Then, gripping the girl’s arm until it hurt, he fairly hissed: “Mazie, I tell you this place is doomed! I can see it all too plain. It’s a premonition, a warning of the firebug. If only I knew when and how!”
“You only dream it,” said Mazie. “The old fires and firebugs have got on your nerves.”
“No, Mazie,” said Johnny more soberly, “it’s more than that. Perhaps you might call it a hunch. It’s all of that. It’s the thing to expect. That firebug has burned school houses, a recreation center, the zoo. He seems to be bent on destroying everything that brings happiness to people. Why not this place next? And think what it would mean, Mazie! Think of ten thousand, maybe twenty or thirty thousand people, half of them children, gliding in boats through the City of Venice; children on the roller coaster and the chute the chutes; children a hundred feet in air on the Ferris wheel; board walks thronged with people; and then, of a sudden, the cry of ‘FIRE! FIRE!’ My God, Mazie, think! Think! Mazie, somehow I must get that man!”
“Johnny,” said Mazie, “are there any people in the world who hate happiness?”
“Plenty of them, I suppose; enemies of happiness.”
“Don’t you think your firebug is one of them?”
“He might be.”
“If he isn’t, what could be his motive? He has nothing to gain.”
“No; that’s right. Most fires that are set are set for gain. A man secretly moves his insured stock away, then sets fire to his building, or hires some firebug to do it, that he may collect insurance on goods that were not burned. There is nothing of that in this. Sometimes revenge is the cause. But what could one man have against a whole city?”
“What could he?”