“I—I—” he leaped from his chair, “I’ll do my best.”
“I know you will. Now sit down there in the corner for fifteen minutes and think out some plans for discovering the lost property. You don’t need to tell me of the plans, but tell me what I can do to aid you.”
Eight minutes had elapsed when Johnny sat up with a start.
“I have it,” he exclaimed. “I’d like an electro-magnet, a powerful one, leaned against the south doorpost to the east exit. I want it connected up with switches in such a manner that I can operate it at a point where I can watch the doorway and not be seen myself. The electro-magnet should appear to be merely stored there temporarily.”
“I’ll have it attended to at once,” said the magnate. “I wish you luck.”
CHAPTER II
JOHNNY’S TRAP WORKS
Closing time that afternoon found Johnny in a cubby-hole just back of the main entrance. He was peering through a crack which appeared to have been left between the boards by accident. It had, in fact, been made for Johnny’s benefit that very day.
He was watching the long line of workmen, each swinging in his right hand his paper lunch-box, file out of the building. A clicking, turnstile gate allowed only one to pass out at a time. The factory had other exits, but this was the only one close to the spot where the strange and precious steel bars had been stored.
Beside the narrow board-walk over which the single-file line traveled, lay a circular affair of iron. Some three feet across and two feet thick, it appeared but a crude lump of metal carelessly left there. A close observer, however, would have noted that electric wires led away from the back of it. This was Johnny’s electro-magnet. When suspended in air from a cable this innocent-appearing affair could lift a half-ton of steel to a freight car platform as easily as a child might pick up a handful of straw.
“It isn’t likely that the fellow who took that steel would attempt to take it from the building at once. He’d hide it in the factory and carry it out some other night. Sooner or later I’ll get him. Sooner or—”