“I found his address. I went there. I was in the hall. Eyes gleamed at me. A skeleton danced before me, my skeleton. I—”
“Your skeleton?” Drew Lane, the keen detective, grinned at him.
“Sure it was my skeleton! Don’t you suppose a fellow knows his skeleton when he sees it?”
Drew Lane laughed, a low laugh, but made no reply.
“Then,” Johnny went on rapidly, “a girl opened the door, a taffy-haired, boyish sort of girl, and said she was sorry. It is a house of magic, the ‘House of a Thousand Eyes.’”
“Eyes?” Joyce Mills leaned forward eagerly. “What sort of eyes?”
“That,” said Johnny, “is what I don’t know. They seem to do things, those eyes, open doors and shut ’em, make coffee maybe, I don’t know. That’s why I’m going back. I want to know. Oh! Don’t I though!”
“So you’re going back?” Drew smiled.
A large man sitting before the fire, a man Johnny had never seen until that night, turned and looked at him in a strange way.
“Sure I’m going back. I’m to help them!”