CHAPTER III JOHNNY FLUSHES A SKULKER
Trembling with suppressed excitement, his brow deeply furrowed, Johnnylifted the lid to the lunch-box, then stared in surprise and disgust. Thebox contained, not the precious steel bars of unusual and as yet unknowncomposition, but a small twist drill, worth, perhaps, a dime. For amoment he stared at the thing, then picked it up and thrust it into hispocket.
"Sneak thief! Petty larceny of the pettiest kind. But, anyway, I'llreport it to the chief. He may want to do something about it."
The rest of that night, waiting in the shadow of a gigantic sheet-steelpress, in full view of the vault where rested the remaining bars ofsteel, Johnny saw no movement, heard no sound that told him there wereother human beings in the building save himself and the regular nightwatchman, who made his monotonous hourly rounds, pausing only to punch aclock here and there. But motionless and silent as they might be, Johnnyknew there were at least two persons in that building who were therewithout leave or license.
To attempt to run down a single individual in the vast plant, with itslabyrinth of aisles, with thousands of machines, drill presses, millers,forges, moulders, cranes, conveyors, with its seemingly tangled mass ofoverhead equipment and its endless underground tunnels, would be equal tothe task of capturing a fish with a hand-net on the bottom of theAtlantic. To discover the person would be almost impossible, and even ifhe were discovered, his capture would be difficult indeed. Only the bestof good fortune could crown such an effort with success.
Johnny knew there were two men. One was he who had attempted to tamperwith the vault's lock, and the other was the originator of the mysteriouswhite fire. That the fire was produced by electric currents set tooperate upon certain given contacts, Johnny could not believe. In thecase of the knob to the vault's door, this might be true, but in that ofthe aluminum casting such a theory was impossible, for Johnny knew therecould have been no prearranged electrical contacts.
The casting had been on the floor. Johnny had lifted it to his vise andhad clamped it there. No one had been near it, save he himself, from thattime until the mysterious heat had enabled him to do the work of repairby welding. How could the heat have come there? That, he could not tell.Who had created it? He could not even guess. What had been the purpose ineither case? Was he friend or enemy? What would be his next strangedemonstration of power? All these remained unanswered. Of one thing aloneJohnny was positive: The person had been in the building and was therestill.
The thought made him distinctly uncomfortable. "Why," he thoughtsuddenly, "if he is our enemy, he has but to burn out the lock to thevault and the door will swing open of its own weight!"
Then he thought of himself. He had an uncomfortable conviction that thisheat might be applied anywhere--on his own body, like as not. At times hesaw himself racing about the factory tortured by an intolerable heatwhich turned his garments to ashes and charred his very flesh. At suchtimes as these he rose and shook himself free from disturbing fancies.
He tried in vain to remember any great discovery which would make suchintense detached heat possible. He could think of none.
"It's a discovery! A great discovery!" he whispered at last, "and thediscoverer, instead of bettering the world with it, is playing with itjust to make one person most awfully uneasy and unhappy. And yet," hepaused to think, "and yet he did send that chap gliding away from thevault door as if his life depended upon it."
In spite of all his forebodings, nothing further disturbed the vastsilence of the night, and Johnny was ready, upon the arrival of hisemployer in the morning, to make his report. He had decided to tell ofthe lunch-box and twist drill episode, but to say nothing, for thepresent, of the strange white fire. He felt that his employer wouldsimply be perplexed and disturbed by this news, without in any wayoffering a contribution to the solution of the problem. This was anaffair which a single individual might best work upon alone.
"No," said his employer, as Johnny displayed the small twist drill andtold how he came into possession of it, "we're not, as you have alreadysuggested, interested in that sort of thing. If there is a sneak-thief inour factory, he will receive his just deserts in due time, and that withno assistance from us. Our factory is run on the honor plan. Every man isput upon his honor. If he proves unworthy of the trust, hisfellow-workmen will find it out first of all, and, since the honor of theentire group is at stake, they will request him to mend his ways or drawthe pay due him and leave. It is useless for him to attempt to deceivethem. He must be on the square or get out.
"In this case," he smiled, "it is probably not a case of theft at all; itis very probable that this drill was borrowed by the workman for somework at home, with the consent of his foreman."
Johnny blushed uncomfortably.
"Your plan, though," the manager hastened to assure him, "is a good one.Keep it up, and you may catch something yet.
