“Mr. Jordan,” he said to the aged keeper of the vault by day, as he came to take his post for the night, “can’t they work that steel as it is?”
“What steel?” The old man gave him a sharp look.
“You know,” Johnny smiled.
“Oh!” the other laughed. “No, it doesn’t seem to respond properly to the heat they have tried on it; it crumples up like mud when they try to work it. And when it comes to analyzing it, there’s an element or two they don’t understand. It’s as if the stuff was from a meteor dropped out of the sky.”
Johnny thought of these things on the watch that night. “I’d like to have a piece to experiment with,” he told himself. “This white fire, now; I wonder how that would affect it. Fine chance to try that,” he laughed to himself, “First place, no steel; second place, no white fire.”
A week passed with no reappearance either of the mysterious white fire or the stranger who had attempted to tamper with the lock of the vault. Johnny was growing uneasy. It was true that his pay had been increased enough to enable him to put away a generous sum at the end of the week toward the paying of his debt of honor. But the task was growing monotonous, and, besides, there was no opportunity to work on his chummy roadster that was to have been built up from salvage.
But one dark night, when the wind was banging at the steel-framed windows of the plant, and rain beat upon the skylights in great torrents, adventure came stalking his way in the form of a crouching, skulking human who made his way, all oblivious of Johnny hidden by the shadow of a forge, to a dark corner of the forge-room, where he rattled about in a pile of imperfect forgings. He had just turned and was about to skulk away when Johnny’s lips framed a word.
The word was not uttered, for like a flash it came to him that in that particular spot there was no opportunity to head the man off and capture him.
He thought of the strange entrance to the scrap-conveyor tunnel which had been shown him by his employer. The conveyor was not running. Once he had dropped down upon it, he could stoop and run forward upon its surface some two hundred feet. He would then come out at a place in the direction in which the man was going. In that spot a trick-wall might be made to rise and head him off. He would be trapped!
A few silent steps and Johnny was upon the spot above the scrap-conveyor. His hand went up to the light wire. Straight down he dropped. The next minute he was racing along the conveyor.