MARKED MONEY
There was little sleeping that night in Johnny Thompson’s tent at the
back of his booth, at the “Greatest of all Carnivals.” True, Johnny
remained in the tent to doze off at times. Drew Lane and his partner
spent their time in scouting about searching for clues that might lead
them to the whereabouts of Greasy Thumb and his gang.
Once, while Johnny was alone, he drew the roll of bills from his pocket.
“What am I to do with these?” he asked himself. “Give them to that truck
farmer? Simple enough. But where is he? Where does he live?”
He examined the bills closely, then let out a low whistle. Two of them
were marked with a faint red cross in the corner.
“Marked money!” he exclaimed in a low tone. “Bad business! Dangerous!
Like to throw them away.”
Yet, because this roll represented a fairly large sum of money, he did
not obey that impulse. Instead, he thrust them once more into his
pocket.
Half an hour later, having returned from one more fruitless search, Drew
and Tom were about to join Johnny in a steaming cup of coffee when,
without ceremony, a curious individual crept into the tent.
At sight of him Johnny started back. A very small man, with a long sharp
nose and piercing yellow eyes, he might have been said to crawl rather
than walk.
“It’s all right,” Drew assured Johnny. “Meet the Ferret. He is one of
us. Very much so.”
“Hello, Ferret,” he greeted the newcomer. “What’s up?”
The man did not reply at once. Instead, he put out a hand for a cup of
the scalding coffee, placed it to his lips and drained it without a
pause.
“Hot stuff!” muttered Johnny.
“Very hot!” agreed Drew.
The dog has been named man’s best friend. Yet as a hunter he has his
handicaps. True, he is a swift runner and can make a great noise. Often
by sheer bluff he drives the coyote from the hen roost. Then, too, he
can dig. At times he drags a rat from his den and destroys him.
The cat has his good points also. He is sly, patient. For hours he waits
beside some enemy’s trail until the great moment comes. Then one swift
spring, a cry of surprise and pain, and all is over.
Yet dog and cat alike are powerless before the sly, deep-digging weasel,
the mink and the skunk. Only one crafty, half tamed pet of mankind can
cope with these. The ferret with his slim, snake-like body, his beady
eyes, his prying nose, glides noiselessly into the deepest burrows and
sends its denizens rushing from their dark haunts into sunshine and
death.
So, too, in the ranks of mankind the ferret is to be found. Lacking in
physical strength and prowess, yet endowed with a faculty for
discovering hidden dens, the human ferret is ever closely associated
with the police. He wears neither badge nor uniform. His name is not on
the pay roll. Despised by some, he is feared by many. For it is he who
many times brings the evil doer to justice.
The strange person who crept into Johnny’s tent was of this sort.
Indeed, so definitely had his vocation been chosen for him by nature
that he was known only as “The Ferret.” If he had any other name it had
been forgotten.
“The Ferret” had one great redeeming quality. He was a sincere friend of
justice. He furnished information only to those who made an honest
attempt to enforce the law. He was possessed of an uncanny power. He
appeared to read men’s minds. Was an officer a traitor to the cause he
had sworn to serve? “The Ferret” knew it on the instant. No information
was forthcoming to such a one. Indeed, if he did not watch his step he
was likely to feel “The Ferret’s” bite.
The source of his income was not known. Some rumors had it that a rich
philanthropist, realizing his value to the community, had endowed him
for life. Another was that he was rich in his own name, that he owned a
flat building, stocks, bonds and mortgages, and that his occupation was
but a hobby. Strange hobby, you will say; yet there have been stranger,
and far less useful.
Because they were honest, sincere and fearless, Drew and Howe were ever
in “The Ferret’s” favor.
Drew Lane’s eyes were alight as they fell upon the insignificant form of
“The Ferret.”
“What’s up?” he demanded once more.
“Mailplane brought down and robbed ten miles from here.” “The Ferret’s”
voice was low and soft.
How could “The Ferret” know this so quickly? Who can say? The source of
his information must have been of an obscure nature. For when Drew
pressed him for details he could furnish none. Nor could he tell whether
Greasy Thumb had a hand in it.
“But what’s so valuable in the Air Mail?” Johnny asked. “I thought that
was for the most part personal messages, important to the sender, but
worthless to others.”
“For the most part, yes,” Drew agreed. “But think of the emergencies the
Air Mail is prepared to meet. A big deal in stocks is on. The actual
securities must be delivered within twenty-four hours. The Air Mail
brings them. Mrs. Jones-Smith-Walker, the millionaire widow, arrives in
Chicago only to find that a great reception has been planned for her at
the country home of her bosom friends, Mrs. Burns-Walker. Her jewels, a
hundred thousand dollars’ worth or more, are in New York. Without them
she will not be properly dressed. The Air Mail brings them. And who
knows but that, through some secret channels the powerful, sometimes
rich, sometimes poor, gang that is forever preying upon the foolish rich
society folks are tipped off in advance regarding the consignment. Worth
going after. What? If you don’t care for the law and have little fear of
prison.
