Again the buzz; the light. This time it was a shooting at Halsted and 22nd Streets.
“Drunken brawl.” The affair did not interest him. He put it through with neatness and dispatch; then he resumed his meditations.
CHAPTER V
MYSTERIOUS VIOLENCE
It was twenty minutes past twelve o’clock, ten minutes before closing time. At this precise moment a thing happened that was destined to change Johnny’s whole career. It was to make him a hunter of men.
At this hour the radio studio in an out-of-the-way corner on the tenth floor of a great hotel was dimly lighted and spooky. The merry-makers in the studio beyond had long since departed. That room was completely dark. So, too, was the studio nearest Johnny. Even the dim shadows of musical instruments had faded into nothing. Two lights burned dimly, one over Johnny’s head, the other directly before the operator who, half asleep, sat waiting for the moment when he might cut a distant ballroom orchestra off the air and follow his fellow workers home.
“No more calls tonight,” Johnny was thinking to himself. “Quiet night, right enough; one holdup, two robberies and a shooting. Ho well, it’s been interesting all the same. Fellow wouldn’t—”
No, there it was again, one more call. Buzz, buzz, flash, flash.
He pressed his ear to the head phone, his lips to the mouthpiece. And then, like lightning from a clear sky, things began to happen. He was struck a murderous blow on the head. He was pitched violently forward. He had a vague sensation of something resembling a microphone glancing past him, then crashing violently against the wall. Other objects appeared to follow. A sudden shock of sound burst on his ears, filling the air.
“Shot,” he thought to himself. “I’m shot!”
He experienced no pain. For all that, his mental light blinked out and he knew no more for some time.