“Bravo! Great! Great! Go to it, old top!”
But again he grew very sober. How could this Voice know all these facts? There was something very intimate and personal about it all.
“Perhaps ‘The Ferret’ told him,” he murmured. And then a thought struck him. “What if he is—”
He did not finish. The thing seemed quite improbable. But if it were true, how had “The Ferret” happened upon him?
“A strange fellow, that Ferret!” he said to himself aloud. “Always has plenty of money, yet he does not appear to be employed by anyone. They say he is rich, or has a rich friend. Who knows? Perhaps both statements are true. Of one thing I am sure. He is sincere.”
CHAPTER XXV
THE SHADOW PASSES
On the fifth day the doctor granted Johnny permission to dress and move about his room. But under no circumstances was he to “leave the room or transact important business.”
“As if I had important business to transact!” Johnny laughed to himself.
For all that, he sat a long time in a brown study. There are times for all of us when we appear to feel the shadows of tremendous events hanging over us. It was so now with Johnny. For some time he had been on the trail of something big. His old pal, Curlie, was under the shadows. He had broken the postal regulations; had opened a registered mail sack and had removed three valuable packages. One package, perhaps the most valuable of all, was missing. Until this was found, Federal operators would dog his trail. In time he might lose his position and his standing as a pilot.
Closely connected with this, as it seemed to Johnny, was the disgrace and shelving of Drew Lane and Tom Howe.