Grace Krowl _was_ to think about it many times and in the end to do something about it. That something was to draw her into a great deal of trouble. For the moment she left the little secondhand bookshop soothed, comforted, and filled with a desire to call again. "No doubt you think Maxwell Street a terrible place," the smiling girl said as she walked with her to the door, "and that your uncle's store is the worst on the street. But I could tell you--" A shadow fell across her face. "I could tell you things about grand stores on a very grand street in this city of ours. Per--perhaps I will sometime." Grace was startled as she looked into her face. It had suddenly become gray and old. "How strange," she murmured as, dodging a pushcart laden with geese, she hurried away toward Nicholas Fischer's place on Maxwell Street. "How strange. And how--how sort of terrible. And yet--" The words of a great man came to her. "No situation in life is ever so bad but that it might be worse." * * * * * * * * "What," you may be asking by this time, "have the adventures of a girl from Kansas to do with Johnny Thompson and his friends?" The answer is: "A great deal." In the first place, Drew Lane, having discovered this little lady while traveling in a bus, was not the sort to desert her in her plight. In the second place, an invisible finger of light moving across the sky was destined to join the fates of Johnny Thompson and Grace Krowl. However, for the time, we will return to Johnny and his friends. CHAPTER VII THE UNHOLY FIVE During the course of their conversation about the open fire in Drew Lane's shack, Captain Burns took from his inside pocket a small package which proved to be five photographs pasted securely upon a strip of stout cloth in such a manner that they might be folded together in the form of a small book. "Ever see any of these?" he said to Johnny after spreading them out upon his knee. For a moment Johnny studied the pictures thoughtfully. Then he gave a sudden start. "That," he exclaimed, pointing a trembling finger at the third in the row, "is the man who sat beside me in the auction--who got me to bid in that package!" "Are you sure?" The Captain's tone was tense. "Can't be a doubt about it. See that scar like a cross? Couldn't well miss that, could I? He's the one all right. And, though I could never prove it, I'd swear he was the one who struck me from the dark. "And, by all that's good!" Johnny sprang to his feet. "I'll get that man! See if I don't! No man can strike me from the shadows and get away with it!" "Well, I guess that makes your friend Johnny here one of us. That right, Drew?" the Captain rumbled. Drew Lane nodded his head.