Johnny Thompson possessed a robust body. Proper food, plenty of sleep, plain living and clean thinking had kept it so. Few there are who could have endured his harrowing experience in the tunnel without a prolonged visit to the hospital.  
Johnny did not entirely escape. On the second day following, a low fever set in. His doctor ordered him to bed until the fever abated. It lasted for an entire week. Such a week, for a person endowed with a boundless supply of nervous energy, was a great trial.
 
It did, however, give him time for thinking. And his thoughts were long, long thoughts.
 
Often he found them returning to the youth with the burning eyes. Over and over again he seemed to hear him say: “It is time for some who are honest, good and clean to die.”
 
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Curiously enough, it was while listening to the Voice, which came on exactly at ten o’clock each evening, that he thought oftenest of those words. There was something about the earnest tones of that mysterious unknown voice that reminded him of the nameless one. “And may he not be the same person?” he asked himself one night.
 
But when he thought of it more soberly, the thing seemed absurd. “In a city of millions, how could it be?” he asked himself. Then he dismissed the matter from his mind.
 
There were other matters requiring consideration. And these made him restless, impatient to be up and away. Some of his friends were in trouble. Curlie Carson had opened a registered mail sack; had made himself liable to arrest; might even yet be arrested and thrown into prison by the Federal authorities if the priceless package were not found and returned.
 
“And how is it to be found?” he asked himself. “Find the man who took it and make him confess, to be sure. How simple!”
 
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Strangely enough, while Johnny was still confined to his bed and might well have been thinking of this very matter, Grace Palmer received a letter which for a time puzzled her greatly.
 
Addressed to her at her home, it contained the simple statement:
 
“The man you are looking for will be at the turn of the breakwater on the island at ten o’clock P. M., Wednesday, this week.”
 
The note, which was unsigned, reached her on Tuesday. She racked her mind for its meaning. She had often gone to this man-made island, but never in search of a man.
 
“Except—” Her heart beat double time. “Except on that night with the young Air Mail pilot.
 
“I wonder—”
 
She went to the phone and got Curlie on the wire. She told him of the note.
 
“It’s a chance,” he said, growing quite excited. “Shall we go?”
 
“Yes.” She did not hesitate. “I’ll bring father’s gun.”
 
200
“Gun? Oh, certainly!”
 
“You know,” she supplemented, “I am really a good shot. And we may need it.” They had reason later to regret not having used it on the offensive instead of on the defensive as they had feared they might be obliged to do.
 
They went to the island half an hour early. In a narrow space, just wide enough to afford them a place of concealment, jammed between two huge squares of limestone with another as their resting place and a fourth forming a sort of fortification before them, they waited while Curlie’s watch ticked the half hour away.
 
The night was chill. There was no moon. For all that, a sort of half light reflected from the city’s street lights made it possible for them to see a moving object at som............