"I have said," he went on, "that we are not interested in petty thefts.We are not. This perhaps makes you wonder that you are employed as youare at the present time. But this is quite another matter. The taking ofthose two bars of steel, insignificant as they may seem--a few pounds inall--is of great importance to us, since, as I have explained to you, itmay mean the revealing of a valuable secret.
"The question of one's right to keep a commercial secret is a delicateone. From a moral standpoint it depends entirely upon the type of secret.Unquestionably there are some secrets which no one has a right to keep.Many great secrets have been thrown open to the world as soon as they arediscovered. Radium is a case in point. If our nation were at war withsome other nation at the present time, it would undoubtedly be our dutyto share our secret steel process, should we be so fortunate as tounravel all its mysteries, with the Government. Since we are not at war,it does not appear to be our duty.
"The law allows us to retain our secret until it has been patented.However, if another should discover it, we would hardly be in a positionto claim a share in the patent right, since no one can prove that theother person did not possess the secret first.
"You will see then, that any person who attempts to discover our secretcan hardly be classed as a criminal; he is simply playing the game in arather unfair way. There have been secrets enough carried from onemanufacturing plant to another. Retaining one's commercial secrets andreaping advantages from them is part of the romance of business. You willfind few manufacturing plants, big or little, but have their secrets. Inone with the magnitude of our own there are many secrets; the one you areguarding is but one of them."
"But--" Johnny began, then hesitated.
"But what? Come on; let's hear what's on your mind."
"Don't you think it's really one's duty to give the whole world thebenefit of his secrets?"
"In time, yes. But not at once, unprotected by patents. We have spent agreat deal of money in discovering these secrets. We have a right to getthat money back with a fair profit."
"I see," said Johnny.
"And you are ready to go on with the search?"
"Yes."
"Good. Report to me when there is any new development. Good morning, andbetter luck next time."
That night the electro-magnet trap caught nothing. Johnny went to workwith a sense of defeat disturbing his usually well-composed mind. Had thetwo bars of steel been carried at once from the factory, and were hiswell-laid plans to come to naught? Would the steel be tested andanalyzed, the formula discovered and patented by the intruder?
"At least," he told himself, "I can guard securely that which is left.
"Mr. Jordan," he said to the aged keeper of the vault by day, as he cameto take his post for the night, "can't they work that steel as it is?"
"What steel?" The old man gave him a sharp look.
"You know," Johnny smiled.
"Oh!" the other laughed. "No, it doesn't seem to respond properly to theheat they have tried on it; it crumples up like mud when they try to workit. And when it comes to anal
yzing it, there's an element or two theydon't understand. It's as if the stuff was from a meteor dropped out ofthe sky."
Johnny thought of these things on the watch that night. "I'd like to havea piece to experiment with," he told himself. "This white fire, now; Iwonder how that would affect it. Fine chance to try that," he laughed tohimself, "First place, no steel; second place, no white fire."
A week passed with no reappearance either of the mysterious white fire orthe stranger who had attempted to tamper with the lock of the vault.Johnny was growing uneasy. It was true that his pay had been increasedenough to enable him to put away a generous sum at the end of the weektoward the paying of his debt of honor. But the task was growingmonotonous, and, besides, there was no opportunity to work on his chummyroadster that was to have been built up from salvage.
But one dark night, when the wind was banging at the steel-framed windowsof the plant, and rain beat upon the skylights in great torrents,adventure came stalking his way in the form of a crouching, skulkinghuman who made his way, all oblivious of Johnny hidden by the shadow of aforge, to a dark corner of the forge-room, where he rattled about in apile of imperfect forgings. He had just turned and was about to skulkaway when Johnny's lips framed a word.
The word was not uttered, for like a flash it came to him that in thatparticular spot there was no opportunity to head the man off and capturehim.
He thought of the strange entrance to the scrap-conveyor tunnel which hadbeen shown him by his employer. The conveyor was not running. Once he haddropped down upon it, he could stoop and run forward upon its surfacesome two hundred feet. He would then come out at a place in the directionin which the man was going. In that spot a trick-wall might be made torise and head him off. He would be trapped!
A few silent steps and Johnny was upon the spot above the scrap-conveyor.His hand went up to the light wire. Straight down he dropped. The nextminute he was racing along the conveyor.
At the end of this race he took a long breath and waited. There would bea struggle, he knew that. The best man would win; there was no one toaid.
With a sharp intake of breath, he touched a button, a trap flew open.With a leap he cleared the opening and fell sprawling. His estimate oftime had failed him. The skulking stranger had tripped over him and theyhad gone down together!