  “Johnny,” began the Chief as Johnny entered the office late that afternoon, “there’s a man in town I want you to watch. I want——” Suddenly he paused to stare at the swollen side of Johnny’s head. “Who hit you?” he asked. “I—I got a bump there.” Johnny did not wish to tell the Chief about his island experience. He was afraid the Chief would not like his going against advice; and besides, if something came of this little excursion, something really big, he felt that he had a right when the time was ripe to spring it as a surprise. He was truly relieved when the Chief did not press the question. “As I was about to say,” the Chief resumed, “there’s a man come to town recently, a man I want you to get in touch with if you can. That is, I mean locate and shadow him. The fact that he wasn’t here at the time this series of fires started doesn’t necessarily prove that he hasn’t a hand in them. The brains of a gang is not always on the spot all the time. “This man,” he leaned forward in his chair, “is credited with a dozen big blazes in New York, and now he’s come to Chicago. “He’s been credited with them but, shrewd as the New York police are and persistent as were the insurance patrols, not one of these fires has been surely pinned on him. So here he is in Chicago. “His name is Knobs Whittaker; at least Knobs is what he goes by. The reason for the name is that on each side of his bald head, well above his ears, is a sort of knob. You’ve seen cattle that had their horns treated when they were calves and had no horns to speak of—just knobs?” “Yes.” “Well, his knobs are like that.” “Sort of a dehorned Devil?” “Exactly that, from what I hear.” “There,” said the Chief after fumbling about in the pigeon holes of his desk, “is the address where he was last seen. He was seen entering the door that leads up the stairs to the second floor. I wish you’d go over there this morning and give the place the once over. You may see Knobs, though I doubt it. Anyway, fix the building in your mind and find out all you can about it.” “Right,” said Johnny as he pocketed the slip of paper handed to him. The place, he noted, was on Randolph near Franklin, not five blocks from his own room. “Right down town,” he thought to himself. “Lot of wholesale shops in there; shoes, plumbing goods, machinery, and the like. Very respectable place. You wouldn’t look for anything queer in there; but then, you never can tell.” In this conclusion Johnny was right. The building to which he had been directed, and where Knobs had last been seen, proved to be a narrow four-story structure with a small square hallway at the front. On the right side of this hallway one might read the names of the occupants. On the first floor was a manufacturing chemist; on the second a wholesale diamond merchant; on the third a publisher of cheap juvenile books; and the fourth had been taken over by the National Novelty Company, whatever that might be. Johnny was studying this board and beginning to wonder in a vague sort of way if the top floor had been taken over by Knobs and if he thought his business of setting fire as being in a way a distinct novelty, when a broad shouldered, smooth shaven man of neat appearance alighted from the small elevator and, as men will do, removed his hat to dust his bald head with a silk handkerchief. Johnny took in the top of that head at a glance. With great difficulty he suppressed an exclamation of surprise. Above each ear there was a distinct, glistening knob. With the greatest of effort he tore his gaze from the man and, leaping into the elevator, called hurriedly: “Third floor.” He had taken the elevator because he did not wish to fall under the suspicions glance of that man. He had chosen the third floor because he was quite sure books were safe; this notorious firebug would have nothing to do with them. “So that,” he thought to himself as the elevator crept upward, “is Knobs!” He found himself tremendously impressed by the appearance of the man. He had personality, which is more than one may say of most of his kind. He looked dangerous, a square-jawed villain who would stop at nothing. Because he had been so greatly impressed and also because Knobs had twice been seen in the building, Johnny made a careful survey of the premises. The diamond merchant’s place on the second floor, he discovered, was well wired with a noted burglar insurance company’s apparatus. “I don’t wonder at that,” he told himself. “With such men as Knobs about, it’s highly necessary.” On the third floor he found a hallway leading to a back window. The window looked down upon the roof of a two-story building. “One could reach that roof at a leap if he found it necessary,” he told himself. He had not expected to find the Novelty Company open for business. They weren’t. “Guess that’s about all I can discover for this time,” he concluded as he once more entered the elevator and dropped to the ground floor. The Chief was well pleased with his report. “Johnny,” he said, “you’d make an inspector, give you time. There’s one thing you wouldn’t know, though, so I’ll tell you. A chemist’s establishment or a drug store is one of the most dangerous risks an insurance company can take. That’s because if it gets on fire it goes up like a flash. There are likely to be dangerous fumes that drive the firemen back, and perhaps an explosion; too many chemicals about and in time of fire they raise the very deuce! “You don’t understand why that is, eh? Well, that’s because you’re no chemist. I’ve dabbled into it a bit, and you’d better when you get time. It pays to know a little about many things, and a lot about one thing. That’s what makes a useful citizen out of a man. “I’ll tell you about those chemicals. There’s always lots of chlorides and sulphur about a chemist’s shop. If the chlorides are heated at all they give up oxygen, and oxygen will make anything burn—a wrought-iron pipe or a steel crowbar. The sulphur mixes in and that makes a fire that nothing can stop. It laughs at water. As for chemical engines, it gives them the roaring Ha! Ha! When a fire like that burns out it don’t much matter what you had in the beginning; all you’ve got in the end is ashes, and mighty fine ashes at that.” Johnny listened to this lecture with intense interest. When it was over he sat in a brown study from which he emerged to exclaim: “That’s queer!” “Nothing queer about it,” protested the Chief, “just nature takin’ her course, that’s all.” “That’s not what I meant,” said Johnny. “I meant it was queer that there’d be a diamond merchant’s place above a chemist warehouse. Queer combination, don’t you think?” “Yes, queer enough, but you do get some queer ones. Diamond merchant has his fire insurance, though, the same as others. Rate would be high; but low rent probably makes up the difference. Besides, chemists’ places are not as dangerous as they used to be; there are laws regulating the amount of the dangerous stuff they may keep in any one place.” “Are inspections frequent?” “Not as frequent as they should be.” “Honest inspectors?” “I don’t know. That doesn’t come in my department.” There the discussion ended, but Johnny pondered long over that diamond merchant’s place above a chemist’s shop. In the end, however, he forgot it to think of his flat-bottomed boat and the marsh south of the city. He had promised to take Mazie out there late this afternoon. She had listened eagerly to the story of his adventure out there, and had said she thought the place must be “perfectly bewitching.” Johnny was not so sure about that. He had a wholesome awe of the place since that shot. “But of course,” he had said at last, “that fellow just happened to run across me before I left the city, and followed me out there. There’d be no danger a second time—no danger at all.” So in the end he had promised to go. They planned to take their lunch along, to arrive about an hour before sundown and to stay for a look at the moon rising over the marsh. |
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