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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RADIO DETECTIVES ***
+[Illustration: “HELP! SEND FOR HELP!”]
+
+
+THE RADIO DETECTIVES
+
+by
+
+A. HYATT VERRILL
+
+Author of “The Deep Sea Hunters,”  “Isles of Spice
+and Palm,” “The Book of the Motor Boat,” etc.
+
+
+
+
+D. Appleton and Company
+New York :: 1922 :: London
+
+Copyright, 1922, by D. Appleton and Company
+
+Printed in the United States of America
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+    CHAPTER I—TOM TAKES UP RADIO
+    CHAPTER II—MYSTERIOUS MESSAGES
+    CHAPTER III—THE RADIO DETECTIVES
+    CHAPTER IV—THE BOYS DRAW A BLANK
+    CHAPTER V—THE UNDER-SEA WIRELESS
+    CHAPTER VI—THE RED MENACE
+    CHAPTER VII—THE CRY FROM THE DEPTHS
+    CHAPTER VIII—ASTOUNDING DISCOVERIES
+    CHAPTER IX—THE BATTLE BENEATH THE RIVER
+    CHAPTER X—RADIO WINS
+    CHAPTER XI—HENDERSON HAS AN INTERVIEW
+    CHAPTER XII—THE CONFESSION
+    CHAPTER XIII—RAWLINS’ PROPOSAL
+
+
+
+
+THE RADIO DETECTIVES
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I—TOM TAKES UP RADIO
+
+
+“Oh, Dad! I’ve made a new set,” cried Tom, as he entered the dining
+room.
+
+“That so, Son?” replied Mr. Pauling interestedly. “Seems to me you boys
+do nothing but junk your sets as fast as you make them and build others.
+Does this one work better than the last?”
+
+“It’s a peacherino!” declared Tom enthusiastically. “Just wait till you
+see it and listen to the music coming in.”
+
+“I’ll come up after dinner,” his father assured him. “Let me know when
+the fun begins. I’ve some papers to go over in the library first.”
+
+Throughout the meal the talk was all of radio, in which Tom and his boy
+friends had become madly interested and in which Tom’s father and mother
+had encouraged him.
+
+“Go to it, Tom,” his father had said when the boy had glowingly
+expatiated on the wonderful things he had heard on a friend’s instrument
+and had asked his father’s permission to get a set. “I’m glad you’re
+interested in it,” he had continued. “It’s going to be a big thing in
+the future and the more you learn about it the better. But begin at the
+beginning, Tom. Don’t be satisfied merely with buying instruments and
+using them. Learn the whole thing from the bottom up and use your
+mechanical ability to build instruments and to make improvements. Wish
+they’d had something as fascinating when I was a kid.”
+
+Tom had lost no time in availing himself of his father’s permission, and
+of the roll of bills which had accompanied it, and there was no prouder
+or more excited boy in Greater New York than Tom Pauling when he
+triumphantly brought home his little crystal receiving set and exhibited
+it to his parents.
+
+“I can’t understand how a little box with a few nickel-plated screws and
+some knobs can do all the things you say,” was his mother’s comment.
+“But then,” she added, “I never could understand anything mechanical or
+electrical. Even a phonograph or an electric light is all a mystery to
+me.”
+
+Mr. Pauling looked the instrument over carefully and listened
+attentively to Tom’s graphic explanation of detectors, tuners,
+condensers, etc.
+
+“H-m-m,” he remarked, “I guess I’ll have to take a back seat now, Son.
+You evidently have a pretty good grip on the fundamentals. Sorry I can’t
+help you any, but it’s all Greek to me, I admit.”
+
+“Oh, it’s all mighty simple,” Tom assured him. “Frank’s coming over this
+afternoon and we’re going to put up the aërial and then you and mother
+can hear the music and songs from Newark to-night.”
+
+But despite the fact that Mrs. Pauling declared it the most remarkable
+thing she had ever seen or heard, and his father complimented him, Tom
+was far from satisfied with his first set. He didn’t like the idea of
+being obliged to sit with head phones clamped to his ears in order to
+hear the music from the big broadcasting stations; he felt that it was
+mighty unsatisfactory for only one person to hear the sounds at one time
+and he soon found that despite every effort he was continually
+interrupted by calls and messages from near-by amateur stations.
+
+Being of a naturally inventive and mechanical mind and remembering his
+father’s advice to try to improve matters, he spent all his spare time
+studying the radio magazines, haunting the stores where radio supplies
+and instruments were sold and arguing about and discussing various
+devices and sets with his boy friends. Hardly a day passed that he did
+not arrive at his home carrying some mysterious package or bundle.
+Accompanied by his chum Frank, from the time school was over until late
+in the evening he kept himself secluded in his den while faint sounds of
+hammering or of animated conversation might have been heard within.
+
+“What’s all the mystery, Son?” his father had asked on one occasion.
+“Going to spring some big invention on an unsuspecting world?”
+
+Tom laughed. “Not quite, Dad,” he replied, “but I’m going to give you
+and mother a surprise pretty soon.”
+
+When at last all was ready and his parents were invited to Tom’s holy of
+holies they were indeed surprised. Upon a small table were various
+instruments and devices and a seeming tangle of wires, while, tucked
+away on a bookshelf, was the little crystal set which had so recently
+been Tom’s pride and joy.
+
+And still greater was their surprise when, after busying himself over
+the instruments, the faint sounds of music filled the room, coming
+mysteriously from the apparent odds and ends upon the table.
+
+“It’s all homemade,” Tom had explained proudly. “But it works. Frank and
+I rigged it up just as an experiment. Now I’m going to reassemble it and
+put it in a case and have a regular set.”
+
+“Wait a minute, Tom,” his father had interrupted. “You’ll have to
+explain a bit. If that lot of stuff can give so much better results than
+the set you bought, why didn’t you make it in the first place, and
+what’s the difference anyway?”
+
+“Well, you see, Dad,” Tom tried to explain, “I had to start at the
+bottom as you said and a crystal set’s the bottom. This is a vacuum tube
+set. Those things like little electric lights are the tubes and they’re
+the heart of the whole thing, and I’ve a one-step amplifier and that has
+to have another tube. I didn’t have enough pocket money to buy
+everything so Frank lent me some of his. You see it’s this way——”
+
+“Never mind about the technicalities,” laughed his father. “As I said
+before, go to it. Get what you need and keep busy. It’s a fine thing for
+you boys. Now turn her on again, or whatever you call it, and let’s hear
+some more music.”
+
+From that time, Tom’s progress was rapid although, as his father had
+jokingly remarked, the boy’s chief occupation appeared to be building
+sets one day only to tear them down and reconstruct them the next.
+
+Tom’s room had assumed the appearance of an electrical supply shop.
+Tools, wire, sheet brass, bakelite, hard rubber knobs, odds and ends of
+metal, coils and countless other things had taken the places of books,
+skates, baseball bats and papers, and the fiction magazines had given
+way to radio periodicals, blue prints and diagrams. Mrs. Pauling was in
+despair and complained to her husband that Tom was making a dreadful
+mess of his room and expressed fears that he might get hurt fooling with
+electricity.
+
+“Don’t you fret over that,” her husband had advised. “Tom and his
+friends are having the time of their lives. As long as they are learning
+something of value, what does it matter if they do keep his room in a
+mess? Besides, it’s clean dirt you know—and it’s orderly disorder if you
+know what I mean. They’re exploring a new world and haven’t time to look
+after such trifles as having a place for everything and everything in
+its place. That will come later. Just now they are fired with the zeal
+and enthusiasm of great inventors and scientists. We mustn’t interfere
+with them—such feelings come to human beings but once in a lifetime. I
+consider this radio craze the best thing for boys that ever occurred. It
+gives them an interest, it’s educational, it keeps them off the street
+and occupies their brains and hands at the same time. Do you know, if I
+didn’t have my time so fully occupied, I believe I’d get bitten by the
+bug myself. Besides, they may really discover something worth while. I
+was talking to Henderson of our staff to-day—he had charge of our radio
+work during the war—and he tells me some of the best inventions in radio
+have been made by amateurs—quite by accident too. I expect Tom knows
+that and that’s what makes the kids so keen on the subject—it’s a
+wonderful thought to feel you may stumble on some little thing that will
+revolutionize a great science at any moment.”
+
+“Yes, I suppose you’re right, Fred,” agreed Tom’s mother resignedly.
+“But I do wish it were possible to have boys amuse themselves without
+tracking shavings all over the halls and burning holes in their clothes
+and having grimy fingers.”
+
+But Tom’s mother need not have worried. Gradually order came out of
+chaos. As the boys progressed, they found that the accumulation of odds
+and ends and the disorder interfered with their work; many experimental
+instruments and devices had been discarded and were now tossed into a
+junk box in the closet; a neat work table with the tools handily
+arranged had been rigged up and Tom and Frank had developed a
+well-equipped and orderly little workshop with the completed instruments
+on an improvised bench under the window.
+
+Both Mr. and Mrs. Pauling had noticed the gradual improvement, as from
+time to time they had been summoned by Tom to witness demonstrations of
+the latest products of the boys’ brains and hands, and both parents
+congratulated the boys on their handiwork and the strides they had made.
+So, on the night when Tom had assured his father that his latest set was
+a “peacherino,” the two grownups entered a room which, as Mr. Pauling
+expressed it, reminded him of a wireless on a ship.
+
+And then, after Tom with the glowing eyes and flushed face of an
+inventor and the pride of a showman, had exhibited his latest
+achievement and had explained its mysteries in terms which were utterly
+unintelligible to his parents, they sat spellbound as the strains of a
+military band fairly filled the room.
+
+“Fine!” declared Mr. Pauling when the concert ended. “You have got a
+‘peacherino’ as you call it.”
+
+“Oh, that’s nothing,” declared Tom deprecatingly. “I can get Pittsburgh
+and I can get spark messages from Cuba and Canada, and last night I
+picked up a message from Balboa. I’ll hear England and France before I’m
+satisfied.”
