CHAPTER XX THE SKY SLIDER
Having secured Spider as his special bodyguard and obtained permission toenter the deserted grounds of the Century of Progress, Johnny set out onhis mission of discovery. He was determined to learn what he could aboutthe mysterious Whisperer.
It was a dark night. Clouds hid the moon. One of those cold, gusty nightsit was, when fine siftings of snow creep and tremble about your feet,when sharp gusts of wind shooting out from unexpected angles blow fineparticles of ice upon your cheek, and you say with a start, "Some devilof the north has been let loose to blow his breath upon me."
"Boo!" Spider shuddered. "How cold it is!"
"Yes, and ghostly!" Johnny added. They were on the old Fair grounds."When you think what this place has been, so full of light and sunshine,so hilarious with the screams and shouts of jolly revelers, every cornerseems to hide a ghost."
"Yes." Spider quickened his pace. "There's the place where they had allthose freaks--tall, skinny men, short, crooked ones, two headed, onelegged--all sorts of funny and distorted humans. Gee! Johnny, what a joyto have two legs and two arms, eyes, ears and all that!"
"Yes, and what poor use some of us make of them!" Johnny grumbled.
"Look." Spider was full of recollections. "There's where they kept thathuge snake. Suppose he's in there now, all coiled up, torpid for hiswinter's sleep?" The thought caused him to veer sharply to the left.
"Ghosts, all right," Johnny said quietly. "Ghosts of those who stood inthese places hour by hour, patiently doing their duty, roasting hot dogs,guarding jewels, changing money, selling tickets. Ghosts too ofperformers on this hilarious Midway."
"And ghosts of those who came to see," Spider chuckled genially.
"But look!" Johnny's voice rose. He gripped Spider's arm. "Do I see alight up there, or don't I?"
"Up where?"
"Tower of the Sky Ride."
A gaunt skeleton of steel, the towers of the Sky Ride where, in the daysof wild joy at the Century of Progress three million thrill seekers hadshot upward to go gliding and bumping across the sky! And, yes, there atthe very top of the left-hand tower a pale yellow light shone.
"The Whisperer!" Johnny's voice was husky with emotion. "We've foundhim."
"But that place--" There was doubt in Spider's tone. "That place has beenlocked for months. Electric current is probably turned off. How'd he getup there? Six hundred feet and more!" There was awe in his tone. He was aclimber, was Spider--none better, so he had supposed. Had he come uponthe tracks of one more skillful than he?
"I could do it," he muttered beneath his breath. "I could climb thattower. Six hundred feet. Bah! What's the diff? Two hundred, threehundred, or six, it's all the same.
"But that man?" He turned to Johnny. "He can't just pucker up his lipsand whisper a mile, can he? Takes machines, instruments, whatever you maycall it, don't it?"
"Yes, I'm sure it does," Johnny agreed. "I don't know a lot about itmyself. It's all like magic to me. But it must take a lot of mechanismsand a strong electric current.
"Of course," he added thoughtfully, as they walked slowly forward, "theSky Ride's in somebody's care. Bound to be. The managers of next year'sFair are going to operate it. And if someone had some sort of a pull hecould get permission to turn on the current and set an elevator running.He could get up and down that way. And what a place he'd have forwhispering! Whisper all over the world, I'd say. I'd like to have apicture of that man--if it _is_ a man."
"If it is?" Spider laughed. "You don't think he's an ape, or something?"
"Might be a woman," said Johnny seriously.
"Yeah, a woman! Fine chance!" Spider scoffed.
"Tell you what!" he exclaimed suddenly. "I'll take that dare!"
"What dare?" Johnny stopped short in his tracks.
"I'll get you his picture, and if it's a lady, I'll take two pictures."
"You mean you'll climb that tower? Six hundred feet! You--you've not beendrinking, Spider?"
"Drinking, Johnny?" There was a deep note of reproach in Spider's voice."Whatever else I am, Johnny, I'm not a fool. Only a fool drinks. And afellow who climbs is a double fool if he drinks. Drink, Johnny, makes youfeel as if you could fly. And that's a fatal feeling when you're up inthe air.
"No, Johnny, I'm sober. You want to know what that man looks like, whathe's doing up there. So do I. The elevator may be working. Who knows? Ifnot--up I go."
"All right," Johnny agreed reluctantly. Full well he knew how futile itis to argue with a person of Spider's nature. "You'll know when you'vehad enough, won't you? You'll give it up if it's sort of getting the bestof you?"
The Spider's reply was a guttural mutter.
"All the same, you promise!" Johnny insisted.
