  Scottie McFadden, a veteran photographer of the Press, was discovered to be entrenched in his favorite dark room. “Can’t come out for another quarter hour,” his voice sounded out through the walls. “These fight pictures must be out for the early edition. What have you got?” “One of Jimmie’s candid camera shots,” John Nightingale winked at his friends as he shouted through the dark room walls. “Candid camera!” came roaring out from the dark room, “You may as well all go home. Nothing big will ever come from a picture the size of a postage stamp.” “May be bigger than you think this time,” was John’s reply. “Anyway, we’ll wait.” “And while you’re all waiting,” he added in a lower tone, “I’ll hop down to Jerry’s for two quarts of coffee and a sack of sinkers,” and away he went. “Coffee and doughnuts,” Jimmie thought with a start. “That was what I was after. Wonder what became of that black bag? Bet that fellow got it.” His father was working late that night because of the heavy-weight boxing bout. Jimmie had begged permission to stay down-town and go home with him on the late theater train and permission had readily been granted. Later when Howard Drury, his father, was ready to start his story he had sent Jimmie out for refreshments. These were always carried in a small, black leather bag. “Say!” Jimmie exploded suddenly, wheeling about to face Tom Howe, the young detective. “I’ll bet I know why that Silent Terror came to pick on me.” “Why?” Tom Howe stared. “I was carrying a small black bag.” “Sure, that’s it,” Tom agreed, quick to seize upon the clue. “Thought you were a messenger carrying money from some small theater to the central vault.” “That’s it,” Jimmie agreed. This much decided upon they all lapsed into silence. They were a quiet group, these reporters and the detective, when there was nothing really serious to be talked about. Jimmie now found time to think back over the days that had led up to this moment. Think, he did, and like all the thoughts of youth, his were long, long thoughts. The old lady on the bridge had called Jimmie a “poor dear.” She would not have called him that had she seen him streaking down the field for a touchdown last autumn. Jimmie had a small, almost childish face, but he was large, six feet in his stockings, 170 pounds, which is not bad for a 17-year-old high school boy. But Jimmie was not all football. Truth is, he took football as a matter of duty. Loyalty to his school demanded it. Jimmie’s interest was centered on cameras. When eight years old he had been taken to the Press photograph department. There he had asked Scottie McFadden so many and such astounding questions that at first Scottie stood staring and at last drove him, in a good-natured manner, from the place, declaring he’d be fired for getting no work done. Jimmie’s first hard-earned dollar had gone for a camera of a sort. For years after that all he could earn, beg or borrow went for cameras and equipment. His proudest hour came when, on his seventeenth birthday, his wealthy uncle Bob had presented him with a truly wonderful miniature camera. “It’s a Gnome,” he confided to Scottie. “Takes twenty-four pictures in about as many seconds. Got a wide-angle lens that will almost take pictures in the dark. And fast! Say! There’s not a camera made that’s faster. It—it’s a real dwarf.” “A Gnome, is it?” Scottie had drawled. “Well, you’ve got to show me, son. I don’t go in for these baby cameras that you can lose in your pocket. Give me a box with a strap that goes over your shoulder and a ground glass at least three inches across. Candid camera, is it? Well, my camera is candid, too. See those pictures I took of the baseball boys in action?” “Yes,” said Jimmie. “They were great!” “Sure they were,” Scottie agreed. “And why? Because they were taken with a real camera.” Jimmie’s chance to show Scottie what his Gnome would do came sooner than he had expected. With his father’s aid he had secured a summer job with the Press as copy boy. The results had been surprising. To many the job of copy boy would not prove exciting. To jump when someone in the large editorial room shouts, “Boy!”, to go racing away to Miss Peter’s desk on the third floor or Mr. Bill’s on the seventh and to keep this up for long hours is tiring to say the least. Yet, for Jimmie, every office, the composing room, the roaring press-room held a charm all its own. It was, however, his little candid camera that brought his great opportunity. Perhaps it was because he always jumped promptly while other boys lagged that John Nightingale began to take an interest in him. More than once he paused to chat with the lad. Then, one day, right out of a clear sky he leaped up from answering a phone call to exclaim: “Come on, boy! You’re drafted for something really big.” “I—I—what?” Jimmie stammered. “Got your little camera, haven’t you?” “Yes, sure,” Jimmie stared. “Percy