“All right; let’s go.”
As they made their way back through the maze of machinery to the vault, Johnny was busy with his own thoughts. Strange questions kept rising in his mind. This fellow, Panther Eye, or “Pant,” as the boys called him for short, had been with him in many an adventure. He had appeared to possess strange powers, too. The boys had called him “Panther Eye” because he appeared to have the power to see in the dark. There had been a time when Johnny had been with him in a cave dark as a dungeon, surrounded by hostile natives, yet Pant had somehow known that the natives were there, and had led the way through the dense darkness to safety. There had been other times—many of them—in which Pant had made Johnny a heavy debtor to him through his use of wonderful powers.
“Now,” Johnny was wondering, “just how much has he to do with the events of the last few days? He’s too honorable a fellow to have anything to do with the attempt to secure the secret-process steel for some other manufacturer. But how about the white fire? What of the driving of the traveling crane?”
At last he closed his mental questionings with a sigh. He had never asked Pant to reveal any of his secrets and he was not going to begin now.
Soon they were feasting on ice-cream and cake and talking over old times.
“By the way,” said Johnny, as dawn began to break, “have you ever met Mr. McFarland?”
“Say not!” grinned Pant. “He’s the manager, ain’t he?”
“Yes. Want to meet him?”
“I’d try it once.”
“All right. Soon’s I’m relieved from duty we’ll wander around to his office.”