+
+“Bully!” exclaimed his father. “Tell you what I’ll do. I’m off to Cuba
+and the Bahamas, Monday, you know. I’ll radio from the ship on the way
+down and after I get there you can see if you can pick up my messages
+direct and can talk back.”
+
+“Oh, I can’t do that, yet,” declared Tom. “I haven’t a sending set. You
+have to get a license for that, but I’m going to get at it right away.
+It will be fine to be able to hear you. I’ll bet I can get your messages
+from Cuba and Nassau. Say, it will be almost like hearing you talk.”
+
+“How shall I address them?” chuckled his father. “Tom Pauling, The Air?”
+
+“Gee! I hadn’t thought of that,” ejaculated Tom. “I haven’t any call
+letters—only sending stations have them—I’ve got it! When you send a
+message, just address it as if it were a regular message and then I’ll
+know it’s for me. And send them the same time every time—then I’ll be
+sure to be here and waiting to get them.”
+
+“Righto,” agreed his father. “I’ll be sending a good many official
+messages, I expect, and I can get them all off together each day—say
+7:45. How will that be?”
+
+“That’ll be fine,” assented Tom. “I’ll be here at half-past seven every
+night listening. Say, Dad, do you suppose those smuggler fellows use
+radio?”
+
+“Why, I don’t know; what made you ask?”
+
+“Oh, I just happened to think of it,” replied Tom. “I guess your
+speaking of sending official messages and starting for Cuba and the
+Bahamas just put it in my head.”
+
+“Well, if we don’t find how they’re getting liquor into the States by
+wholesale pretty quick, I’ll begin to think they’re sending the booze in
+by radio,” laughed Mr. Pauling. “It’s the most mysterious thing we’ve
+been up against yet. Can’t get a clue. Perhaps they are using radio to
+warn one another, or maybe they’re onto our codes. Suppose you keep
+track of any odd messages you hear, Tom. I don’t suppose there’s
+anything in it, but it will give you another interest and one never
+knows what may happen through chance or accident. Remember that coup I
+told you about that we made during the war—that meaningless message that
+passed all the censors and that, by pure accident, led to the capture of
+the worst lot of German plotters in the country?”
+
+But Frank had not heard the story and so, from radio, the conversation
+drifted to Mr. Pauling’s experiences as an officer of the Department of
+Justice during the war and from that to his present problem of tracing
+to its source the mysterious influx of liquor which was flooding New
+York and other ports despite every effort of the government to stop it.
+
+It was on this work that he was leaving for the West Indies, and long
+after he and Mrs. Pauling had left the room, Tom and Frank remained,
+talking earnestly, and with boyish imagination discussing the
+possibilities of aiding the government through picking up some stray
+information from the air by means of their instruments.
+
+“We ought to have better sets,” declared Tom. “These are all right for
+getting the broadcasted entertainments and spark signals, but we can’t
+get the long waves from the big stations. And we don’t always get
+farther than Arlington or Pittsburgh with this. Last night, we heard
+Balboa, but the night before that we couldn’t get Havana. If we’re going
+to hear Dad from Nassau or Cuba we want a set we can depend upon.”
+
+“I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” replied Frank. “Let’s put everything that
+we both have together and have a fine set here in your room. I’ll bring
+my stuff down and we can work together—have duplicate sets and
+everything—and I’ll just keep that little old set of mine so I can use
+it when I happen to be home.”
+
+“That’s a good idea,” agreed Tom, “Dad’s so interested in our work I can
+spend a lot more money on instruments and he won’t mind and school will
+soon be over and we can devote all our time to it. Gosh, I bet we have
+the best sets of any boys in the whole of New York! Say, won’t it be
+great when we can hear messages from England and Germany and France?”
+
+“Yes, and we want to get busy on a sending set too. It’s twice as much
+fun when we can talk to others as well as hear them. And say! my folks
+are going to Europe next month. If your mother and father don’t mind I
+could stay here with you.”
+
+“That’s bully! Of course mother won’t mind and Dad will be glad to have
+you,” declared Tom. “We’re not going any place this summer and so we can
+give all our vacation to radio. Say, we may make some big discovery or
+invention. I was reading the other day about how many things there are
+to be done in radio yet and the fellow that wrote it said he believed
+some of the big things would be discovered by boys or beginners
+accidentally.”
+
+Mrs. Pauling was very glad to have Frank plan to stay with Tom while his
+parents were absent and for several days the two boys were busy packing
+up Frank’s radio outfits and carrying them to Tom’s house.
+
+When at last everything was there the boys had a veritable treasure
+trove of materials, for Frank had not been stinted in the amount he
+could spend on good tools, supplies and instruments and, while he did
+not possess the mechanical or inventive ability of Tom, yet he was a
+very careful and painstaking worker and everything he had was of the
+best.
+
+Tom, on the other hand, preferred to make everything himself and,
+although his father was willing to let him have any sum within reason to
+carry on his radio work, he spent most of the money for tools and
+supplies and had built a number of special instruments which even Frank
+admitted were big improvements over ready-made devices. In addition, he
+had a very complete library of radio books as well as scrapbooks filled
+with clippings from the radio columns of the various newspapers and
+periodicals. Hence the two boys made most excellent partners for
+carrying on their experiments and building their sets. Fortunately, too,
+they were not the type of boys who soon become tired of a subject and
+take up one fad after another and, while they were both strong,
+red-blooded, out-of-door boys, always ready for the most strenuous
+games, long hikes or hunting and fishing, they found radio so much more
+fascinating than football, baseball or other sports that practically
+everything else had been abandoned.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+MYSTERIOUS MESSAGES
+
+
+For the next few days the boys were very busy perfecting their
+instruments and, when Mr. Pauling bade Tom and his mother good-by and
+sailed southward, Tom assured him that he would be able to pick up any
+messages he sent.
+
+“Maybe I’ll surprise you by sending a message,” he declared. “I’m going
+to apply for a license next week and make a sending set. Of course it
+won’t be able to send clear to Cuba or Nassau, but freak messages _do_
+go long distances sometimes and anyway, I can get in touch with your
+ship before you reach port coming back.”
+
+“Great!” exclaimed his father heartily. “And don’t forget about stray
+messages—you may help us out yet. I spoke to Henderson about your idea
+that the bootleggers were using radio and he says he should not be a bit
+surprised. They’re right up to date in their methods, you know.”
+
+That evening, Tom and Frank hurried to their sets promptly at 7:30
+accompanied by Mrs. Pauling who seemed as interested as the boys in the
+result of their first attempt to pick up a message intended for them.
+She was rather disappointed, however, when Tom clamped on his phones and
+told her she wouldn’t be able to hear anything.
+
+“You see,” he explained, “if the message comes in, it will be just code
+signal—dots and dashes in International Morse—and wouldn’t mean anything
+to you and I might miss it if I used the loud speaker.”
+
+Slowly the minutes slipped by. From out of the silent air came various
+sounds to the boys’ impatient ears—little buzzing dots and dashes from
+local stations; the faint sounds of a phonograph from some amateur’s
+radiophone; fragments of speech from a broadcasting station. Carefully
+the two waiting, expectant boys tuned their instruments, for they had
+taken the precaution of asking the wireless operator on the ship what
+wave length he used and with their sets tuned as nearly to this as
+possible they cut out the amateur senders with their short wave lengths
+and the broadcasting stations with their evening entertainments on 360
+meter waves and heard only the meaningless or uninteresting Morse
+messages passing from ships to shore or vice versa.
+
+Over and over Tom and Frank glanced anxiously at the little
+nickel-plated clock ticking merrily on its shelf, until at last the
+hands pointed to 7:45 and the boys fairly thrilled with excitement.
+Would they hear the message from the speeding ship? Would they pick up
+that one message that they were expecting? Would they, in a moment more,
+be listening to the dots and dashes that represented Mr. Pauling’s
+words? Neither boy was yet expert at reading Morse if sent rapidly, but
+the wireless man aboard the _Havana_ had laughingly agreed to send Mr.
+Pauling’s messages slowly and the boys were not worried on that score.
+
+Suddenly, to Tom’s ears, came a sharp buzz—faint and blurred, and with
+trembling fingers he tuned his set, adjusted the variable condenser and
+as the short, staccato sounds grew sharp, loud and clear he knew that
+the long-hoped-for message was coming to his ears. “Dah, dah dah dah,
+dah dah, dee dah dah dee, dee dah, dee dee dah, dee dah dee dee, dee
+dee, dah dee, dah dah dee,” came the dots and dashes, sent slowly as if
+by an amateur and mentally Tom translated them. Yes, there was no doubt
+of it, TOM PAULING were the words the dots and dashes spelled and Tom’s
+heart beat a trifle faster and his face flushed with excitement as he
+heard his own name coming out of space and realized that, across a
+hundred miles and more of tossing sea, his father was talking to him and
+steadily he jotted down the letters as they buzzed in dots and dashes
+through the air from the distant ship.
+
+“Hurrah!” he fairly yelled, as with the final “dee dah dee dah dee” the
+operator signified that the message was finished. “Hurrah! I got it.
+See, here ’tis, Mother!”
+
+Frank also had received the message on his set and the two compared the
+letters they had written down.
+
+“Of course we made some mistakes,” explained Tom as his mother puzzled
+over the unpunctuated, apparently meaningless letters. “See,” he
+continued, “you have to separate the letters into words and sentences
+and this one should be an “N” instead of an “A” and I guess this is a
+“D” instead of a “B,” Frank’s got it that way. One’s a dash and three
+dots and the other’s a dash and two dots.”
+
+As he spoke, Tom was busily copying the letters and forming words and
+presently showed his mother the finished message. “That’s it,” he
+announced proudly. “Just think of Dad talking to us—and he’ll do it
+every night all the way down and after he gets there. Gosh! It’s funny
+to think we can hear from him that way. Say, isn’t radio great?”
+
+“But I thought you could hear him talking,” said his mother in rather
+disappointed tones. “He could send messages that way by the regular
+radio companies or by cable.”
