“But how are you to get them?”
“We must find a way. There’s still that invisible footprint on the sleeping car bed sheet.”
“And there’s my jimmy bar,” said Johnny hopefully.
“Yes, that’s the very bar, right enough. But where did you find it? In the speed boat of a boy in his ’teens. You can’t very well pin a super-kidnaping on a mere boy.”
“N-no,” Johnny said slowly, “and you wouldn’t want to. Young Angelo is a fine chap. Good looking, and all that. Got everything—speed boat—going to have a faster one—big car—going to college, and all that.”
“All that?” Drew sat up and stared at him. “Didn’t know there was that much in the cut flower business, not these days. Flowers, you’d say, are a luxury. And luxuries have been hit hard. Guess I’ll quit being a cop, and go in for flowers.”
Johnny thought of the rough reception accorded him in the place beneath the flower shop, and wondered a big wonder. Should he tell Drew about that? Well, perhaps, some time. Not now. He hadn’t quite thought the thing through yet.
“But the man with the scar and the fiery eyes!” he suggested. “You’ve got the goods on him. That was his gun. He fired that shot at Tom, didn’t he?”
“Yes, he fired the shot. But he’s vanished off the earth, so far as we can see.
“And besides,” he added, pushing a sheet of paper toward the boy, “besides, there is this.”