THE SILVER-FOX KING'S TREASURE
Next day two interesting people entered Jimmie's life. One had been
there before, the other was an entire stranger. Each in his own way was
to play a part in unraveling the mysteries that had become a part of the
boy's every wakeful thought.
It was fairly early in the day when, sitting in the row of copy boys
waiting for his call, he saw a rather strange looking old man wandering
in a confused manner up and down the hall.
"Some old crank," was Tim Dougherty's instant comment. Tim also was a
copy boy. "They're always coming in here looking for things they can't
have. Let him go. The cop'll pick him up."
For a time Jimmie did "let him go." In the end, however, a combined
feeling of friendly interest and curiosity got the better of him. The
man was small and gray haired. He wore thick glasses and baggy trousers.
There was about him for all that an air of quiet dignity that Jimmy
liked.
"Oh well," he said, standing up, "I'm tired of sitting. I'll give him a
steer in the right direction."
"Why bother?" said Tim. But Jimmie was gone.
"I am looking for the morgue," said the little old man in answer to a
friendly word from Jimmie.
"But this is a newspaper office, not the morgue," Jimmie laughed in
spite of himself.
"The laugh is on you, young man," said the stranger. "There is a morgue
in every large newspaper office. There is one here, only I have
forgotten where it is.
"You see," he went on before Jimmie could reply, "I want to find out
about heavy water."
"Heavy water!" Jimmie exclaimed as he thought, 'He is a nut after all.'
"Water always weighs the same," he added politely.
"Wrong again." The old man smiled. "It all depends upon your proportions
of hydrogen and oxygen. That is just what I wish to read about. You must
have clippings about it in your morgue."
"Clippings!" Jimmie exclaimed. "Clippings in the morgue! Oh, sure. It's
over this way." Suddenly he had recalled that the files where pictures
and clippings were kept was often called the morgue.
"You, no doubt, think me a trifle strange," the old man half apologized.
"Old clothes and all that. Truth is, I haven't time for dressing up. I
have a chemical laboratory and it is astonishing what a busy place that
can be, truly astonishing. Here is my card." He pressed a paste-board
square into the boy's hand. "Come and see me sometime. I will show you
things that will astonish you."
"I--I'll come," said Jimmie. He said this just to be polite. The time
was to come when he would gladly visit those laboratories and the
results were to be nothing short of tremendous.
"Take this heavy water," the old man went on. "Someone discovered that.
It may revolutionize many things. Many forms of insect life cannot live
in it nor can some fishes. Others thrive in it. Many plants are
immensely benefited by it. You would think----"
"Here we are at the morgue," said Jimmie. "This is George Beck. He's in
charge of it.
"George, this man wants to see the clippings about heavy water," he
explained. "May he?"
"Surely," said George. "Right this way, please."
"Well, goodbye son," said the old man. "I'll be seeing you."
"Oh--oh, yes. Goodbye," said Jimmie.
"What'd he want?" Tim asked when Jimmie returned to his seat.
"Wanted to know about heavy water," Jimmie grinned broadly.
"What'd I tell you?" exclaimed Tim. "Regular nut." Jimmie made no reply.
Late in the morning, once more in his place after running a dozen
errands, Jimmie was dreaming of the trap he was to set that night when
he heard a loud booming voice say:
"Is there a boy by the name of Jimmie Drury here?"
"Why, yes," came in a feminine voice. "He's one of our copy boys."
"Want to see him," boomed the other voice.
"It's Harm Stark, the silver fox king," said Jimmie, springing to his
feet.
"Here I am," he called.
"Oh, there you are," Harm Stark roared. "I had one old time getting by
the policeman at the elevator. Thought I was some crook, I guess. Come
along with me. I'll show you things."
"Just a minute," Jimmie hurried to say a few words to the man at the
desk. The man smiled, threw a hasty glance at Jimmie's giant, then
nodded. At once Jimmie was away.
Once on the sidewalk Stark hailed a taxi, crowded Jimmie in beside him,
then called a number.
One habit Jimmie had formed which he was to live to regret was that once
inside a taxi he felt as if he were in a room with shades down. The
world of streets outside meant nothing to him, if another had given
orders; nor did he pay any attention to the direction and destination
toward which the cab was going. His whole interest was in the person who
rode with him.
It was so today. Harm Stark was an interesting man. He had been
everywhere that was north. He talked in a drawling voice of Fairbanks,
Dawson, Nome, of Fort McMurray, and Great Slave Lake.
When the taxi at last came to a halt Jimmie had no idea of the direction
they had taken nor of the distance that they had traveled.
"This is the place," said Harm Stark, fairly lifting Jimmie out of the
car. "Not much for looks but the vaults are good."
"Vaults?" said Jimmie.
"Sure! Don't you know, furs are kept in vaults."
"To prevent them from being stolen?" Jimmie asked.
"Partly that. More because they must be kept at a cool, even
temperature, air conditioned, you might say. Heat is bad for them.
"Hello, Sol!" exclaimed Harm Stark, grasping the hand of a short, pudgy
man who greeted him at the door with a smile. "I just wanted to show
Jimmie here some of my fox skins."
"But they are _my_ skins now." The man rubbed his small hands together
nervously.
"Sure they are. You bought them," Stark laughed good-naturedly. "But
lookin' at them won't do them any harm."
