“And there’s the ‘Prince,’” he thought. “Queer sort of fellow. How did he come here?” He seemed to see an airplane landing within prison walls. Had the Colonel rescued him in that strange manner from a prison? “Of course not!” he whispered. “Perfectly absurd!” And yet, there was that air pilot’s story. “Mystery wings!” he whispered low. How many mysterious things might be carried on high in the air—kidnaping, smuggling, daring robbers escaping from the scene of their crime. What had happened that day as the airplane soared over their baseball diamond? He had a rather definite notion. But was that idea correct? He meant to find out.
He thought of the coming ball game. The “Prince” would be there. He had promised to come. Meggy had brought word of this.
“Good old Meg!” he thought. “How I’d like to tell her about the thought-camera!” He was burning to tell someone. And yet, had he the right? Meg would keep the secret. Threats of death would not wring it from her. Good old Meg! And yet—. He wouldn’t tell, not just now.
How was the ball game to come out? And Goggles’ forty-eyed umpire? Would it work? They would get a crowd, he was sure of that. But would they be able to satisfy that crowd?
He stole a glance at his grandfather. As usual, he sat in his big chair dreaming of the past. Slipping up the stairs, Johnny returned with the thought-camera under his coat. He recorded one more chapter of the grand old man’s life. Then he crept back upstairs again.
“Wonder how that thing works,” he murmured as he once more hid the camera in the bottom of his trunk. “I’d give a lot to know.” He had read of things scientists were doing with what they called the spectrum, how they divided it into different rays, red, violet, indigo blue, and how some rays were life-giving and some deadly. It might be something like that. If he knew the secrets of that camera he could become the richest person in the world. Perhaps some day he would know.
“But now,” he laughed low, “the next thing is a ball game.”
He was late to the Wednesday game. His grandfather had a hurry-up call into the country. Johnny drove the car. Twenty miles from town they got a flat tire. The bolts stuck. He was a full hour getting it changed. When he finally reached the ball grounds the game had been in progress for some time and, to his great surprise and consternation, this is what he heard:
“Oh! What an eye! Kill that umpire! Git a pop bottle! Git twenty pop bottles! Wreck him! Wreck him!” The cries were loud and persistent from every corner of the grandstand.
“Trouble is,” Doug Danby groaned as Johnny came racing up, “they are liable to break loose any minute and do just that—‘wreck the umpire.’ And that umpire cost hundreds of dollars. How could we ever pay it back?”