+
+“Of course he could,” agreed Tom somewhat disturbed because his mother
+was not more enthusiastic over his achievement. “But you see the fun is
+in getting it ourselves this way. It wouldn’t be any sport to have the
+messages brought in an envelope like ordinary telegrams. Gee! I just
+wish we could hear him talk over the phones. Some of the ships have
+talked with the shore farther away than he is, but I guess the
+_Havana’s_ radio isn’t up-to-date.”
+
+“I think it’s fine and splendid of you boys to be able to do this,”
+declared his mother. “What I meant was, that I had expected to hear your
+father’s voice and I really _was_ disappointed when I found it was so
+different.”
+
+“Well, I’m going to fix a set to talk back to him,” said Tom. “And just
+as soon as I get the sending set done we’ll get to work and make a
+better receiving set, won’t we, Frank?”
+
+“You bet!” agreed Frank. “Perhaps by the time your father is on the way
+back we can really talk to him.”
+
+“Now let’s have some music,” suggested Tom, and for the next hour they
+all listened to the broadcasting station’s program as the loud speaker
+filled the room with the sounds of music, singing, speeches and news.
+
+For the next three nights the two boys picked up Mr. Pauling’s messages
+regularly and were as proud as peacocks when they managed to get the
+first message from Havana telling of his safe arrival in Cuba. And by
+their enthusiastic studies and the practice they gained by deciphering
+the messages, the boys were successful in passing the required
+examination and proudly exhibited their license to maintain and operate
+a sending station.
+
+It was a red letter day in their lives when they at last had the
+transmitting set in working order and flashed a message into the night,
+to have it promptly answered by an unknown boy in Garden City. Each
+night, too, they sent out messages directed to their father in the vain
+hope that, by some chance or by the same mysterious combination of
+conditions which had wafted other messages to vast distances beyond the
+range of the instruments, their words might be picked up in Havana or
+Nassau; but no reply came and at last they gave up in despair.
+
+Then, their sending set being no longer a novelty, the boys set
+diligently to work on other matters and worked early and late.
+
+“What on earth is that?” asked Tom’s mother, when finally the new
+idea had assumed concrete form and she was invited to witness a
+demonstration. “It looks like some sort of a huge birdcage,” she
+continued as she seated herself and glanced at the wooden framework
+wound with wire that stood on a small table.
+
+“Well, I don’t suppose you can understand,” replied Tom, with the
+superior air of one who is master of an art beyond ordinary
+comprehension, “but I’ll try to explain. That’s a loop aërial.”
+
+“But I thought the aërial was that wire clothesline-like affair on the
+roof,” objected Mrs. Pauling. “You see,” she laughed, “I _am_ beginning
+to learn a little.”
+
+Tom grinned, “Oh, yes, that’s an aërial, too,” he replied. “But this is
+another kind. With this we don’t need any ground or lead-ins or
+lightning switches. And it’s directional too. That is,” he hastened to
+explain, “by turning it one way or another we can pick up signals from
+certain directions and not from others. Some people call them compass
+aërials and they’re used on ships for locating other vessels or for
+finding their way. And besides, they cut out a lot of static.”
+
+“Now please, Tom, what _is_ all this you’re talking about? What _is_
+static?”
+
+“Well that’s mighty hard to explain,” said Tom, scratching his head
+reflectively. “It’s a sort of electricity in the air—lots of it around
+when there are thunderstorms and lightning.”
+
+“Lightning!” exclaimed his mother. “Do be careful, fooling with all
+these things, Tom. I’m always afraid you’ll get a fearful shock or
+something.”
+
+“Nonsense,” laughed Tom. “Static doesn’t hurt any one and lightning
+won’t do any harm. An aërial is just like a lightning-rod and if it’s
+struck the lightning is just carried down to the ground harmlessly; but
+this loop aërial’s different. Now let’s hear how it works.”
+
+Adjusting the instruments and attaching the loud-speaker, Tom slowly
+turned the cagelike affair about and suddenly, as it faced the west, the
+sounds of music burst out from the horn.
+
+“There ’tis!” cried Tom, exultantly. “That’s Newark. Now, see here.” As
+he spoke, he swung the loop aërial to one side, and instantly, the music
+died out. “Now, listen carefully,” he continued and turned the loop
+slowly around until, somewhat fainter, the sounds of a human voice came
+from the loud-speaker. “That’s Pittsburgh,” declared Tom. “Now you see
+how it works. If it’s turned towards Newark we get Newark and if towards
+Pittsburgh we get that.”
+
+“Yes, it’s all very interesting,” admitted his mother. “But what
+advantage is it? You used to hear both Newark and Pittsburgh with the
+aërial on the roof.”
+
+“Oh, it’s no advantage for ordinary work,” replied Tom. “But it’s a fine
+thing in some ways. Now, for instance, if we heard a fellow’s message
+and didn’t know where it came from we could tell by turning this back
+and forth until we got his direction. Then, if we wanted to locate him
+exactly, we could put it up somewhere else and in that way we could find
+out just where he was. Frank and I have a particular scheme in hand, but
+that’s a secret and I’m not ready to tell it yet.”
+
+His mother laughed. “I’m not a bit curious,” she declared. “I suppose
+some day I’ll wake up to find you two boys have astonished the world.”
+
+But had Frank and Tom told Mrs. Pauling what their secret was she would
+have been both curious and surprised. Several times within the preceding
+weeks the boys, listening at their instruments, had received messages
+which they could not locate. At first they had given no heed to these,
+thinking they were merely from some amateur, but when, after repeated
+requests for the unknown’s call letters, no answer was received and the
+messages abruptly ceased, the two boys began to be curious.
+
+“There’s something mighty funny about him,” declared Frank. “Every time
+we answer him or ask a question he shuts up like a clam. Say, Tom, maybe
+he’s a crook or a bootlegger.”
+
+“More likely some amateur sending without a license and afraid the
+government inspector will get after him,” suggested Tom. “But I _would_
+like to find out who it is.”
+
+A few days later Frank, who was poring over the latest issue of a radio
+magazine, uttered an exclamation. “Gosh! here’s the scheme,” he cried.
+“Now we can find out who that mysterious chap is.”
+
+“What’s the big idea?” queried Tom, who was busy making a new
+vario-coupler.
+
+“Loop aërial,” replied his chum. “Here’s an article all about it. It
+says they’re used aboard ships to find the location of other vessels and
+are called compass aërials.”
+
+Tom dropped his work and hurried to Frank’s side.
+
+“Well,” he remarked, after a few moments’ study of the article and the
+diagrams, “I don’t see how that would work in our case. It says one ship
+can find another or can work its way into port by using the loop aërial
+like a compass, but the trouble is the ship’s moving and so the thing
+will work, but we can’t go running around New York City or the state
+with a set in one hand and a big loop aërial in the other.”
+
+“No,” admitted Frank rather regretfully, “but we can tell in which
+direction his station is.”
+
+“Yes, and it will be fun to make one and experiment with it,” agreed
+Tom, “especially as the article says the thing cuts out static and
+interferences and it’s getting on towards warm weather now when the air
+will be full of static.”
+
+“Well, let’s make one then,” suggested Frank.
+
+As a result, the boys had constructed their loop aërial and a special
+set to go with it and the very first time they tested the odd affair
+they were overjoyed at the result. Again they had picked up the messages
+which had aroused their curiosity and, by turning the loop one way and
+then another, they were soon convinced that the sender had a station to
+the southeast of their own.
+
+“Well, that’s settled,” announced Tom, “and the only things southeast of
+here are the East Side, the river and Brooklyn. That fellow is not far
+away—he’s using a very short wave and his messages are strong. I’ll bet
+he’s right here in New York.”
+
+“I guess you’re right,” agreed Frank, “but that doesn’t do much good.
+There’s an awful lot of the city southeast from here.”
+
+“Sure there is,” said Tom, “but, after all, what do we care. I still
+think he’s just some unlicensed chap—probably some kid over on the East
+Side who can’t pass an examination or get a license and is just having a
+little fun on the quiet.”
+
+This conversation took place two days before Tom received his father’s
+message telling of his safe arrival in Cuba and no more messages from
+the mysterious stranger were heard until the day after Mr. Pauling’s
+message had been received.
+
+Then, as Tom was listening at the loop aërial set and idly turned the
+aërial about, he again picked up the well-known short-wave messages.
+Heretofore the messages had been meaningless sentences in code, dots and
+dashes which the boys out of curiosity had jotted down only to find them
+devoid of any interest—items regarding shipping which Tom had declared
+had been culled from the daily shipping lists and were being sent merely
+for practice—and so now, from mere habit, Tom wrote down the letters as
+they came to him over the instruments. Suddenly he uttered a surprised
+whistle.
+
+“Gee Whittaker!” he exclaimed in low tones. “Come here, Frank.”
+
+The other hurried to him and as he glanced at the pad on the table
+beside Tom he too gave an ejaculation of surprise. The letters which Tom
+had jotted down were as follows: LEAR P IN HAVANA ARRIVED YESTERDAY GET
+BUSY.
+
+“They _are_ rum runners!” cried Tom as the signals ceased.
+
+“Gosh, I believe they are!” agreed Frank. “But of course,” he added, “it
+may not mean your father by ‘P’ and we don’t know the first part of the
+message. Maybe they were just talking about a ship—that ‘lear’ might
+have been something about a ship clearing for some place.”
+
+“You _are_ a funny one,” declared Tom. “Here you’ve been insisting all
+along that there was some deep mystery or plot behind these messages and
+I’ve said it was just some amateur and nothing to it and now, just as
+soon as we get a message which really means something, you shift around
+and say it’s only about some boat.”
+
+“Well, if it’s anything secret why do they talk plain English?” asked
+Frank. “That’s what makes me change my views. When they were sending
+things that sounded like nonsense I thought they might be code messages,
+but now that they send things that are so plain it doesn’t seem
+mysterious.”
+
+“Yes, there’s sense in that argument, I admit,” replied Tom. “But
+perhaps there was just as much sense in the others—if they _are_
+bootleggers. Of course as you say, they may not mean anything about Dad,
+but it would be a mighty funny coincidence if any one or anything else
+beginning with ‘P’ arrived in Havana yesterday and it happened to come
+in with this message and with a ‘get busy’ after it. I’ll bet you,
+Frank, they’re smugglers and that’s a message to some boat or something
+that the coast’s clear and to unload their stuff. Let’s go down and tell
+Mr. Henderson about it.”
