Scarcely had the last straggling sight-seer wandered from the grounds, than two figures emerged from the side entrance to a small tent. They were followed at a distance by a third. Darting directly for the wall that lined the railway tracks, which at this point run some twelve feet below the surface, but open to the air, they scaled the wall, and, by the aid of a rope, let themselves down to the track.
The third person, having followed them to the wall and noted the direction they had taken, contented himself with following along the wall. Coming presently to some stairs, he crept silently down, then having listened for a moment, possibly for the sound of footsteps, he peered down the track. For an instant a pale crimson light flashed down the track. It might easily have been mistaken for the glow of a switch lantern. Then he pushed on after the pair.
The two men left the tracks at Randolph street and, taking a zigzag course, headed for the river. Into a long, low-lying building facing the stream they went. Not five minutes later the individual who had followed them was braced against a wall, peering in through a crack in a broken window pane. What he saw within was a low-ceilinged, dimly lighted room, furnished only with a small table, four chairs and a dilapidated chest of drawers. Four men were bent over the table. The lines of their faces drawn in eagerness, they were staring at some flat object on the table. Soon one of them, with the tips of his thumb and forefinger lifted the corner of a sheet of paper. He had lifted it half off from the flat object, to which it appeared to cling, when a startling thing happened—the room was suddenly illuminated with a brilliant blood red light. This lasted only a fraction of a second. The room was then left in darkness, black as ink; for even the candle had been overturned and snuffed out. From the darkness there came the sound of overturned chairs, as the four men made good their escape. By the time they reached the open air their tracker had vanished utterly.
He was, at that very moment, flattened against the corner of a dark wall, and was quite as unhappy over the turn of events as they were. At the very instant when he was about to discover a secret of vast importance, his foot had slipped, his face bumped against the glass, and the unexpected happened.
The second occurrence, the one which caused much talk among the circus people, happened a short time later. As the attendants reported it, it would seem that their attention was first attracted to the strange phenomenon by the growl of a lion, whose cage was in the corner of the tent. To their surprise, the cage, the lion, and even the straw upon which he lay had turned blood red. Hardly had they finished staring at this than the snarl of a Siberian tiger at the opposite corner had called them to note that the red light, for light it must have been, had shifted to the tiger’s cage. The red glare had continued to play hide and seek with the distracted animals for fully five minutes and, during all that time, not one of the attendants could detect its source. At times it appeared to stream down from the canvas top, then to shoot from a corner, or to leap up from the floor.
One notable fact was reported: In every instance save one, the animals whose cages were illuminated with crimson light cowered in a corner in snarling fear. The single instance in which this was not true was that of the black leopard. That beast leaped, clawing and snarling, at the bars of its cage, as if it would tear the originator of the crimson flash limb from limb.
As the report spread, the negroes of the troupe were panic stricken. They quit in numbers. The owners and managers were hard pressed to keep enough men to do the menial work about the tents, and sent the employment agent to search the city for recruits. One of these recruits chanced to be Snowball, the bullet-headed friend of the strange hanger-on, Pant.
CHAPTER VI
JOHNNY BOXES THE BEAR
Johnny Thompson paced the beach up which the waves of Lake Michigan were rolling. There had been a storm, the aftermath of which was even now coming in. Johnny’s mind was in a turmoil. He had been with the circus five days now. Two more days they would remain in Chicago. He was still groom for Millie Gonzales’ three grays. Millie was as impossible as ever. Three times she had struck at him with her whip, when he had appeared to overstep his rights as her menial.
“If she has the ring, fine chance I’ve got unless I steal it from her,” he grumbled.