"Watch a picture?" Johnny exclaimed. "Is it worth a million dollars? And do you expect it to be stolen?" "It is worth," Felix said without breaking into a smile, "very little. I even doubt if you could sell it at all. "And yet," he added, "if you watch it long enough, something may come of it after all!" Something did come of it, you may be sure. But to Johnny, ever keen for action, this at first seemed a dull occupation. The picture was in his own room, the tall room that during his first night had shown an inclination to become a short one. "Nothing could be more stupid!" he told himself after a half hour of watching. "Picture isn't even halfway interesting." This was true. Though quite evidently an oil painting, this canvas within a narrow gilt frame was very dark. An old Dutch master, one would say; a suggestion of some cabin in the foreground, clumps of trees behind. There might have been a sunset in the beginning. If there were, time had taken care of the sunset. It had put out the sun. "Just to sit in this chair and look at that picture!" he grumbled to himself. "Nothing could be worse!" His eyes strayed to the far side of the room where the strange round reflector rested. "Whispers," he murmured. "Those whispers that wakened me at dawn. Wonder if they come from that thing? I feel sure they do. Person can tell what direction sound comes from. But who whispers? How? Why? That's what I'm going to find out." That the whisperer would speak again, that he would at last deliver some important message, perhaps many important messages, he did not doubt. But now-- It was with great reluctance that he dragged his eyes from this mysterious instrument to fix them once more upon the dull and quite commonplace Dutch master. When at last he accomplished the feat, he fairly bounced from his chair. The Dutch master was gone! In its stead was a square of glass. Out from that square, well down toward the left-hand corner, shone a yellow spot of light. "Like a moon in the midst of a black sky," he told himself. "What--" The spot of light began revolving. It broke itself up into a hundred yellow moons. It became a golden circle, a hundred golden circles. Then, to Johnny's utter astonishment, a face, a living face appeared in that frame. It was a wavering sort of face. Had Johnny been superstitious he might have said it was a ghost, for now the lips and eyes were distinct, and now they were irregular and all but lost. Then with a sharp cry Johnny sprang to his feet. "Where is he?" he cried. "I must find him!" He had recognized that face. It was the man who sat beside him at the auction, who had all but forced him to bid in that package containing the bronze lamp, who had later more than likely struck him over the head in that dark alley. "Iggy the Snake!" He fairly shouted the name aloud.