+
+“No,” Frank advised. “He’d probably laugh at us and it wouldn’t be any
+use to him anyhow. We’ll keep the message and all others we hear and if
+anything else is going on we’ll get some more messages, you can bet. And
+I’ve a scheme, Tom. I know a fellow down at Gramercy Park and we can go
+down there and set up a loop aërial and see if this chap that’s talking
+is still southeast of there.”
+
+“That’s a bully scheme!” cried Tom with enthusiasm. “We can turn radio
+detectives—that’ll be great! And if we find he’s north or west or east
+of Gramercy Square we can try some other place. Probably your friend
+knows fellows who have sets all around that part of the city.”
+
+The next day they visited Frank’s friend and after making him promise
+secrecy they divulged a part of their plan, omitting, at Tom’s
+suggestion, any reference to their suspicions of the messages coming
+from a gang of bootleggers. Henry fell in readily with the idea of
+locating the messages, which he had also heard repeatedly, and was
+deeply interested in the loop aërial. He had an excellent set and
+numerous instruments and supplies and the three boys soon rigged up a
+compass set in Henry’s home.
+
+“Now, you listen with this and try to pick him up,” instructed Frank.
+“Keep turning the aërial about in this way and, as soon as you hear him,
+write down what he says. We’ll listen too, whenever we have a chance,
+and will let you know. Then, if you haven’t picked him up, you can turn
+the loop until you do. Too bad you haven’t a sending set so you could
+tell us.”
+
+“But he’ll hear you and quit,” objected Henry, “and how can I hear you
+if I don’t happen to have the loop pointed your way or am listening to
+this fellow?”
+
+Frank looked puzzled. “Gee!” he ejaculated, “I hadn’t thought of that.
+
+“Oh, that’s easy,” declared Tom. “You’ll hear us over the other set with
+the loud-speaker you have. That works with a regular aërial and is
+entirely separate from this set. And we’ll arrange a code so he won’t
+know what we’re talking about. Let’s see, I guess we’d better use the
+phone and not send dot and dash, we’ll just say ‘we’ve got the message’
+and you’ll know what it means.”
+
+“No, that’s no good,” declared Frank. “That’s not a bit mysterious or
+exciting. We’re radio detectives, you know. We must have something like
+a password or code or something. Say, let’s begin with ‘loop,’ then
+Henry’ll know we mean him. We’ll say ‘loop, be ready to receive.’”
+
+“Yes, and have him know something’s wrong when we don’t begin to send
+anything,” said Tom.
+
+“I have it!” exclaimed Henry, “Say, ‘loop, coming over,’ and then any
+one’ll think you are telling me you are coming over here. But say,
+how’ll I get your message if I don’t sit at my set and tune to you?”
+
+“That’s easy,” said Frank. “Just as soon as we get home to Tom’s we’ll
+begin to send and you listen and tune until you get us good and loud and
+then mark your knobs so you can set ’em whenever you want to hear us.
+Then ring us by regular phone and tell us it’s O. K.”
+
+Thus, all being arranged, Tom and Frank went up town and as soon as they
+reached Tom’s room began to send calls for Henry as they had agreed.
+Very soon the telephone bell rang and Tom ran to the instrument.
+
+“It’s all right, Frank,” he announced as he returned to the room. “Henry
+says he got our calls finely and has marked his knobs. He’s going to
+turn them about and then set them back at the marks and we’re to call
+him again. Then if he gets us right off he’ll know he won’t miss us next
+time.”
+
+When, a few minutes later, the phone rang again and Henry told Tom that
+the message had come in on the adjusted set the boys felt sure that
+their fellow conspirator would not miss any calls they might send him.
+So, having nothing else to do, they worked at another step of
+amplification for their new set, and listened for any signals or
+messages that might come in from the person whom they were endeavoring
+to trail by means of radio.
+
+Evidently, however, the mysterious stranger had no business to transact
+and no message from him was received. When at last they were obliged to
+leave for dinner they phoned to Henry who reported that he had been
+listening all the afternoon, but had heard nothing.
+
+“We’ll get at it again to-night,” said Tom. “Most of the messages we’ve
+heard come in just when the broadcasting stations are giving their
+concerts. I’d bet he takes that time so nobody will hear him, or pay
+attention to him. If they’re all tuned to 360 meters they’d never know
+he was talking, you see, and if they just chanced to hear him they’d be
+too busy with the music to bother with him.”
+
+As Tom had suspected, the mysterious messages did come in that night and
+so interesting and exciting did they prove to the boys’ imaginative and
+suspicious minds that they were thankful they had foregone the pleasure
+of hearing the concert on the chance of the supposed smugglers talking.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE RADIO DETECTIVES
+
+
+The instant the boys recognized the long-awaited signals, Frank called
+Henry and notified him as agreed and, to their delight and satisfaction,
+the mysterious stranger continued to talk, evidently paying no heed to
+the seemingly innocent words of the boys, if indeed he had heard them.
+
+As heretofore, much that was said meant nothing to the boys, but wisely
+they jotted every thing down nevertheless. However, both Tom and Frank
+were more puzzled than ever, for now that their minds were concentrated
+on the messages they suddenly realized that a true conversation, an
+interchange of messages, was going on, but, for some inexplicable
+reason, they could hear but one of the speakers. It was like listening
+to one individual talking to another over an ordinary telephone and the
+boys could merely guess at the words of the inaudible speaker.
+
+“Yes, it’s all right,” came the words on the easily recognized short
+waves, “thirty-eight fifty seventy-seven; yes, that’s it. Still there.
+Gave them the ha, ha! Azalia. Can’t get anything on her. How about
+Colon? French Islands? Sure, they’re just about crazy. No, no fear of
+that. Good stuff. No, no rough stuff. Expect her at same place about the
+tenth. No, don’t hang around. Cleared the third. Fifteen seconds west.
+I’ll tell him. Good bottom. Good luck! Don’t worry, we’ll see to that.
+No risk. So long!”
+
+As the conversation ceased Tom jumped up. “Gee!” he exclaimed. “That’s
+the most we’ve heard yet. I wonder if Henry got it.”
+
+Hurrying to the telephone, he was about to call Henry when the bell
+tinkled. “Hello!”—came the greeting in Henry’s voice as Tom took down
+the receiver. “This is Henry. Say, did you get it?”
+
+“You bet we did!” Tom assured him gleefully. “What did you make out? No,
+guess you’d better not tell over the phone. We’ll be down there right
+away.”
+
+“He’s east of here,” declared Henry, when Tom and Frank reached his
+home.
+
+“Golly, he must be in Brooklyn or out on the river!” exclaimed Tom.
+“What did you make out that he said?”
+
+Henry showed them the message as he had jotted it down and which, with
+the exception of one or two words, was identical with what they had
+heard.
+
+“I couldn’t catch some of the words,” explained Henry. “There was a
+funny sort of noise—like some one talking through a comb with paper on
+it,—the way we used to do when we were little kids—say, what’s it all
+about anyway?”
+
+“We don’t know,” replied Frank. “Did you hear any one else talking or
+anything?”
+
+“And, Henry, were the sounds weak or faint to you?” put in Tom.
+
+“Only that queer sound I told you about. The words were fine and strong
+here.”
+
+“Then he’s nearer here than he is to us,” announced Tom. “But I would
+like to know who the other fellow was and what he said and why the
+dickens we can’t hear him when we hear this chap. Couldn’t you make out
+any of the words that the fellow said—those that sounded like talking
+through a comb, I mean?”
+
+“No, they were just a sort of buzzy mumble,” replied Henry.
+
+“Well if he’s east of here it ought to be easy to locate him,” remarked
+Frank. “Do you know any fellows around here who have sets, Henry?”
+
+“Sure there are lots of ’em,” Henry assured him. “Tom Fleming over at
+Bellevue has a dandy set and there’s ‘Pink’ Bradley down on 19th St.,
+and Billy Fletcher up on Lexington Ave., and a whole crowd I don’t
+know.”
+
+“Well, let’s try it out at Fleming’s place next, then,” cried Frank. “Do
+you s’pose you can see him to-morrow and tell him the scheme? And say,
+ask him if he’s heard the same talk.”
+
+“I can phone over to him now—I guess he’s home,” said Henry, “but what’s
+back of all this? You fellows aren’t so keen just because you want to
+locate this fellow that’s been talking, I’ll bet.”
+
+Tom hesitated, but in a moment his mind was made up.
+
+“I suppose we might just as well tell you,” he said at last. “But it’s a
+secret and you’ll have to promise not to tell any one else.”
+
+Henry readily agreed and Tom and Frank told him all they knew and what
+they suspected.
+
+“Whew!” ejaculated Henry. “I shouldn’t be surprised if you’re right. I
+couldn’t see any sense to all that talk about boats and the West Indies
+and numbers, but I can now. I’ll bet those numbers were places out at
+sea—fifteen seconds west—and ‘Azalia’ may be the name of the ship. Say,
+won’t it be bully if we can find out something—radio detectives—Gee,
+that’s great!”
+
+“Well, go on and call up Fleming,” said Frank. “Tell him to come over
+here.”
+
+“He’s on the way now,” Henry announced when he returned to the room.
+“Are you fellows going to let him in on the bootlegger stuff?”
+
+“Better not,” advised Tom. “If he’s heard the fellow talking we can tell
+him we’re just anxious to locate him. We can make a mystery out of not
+hearing the person that was talking back, you know.”
+
+“It’s a mystery all right enough,” put in Frank. “If that other chap can
+hear him, why can’t we? There’s something mighty queer about it.”
+
+“Search me,” replied Tom laconically. “Maybe he talks on a different
+wave length.”
+
+“I never thought of that,” admitted Frank. “Say, next time they’re
+talking one of us will listen while the other tunes to try and pick up
+the other man.”
