacturer.
“Colonel Chamberlain—” he had taken a deep breath. “He showed me a lot of things I can’t talk about. He says maybe some day I can work with him in the laboratories. Boy! Won’t that be grand!”
“Yes, I shouldn’t wonder if Goggles knows something about this ‘Prince,’” Johnny said to himself now.
He broke short off to stare down at the laboratories. Someone had come walking down the gravel path. He walked slowly. “Seems to drag his feet,” Johnny whispered. Just then the newcomer looked up toward the sun. Johnny got a full view of his slim, dark face. It was the ‘Prince.’ A moment more and the long, low place of mysteries had swallowed him up.
That evening Johnny searched in vain for Goggles. Goggles’ mother did not know where he was, nor did anyone else. Johnny decided to go on a little detective cruise all by himself. Mounting his bicycle, he rode east nine miles to the Shady Valley landing field. In the office he found two men in aviators’ uniforms playing checkers.
“Say!” he said in a subdued voice, “Did any of you fly a plane over the Hillcrest ball field this afternoon?”