a strange way.

“Sure I’m going back. I’m to help them!”

“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.

“Not out there in—”

“In the ‘Wild Garden of Despair’?” Drew laughed low. “That’s what they call West Madison Street. You didn’t see him there, did you?”

Drew was beginning to believe that Johnny was all right in his head after all.

“He’s the only one I didn’t see.” Johnny’s tone was thoughtful. “All the same, I have a notion I’ve seen him right enough. Unless I’ve got him all wrong, he sat beside me in that auction house and prodded me in the ribs, telling me to bid on a package I had no notion of buying.”

“Did you buy it?”

“Sure did.”

Johnny told of his experience in the auction house, then of the battle in the “Garden of Despair.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” Drew said slowly when the story was told. “The fellow who talked you into buying that package may have belonged to the gang that beat you up in that alley. Package was gone right enough when I found you. You’re sure there was nothing in that box but a broken lamp?”

“I wouldn’t swear to that.” Johnny dropped back to his place on the cot. “I didn’t untie it; just explored it with my hands.”

“It’s a toss-up,” Drew concluded. “Man who carries a knife up his sleeve, or the fellow who made you buy what you didn’t want. One of these hit you. Which one? Nice little riddle. We’ll help you solve it, won’t we, Joyce?”

“Yes, and let me in on it!” The large man by the fire stood up.

“Johnny,” Drew said, and there was a note of deep respect in his voice, “this is Captain Burns, a chief in the detective bureau. He—he seems to like being here in our shack now and then. But keep it dark,” he warned. “There are people who would like to meet the Captain here in a very unsocial way—boys of the under-world who’ve felt his steel. Right, Captain?”

“Maybe so,” the Captain rumbled. “Anyway, I wouldn’t want our happy retreat broken up.

“But this ‘House of a Thousand Eyes’?” He turned to Johnny. “Tell me more about it.”

“I will,” said Johnny with a broad grin, “when I have more to tell.”

CHAPTER V
PAST AND PRESENT

Several hours later, having quite recovered from his severe headache, and apparently not so very much the worse for the terrible thump he had received on the head, Johnny sat before the open fireplace in Drew Lane’s shack on Grand Avenue. About that same fire were gathered his friends of other days, Drew Lane, Tom Howe and Joyce Mills. With them was the ruddy-faced, smiling Captain Burns, one of the best known and most feared officers of the law in that city.

If you have read “Arrow of Fire” you will know that the “Shack” was the one remaining structure of days long gone by when the east end of Grand Avenue—which, after all, has never been very grand—was at the edge of a sandy marsh where in the autumn one might hunt wild ducks.

This shack was now surrounded by tall warehouses. Hidden away and quite forgotten, it made a perfect meeting place for such as Drew Lane and his little group of crime hunters.

Drew Lane was still young. With his derby hat, bright tie and natty suit, he looked still very much the college boy he had been. Endowed with great strength, trained to the limit, with a brain like a brightly burning lamp, he was the despair of evil doers. Scarcely less effective was his team-mate, Tom Howe. Small, freckled, active as a cat, silent, full of thoughts, Tom planned, while, more often than not, Drew executed.

Joyce Mills, as you may know, had become a member of this group quite by accident. Her father, Newton Mills, after many years of distinguished service as a detective in New York, had at last fallen a prey to strong drink. Johnny and Drew had found him in Chicago drinking his life away. They had saved him to a life of further usefulness. Joyce, deeply grateful, and always at heart a “lady cop,” had cast her lot with them. And now here she was.

“But your father?” Johnny was saying to her at this moment, “where is he?”

A shadow passed over the girl’s dark face. “Haven’t seen him for two months.

“But then,” she added in a lighter tone, “you know him. Gets going on something and forgets everything else. He’ll show up.”

“Yes,” Johnny agreed, “he’s bound to.”

Johnny was thinking of the time the veteran detective had turned himself into a gray shadow and had, all unknown, dogged Johnny’s heels, saving him from all manner of terrible deaths. The time was to come, and that soon enough, when he was to wish the “Gray Shadow” back on his trail.

“Drew,” Johnny said, turning to his sturdy young friend, “I came here the moment I reached the city. How come the place was locked up and dark?”

“Been on a vacation; just got back.” Drew’s face lighted. “Went to the Rockies. Had some wonderful hunting—grizzly bears. Can’t say that’s more exciting than hunting crooks, though,” he laughed.

“Met a girl you’d like on the way back.” Drew Lane turned to Joyce. “Came on the bus. People in a bus, traveling far, get to be like one big family. Funny part was—” He gave a low chuckle. “She’s coming here to help her uncle. He has a store on Maxwell Street. Maxwell Street! Can you imagine?”

“Rags, scrap-iron, poultry in crates, fish smells and noise—that’s what Maxwell Street means to me!” Joyce shuddered.

“Just that!” Drew agreed. “This truly nice girl from somewhere in Kansas is going there to help in her uncle’s store. She doesn’t know a thing about Chicago. Thinks Maxwell Street is all the same as State Street, I’m sure. Believes her uncle’s store is anyway six stories high. Well, she’s in for a terrible shock. I feel sorry for her. Have to get round and see