+
+“And perhaps he’s in a different direction,” suggested Henry. “If he is
+of course we wouldn’t hear him with our loops pointed towards this
+fellow.”
+
+“Of course!” agreed Tom. “We _have_ been boobs. Just as like as not the
+one we didn’t hear is over to the west or the north and we were all
+listening to the southeast. Say, you’ve got sense, old man. Next time we
+hear this chap we’ll nab the other one, I bet. Hello! There’s the bell.”
+
+Henry hurried from the room and returned presently, accompanied by
+another boy whom he introduced as Jim Fleming. Jim was undersized and
+round-shouldered with damp, reddish hair and big blue eyes behind
+horn-rimmed glasses. He had a most disconcerting manner of staring at
+one and constantly blinking and gulping—like a dying fish Frank declared
+later—and his hands and wrists seemed far too long for his sleeves. He
+was such a queer, gawky-looking chap that the boys could scarcely resist
+laughing, but before they had talked with him five minutes they had
+taken a great fancy to him and found he knew a lot about radio.
+
+While the boys told him of their interest in the strange conversations,
+he stood listening, his long arms dangling at his sides, his big eyes
+blinking and his half-open mouth gulping spasmodically until Tom became
+absolutely fascinated watching him.
+
+Mentally, Frank and Tom had dubbed him a “freak,” a “simp,” a “bookworm”
+and half a dozen far from complimentary names and they had expected to
+hear him speak “like a professor,” as Tom would have expressed it.
+Instead he uttered a yell like a wild Indian, danced an impromptu jig
+and to the boys’ amazement exclaimed:
+
+“Hully Gee! So youse’s onto that boid too! Say, fellers, isn’t he the
+candy kid though? Spielin’ on that flapper wave an’ cannin’ his gab if
+youse ask his call. Say, that boid oughter be up to the flooey ward—he’s
+bughouse I’ll say, with all his ship talk and numbers jazzed up an’
+chinnin’ to himself. Say, did youse ever hear a bloke talkin’ to him?”
+
+“No, we never did,” replied Tom. “Did you?”
+
+“Nix!” answered Jim. “That’s why I say he’s got rats in his
+garret—flooey I’ll say—” Then, suddenly dropping his slangy East Side
+expressions, he continued: “Say, he’s had me guessing, too. But I can
+tell you one thing. He’s west of my place—I’m over at Bellevue, you
+know—Dad’s stationed there—and that’ll bring him somewhere between East
+27th St. and Gramercy Square.”
+
+“But, how on earth do you know that?” queried Tom in surprise.
+
+Jim grinned and blinked.
+
+“Same way you found out he was east of here,” he replied. “You needn’t
+think you fellows have got any patent on a loop, I’ve been usin’ one for
+six months. Ed—he’s my brother—is ‘Sparks’ on a big liner and showed me
+about it. But honest, if that fellow isn’t crazy an’ talkin’ to himself,
+why don’t we get the other guy sometimes?”
+
+“That’s the mystery to us,” said Frank. “We decided just before you came
+in that the other fellow must be sending on a different wave length or
+else was in some other direction. We were just planning to pick him up
+by one of us tuning and turning the loop while the others listened to
+this fellow, but if you hear this man west of your place that knocks one
+of our theories out. If the other chap was west you’d get him, too.”
+
+“Yep, and ’tisn’t because he’s on a different length,” declared Jim.
+“Hully Gee, I’ve tuned everywhere from 1500 meters down trying to get
+him, and nothin’ doin’.”
+
+“Didn’t you ever hear a funny sound like talking through a comb with
+paper on it?” asked Henry.
+
+“Sure, sometimes I do,” admitted Jim, “but you can’t bring it in as
+chatter—I put it down to induction or somethin’—but Gee, come to think
+of it, it always does come in just right between this looney’s
+sentences.”
+
+“I’ll bet ’tis the other fellow,” declared Henry. “Only if ’tis he’s got
+an awful wheeze in his throat or his transmitter’s cracked.”
+
+“Well, let’s drop that and plan how we can locate this fellow we do
+hear,” suggested Frank.
+
+“Yes, now we know he’s between your place and here we ought to find some
+place where we can set up a loop to the north and south,” said Tom.
+
+“Sure, we can fix that,” declared Jim. “I’ve got a cousin that lives
+over on 23d St. and there’s a good scout named Lathrop over on 26th. We
+can take sets to their places and put ’em up. They haven’t anything but
+crystal sets, and most likely they’ll know other guys and by trying out
+at different places we can spot his hangout all right. But say, what are
+you fellows so keen about findin’ him for?”
+
+“Oh, nothing except the fun of it,” replied Tom, trying to act and speak
+in a casual manner. “You see we’re just experimenting to find out what
+we can do with loop aërials—call ourselves radio detectives—and we
+picked on this fellow because his messages seemed sort of mysterious and
+are so easily recognized.”
+
+“Yea, I understand,” said Jim. “Say that’s a lulu of an idea—radio
+detectives. Well, I’ll bet we can detect this bughousey guy O. K.”
+
+It was soon arranged that Jim was to see his cousin and that one of the
+boys’ loops would be set up in his home the following evening and that,
+while Jim and Frank listened there, Henry and Tom would be at their sets
+and would call out as soon as they heard the messages from the
+mysterious speaker. All was arranged, but to the boys’ intense chagrin
+not a sound came to any of them which remotely resembled the well-known
+voice and short wave lengths of the man they were striving to locate.
+But they were not discouraged, for they knew from past experience that
+they could not expect to hear him every night.
+
+The following day was Saturday and the boys devoted their holiday to
+putting up a set in Lathrop’s home. They now had four loop aërial sets
+ready to receive and located within a comparatively small area. They
+were sure that the station they were trying to find was within the few
+blocks between 20th and 27th Sts., but they were not at all sure whether
+it would be found to the east or west of Third Avenue. Moreover, as Jim
+pointed out, for all they knew he might be on 27th St. or 20th St. or
+even slightly north or south of one or the other, for he stated that his
+brother had told him that when close to a sending station the loop
+aërial could not be depended upon to give very accurate directions and
+that only by taking cross bearings could a certain point be definitely
+located. This was exactly what the boys had in view, to take cross
+bearings, and then, by means of a map of the city, to locate the man or
+the station.
+
+It may seem as if the boys were devoting a great deal of time and
+trouble to something of little importance, but they were, or at least
+Tom, Frank and Henry were, thoroughly convinced that the messages
+emanated from some one connected with a rum-running gang and they were
+as keen on finding his location and as interested as if they had been
+real detectives detailed to discover a fugitive from justice.
+
+So on that Saturday night they sat at their various instruments, waiting
+expectantly and with high hopes. No one was stationed at Tom’s home,
+for, in order to provide two sets for the test, Tom’s and Frank’s had
+been dismantled and reinstalled at the houses of Jim’s cousin and of
+Paul Lathrop.
+
+Henry was the first to pick up the sounds and instantly he hurried to
+the telephone and called Jim. But by the time he had Jim’s number the
+latter had also picked up the signals and had called the others, for Tom
+had not disturbed his transmission set and ordinary phoning was the only
+means of communicating with one another at the boys’ disposal. For some
+time Tom, at the 23d St. house, could not pick up the sounds, but at
+last, with his loop pointed to the northeast, they came clear.
+“Congratulations,” was the first word he heard, instantly followed by
+the queer buzzing sound which Henry had described. “Golly, ’tis just
+like some one talking through a comb,” was Tom’s mental comment and
+deeply interested and tremendously puzzled he strained his ears and mind
+striving to formulate words or meanings from the strange sounds. Once or
+twice he was sure that the sounds were words—he thought he could make
+out “last night” following a query of “When was it?” from the other
+speaker but, as he told the others later, it was like trying to hear
+what a mosquito was saying.
+
+So intent was he on this that he quite forgot to jot down the plain
+words of the other speaker and did not realize it until the sounds
+ceased and the conversation was over.
+
+But he knew that the others would have it and he had the direction,
+which was the main thing, and, a few minutes later all the boys were
+together and eagerly discussing the results of their experiment.
+
+“He’s southeast of my set!” announced Frank, when Tom had told them what
+he had discovered. “That puts him in between the river front and Third
+Avenue and between 23d and 26th Sts.”
+
+“Well, we’re getting him narrowed down to a few blocks now,” said Henry
+joyfully. “Say, what did you fellows make of the talk? Here’s my slip.”
+
+The words that Henry had written down were as follows: “Everything O. K.
+Yes, haven’t an idea. Sure, Fritz told me about it. Must be careful. No,
+but price will drop. No use killing the goose, you know. Golden eggs is
+right. Not a chance in the world of their getting wise. Nonsense, no one
+else has anything like it. Amateurs. Oh, forget it. Well, let ’em guess,
+guesses don’t prove anything. Well, if they did they’d never find
+anything. Magnolia. Yes, same place thirty fifteen west. Oh, yes, the
+French stuff went like hot cakes. Sure, get all you can. Yes she
+cleared. Regards to Heinrich. Expect you the eighteenth. Don’t forget
+Magnolia. Good-by.”
+
+“It’s just the same as I made it,” announced Frank.
+
+“Same here,” said Jim. “Sufferin’ cats! Do you mean to say that nut
+isn’t bughouse now?”
+
+“It _does_ sound a bit crazy, I admit,” replied Tom. “Say, did any of
+you fellows try tuning to different wave lengths to see if any one else
+came in?”
+
+“I did,” declared Frank, “but all I got was some one who said ‘for the
+love of Mike get off the air.’”
+
+“Me, too,” chimed in Jim. “No one’s talking to him, he’s just nutty and
+chins to himself.”
+
+“Well, then, we have all the more reason for finding him,” said Tom. “If
+he’s really crazy the authorities ought to know it. Now we know he’s so
+close we ought to be able to locate him.”
+
+So, day after day, the boys, their interest and enthusiasm at high pitch
+owing to the success of their experiments, shifted their instruments
+from house to house, gradually drawing their radio net about the
+mysterious sender until they were positive that he was located in a
+certain block, a district of small, old-fashioned buildings, warehouses
+and garages.
