"Have it your way," Spider mumbled. "But just you watch this flashlight. I'll fasten it to my belt, behind. It will be shining straight down. Guess you'll be able to see it all the way up. It's pretty bright. When you see it up there at the top you'll know I'm there. "And--when you see a white flash you'll know I've got the picture. Always carry a flash-bulb and a little camera, I do. Get some great pictures in all sorts of places." "Yes," Johnny grumbled, "and some time you'll get your head blown off in the bargain!" "Oh, yeah?" Spider laughed a crackly sort of laugh. The elevator to the Sky Ride tower might or might not have been working. The two boys had no way to tell. The door to the place was locked and bolted, apparently from within. "Just as well pleased," Spider chuckled. "Always have wanted to climb that thing since I saw the first two sections sticking up out of the snow in 1933--so here goes!" He was away up the steel frame, like a monkey. It was with a feeling akin to awe that Johnny saw that small, wavering spot of yellow light mount up, up, up toward the spot where some bright star lay hidden behind a cloud. "He'll never climb so high," he muttered. "I shouldn't have let him try. And yet--" There was a mystery to be solved, and mysteries at times are to be solved only by deeds of daring. So he watched the light at Spider's back mount and mount until it was but a tiny speck of yellow light that, winking and blinking, rose ever higher and higher. As for Spider, he was not disturbed. A climber from the age of six, he had within him supreme self-confidence. What is distance anyway? If you fall at fifty feet you will die. Can six hundred be worse? Thus he reasoned and, mounting higher and higher, thought only of his goal. He would have a look into that room of mystery. He'd surprise someone at his work and, be he man, woman or devil--flash! There would be a picture. He was right in part--at least, the flash was not lacking; for, having at last scaled the height, he stood upon a steel cross-beam to draw his chin above a steel window frame. And there he hung, drinking in with his eyes the scene that lay before him. The right-hand corner of a broad, glass-enclosed space had been roughly partitioned off into a small room. At the center of this narrow space, bending over some curious instrument, was a tall, thin man. That he was not conscious of prying eyes was at once apparent, for, after a moment, partially straightening up, he switched on a powerful lamp, thus sending a sharp pencil of illumination through the clouds that hung over the city. This accomplished, he turned half about. Spider dropped low, he might be seen. When next he dared bring his eyes above the edge of the window frame he found the man facing a peculiar square of metal attached to a low pedestal. "A microphone! He's talking into it. The Whisperer!" Spider breathed. Then with the force of a blow it came to him that here was his chance.