Palmer’s been found dead. Come with us. You’re going to take his picture.” “Percy Palmer, the millionaire? Oh, I—” Jimmie held back. “Sure! Come on! You’re drafted, I tell you.” And Jimmie went. While they were on their way in a taxi John explained that two photographers were home sick and three out on big stories. “So that left only you,” John finished. “But, I—Well, you see——” “Yes, I know, but I’ve seen some of your shots,” John broke in. “They’re good. Good enough for me. You wait. We’re a full half hour ahead of the other papers. It will be a scoop. You’ll see one of your pictures on the front page under a screaming head-line.” And he did. That was not all there was to it either. Jimmie had just finished reading a book called, “Mysteries of Real Life.” The part cameras have played in solving death mysteries had been told in this book in detail. After making the shots of the dead man required by the reporter, he took a number of others on his own. These pictures, when developed and enlarged, were presented to the coroner’s jury and went far toward helping to prove that this was a case of suicide and not of murder. After that, on many a summer afternoon Jimmie did not answer to the call of “Boy!”, for he was not there, but was off with his good pal, John, shooting a story. Needless to say, Jimmie went in stronger than ever for candid cameras. He haunted a shop window where telescopic lenses were displayed, spent many hours studying methods of taking pictures in the dark with the aid of infra-red rays and dreamed strange dreams of thrilling photographic adventures. Needless to say, none of those dreams had been more fantastic than the thing that had just happened to him there on the bridge in the fog. It had begun with a book he had read on his day off. For once he had abandoned camera craft and had lost himself in a western story of wild adventure. The hero of this story shot from the hips and always got his man. “Why not?” Jimmie whispered, thinking of his camera. “A shot from the belt, a touch of the button, a click, a flash, and there you have it, a picture.” He tried it and with good results. By training his eye to measure distances accurately he could set his camera for eight, ten, or fifteen feet and get a fairly sharp picture three times out of four. “But when will you use it?” Jimmie’s father objected. “Of course, you might meet the president on the street and shoot him. But if you did you’d get nabbed. If you happened to meet a hold-up man and flashed a bulb in his face he’d shoot you and investigate afterwards.” “You never can tell,” was Jimmie’s reply. “There’s no harm in being prepared.” Shortly after that a fresh sensation made the headlines of all the papers. A strange new type of hold-up man was abroad on the city streets. A man crossing the Roosevelt Road viaduct heard a hoarse voice say: “As you are.” He saw an arm lifted in the shadows, felt a soft push at his chest, reeled dizzily, and some ten minutes later came to himself to find his wallet and watch gone. “How was it done?” This was the headline for the next day’s paper. That, as time passed, became the question of the hour. This man who soon became known as the Silent Terror struck again; this time in a tunnel leading to a suburban station. A woman hurrying to a train heard those same words, “As you are,” saw a hand, felt something touch her, and that was all. She was found a moment later lying unconscious. Her purse was gone. She returned to consciousness ten minutes later and was, apparently, none the worse for the adventure. “Get that man!” was the cry of the police. “How does he do it?” the papers demanded. And they offered prizes, a hundred, five hundred, a thousand dollars, for the answer. “Electricity,” said some; “gas” said others; “a new form of mysterious life and death.” But how? How? A man on the Municipal Pier and a woman on the Washington Street bridge were the next victims. The man had a weak heart. He barely escaped death. Tom Howe, one of the keenest young detectives in the city service, was assigned to the case. He was a friend of John Nightingale and had become greatly interested in Jimmie Drury. The three of them put their heads together but no solution appeared. “And now,” Jimmie thought, sitting there in the newspaper office at night waiting for Scottie, the veteran photographer, “it’s happened to me. If only I got that fellow’s picture.” “All right!” He started at the sound of a voice. “All right, Jimmie, me boy.” It was Scottie. “Give me that cigar lighter with the bit of baby ribbon inside. That thing you call a candid camera ... I’m ready to develop that film.” “All—all right. Here it is,” Jimmie stammered. Then they all crowded excitedly into the narrow dark room; John Nightingale, Tom Howe, Denny Sullivan, Jimmie, and that red-haired girl named Mary Dare. |
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