They had interested Joyce a little and had often amused her. But now she was in deadly earnest. She had never been in that secret back room. To-night, whether invited or not, she meant to go in. For to this room, she knew right well, a certain little group of dark and gloomy-faced individuals including Brother Krosky retired at a rather late hour to discuss matters of weight and importance. The subjects talked of so freely in the outer room were of a general nature, the discussions rather vague. She guessed that in the back room all high sounding talk ceased and the brethren “got down to brass tacks.”
“If the package of jewels is still missing from their treasure house, there is sure to be some discussion regarding it. And that is exactly what I want to hear,” she told herself.
So, when the hour had grown late and the tea very thin indeed, she seized upon a moment when a certain brother held the others spellbound with his eloquent discussion of the rights of the proletariat, to slip through the door into the secret chamber. She was more than a little frightened at first. The place was completely dark. How was she to find a place of hiding?
Fortune favored her, for almost at once her hand came into contact with a long davenport. At once she dropped on her knees to feel beneath.
“Just room,” she breathed. “Glad I’m thin as a rail.”
Ten seconds later found her flat on her stomach beneath that davenport, waiting patiently for secret matters to transpire.
At this same hour a plainly dressed youth was preparing to enter a dingy brick building in an unlovely section of the great city. With his hand on the knob, he glanced right and left. As if apprehensive of being followed, he lingered on the threshold.
Seeing no one, he disappeared quickly within. At once there came the sound of a key being turned in a lock.
This ceremony performed, he proceeded in a leisurely manner up seven flights of grimy, unscrubbed wooden stairs to a small room beneath the eaves.
This youth was none other than the one of the burning eyes—the one who, having been introduced to Johnny Thompson by “The Ferret,” had taken him for an eight mile walk with no apparent reason except that he wished Johnny to know that hundreds of thousands of honest people lived in the city. To-night his eyes appeared to shine in the dark.