Three minutes later he found himself crouching against a stone wall, waiting in the stillness of the morning.
But even as he waited, doubt assailed him. Had the man truly left the tunnel?
“That window may have been opened by a caretaker,” he told himself. “And after all, what an ideal hiding place that labyrinth of tunnels would make! Why, a man might hide there for weeks and even a regiment of soldiers might fail to come upon him.”
So now assailed by doubts, now filled with hope, he waited in the dawn.
CHAPTER XII
A LADY DETECTIVE
In that ancient Book called Genesis it says that God saw that it was not good for man to live alone. So He gave him a woman to be his companion. Johnny Thompson had read that old Book. He had learned, too, by experience that a man and woman, or boy and girl, fighting side by side, shoulder to shoulder, will go farther along the road to success in any endeavor than will either alone. It will not seem strange, then, that as he launched forth on a fresh adventure, as he prepared to carry forward the business of solving the mysteries back of the sinister events that had led to the downfall of his good friends Drew Lane and Tom Howe, he should think first of securing a partner for this adventure. And who could better occupy this post of honor than Joyce Mills, daughter of a great detective and partner of Johnny in many a previous adventure?
Johnny was not long in seeking her out. Fortune favored him. He arrived just at her lunch hour.
“There’s no place like a crowd for talking,” he assured her. “Come over to Biedermann’s, on Adams Street. It’s a German grill. You can get a swell cut of flank steak and all the trimmings for thirty-five cents. And there’s so much racket thrown in that not a soul will hear what we say.”
Joyce joined him gladly. To her, every new eating place was a fresh adventure.
After they had eaten the steak and onions and were sipping iced tea, Johnny told of his new adventure.