"You can't be too keerful," said the short man. "Remember they cost me a
half-million dollars."
"Yes, and you'll turn it into a million," Stark laughed again.
"Ach! The market is already down!" exclaimed the little man. "I lose my
shirt."
"If you do you can have mine," Stark slapped the little man on the back.
"Come on. Lead the way."
Reluctantly, the little man led the way. After he had worked the
combination lock on a heavy steel door, they were ushered into a room as
cool and damp as a November morning. Their nostrils were greeted by a
strange oily smell. It was one of the rarest sights Jimmie had ever
looked upon; hundreds and hundreds of silver fox skins with fur as soft
as silk.
"What fine lady would not give you a grand hug for one of these?" said
Harm Stark, reading the look of admiration on Jimmie's face.
"I know one that would," smiled Jimmie.
"Ho! So you have a girl!" Stark roared. "I don't blame you!"
"It's my mother," said Jimmie with a grin.
"Ah. There you're right." The big man's voice was a little less gruff.
"You're dead right."
When they were at last in the outer room Stark murmured a few words in a
low tone to the little man.
"Yes, Mr. Stark! With pleasure!" the little man exclaimed. "A fine
skin."
"It had better be!" said Stark. "You might fool the Queen of England but
you can't fool the silver-fox king."
"No, and I vouldn't even try," said the little man. "Vait!"
He stepped across the room to say a few words to a girl at a desk. She
hurried away to return a few minutes later with a small, paper-wrapped
package.
"Well!" Stark boomed when they were once more on the street. "You have
seen the world's finest collection of fox skins. How would you like to
see a thousand beautiful ladies all dolled up in them and walking down
that Boulevard of yours?"
"That would be swell," said Jimmie. Truth was, he had scarcely heard,
for of a sudden the street with its low, old-fashioned brick business
structures, had become hauntingly familiar to him. He had a feeling that
he had been there before. But when? And why? For the life of him he
could not recall.
"I feel as if I should know," he told himself. "As if it were
tremendously important that I should know. And yet----"
Wrack his brain as he might, he found no answer to this question. And so
they drove away.
"Well, good luck, son," Harm Stark said as they left the taxi, at the
news building. "I'll be hobbling along."
"Wait," Jimmie exclaimed. "You're leaving your package."
"That's right," Stark reached for the brown paper package. "I meant that
for you. You are to give it to that best girl of yours."
"My mother?"
"Who else?" Harm Stark smiled broadly.
"Gee! Thanks--I don't know how to thank you for such a swell present,"
said Jimmie. "I know she'll be thrilled with it."
"I shouldn't wonder," said Stark as he turned to go striding away.
Jimmie was doubly sure she would like it, when, on meeting the
red-haired lady reporter, Mary Dare, he paused to unwrap it and show it
to her.
"A silver fox!" Mary exclaimed. "A beauty! Oh! I never saw a grander
one!"
"It's for my mother," said Jimmie. "She's got silver-gray hair to match
it and day after tomorrow is her birthday."
"Jimmie, you're a dear!" the lady reporter exclaimed. Then she did a
strange thing. She grabbed Jimmie and kissed him on the cheek.
"She may be hard-boiled about her work," Jimmie said to John a few
minutes later. "But she's a softie inside just the same, the right kind
of a softie."
"I wouldn't doubt it," said John.
On his way home that night Jimmie absentmindedly pulled a card from his
pocket. On it he read, "Dr. Amos Andre." "Now where did I get that?" he
asked himself. Then he remembered, it was the card of the little, old
man who wanted to know all about heavy water. He thrust it back into his
pocket. He might want to ask this old man something. Why not make a
collection of such cards? Paul Leach, one of the star reporters had a
stack of them two inches high. He could direct you to most any person or
any sort of place, just by consulting these cards.
As Jimmie sat in his big chair after dinner that night a disturbing
sense of things half thought through and unfinished seemed to haunt him.
The feeling that the part of the city surrounding the silver-fox storage
plant came back to him more strangely than before. Closing his eyes he
pictured the low, old-fashioned business structures. Then, of a sudden,
he gave a great start. Could it be that this feeling was connected to
that other taxi journey, the one he and Tom Howe had taken while
following that truck owned and operated by men known to be gangsters?
The thought was startling, yet, for the moment he could discover no
ground for believing it true.
"I'll find my way back there," he told himself. "I surely will, and
soon. Perhaps tomorrow."
One other scene remained vividly pictured on the walls of his memory:
three men sitting at a dimly lit table fingering gold nuggets, diamonds
and--and "bubbles," he said aloud. "Or perhaps they were rare eggs."
Bubbles? The thought was queer. Whatever had put that in his head. One
does not handle bubbles, much less carry them in his pocket.
One other feeling haunted him. This also seemed groundless, yet it
remained with him. This was the feeling that he had seen that
mysterious, more than half invisible man who had been seated in the
shadows behind the light in the ancient mansion. There had been
something vaguely familiar about the restless movement of his long
fingers. It all seemed to be somehow connected up with some voice, a
loud voice. But what voice? For the life of him he could not tell.
Of a sudden, all this was driven from his mind.
"The trap!" he thought, springing to his feet. "I was going to set that
camera trap tonight."