“Mind,” he added, “I don’t say this is the case. I have no information
which would even lead me to suspect such a thing.
“Only one fact stands out clearly!” he exclaimed, springing into action.
“The trail leads to the city. Big affairs may be pulled off by crooks in
the country at times. But they always speed away to the city afterward.
For it is there that they may most effectually lose themselves.
“Come. Let’s be moving. We will find Greasy Thumb in the city.”
“I wonder if we will,” Johnny murmured to himself, as he began a hasty
pack-up of his personal effects preparatory to leaving his spindle wheel
and many baskets of groceries to anyone who chose to take them over on
the morrow.
“The city,” he murmured after a time, “the strangest, weirdest, most
fascinating, most beautiful, most dangerous place man has ever known. In
the jungle the tiger slinks away from man. There you may sleep in peace.
On the polar waste the great white bear floats by on his palace of ice.
He will not molest you. In the Rockies where the grizzly roams and the
mountain lion inhabits the treetops you are safe. But the city? Oh,
well, perhaps you are safe enough there. Who knows?
“Good-bye,” he whispered back as he left his booth, “good-bye, old
carnival. Good-bye, big-noise-about-nothing. Good-bye, screaming women.
Good-bye, laughing children. We’re here to-day and away to-morrow.” He
choked a little over these last words. This strange life, the carnival
spirit, had got under his skin. Gladly he would have remained. But duty
called. “Good-bye, good-bye. We’re here to-day and away to-morrow. The
city beckons. We must go.”
Settled on the cushions on the back seat of a high-powered police car
driven by Drew Lane, Johnny Thompson had time for a few sober
reflections.
As you know from reading _The Arrow of Fire_, Johnny’s latest venture
was in the field of police detection. Many tales Johnny had read of
shrewd private detectives who outwitted clever criminals and showed up
the stupidity of the police. Johnny had found it difficult to believe
that all police detectives were stupid. By contact with four men, Herman
McCarthey, Newton Mills, Drew Lane and Tom Howe, he had come to know
that men with keen minds and sturdy bodies were more and more offering
their services to the police departments of their cities.
“No better detective ever lived than Drew Lane,” a reporter had once
said to Johnny. And Johnny had found this to be true. He gave himself
over with genuine abandon to the business of being Drew Lane’s
understudy.
Yet, at this moment he found himself missing certain friends who had
added joy and inspiration to his life. In a great city friends come and
go quickly. Herman McCarthey had retired from active service.
“And Newton Mills,” he grumbled to himself. “Where is he?”
Where indeed? Johnny had once lifted this shadow of a great detective
out from a living hell of remorse and drink and had set him doing
marvelous things for the law again.
“But now he is gone,” he mourned. “I wonder if drink has claimed him. Or
is he dead?
“Hardly dead,” he corrected himself. “Men, like wounded fish, come to
the surface to die. Had he died I would have known it.”
Strangely enough, at this moment he thought once more of that
spectre-like individual, the Gray Shadow, that had three times crossed
his path and three times vanished.
“Unusual sort of person, if it be a person,” he said to himself. “Always
appears when I am in more or less danger. If I believed in the return of
the spirits of the dead I’d say it was the spirit of some dead friend
set to guard me.”
And Joyce Mills, that daring daughter of a famous father, you will
recall her. Johnny, too, recalled her with a sigh.
Some people he found it difficult to understand. Joyce Mills was one of
these. Once she had inspired him. Now she had gone into the humdrum
business of selling books in a department store.
“At least that’s what she was doing when I saw her last. Queer business
for a girl like that,” he grumbled.
And yet, as he recollected his last meeting with her, he seemed again to
detect a mysterious twinkle in her eyes which appeared to say: “You
don’t know all; nor even half.”
“Odd sort of girl,” he said to himself. “Have to look her up.”
But here we are nearing the city and a new day.
_“Turn, turn my wheel,
All things must change
To something new,
To something strange.
The wind blows east,
The wind blows west,
The blue eggs in the robin’s nest
Will soon have wings
And beaks and breasts,
And flutter and fly away;
To-morrow be to-day.”_
So much for the thoughts of Johnny Thompson. He expressed himself in
verse at times. Not so, Drew Lane. His thoughts were of a grim and
practical sort.
“Tom,” he said, speaking to his companion and pal, “Tom, old boy, if we
see Greasy Thumb and his pardner, Three Fingers Barbinelle, we’ll arrest
them on sight.”
“And arrange a case against them later,” agreed Tom.
“Hold them on a vagrancy charge. Or more than likely we’ll find them
carrying guns.”
“Almost sure to.”
“Then,” Johnny broke in, “you’ll need to be quick.”
“Son,” replied Drew with a drawl, “In this sort of work there are but
two classes of people, ‘the quick and the dead.’”