Picking up the metal base of the telephone, he examined it idly. Then of a sudden he looked at it with a keen interest.
“That’s queer,” he muttered, “two sets of wires running from it, one heavier than the other. Wonder what that could mean. Trace ’em out.”
He did trace them out. He found that one pair, as the usual wires always do, led to a small pipe outside the wall. The other pair, fine and short, not more than fifteen feet long, ended in nothing at all—just broke off abruptly.
“Huh!” he mused, “that’s queer!”
“Not so queer after all, perhaps,” he added after a moment’s thought. “Most likely ran to a bell jack in another room. Then if the clerk or principal were working in that room and the phone rang, the bells would repeat the call. Nothing simpler than that. Nothing to it, after all.”
“But where’s the jack,” he thought again. “The box would burn, but there are fine coils on a spool inside. They wouldn’t burn; neither would the bells.”
A careful search brought no reward. If there had been a bell jack the metal parts had vanished. This puzzled Johnny but he placed little importance on the circumstance.
“Doesn’t mean anything,” he muttered as he lifted himself up from the basement. “Just have to check this fire off as a complete loss, unless the discovery of that pink-eyed man means something. I may see him sometime. And then, of course, what Tillie McFadden told me about being in the office almost up to the time of the fire seems to show that the fire was arranged for in advance. But how? That’s the question. All I’ve got to say is, this firebug is no ordinary rascal. He’s a man of keen mind. He’ll be hard to catch.”
He took the car downtown. It was his intention to go to the central station and report to Chief McQueen, but as he was about to change cars he chanced to notice a head and a pair of shoulders ahead of him that looked familiar. At that moment the man turned his head. Johnny saw his eyes. They were pink. Somewhat unsteadily he dropped back in his seat.
His thoughts raced. The man was his pink-eyed stranger of the night before. What should he do? Call a policeman? This thought was instantly abandoned. A man could scarcely be arrested for the look on his face, and that was really all he had seen amiss in the man. Follow him? If possible, learn something of his haunts? That was better. He’d do that.