“Help them at what?” Drew Lane was curious.
“Don’t know.” Johnny’s brow wrinkled.
Had Johnny been a little wider awake and a little more alive, he would have realized that the young detective and Joyce Mills were humoring him as they might a drunken man. “He was hit on the head in that alley—I found him and brought him here,” Drew was saying to himself. “He’s slightly cuckoo from that terrible bump he got. All this stuff he’s talking is sheer nonsense. He’s delirious. He’ll come round all right.” Joyce Mills was thinking much the same. Not knowing their thoughts, Johnny rambled on:
“We put some wires and things in a place nearby. Two queer ones live there, a long one and a short one. One carries a knife up his sleeve.”
“Nice friendly sort.” Drew grinned. “Was he the fellow that hit you?”
“Hit me?” Johnny’s hand went to his head. “I—I doubt that. It—it was a different place.”
“Of course,” he added thoughtfully, “they might have followed me all that time. But why? I hadn’t done anything to them—not yet.”
“Not yet? Are you going to later?” Joyce Mills gave him a look.
“Something tells me I am. Fellow gets hunches, you know that. That old professor interests me and so does that ‘House of a Thousand Eyes.’ He said there’d be danger. But who cares for danger?” Once more his hand went to his head. “They—they didn’t get me, not yet. But if I find that fellow who hit me with that iron bar—and I will find him, don’t doubt that—when I find him, well—” He did not finish.
“Did you see him?” Drew asked eagerly.