"Have it your way," Spider mumbled. "But just you watch this flashlight.I'll fasten it to my belt, behind. It will be shining straight down.Guess you'll be able to see it all the way up. It's pretty bright. Whenyou see it up there at the top you'll know I'm there.
"And--when you see a white flash you'll know I've got the picture. Alwayscarry a flash-bulb and a little camera, I do. Get some great pictures inall sorts of places."
"Yes," Johnny grumbled, "and some time you'll get your head blown off inthe bargain!"
"Oh, yeah?" Spider laughed a crackly sort of laugh.
The elevator to the Sky Ride tower might or might not have been working.The two boys had no way to tell. The door to the place was locked andbolted, apparently from within.
"Just as well pleased," Spider chuckled. "Always have wanted to climbthat thing since I saw the first two sections sticking up out of the snowin 1933--so here goes!" He was away up the steel frame, like a monkey.
It was with a feeling akin to awe that Johnny saw that small, waveringspot of yellow light mount up, up, up toward the spot where some brightstar lay hidden behind a cloud.
"He'll never climb so high," he muttered. "I shouldn't have let him try.And yet--" There was a mystery to be solved, and mysteries at times areto be solved only by deeds of daring. So he watched the light at Spider'sback mount and mount until it was but a tiny speck of yellow light that,winking and blinking, rose ever higher and higher.
As for Spider, he was not disturbed. A climber from the age of six, hehad within him supreme self-confidence. What is distance anyway? If youfall at fifty feet you will die. Can six hundred be worse? Thus hereasoned and, mounting higher and higher, thought only of his goal. Hewould have a look into that room of mystery. He'd surprise someone at hiswork and, be he man, woman or devil--flash! There would be a picture.
He was right in part--at least, the flash was not lacking; for, having atlast scaled the height, he stood upon a steel cross-beam to draw his chinabove a steel window frame. And there he hung, drinking in with his eyesthe scene that lay before him.
The right-hand corner of a broad, glass-enclosed space had been roughlypartitioned off into a small room. At the center of this narrow space,bending over some curious instrument, was a tall, thin man.
That he was not conscious of prying eyes was at once apparent, for, aftera moment, partially straightening up, he switched on a powerful lamp,thus sending a sharp pencil of illumination through the clouds that hungover the city.
This accomplished, he turned half about.
Spider dropped low, he might be seen.
When next he dared bring his eyes above the edge of the window frame hefound the man facing a peculiar square of metal attached to a lowpedestal.
"A microphone! He's talking into it. The Whisperer!" Spider breathed.
Then with the force of a blow it came to him that here was his chance.
"The picture," he muttered low.
Twisting an arm about a steel beam, with no thought of the dizzy depthsbelow, with fingers that trembled ever so slightly, he adjusted anelectric light bulb, half filled with a sort of tinfoil, to hisflashlight. Then adjusting his small camera, he shifted his position,held camera and
flashlight high, then pressed a button.
The result was most astonishing. A bright flash was to be expected. Thetinfoil filled bulb was such as newspaper photographers use for takingflashlight pictures. Yes, that first bright flash was to be expected. Thesecond, following closely upon the first and accompanied by a sharpreport, had not been anticipated. A bullet burned Spider's ear. With acry of consternation, he released his grip, dropped a short way towardthe black depths below, struck a steel beam, threw out his hands,clutched something cold and substantial, then hung there between heavenand earth.
The first indication that all had not gone well came to Johnny when someobject falling from the sky crashed upon a square of wind-blown pavementnot twenty feet from where he stood.
Springing forward, he cast the light of his electric torch upon someblack fragments scattered over the spot where the thing had struck.
"The--the camera!" he whispered. "Spider's camera. There'll be nopicture. But Spider. What of him?"
The wind that whistled about the foot of the Sky Ride tower brought himno answer.
He had been watching the top of that tower for a full five minutes whensome object, gliding along a cluster of four cables closely set togetherand running at a broad angle from the top of the tower to the ground,suddenly caught his attention.
"Can that be a man?" he asked himself, staring with all his eyes as thething moved downward.
"If it's a man, is it Spider or the Whisperer?" he asked himself a momentlater.
Determined to know, he went racing away toward the end of the cable, somethree blocks away.
He arrived just in time to see the slider drop to earth. It was Spider.
"Quite a sky-slider, I am!" he chuckled.
"Well done!" exclaimed Johnny. "Did you see him?"
"Not very clearly. He's a man, all right. And he's a tiger. Nearly gotme. Never again!"
Spider led the way off the grounds.
And so for the time the mystery of the Whisperer remained unsolved. Onlythis was known with a fair degree of certainty: his place of retreat wasone high tower of the Sky Ride.