The cackling of geese saved Rome. A spider by his patience once gave the immortal Bruce the courage needed to win a great victory. Even a mouse may cause a deal of disturbance; Joyce Mills was to discover this on the very night that Johnny and Curlie sat planning their flight.  
That night she visited the camp of the Bolsheviks. In spite of all that Johnny had said, she still believed that these radicals who were bent on destroying the present form of government in America had robbed the Air Mail.
 
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“They are shrewd people,” she told herself. “They have members, yes, and spies, in every corner of our land. They were expecting the package. The American Secret Service men learned of its arrival. They had planned to seize it the moment it arrived in this city. What was to hinder the radical spies from finding out that the Secret Service men were after their Russian Crown jewels? What more natural than that they make a bold attempt to re-take the jewels before it was too late?”
 
Thus she reasoned as she made her way alone down the city street that led to the radical center.
 
As she neared the place she shuddered a little. She had attended many of these meetings, and yet the thought of them always affected her in the same way. “As if I had seen a snake in the grass,” she told herself.
 
The building occupied by this radical group was long and low. A one-storied structure, it ran the length of the block, but extended back from the street only about sixty feet.
 
During a great fair there had been many small shops there. After the fair, the store-rooms had been transformed into cheap studios. Here musicians of a sort and artists who painted futuristic daubs and other strange distortions of art lived.
 
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In one of these buildings lived Brother Krosky. It was in his studio that the brethren of his set met.
 
His studio was divided into two rooms, a large front room and a very secret back room. Besides these, there was a cubbyhole of a place where one prepared a meal.
 
Many times Joyce Mills had been admitted to the front room. There, in uncomfortable chairs, over very weak tea, all sorts of people, young students with bright, simple faces, old artists with long hair, middle-aged women with clicking false teeth, and many others mouthed big words and looking wise as owls proceeded to solve all the problems of a great nation at a single sitting.
 
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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.”
 
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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 ............