"Coming down the stairs," Felix breathed. "Going out to breakfast, perhaps. If they don't, we're trapped like rats!" Five long minutes they cowered there in the dark. Then, satisfied that all was well, Felix tucked some wires through a crack in the wall, and they were away. "You're all right!" A moment later in the broad light of the street the inventor's son offered Johnny a slim hand. "I--I just wanted to make sure. You weren't much afraid, were you?" "Do you mean--" The muscles in Johnny's face hardened. "Mean to say there really wasn't any danger back there?" "Danger?" Felix stared. "Of course there was danger! Those men were there, somewhere, no doubt about that. They're bad ones too! Up to something rather terrible, I imagine. But then," he added as a sort of afterthought, "we're not detectives. I only wanted to get some things in there to try them out. You may have a chance to help at that. There's a lot of things to do. "But not tomorrow." His brow wrinkled in thought. "Father and I will be away tomorrow. Tell you what--that'll be all for today. Why don't you come back day after tomorrow? We'll try something out then, something rather thrilling, I'd say." It was to be thrilling, that thing they were to try out; but the thrill was to be of a different sort than that expected by Felix. Fate too would step in and change the date for them. Fate has a way of doing that little thing, as Johnny had long since learned. Gripping Felix's hand, Johnny hurried away to catch a bus. "Just in time for one more auction," he thought to himself. "That other auction brought me luck and promise of adventure. Why might not another do the same? Might go to the shack and see if Drew Lane is there," he told himself. "Do that after the auction is over." He was going to the shack right enough, but not in just the manner he would have chosen. CHAPTER III THE BATTLE "There! That's the one! The one up next!" Johnny sat up with a start. Arrived at the auction house where all manner of strange things lost, damaged or stolen, are sold, he had taken his place among the bidders. He had found himself crowded in between a thin man and a stout one. He knew the stout one slightly; they called him John. The slim man was new and quite strange for such a place. His clothes were new and very well kept. His face was dark. His lips were twitchy, his slim fingers ever in motion. There was on his left cheek a peculiar scar. Two marks, like a cross, as if someone had branded him, so Johnny thought. And now, to his great astonishment, after dozing through a half hour of uninteresting auction, he found this stranger whispering shrilly in his ear. Before the whisper had come he felt a sharp punch in the ribs. The punch may have been made with a sharp elbow. Johnny had an uncomfortable feeling that the business end of some sort of short gun had been stuck into his side.