“That’s not what I meant,” said Johnny. “I meant it was queer that there’d be a diamond merchant’s place above a chemist warehouse. Queer combination, don’t you think?”
“Yes, queer enough, but you do get some queer ones. Diamond merchant has his fire insurance, though, the same as others. Rate would be high; but low rent probably makes up the difference. Besides, chemists’ places are not as dangerous as they used to be; there are laws regulating the amount of the dangerous stuff they may keep in any one place.”
“Are inspections frequent?”
“Not as frequent as they should be.”
“Honest inspectors?”
“I don’t know. That doesn’t come in my department.”
There the discussion ended, but Johnny pondered long over that diamond merchant’s place above a chemist’s shop. In the end, however, he forgot it to think of his flat-bottomed boat and the marsh south of the city. He had promised to take Mazie out there late this afternoon. She had listened eagerly to the story of his adventure out there, and had said she thought the place must be “perfectly bewitching.”
Johnny was not so sure about that. He had a wholesome awe of the place since that shot.
“But of course,” he had said at last, “that fellow just happened to run across me before I left the city, and followed me out there. There’d be no danger a second time—no danger at all.”
So in the end he had promised to go. They planned to take their lunch along, to arrive about an hour before sundown and to stay for a look at the moon rising over the marsh.