Johnny sat there for a short time staring into his half drained coffee cup. Life had, he thought, always been strange. Curious, mysterious things were always bobbing up. Life was a joyous affair too. It sure was good to live. The coming weeks promised to be full of interest. There was that queer old man and his nephew, Donald Day, down there in the mountains. They took jug-like affairs into a dark, cavern-like place beneath a mill, carried them down empty and brought them up filled with some precious fluid. How could they? What magic was this? He was going to know. His grandfather had given him a small car, a long, low one with a nose like a chisel. Cut the air like a knife, this car. He’d go spinning down to the mountains in it. Take Jensie or Ballard with him.
“Old Kentucky. That’s what they all called Ballard tonight,” he whispered. He was thinking of Ballard. Yes, surely life was joyous, grand and joyous. Things had a way of coming out right if you got a proper start and kept plugging. There was the Blue Moon now. It was going to be a success. Students needed such a meeting place, good, clean atmosphere, and all that.
“Just takes one good push,” he murmured. “Tonight it got that push. Ballard got his push too. He’ll make a great football star. I’m sure of it. I—” he broke off.
Then, like a ghost, a mental picture of Panther Eye came floating into his consciousness. “He’s been into something I’ll be bound,” he said this aloud to the empty room. “Nothing bad, but something that’s likely to get some people into a lot of trouble of one sort or another. Pant’s just naturally that way.
“Trouble for some people,” he repeated musingly. “But I won’t be one of those people.”
“Oh won’t you though!” He would have sworn that a voice whispered this in his ear. Springing to his feet, he flashed a look here, there, everywhere.
“No one!” he exclaimed. “Of course not. Time I was going home. Been a wild day. I’m beginning to hear things. Be seeing them pretty soon.”
At that he switched off the light, opened the door, then stood on the threshold listening, peering into the dark. Strangely enough, at that moment a curious notion took possession of his mind, it was that the mysterious Panther Eye had not been there at all, that Pant was dead, that only Pant’s ghost had been to visit him here in the big room of the Blue Moon.
“Boo!” he shivered.
He was sure he caught an answering “Boo!” But after all it might have been some lonesome old owl talking to himself.