Briefly he described his experience at the “Greatest of All Carnivals,” of Greasy Thumb and his con game, and of the Gray Shadow. He even produced the roll of bills that had played so large a part in that night’s adventure.
Had he known all, he might well have regretted this move; for scarcely had he slid the roll deep in his pocket than two small men with sharp eyes and nervous, twitching fingers, sidled from their table to pay their check and leave the room. As they gained the street, the shorter of the two placed a hand to his mouth to say in a hoarse whisper:
“Marked money.”
Unconscious of all this, Johnny went on with his story. By a telephone call to the office of the Air Mail station he had secured some details regarding the packages that had disappeared with the young pilot.
“It seems,” he said, “that one package carried the heaviest insurance possible on a registered package, and that it was mailed to a rather dingy section of the city. That in itself seems strange.”
“It does.” Joyce sat up with sudden interest. “Unless you know some things. Would you believe it? I can almost name the consignee of that package.”
“You?” Johnny’s face showed his astonishment.
“I might, if I would,” she replied soberly.
“You see,” her eyes glowed with fresh fire, “I’ve all but turned radical. It’s working in the store that’s done it, I guess. When you see girls, fine young things with splendid bodies and keen minds, working for fifteen or eighteen dollars a week and trying to make a go of it, it sort of makes you hate the millionaires who own that pile of brick and stone and merchandise they call a store.
“Look at that thing of marble out on the lake front.” Her eyes burned like fire. “That place where they keep fish, live fish for folks to look at! It cost a million, they say. Built by a man who ran a big store. Built for a monument to his name, and paid for by the labor of ten thousand folks just like me! Who wouldn’t be a radical?”