+
+But beyond this they could not go. There were no boys so far as they
+knew within the area and, satisfied that they had done all they could
+and that they had proved the value of their loops in locating the
+unknown speaker, all but Tom, Frank and Henry lost interest and devoted
+their attention to other matters.
+
+But Tom, Frank, and, to a lesser degree, Henry were still deeply
+interested in the mysterious messages and were convinced that they came
+either from a gang of rum-runners or from some other law-breakers, for
+while there was nothing really suspicious in the messages they could not
+rid themselves of the idea, once it had entered their minds.
+
+“I vote we go and tell Mr. Henderson all we know,” said Tom. “Dad won’t
+be back for two weeks or more yet and if Mr. Henderson thinks there’s
+anything in it he can have that block searched and find out who owns the
+set.”
+
+“Well, perhaps ’twould be a good plan,” admitted Frank, and accordingly
+the two boys went to Mr. Henderson’s office and related the story of
+their experiments and told of their suspicions.
+
+“H-m-m,” remarked the keen-eyed man when they had ended, “this is very
+interesting, boys. Let me see the notes you made.”
+
+For a time he examined the slips of paper bearing the various messages
+the boys had scribbled down and his forehead wrinkled in a frown of
+perplexity.
+
+“It’s very indefinite,” he announced at last, half to himself, “but I
+agree with you that the whole matter has a suspicious appearance. Too
+bad you didn’t take down the earlier messages you heard. Now, let’s see.
+You say you have never heard the other party to the conversations and
+yet you have been listening in within a block of this chap. Very odd,
+yes, most extraordinary. There are several explanations that occur to
+me, however. For example, if they wished the conversation to be secret
+and unintelligible they might have arranged that one man was to talk
+through an ordinary phone and the other by radio. Or they might have
+arranged this because the second man had no sending set—exactly as you
+boys communicated with one another with only one transmission set among
+you.”
+
+“Gee, but we _are_ dumb-bells!” exclaimed Tom. “Why the dickens didn’t
+we think of that? Why we are doing the same thing ourselves. It was so
+simple we overlooked it.”
+
+Mr. Henderson smiled. “That’s often the way,” he declared. “During the
+war a lot of messages passed our censors as perfectly innocent and
+harmless and yet they were of the utmost importance—they were so frank
+and simple we overshot the mark.”
+
+“Yes, Dad told us about some of those,” said Tom.
+
+“As I was saying,” went on Mr. Henderson, “if one man was talking over a
+telephone you would not have heard him under ordinary conditions, but it
+often happens that through capacity inductance a phone message may come
+in over a radio set. That might account for your occasionally hearing
+those sounds which you describe as resembling words coming through a
+paper-covered comb. Do you remember the conditions under which you heard
+those sounds? Were you near telephone receivers, touching any part of
+your sets or doing anything unusual?”
+
+The boys thought deeply, trying to revisualize the conditions that had
+existed on the few occasions when they had heard the odd buzzing sounds.
+
+“I’m not sure,” said Tom at last, “but it seems to me that when I heard
+them the first time—that time I was on 23d St., I was sitting close to
+the telephone receiver on the table—I’d just been called up by Jim
+and—yes, I am sure now, I remember distinctly—I had my hand touching the
+stand while I was listening to the messages. You see, I was half
+inclined to phone to the others to find out if they heard the sounds and
+I reached out to pick up the phone and then changed my mind—but sort of
+kept my hand there.”
+
+“Then that’s solved, I think,” declared Mr. Henderson. “If you had taken
+down the phone receiver and had kept your hand upon it you would
+probably have heard the other speaker’s voice plainly.”
+
+“Gosh, why didn’t we think of that!” interrupted Frank. “And come to
+think of it, the phone _is_ on the same table with the radio set at
+Henry’s house.”
+
+“Well, we’ve laid one ghost, we’ll assume,” went on Mr. Henderson, “but
+that does not solve the mystery of the other speaker nor does it
+eliminate the possibility that these fellows may be crooks. In our work,
+you know, we always assume that every suspect is guilty until we prove
+our theory wrong and so we’ll assume that your mysterious speaker is a
+crook until we find we’re mistaken. However, before I take any active
+steps I think it will be a good plan to try another test. Suppose you
+listen in for a few nights more and, as soon as you hear this fellow,
+take down your phone receivers and hold the instrument against your body
+or arm and see if you get the voice of the other chap. Let me know the
+results and then we can plan our next move.”
+
+“Hurrah! Now we _are_ real radio detectives working for the government!”
+cried Tom enthusiastically. “Do you really think they’re bootleggers?”
+
+“I make it a point never to form a hard-and-fast opinion,” replied Mr.
+Henderson with a smile at the boys’ excitement. “However, I should not
+be in the least surprised if they are, and if so and we round them up,
+Uncle Sam will have to thank you boys. Go to it, boys! Perhaps we may
+have to organize a radio detective corps yet, and I’m not sure that boys
+may not be able to show us old hands a few tricks at our own game.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE BOYS DRAW A BLANK
+
+
+Hardly had the door to Mr. Henderson’s office closed behind them before
+Frank commenced to dance and caper wildly about.
+
+“Hurrah!” he shouted. “This _is_ great! We’re real detectives and
+working for Uncle Sam!”
+
+“Yes, but don’t make such a row,” cautioned Tom. “We don’t want every
+one in the place to know it and they’ll think you’re crazy. Come on,
+let’s hurry and tell Henry.”
+
+When they reached Gramercy Square and dashed into Henry’s room and told
+him of their talk with Mr. Henderson, he was as excited and pleased as
+Frank.
+
+“Say, it _was_ funny we didn’t think of that fellow using a telephone!”
+he exclaimed, when the boys had told him of Mr. Henderson’s theory. “And
+he’s right about that capacity effect of a fellow near a phone. I _was_
+a fool not to have thought of it. Why, Jim told me about that long ago.
+He even said his brother Ed showed him with his set on the _San
+Jacinto_. But I guess it must have been because we were so intent on the
+messages that we couldn’t think of anything else. I’ll bet we can hear
+folks on the phone through my set right now.”
+
+“That _is_ funny!” declared Tom, when, a moment later, the boys were
+listening to a telephone conversation coming to them through Henry’s
+set. “Say,” he continued, “there isn’t much privacy nowadays, is there?
+Why, if you could amplify that enough, every one could hear everything
+that was going on over the telephones.”
+
+“Yes, and to think we were so close to getting that other chap’s talk
+and never realized it,” said Frank. “Mr. Henderson must think we are
+great radio fans! I’ll bet he had a mighty good laugh at our expense
+after we left.”
+
+“Well, we’ll not be fooled again,” declared Tom. “If that fellow begins
+talking to-night we’ll nail him, too.”
+
+“But we can’t locate him,” objected Henry. “So what good will it do?”
+
+“That’s so,” admitted Tom. “But the main thing is to hear what he says.
+Then perhaps we can make sense out of it.”
+
+“Say,” suddenly exclaimed Henry, “did you fellows notice that every time
+we heard those messages the fellow mentioned a flower? First ’twas
+‘Azalia’ and then ‘Magnolia’ and then ‘Hibiscus’ and last time ’twas
+‘Frangi Pani.’ I’d like to know what that meant.”
+
+“I hadn’t thought of that,” said Tom. “Of course Azalia and Magnolia and
+Hibiscus are flowers, but what’s Frangi Pani—sounds like some sort of
+Japanese thing to me. I guess this fellow must be talking about boats.
+Lots of ships are named after flowers, you know.”
+
+“Well, he must have a whole fleet then,” said Henry.
+
+“Perhaps it’s perfumes or he may be in the flower business,” suggested
+Frank with a laugh.
+
+“Perhaps we’ll get the answer to that when we hear his mate,” said Tom.
+
+“Hope we hear him to-night,” remarked Henry. “Say, what do you think of
+this scheme?”
+
+For some time the boys forgot all else in examining a new hook-up which
+Henry had devised and at last left him with final cautions to be at his
+instruments that evening and each night thereafter until they again
+heard the unknown speakers.
+
+But it was several nights before the mysterious messages again greeted
+their ears. Then Frank and Tom caught them at the same instant and both
+boys gave a little start and looked at each other in surprise, for the
+first word they heard was “Tuberose.” Once more the name of a flower had
+entered into the conversation and mentally wondering what in the world
+this meant the two boys slipped the receiver of the desk telephone from
+its hook. Hardly had they done so when they almost jumped, as clear and
+loud, they heard a human voice; but the next instant their spirits sank
+to zero and they glanced at each other with disgusted expressions, for
+instead of the voice of the man they had expected to hear they heard a
+woman’s voice and her words were: “Number, please?”
+
+With a savage jerk, Tom hung up the receiver.
+
+“Gee!” he exclaimed. “Of course we’d get _her_. I’ll bet Mr. Henderson
+knew that and just tried to jolly us. Now what _are_ we going to do? If
+we—Hello! What’s that?”
+
+Clearly to his ears, and interrupting the words of the mysterious man
+whom they had almost forgotten in their disappointment, came another
+voice, evidently that of a woman, and pitched in high tones. “Oh, yes!”
+it exclaimed. “I’m _so_ glad, my dear. Do you know—” Tom drew his hand
+from the desk phone on which it had been resting and the words trailed
+off into a faint indistinct buzz. Tom and Frank grinned.
+
+“Well, it works!” ejaculated Frank. “Of course it doesn’t make any
+difference if the receiver is off or not—we aren’t getting waves over
+wires. Henry kept the receiver on to-day, didn’t he?”
+
+“I don’t know,” replied Tom. “But say, we’ve got to get busy. That
+chap’s been talking for the last five minutes and we haven’t put down a
+thing he’s said.”
+
+Trying to make up for lost time, the two boys jotted down the words that
+came in, now and then placing a hand on the desk phone to see if they
+could hear the other party to the conversation, but each time the nasal
+voice of the woman, gossiping with a friend, was all that came to them.
+Then the man’s voice ceased and after a few moments’ wait the boys rose
+from their seats.
