Johnny told the youth with the burning eyes much more about his two pals of the police department. To his surprise, he found him taking notes. This, too, he was to recall long after.
“Thanks. Er—thanks a heap! You’ve helped me no end,” the boy said at last. “Good-night.” And he was gone.
“That,” said Johnny, as he walked slowly down the boulevard and across the river, “is one queer chap. He’s up to something, I’ll be bound.
“But then, if he wasn’t on the up and up, ‘The Ferret’ would never have introduced him to me. And then again, I wonder if ‘The Ferret’ ever makes a mistake.”
CHAPTER XXIII
THE FACE IN THE NIGHT
Johnny Thompson possessed a robust body. Proper food, plenty of sleep, plain living and clean thinking had kept it so. Few there are who could have endured his harrowing experience in the tunnel without a prolonged visit to the hospital.
Johnny did not entirely escape. On the second day following, a low fever set in. His doctor ordered him to bed until the fever abated. It lasted for an entire week. Such a week, for a person endowed with a boundless supply of nervous energy, was a great trial.
It did, however, give him time for thinking. And his thoughts were long, long thoughts.
Often he found them returning to the youth with the burning eyes. Over and over again he seemed to hear him say: “It is time for some who are honest, good and clean to die.”
Curiously enough, it was while listening to the Voice, which came on exactly at ten o’clock each evening, that he thought oftenest of those words. There was something about the earnest tones of that mysterious unknown voice that reminded him of the nameless one. “And may he not be the same person?” he asked himself one night.