“If he makes it, he’s gone!” Leaping out and up, Johnny caught the platform of a second tram; he drew himself up, threw in the lever and was once more in the race.
At last fortune was favoring him. The door to the loading-room was locked. The stranger was running himself into a narrow passage from which escape would be impossible. Johnny leaped from his tram, to find the stranger facing him. That person was clearly on the defense. With fists doubled up he advanced to attack.
Just as the stranger struck out with his right hand, Johnny ducked low—so low that the other’s blow glanced harmlessly over his head. The next instant Johnny would have come up with a “haymaker,” had not the stranger thrown himself, stomach down, on Johnny’s back, and turned a quick somersault forward.
Whipping himself about, prepared for another wild race, Johnny was astonished to find the stranger standing smiling at him, and extending his hand;
“Good work, Johnny, old boy!” the other grinned. “You haven’t lost a bit of your pep!”
“You’ve got the best of me,” Johnny smiled doubtfully, “but if you ever had any more pep yourself, I’d hate to have followed you far!” He mopped his brow.
“Don’t recognize me, eh? Perhaps you miss the blue goggles.”
“What?” Johnny stared. “What? Not my old pal, Panther Eye?”
“Been working here for a month. Got a way of getting in when I want to. Thought I’d make you an early morning call. Whew! you sure gave me a merry chase! Good of you though not to knock my head off with that tram. ’Fraid you’ll never make an ideal guard.”
“I’d never be a guard at all if I had my way. But what’d you run for?”
“Just wanted to see how much you had in you,” chuckled Panther Eye.
“Oh, you did! Well, you saw, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” the other admitted, taking his turn at mopping his brow.
“Say!” Johnny exclaimed, “since it’s only you, I’ve got to get back to my post. Got some cakes and a little ice-cream in the bottom of a freezer from the company cafeteria. Want to join me?”
As they made their way back through the maze of machinery to the vault, Johnny was busy with his own thoughts. Strange questions kept rising in his mind. This fellow, Panther Eye, or “Pant,” as the boys called him for short, had been with him in many an adventure. He had appeared to possess strange powers, too. The boys had called him “Panther Eye” because he appeared to have the power to see in the dark. There had been a time when Johnny had been with him in a cave dark as a dungeon, surrounded by hostile natives, yet Pant had somehow known that the natives were there, and had led the way through the dense darkness to safety. There had been other times—many of them—in which Pant had made Johnny a heavy debtor to him through his use of wonderful powers.