Johnny smiled as he watched him hurry down the street. Goggles sure was an interesting boy. He dug into everything just as a gopher digs into the earth. Chemistry, electricity, detective work, it was all the same to him.
“Little cities are surely interesting,” was Johnny’s mental comment. “In big cities everyone tries to be just like everyone else. People think alike, walk alike, dress the same, everything. In a little city everyone is different.”
Then he brought himself up with a jerk. There was the thought-camera. Somehow, since talking to C.K. about the Chinese, he found himself all but overcome with a desire to hide the thought-camera in some very dark and secret spot. In the end, after hurrying home, he buried it deep among the clothes in his trunk, locked the trunk, then hid the key.
“So they’re after Tao Sing!” he murmured low. “Wonder if they’ll find him. And if they do, I wonder—” he did not finish that last wonder.
CHAPTER X
CLUES FROM THE DUST
“In cases like this—” Goggles’ eyes bulged behind his thick glasses. His beak-like nose appeared to wrinkle and wriggle as a rabbit’s. “In a case like this,” he repeated, “one may learn a great deal from dust. Take a vacuum cleaner now. It’s queer. I’ve helped clean dozens of furnished houses and apartments after the tenants were gone. Some of them would scrub the place till it shone like a new dollar. But the vacuum cleaner! What do you think?” He paused. “Always half full of dust!
“And yes!” he exclaimed. “Same here. A good big lot of dust. I’m prepared. See!” He drew a stout paper sack from his pocket. Unfastening the cloth dust-bag from the vacuum cleaner, he proceeded to empty its contents into the paper sack.
“Dust?” said Johnny, “What can you do with dust?”
“You wait,” said Goggles, “You’ll see.”
“Well, you can have your dust,” Johnny grumbled. “Can’t see how that can help any.”