Read Ebook: Jimmy Drury: Candid Camera Detective by O Hara David Warren F Ferdinand Illustrator

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Ebook has 1185 lines and 35853 words, and 24 pages

"If he did," Tom said soberly, "he has done a real service to his city. We've got to get that man and get him quick. At present, in some way quite unknown to us, he is putting people to sleep at a distance and robbing them on the streets. But criminals are never satisfied. In time he will double the dose, whatever it is, and his victims will never come to life. It is always that way with crime."

"But how about the picture?" he demanded, turning eagerly to Jimmie.

"It--it's not developed yet," Jimmie stammered.

"Come on. We're in luck," the reporter exclaimed. "Scottie just went back to the darkroom. Took some pictures of the fight out at the park--to illustrate your father's write-up, you know," he explained to Jimmie. "He just went back to develop them. Come on, we'll all go back to the dark room."

"What's all this?" put in a soft feminine voice.

"Oh, hello, Mary Dare," John Nightingale exclaimed. "Been doing night life in the great city?"

"Out on a show that somebody thought should be exposed." The young, red-headed lady reporter, who looked little more than a girl, laughed merrily. "But what's the big excitement?"

"Jimmie thinks he got a picture of the Silent Terror with his candid camera," John explained. "Come on back with us and we'll watch this Silent Terror come out on the film."

And so the five of them marched toward the magic dark room of a great city newspaper where many a picture destined to condemn a guilty man to the electric chair or set an innocent one free has first seen the red glow of the photographer's magic lamp.

Scottie McFadden, a veteran photographer of the Press, was discovered to be entrenched in his favorite dark room.

"Can't come out for another quarter hour," his voice sounded out through the walls. "These fight pictures must be out for the early edition. What have you got?"

"One of Jimmie's candid camera shots," John Nightingale winked at his friends as he shouted through the dark room walls.

"Candid camera!" came roaring out from the dark room, "You may as well all go home. Nothing big will ever come from a picture the size of a postage stamp."

"May be bigger than you think this time," was John's reply. "Anyway, we'll wait."

"And while you're all waiting," he added in a lower tone, "I'll hop down to Jerry's for two quarts of coffee and a sack of sinkers," and away he went.

"Coffee and doughnuts," Jimmie thought with a start. "That was what I was after. Wonder what became of that black bag? Bet that fellow got it."

His father was working late that night because of the heavy-weight boxing bout. Jimmie had begged permission to stay down-town and go home with him on the late theater train and permission had readily been granted. Later when Howard Drury, his father, was ready to start his story he had sent Jimmie out for refreshments. These were always carried in a small, black leather bag.

"Say!" Jimmie exploded suddenly, wheeling about to face Tom Howe, the young detective. "I'll bet I know why that Silent Terror came to pick on me."

"Why?" Tom Howe stared.

"I was carrying a small black bag."

"Sure, that's it," Tom agreed, quick to seize upon the clue. "Thought you were a messenger carrying money from some small theater to the central vault."

"That's it," Jimmie agreed.

This much decided upon they all lapsed into silence. They were a quiet group, these reporters and the detective, when there was nothing really serious to be talked about.

Jimmie now found time to think back over the days that had led up to this moment. Think, he did, and like all the thoughts of youth, his were long, long thoughts.

The old lady on the bridge had called Jimmie a "poor dear." She would not have called him that had she seen him streaking down the field for a touchdown last autumn. Jimmie had a small, almost childish face, but he was large, six feet in his stockings, 170 pounds, which is not bad for a 17-year-old high school boy.

But Jimmie was not all football. Truth is, he took football as a matter of duty. Loyalty to his school demanded it. Jimmie's interest was centered on cameras. When eight years old he had been taken to the Press photograph department. There he had asked Scottie McFadden so many and such astounding questions that at first Scottie stood staring and at last drove him, in a good-natured manner, from the place, declaring he'd be fired for getting no work done.

Jimmie's first hard-earned dollar had gone for a camera of a sort. For years after that all he could earn, beg or borrow went for cameras and equipment. His proudest hour came when, on his seventeenth birthday, his wealthy uncle Bob had presented him with a truly wonderful miniature camera.

"It's a Gnome," he confided to Scottie. "Takes twenty-four pictures in about as many seconds. Got a wide-angle lens that will almost take pictures in the dark. And fast! Say! There's not a camera made that's faster. It--it's a real dwarf."

"A Gnome, is it?" Scottie had drawled. "Well, you've got to show me, son. I don't go in for these baby cameras that you can lose in your pocket. Give me a box with a strap that goes over your shoulder and a ground glass at least three inches across. Candid camera, is it? Well, my camera is candid, too. See those pictures I took of the baseball boys in action?"

"Yes," said Jimmie. "They were great!"

"Sure they were," Scottie agreed. "And why? Because they were taken with a real camera."

Jimmie's chance to show Scottie what his Gnome would do came sooner than he had expected. With his father's aid he had secured a summer job with the Press as copy boy. The results had been surprising.

To many the job of copy boy would not prove exciting. To jump when someone in the large editorial room shouts, "Boy!", to go racing away to Miss Peter's desk on the third floor or Mr. Bill's on the seventh and to keep this up for long hours is tiring to say the least. Yet, for Jimmie, every office, the composing room, the roaring press-room held a charm all its own.

It was, however, his little candid camera that brought his great opportunity. Perhaps it was because he always jumped promptly while other boys lagged that John Nightingale began to take an interest in him. More than once he paused to chat with the lad. Then, one day, right out of a clear sky he leaped up from answering a phone call to exclaim:

"Come on, boy! You're drafted for something really big."

"I--I--what?" Jimmie stammered.

"Got your little camera, haven't you?"

"Yes, sure," Jimmie stared.

"Percy Palmer's been found dead. Come with us. You're going to take his picture."

"Percy Palmer, the millionaire? Oh, I--" Jimmie held back.

"Sure! Come on! You're drafted, I tell you."

And Jimmie went.

While they were on their way in a taxi John explained that two photographers were home sick and three out on big stories.

"So that left only you," John finished.

"Yes, I know, but I've seen some of your shots," John broke in. "They're good. Good enough for me. You wait. We're a full half hour ahead of the other papers. It will be a scoop. You'll see one of your pictures on the front page under a screaming head-line."

And he did.

That was not all there was to it either. Jimmie had just finished reading a book called, "Mysteries of Real Life." The part cameras have played in solving death mysteries had been told in this book in detail. After making the shots of the dead man required by the reporter, he took a number of others on his own. These pictures, when developed and enlarged, were presented to the coroner's jury and went far toward helping to prove that this was a case of suicide and not of murder.

After that, on many a summer afternoon Jimmie did not answer to the call of "Boy!", for he was not there, but was off with his good pal, John, shooting a story.

Needless to say, Jimmie went in stronger than ever for candid cameras. He haunted a shop window where telescopic lenses were displayed, spent many hours studying methods of taking pictures in the dark with the aid of infra-red rays and dreamed strange dreams of thrilling photographic adventures.

Needless to say, none of those dreams had been more fantastic than the thing that had just happened to him there on the bridge in the fog.

It had begun with a book he had read on his day off. For once he had abandoned camera craft and had lost himself in a western story of wild adventure. The hero of this story shot from the hips and always got his man.

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