THE FACE THAT SEEMED A MASK
So it happened that when Drew returned from work that evening he found a
man in Johnny's bunk, and Johnny seated near him. The man was asleep, or
in a drunken stupor.
"I found a man," said Johnny.
"Looks like a bum," said Drew, casting a critical eye over the stranger.
"He has been."
"Looks like he was drunk."
"He is."
"Then why--" Drew paused to stare at the stranger.
"Drew," said Johnny, almost solemnly, "did you ever hear of Newton
Mills?"
"Newton Mills, the great city detective? Who hasn't?"
"That," said Johnny dramatically, "is Newton Mills."
"What!" Drew took a step forward. "It can't be. He disappeared three
years ago. He's dead.
"And yet--" He stared at the face of the man on the cot.
Then he tore into a trunk to drag out a bundle of old photographs. One of
these he studied intently for a moment. Then turning to Johnny, he said
in a voice tense with emotion,
"Yes, Johnny, that is Newton Mills. You have indeed found a man.
"My God!" he exclaimed in an altered tone. "I wonder if that's the price?
Will I be like that in twenty years?"
To this question he expected no reply. He received none.
He took a seat beside the cot where the man with deep-lined face and
tangled white hair was sleeping. For a long time he said nothing. Silence
brooded over the shack.
"This man, Drew Lane, is an unusual person," Johnny told himself. "He is
so full of strange deep thoughts."
This beyond question was true. He was given to actions quite as strange
as his thoughts. At one time he had paid a half-dollar for the privilege
of taking Johnny to the top of his city's highest tower. Once there, he
had spread his hands wide as he exclaimed, "See, Johnny! Look at all
that!"
It was indeed an awe-inspiring sight. Mile on mile of magnificent
buildings. Towers rising to the clouds, all the wealth and glory of a
great modern city was there, spread out beneath them.
"Johnny," Drew had said, "there are people living down there who are
ashamed of their own city. They don't believe in its future.
"You can't blame them too much." His voice took on a note of sadness.
"The badness of it is pretty terrible.
"But think, Johnny! Look! Look and think how many men of great wealth
must have believed in this city and her future. Not one of those great
towers could have risen a foot from the ground had not some man had faith
in the city's future.
"And, Johnny!" He had gripped the boy's arm hard. "It's my task and
yours, every young man's task, to prove to the world that the faith of
those men was not misplaced.
"And we will!" He had clenched his hands tight. "We'll make it the
grandest, the greatest, the safest, most beautiful city the world has
ever known!"
He had said that. And now he sat brooding beside the form of one who,
like himself perhaps in his youth, had thrown himself against the slow
revolving wheel of stone that is a great city's appalling wickedness.
"And now see!" he murmured, half aloud.
"The lawyer who told me who he was said he was 'just a shell!'" Johnny
volunteered. "Do you think you can make anything of just a shell?"
"I don't know." Drew's tone betrayed no emotion. "But who could do less
than try?"
"Who?" Johnny echoed.
At that moment the souls of Drew and Johnny were like those of David and
Jonathan. They were as one.
"That man," said Drew as he nodded at the slight form on the cot, "was
one of New York's finest. Many a member of the old Five Point Gang has
felt a light touch on his arm, to turn and laugh up into those mild blue
eyes. But they never laughed long. That touch became a chain of steel.
The chain dragged them to a cell or to a grave.
"There are people still," he rambled on, "who believe that a detective
should be a man of muscle and brawn. In a fight, of course, it helps. But
in these days when fighting is done, for the most part, with powder and
steel, a slight man with brains gets the break. This Newton Mills surely
did. For a long, long time he got all the breaks. But now look!"
"He told the judge he had been living on fifteen dollars a week, sent by
his mother," said Johnny. "What could have happened?"
"Many things perhaps. Herman McCarthey will know. I have heard him speak
of Newton Mills. We will ask him, first thing to-morrow morning."
And there, for a time, the matter rested.
That night as he went to work, walking by preference down the Avenue,
then over the Drive that fronted the lake, as one will at times, Johnny
received the impression that he was being watched, perhaps followed.
An uncomfortable feeling this, at any time. A late hour, a deserted
street, do not lessen one's mental disturbance.
Long ago Johnny had formed two habits. While walking alone at night he
kept well toward the outer edge of the sidewalk. Under such conditions it
is hard for a would-be assailant to spring at one unobserved. Then, too,
he carried one hand in his coat pocket. "For," he was accustomed to say
to his friends, "who will know what I hold in that hand? It may be a
small gun. If it were, I could shoot it quite accurately without removing
it from my pocket. Crooks are, at heart, great cowards. What one of them
will face a hand in a coat pocket?" Thus far in Johnny's young life, not
one of the night prowlers had molested him.
Though some sixth sense told him now that he was being followed in the
shadows, he was not greatly alarmed. He merely increased his pace to a
brisk walk. From time to time he looked over his shoulder. Each time he
saw no one.
He was passing along an empty lot lined with great signboards, and had
reached the center of the block when two men sprang from the shadows.
Not wholly unprepared for this, he gave a sudden leap to one side, then
sprang forward to transform the affair into a foot race.
Fortunately at that moment four sturdy citizens turned a corner and
advanced in his direction.
This apparently was an unforeseen part of the program, for at once his
would-be assailants stopped short, then turned as if to walk in the other
direction.
As they turned, the face of the shorter one was suddenly illumined by a
light from an auto that had turned a corner.
It was but a flash. Then all was darkness. Yet in that flash Johnny had
seen a man, one of those who had followed him. He was a youth with broad,
slightly stooping shoulders. His face seemed a mask. His clothes were in
the height of style. The light brought a flash from a diamond somewhere
on his person.
Darkness followed. Johnny walked straight ahead. He met and passed the
four men, who paid him not the slightest attention. Fifteen minutes later
he was at his post in the radio station. There, for a time, the matter
ended. Of two things you may be sure. Johnny walked that street no more
at night, nor did he forget that youth with a face that was like a mask.