Free Johnny Graphic and the Etheric Bomb by D. R. Martin Page B

best we can do. The guy who can handle a punch is the guy who will make it through. Now I suppose we’d better get going. Thanks for hosting this little clambake, Crider.”
    Crider put up his hand. “Just a moment, please. I’d like to speak with you four privately, now that Mr. Santangelo’s gone. Johnny, will you please shut the door?”
    Johnny did just that and returned to his seat.
    “What I’m about to tell you is for background only, a rumor of a rumor that I heard,” Crider said, his voice low, his eyes furtive.
    “Go on,” said Mr. Cargill.
    “Off the record? I can trust you all?”
    “Yes, sir, off the record and confidential,” the editor replied gravely. “Not a word you say will be published, let alone attributed to you. We’ll only use your information for deep background. Right Louie, right kids?”
    Johnny, Mel, and Uncle Louie all agreed.
    Johnny understood that Crider’s information—whatever it was—couldn’t be linked back to the lawman. But Mr. Cargill and his newspaper could use it for their investigation. It was a sacred trust for a newspaperman like Johnny to keep Crider’s secret.
    “If you ever quote me or attribute this information to me, I’ll deny I ever said it,” Crider warned.
    Mr. Cargill nodded. “What have you heard?”
    * * *
    “But why would the Ministry of War be interested in the Night Goose investigation?” Johnny asked.
    Johnny, Mel, Uncle Louie, and Mr. Cargill were huddled together in a battered, green-upholstered booth at the back of the Angry Trout Fishhouse—Johnny and Uncle Louie on one side, Mel and Mr. Cargill on the other. Servers in long white aprons rushed back and forth carrying trays covered with heaping plates of different kinds of fish.
    “Haven’t a clue,” said Mr. Cargill, shifting his unlit cigar to the opposite side of his mouth. “But if Crider heard true, some general somewhere thinks our ghost assassins are a real threat to the nation.”
    “But that doesn’t make any sense, Chief,” Johnny said. “As rotten as the Gesellschaft murders are, it’s gotta just be some kind of crime wave. I mean, what does it have to do with armies and navies and threats to the nation?”
    “That’s as may be,” Mr. Cargill replied. “But the Army and Air Corps don’t stick their noses into anything without very good reasons. And I’ve gotta admit, I’m even more intrigued by this affair than I was to start with. There’s a lot for our reporters to start checking out. Somehow, you two kids have touched a very raw nerve in the ministries down in Capital City.”
    Johnny nibbled on his big clubhouse sandwich and regarded Mel, sitting quietly across from him. He knew that look, when she knitted her eyebrows together and half closed her eyes. She was formulating an idea or…hiding something.
    “Mel, what is it?” he asked.
    Mel stared down into her bowl of catfish chowder. Then she sucked in a breath and sat up straight, pulling back her shoulders. “I have an idea,” she said. “I think I know why the Ministry of War might be interested in this business.”
    Mr. Cargill put down his cup of coffee and regarded the young woman with a questioning expression. “Go on, Melanie.”
    “I mean, heavens to Betsy…” Mel began. “It’s a preposterous idea. Something Mongke Eng wrote in the Annals of the Hausenhofer Gesellschaft back in ’32. Mongke was sort of a genius, you know.”
    Johnny nodded in agreement. His parents had worked with Mongke on several occasions and often said how much they had admired him. Mongke even helped Johnny’s pop with the research that transformed the art of medical diagnosis.
    “I believe that his article is why we’re all being targeted for death,” Mel continued. “Eliminate us, eliminate the copies of that issue of the Annals , and you could control the theoretical knowledge that the conspirators wish to own.”
    “Okay, then,” said Johnny, looking grim. “What does that mean, in ordinary English?