He turned about to look into the slim stranger’s face; wanted to see how he felt about it. To his surprise he found the seat empty.
“That’s queer!” he thought with a start. “Perhaps I dreamed the whole thing!... No, not all of it,” he amended ten seconds later. “Here comes the collector after my deposit. I’ve got a good mind to tell him I didn’t buy the package.”
This notion too he abandoned. Digging into his watch-pocket, he dragged forth a crumpled dollar bill.
“O.K., Buddie, you get your package after the auction.” The collector went his way.
Johnny had not meant to stay the auction through. Now he must, or forfeit his dollar. He debated this problem and decided to stay. The package did not interest him overmuch, but his money was up. He would have a look.
Losing all interest in the auction, he spent his time thinking through his unusual adventures of the night before. Closing his eyes, he seemed to see again that frightful wavering skeleton which in time he came to believe was his own. Two other skeletons he saw, one with a long-bladed knife wavering in its hand.
“I saw them later on the streets, those men,” he told himself, “only they were all dressed up in flesh and had their skins on—clothes too. It’s a queer business! Eyes staring at a fellow from the wall!” He shuddered. “Fairly gives you the creeps! Wonder why I agreed to join up with such an outfit as that old professor and his children.”
“People,” he whispered after a long period of deep thinking, “certain people have a way of getting inside of you and making you like them. They may be very good and they may be very bad, in certain ways, but you like them all the same. And you’ll follow them as a dog follows his master. Queer old world! The professor is like that, and so’s his daughter. Fellow’d come to like the boy too.
“Wonder what we were up to in that strange house,” he mused. “Good thing we got out of that cellar before anyone showed up! I doubt if that boy’s much of a fighter.
“Dumb!” He stirred impatiently in his seat. “Got a lot more to sell at this auction. Radios, somebody’s trunks, ‘with contents if any,’ some puppies—hear ’em squeal!—pop-corn in a sack, six broken lamps and a hundred more things. Guess I’ll get out. Buzz around here after awhile and pick up that package.”