+
+“Darn that old hen!” exclaimed Tom, petulantly. “How the dickens could a
+fellow expect to hear anything with her tongue going like a house
+afire?”
+
+“Just think what it’ll be when every one’s talking by radio,” chuckled
+Frank. “And won’t the women have the time of their lives hearing all
+their neighbors’ gossip?”
+
+“Government’ll have to license ’em to talk, I guess,” muttered Tom.
+“Come on, let’s go over to Henry’s and see if he had any better luck.”
+
+But Henry had nothing to tell them. He had heard no conversation over
+the phone except some man talking business with a friend, but he had
+written down all the words the mysterious man had spoken and showed them
+to the boys who had explained how they had forgotten to get the greater
+part of the conversation.
+
+“Tuberose,” Tom read. “We’ll begin next week. Getting stocked up. I’ll
+bet it’ll wake things up. Too bad we didn’t know then. Might have been a
+different tale, eh? Oh, Oscar’s all right. Yes, same old place. Nothing
+doing, old man. Never a suspicion. Oh, it’s a cinch. I don’t know. Some
+kids, I expect. Got to see him to-night. So long, old man.”
+
+“Just the same old stuff,” commented Tom when he had finished. “Only no
+figures this time.”
+
+“And another flower,” added Henry.
+
+“Jim would swear he was crazy if he noticed that,” chuckled Frank. “I’m
+beginning to think that may be it myself.”
+
+For three consecutive nights the boys heard the conversation and despite
+all efforts failed to hear anything of interest over the ordinary phones
+while the radio words were coming in, although they heard various scraps
+of conversations between other persons.
+
+“Mr. Henderson was off that time,” declared Tom, when the boys rose from
+their sets on the third night. “His theory was wrong. The other chap’s
+not talking on a telephone, I’ll bet.”
+
+“Doesn’t look that way at any rate,” agreed Frank. “Let’s go down
+to-morrow and tell him.”
+
+Accordingly, the three boys visited Mr. Henderson the next day and
+reported the results of their experiments.
+
+“That _does_ puzzle me,” exclaimed Mr. Henderson as they finished. “If
+you heard others it’s pretty conclusive evidence he’s not on a wire. Did
+you hear those buzzing sounds or words again?”
+
+“I did,” said Henry, “and I heard ’em just as plain and no plainer when
+I was a long way from the phone as when I was touching it.”
+
+“Well, we’ve drawn a blank there,” smiled Mr. Henderson. Then, after a
+moment’s thought, he exclaimed, “Boys, I’m going to take a chance. I’m
+pretty well convinced something’s going on that’s crooked and I’m going
+to send some men out and search every building in that block from cellar
+to garret. You understand, of course, this is a profound secret. No one
+will know who they are or what they’re after. It must be a surprise
+visit so don’t even talk it over among yourselves. But I want you to
+help us a bit. I’m going to start the men out at eight o’clock sharp,
+to-night. You must be at your sets and listening. If the fellow’s
+talking, you’ll know when my men find him, either by what he says or the
+way he shuts off, and if he goes on talking without interruption for
+half an hour you’ll know you’ve made some mistake and he’s not in that
+block. Meet me here to-morrow at about this time and we’ll have
+something to report—or nothing.”
+
+“Oh, and there’s something else,” announced Tom as the boys turned to
+leave. “Henry called attention to those names of flowers yesterday. We’d
+almost forgotten about them. Every time that fellow talks he gets a new
+name of a flower. Have you noticed it?”
+
+Mr. Henderson chuckled. “You’re getting a pretty good training at this,
+boys,” he replied. “Yes, I’ve noticed that—that’s one thing that
+influences me more than anything else. There’s some code to those names,
+I think, and they may prove the key to the whole thing. We’ll find out
+sometime probably.”
+
+Remembering Mr. Henderson’s injunction about discussing the proposed
+raid the boys refrained from mentioning it to one another, but could
+scarcely restrain their impatience until the time came for them to be at
+their instruments.
+
+Eight o’clock came and, excited and expectant, the boys listened, hoping
+to hear the message coming in and to learn from its words or its abrupt
+ending of the success of the raid. But the minutes ticked by, the hands
+of the clock pointed to half-past eight, and nine o’clock came and went
+without a word from the source they so longed to hear.
+
+Anxious to learn the result of the search, the boys hurried to Mr.
+Henderson’s office the following day.
+
+“Another blank, boys,” he announced when they entered his office. “There
+wasn’t a sign of a wireless outfit in that block. Did you hear anything
+last night?”
+
+The boys admitted that they had heard nothing.
+
+“But—but there _must_ be a set there,” insisted Tom, utterly unable to
+believe that they had been mistaken. “Why, we were all around there with
+our loops and we got cross bearings and knew he was there.”
+
+“It’s a bit mysterious, I grant,” replied Mr. Henderson. “I fully
+expected we’d locate it, but my men will swear there isn’t even a piece
+of radio apparatus in the block. They went through it with a fine-tooth
+comb. Either you boys were mistaken or else the fellow’s moved away. If
+you hear him again you’ll know whether he’s changed his location. I’m
+afraid you’ll never locate him by your instruments, though. I’ve used
+those loops as direction finders at sea and to some extent ashore and I
+admit I can’t see how you went wrong, but we’ve got to face the fact
+that he’s not there—at least not now.”
+
+Thoroughly disappointed and discouraged, the boys left the office and
+for hours discussed the matter with one another, but at the end of the
+time were no nearer a solution than ever.
+
+“Oh, bother the old thing, anyhow!” exclaimed Tom at last. “We’ve had
+our fun and now let’s do something else. Dad’s leaving Nassau to-morrow
+and we can try sending to him when he gets nearer. Wonder what he’ll say
+about this thing.”
+
+“Yes, but it gets my goat to think that Mr. Henderson will think we’re
+such dubs,” said Frank. “He thinks we’ve made some big mistake and put
+him to all that trouble for nothing.”
+
+“Well, let’s forget it,” suggested Henry, and this seeming the best
+advice the boys followed it and were soon so busy experimenting along
+new lines that the mysterious conversations almost slipped from their
+minds, and as no further messages were heard from the same source they
+decided that by some coincidence the sender had moved bag and baggage
+from his former location just in time to escape detection by the men Mr.
+Henderson had sent on the search.
+
+Tom and Frank were overjoyed when, a day before Mr. Pauling’s ship
+docked, they succeeded in getting a message to him.
+
+“That’s pretty near 300 miles,” declared Tom jubilantly, “and our set’s
+only supposed to send 100. Say, that’s a real freak message.”
+
+But when, a few moments later, they heard some one calling their letters
+and this was followed by a question as to their location and the
+information that the inquirer was the government operator at Fort
+Randolph, Canal Zone, Panama, the two boys could only stare at each
+other in utter amazement.
+
+“Jehoshaphat!” exclaimed Frank at last. “We were heard clear down in
+Panama! Why that’s pretty near 2000 miles!”
+
+“Almost as good as that fellow over in Jersey who was heard in Scotland
+and Honduras!” cried Tom. “Hurrah, Frank! Let’s try again.”
+
+But despite every effort the boys failed to get a reply from any one
+more than fifty or sixty miles distant and realized that, by some
+peculiar atmospheric condition, their dots and dashes had been carried
+through the ether for twenty times and more their normal sending range.
+
+“That’s something to tell Dad,” declared Tom, and rushing down the
+stairs he excitedly told his mother of the wonderful feat.
+
+“I suppose it is remarkable, if you say so,” said Mrs. Pauling, “but
+really, I can’t see why you should not talk to Balboa or Europe or any
+other point if you can talk to your father’s ship out at sea. One is
+just as wonderful as the other to me. But I’m proud of you just the
+same, Tom.”
+
+When, the next day, Mr. Pauling arrived, Tom could scarcely wait to
+relate the story of his freak message and his father was enthusiastic
+enough to satisfy any boy.
+
+“Marvelous!” he declared. “And the operator on the _San Jacinto_ tells
+me you’ve improved a lot since he first talked to you. Says you can send
+well and had no trouble in getting his message at regular speed. I’m
+mighty glad you’ve done so well, Son. Just as soon as I have a chance
+I’m coming up to see that wonder set of yours. How many have you built
+since I’ve been gone?”
+
+Then Tom told his father of the mysterious messages and what had come of
+their attempts to locate the sender.
+
+Mr. Pauling laughed heartily. “Well, if you got old Henderson interested
+he must have believed there was something in it. I don’t know but what
+there was. I’ll talk it over with him. But I can imagine your
+disappointment, and his too—when nothing came of it. No, Son, I can’t
+offer any explanation and we’re as much in the dark as ever about the
+smugglers. By the way, I met a chap down at Nassau that was just about
+as keen on experiments as you boys only he’s not a radio fan. No, he’s a
+diver. He’s invented a new type of diving suit—self-contained he calls
+it. Just a sort of rubber cloth shirt and a khaki-colored helmet and
+lead-soled shoes. He goes down without ropes or life lines or air hose.
+Gets his air from a little box or receptacle strapped to his body. I
+don’t know what is in it, but it’s some chemical which produces oxygen
+and he can walk about where he pleases on the bottom. It’s the weirdest
+thing I’ve ever seen to watch him wade out into the water and disappear
+and then, half an hour or two hours later, have him bob up somewhere
+else.”
+
+“Gosh, I’d love to see that,” declared Tom. “Suppose he wants to come up
+from deep water without walking ashore, how does he manage?”
+
+“He just produces more oxygen so he floats up,” replied Mr. Pauling.
+“And you’ll have a chance to talk with him next week. He’s returning to
+New York and I’ve asked him to call and see us. Nice young chap, name’s
+Rawlins. The only trouble with his outfit is that he can’t communicate
+with others ashore or on the boats. Of course he can take down a line or
+even a telephone, but then he at once destroys one of the great
+advantages of his invention. A trailing line or wire is as liable to be
+caught or tangled in a wreck or in coral as an air pipe or any other
+rope or line and it means some one must be stationed in a boat over him.
