CHAPTER XXX
MANY PERILS
The person who leaped upon the back of the car as it went speeding out of Grand Avenue, who left it only as it arrived at the abandoned farmyard, and who now found himself in the mammoth hayloft of that barn, was none other than the new bus boy of the Seventy Club.
You may have guessed that this person was not a boy, but a girl, and that her name was Joyce Mills. This is true.
The thought of going to Naperville, of lolling about in white duck skirts on summer porches or playing tennis with well-to-do and self satisfied suburbanites had been abhorrent to her. The love of adventure was in her blood.
More than that; she had come to this city with the expectation of finding her father in jail. Instead, thanks to a boy, a young detective, and a sergeant of the force, she had found him free and employed as he should be at the task for which God had created him. She wanted above everything else to prove herself of service to those who had brought so much joy into her life. She wished to assist in the capture of Jimmie McGowan and his gang.
This was not the first time she had masqueraded as a boy. More than once, while living in the Sicilian quarters of New York, she had dyed her face brown, donned trousers and haunted dark places of crime, as a newsboy or a city waif.
Having secured the secret card, she had donned her disguise and had succeeded in getting herself employed at the Seventy Club.
She had been able to shadow the gang. She had witnessed the capture of the crook, Jimmie McGowan, had learned of the intended reprisal, had ridden to the shack on the back of the gangster’s car, and had seen them spying there.
There had been no opportunity for warning Johnny. She had ridden on the car to this deserted spot in the hope that here she might be of some service.
Her best course at present appeared to be that of leaving the barn and going for help.