+He claims one big advantage of his suit will be the fact that as no boat
+or air pump is needed, no one can tell where he is. That would be a fine
+thing in time of war, of course. Think you’ll take a great fancy to him,
+Tom.”
+
+For a moment, Tom was silent and then he suddenly let out a yell like an
+Indian.
+
+“I have it!” he fairly screamed. “Radio! Submarine radio! I’ll bet it’ll
+work.”
+
+Then, filled with enthusiasm, he started to explain his ideas to his
+father.
+
+“All right! All right!” cried Mr. Pauling, laughing and holding up his
+hands in protestation. “I’ll take your word for the technical end of it.
+Wait and tell Rawlins about it. But honestly I don’t know but what there
+may be something in it. You and Rawlins can work it out.”
+
+So filled with his new idea was Tom, that he fairly rushed to tell Frank
+when the latter arrived, and for the next ten days the two were
+ceaselessly at work, drawing plans and diagrams, making and discarding
+instruments, purchasing countless rolls of wire and knock-down
+apparatus, as they strove to put into concrete form the vision in Tom’s
+brain.
+
+But they found innumerable difficulties to be overcome and were almost
+discouraged when one evening Rawlins called.
+
+He was such an enthusiastic and interesting man that the boys took a
+huge liking for him and as soon as Tom told him of his idea he at once
+fell in with the boys’ plans.
+
+“I do believe it can be done!” he declared, when Tom had shown him the
+plans and had described his ideas fully. “I don’t know much about radio,
+but if you are right about the matter there’s no reason I can see why
+you shouldn’t get it to work. I tell you what, Tom, we’ll fit up a
+workshop and laboratory down at my father’s dock—it’s down near the foot
+of 28th St. and we don’t use it except for storage. The old gentleman’s
+gone out of the wrecking business and has sold all his outfit except the
+things stored there. It’s a fine place to work and experiment. There are
+tools and a machine lathe and about ten tons of odds and ends that may
+come in handy. My father had his office and workshop there—did all his
+repairing of pumps, diving suits and tugs there, and never threw
+anything away. I learned to dive there—my father and grandfather were
+deep-sea divers, too—and there’s a trapdoor where the divers went down
+to test their suits and pumps. I made my suits and even my under-sea
+motion picture outfit there and it’s private and no one will disturb us.
+The only way we can test out this idea of yours is by actual trial under
+water. If we do get it, it will be a mighty big thing—greatest
+improvement in sub-sea work ever. I’ll get the place ready and cleaned
+up a bit to-morrow. I’m just as crazy as you are to try it out.”
+
+Mr. Henderson also was deeply interested in the boys’ new experiments
+and declared he believed their ideas might be worked out successfully.
+
+“You’ll run across a lot of unexpected and unforeseen difficulties,” he
+warned them. “One never knows what new laws and phenomena one may run up
+against in a thing of this sort. During the war our government and the
+Allies, and no doubt Germany also, carried on a good many experiments
+with under-water radio, but as far as I know they never came to much.
+Radio had not progressed so far then and there were more important
+things to be done and not enough men to attend to it. We _did_ use
+vacuum tubes and amplifiers for detecting submarines, however. By the
+way, I have a few things that may be of help to you boys and I’ll be
+glad to let you have them. Among them is a remarkable tuning device of
+German make and I don’t think it has ever been tried out. You’ll need
+something that is simple and accurate and easy to control and this may
+do the trick.”
+
+By the end of a week a snug little laboratory had been set up on
+Rawlins’ dock and the boys and their diver friend spent every available
+moment of their time there.
+
+Tom and Frank were as interested in seeing Rawlins go down in his odd
+suit as he was in their radio work, and the first time he put it on to
+demonstrate it to the boys they became tremendously excited. Rawlins
+carefully explained all about it, pointing out its various parts and
+showing them how the oxygen generator worked.
+
+“You have to be careful about this,” he said, “if a drop of water gets
+into it, it blazes or flames up and may kill a fellow. That’s the only
+danger about it. If a man forgets and takes the mouthpiece from his lips
+to speak without shutting it off and water gets in, he’ll have a red hot
+flame inside his helmet. It’s easy to get accustomed to it though—comes
+as natural as breathing, after a bit of practice.”
+
+But even now that it had been explained to them it seemed a most
+remarkable feat for Rawlins to don the shirtlike suit and helmet and,
+with only these over his ordinary garments and with no rubber trousers
+covering his legs, descend the ladder and disappear in the water without
+lines, pipes or ropes trailing after him. Both Tom and Frank were crazy
+to go down, but Rawlins refused to permit it until he had made the suits
+“fool proof” as he put it. Even then, the boys’ parents objected until
+they had visited the workshop and Rawlins had proved to their
+satisfaction that the boys were perfectly safe in shallow water when he
+accompanied them.
+
+“We’ll have to go down to test out the radio,” argued Tom, “so we might
+as well learn right away.”
+
+At last the fathers gave in and Tom went down first with Rawlins. For a
+week afterwards he could think or talk of nothing else and never tired
+relating his sensations and experiences to his parents and his boy
+friends, and Frank did the same. But after the first few times the
+novelty wore off and the boys soon became quite accustomed to going to
+the bottom of the river. Rawlins, however, never allowed them to stay
+down more than a few minutes at a time and after the first few descents
+the boys found little fun in it. They had expected to find a smooth,
+hard bottom and to see fishes swimming about and to be able to look up
+and see passing boats overhead. To their surprise, they found they could
+not walk upright, but leaned far forward and had a peculiar dreamy
+sensation when they attempted to walk, their feet seeming to half-drag,
+half-float behind them and that, despite the fact that the bottom of the
+river was soft and muddy, they did not sink into the bottom to any
+extent. As Tom put it, it was like trying to hurry in a dream when one’s
+feet seem tied to something and one can’t possibly run. Moreover, they
+found the water dark and so filled with sediment that they could see but
+a few feet and even near-by objects, such as the spiles and abutments of
+the dock, the ladder down which they descended and the figure of their
+companion were scarcely visible a yard distant and took on strange,
+hazy, indistinct and distorted forms. Indeed, Rawlins always held their
+hands when they went down, explaining that should they stray a few yards
+away they might be lost or might be swept off in some current.
+
+But they were glad of the experience and realized that in order to carry
+on their experiments with any hopes of success they must learn to use
+the suits, for Rawlins had not yet mastered the details of radio.
+
+In the meantime, however, they worked at the radio devices and at last
+Tom announced that he had a set which he believed might work.
+
+“It’s only an experimental set,” he explained to Rawlins. “And it won’t
+stand up long under water, but if the idea’s all right and we get any
+results we can go to work and make a good outfit on the same principle.”
+
+Rawlins was almost as excited as the boys when the day came to test the
+new device and at Tom’s suggestion was to go down alone with the
+receiver in his helmet while the boys remained on the dock and attempted
+to communicate with him.
+
+“We’ll try receiving under water first,” said Tom. “If it works we’ll
+get it into good shape and then get busy on the under-water sending
+set.”
+
+So, with the compact but complicated little set inside his helmet, which
+was specially made to accommodate it, and with the receivers clamped
+over his ears, Rawlins backed down the ladder while the boys, feeling
+like explorers about to set foot on some new and unknown land, watched
+his head disappear beneath the surface of the river.
+
+It was little wonder that they were wildly excited for now, in a few
+moments, they would know beyond question whether their ideas had been
+right and whether all their work and trouble had been thrown away or
+they had made an advance in radio which might revolutionize under-sea
+work.
+
+At first the boys had not fully realized what the success of their
+efforts would mean and had gone into it enthusiastically merely as
+something new and strange.
+
+But as soon as Rawlins had explained the possibilities which a
+successful under-sea radio telephone would open up, they understood how
+much might hinge on the triumph or failure of their plans.
+
+“Why,” Rawlins had exclaimed, “think what it will do if it works! A man
+can go down and walk about any place he chooses and yet can talk back
+and forth with men on a ship or on shore. In wrecking, he could go all
+through a ship with no danger of getting his life-line or air-hose
+tangled and he could direct the fellows on the tug or lighter, telling
+them just where to lower chains or tackle or anything else. And think
+what it would mean in time of war! Why, a man could walk out from shore
+anywhere, go under a ship and fasten a mine to her and blow her up and
+hear all that was going on aboard the enemy’s ship. And just think what
+a dangerous sort of spy a man would be—out of sight under the sea and
+yet able to hear all the talk and messages of the enemy! I tell you,
+boys, up to now diving’s been like blind man’s work—mostly feeling and
+signaling by jerks on a line. Of course the ordinary phone was a big
+advance, but with that you still had to trail a wire along and there was
+a visible connection between the diver and the surface. With my suits
+and your radio the country that owned the secrets would be mighty near
+masters of the sea, I’ll say.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE UNDER-SEA WIRELESS
+
+
+As soon as Rawlins was out of sight the boys commenced to talk, Tom
+speaking through the transmitter while Frank wrote down what he said,
+for of course they could not know if Rawlins heard them, and the only
+means of determining if he had received all the words was to keep a
+record for comparison when he came up. They were busily engaged at this
+and tremendously interested and excited, when the telephone bell rang.
+Telling Rawlins to wait a moment, and explaining the reason, Tom ceased
+speaking while Frank answered the call.
+
+“Hello, Frank,” came Henry’s voice. “I just rang up to be sure you were
+there. How’s everything going?”
+
+“Fine!” replied Frank, “come on down, we’re just testing it out for the
+first time. When did you get back?”
+
+“Last evening—but didn’t have a chance to run around to see you. I
+called up, but the maid said you were out with Tom. Didn’t she tell you?
+I’ll be right down, you bet. Say, I’ve some news for you. So long.”
+
+“I’m glad he’s back from that trip with his father and is coming down,”
+said Tom, “Won’t he be interested and surprised if this works? Wonder
+what the news is.”
+
+Then, turning to his set, he continued his interrupted talk, or attempt
+to talk, with Rawlins until, five minutes later, Henry was pounding at
+the door.
+
+“Gee, but you’ve a fine place here!” he cried as he glanced about the
+little laboratory, “and you’ve diving suits and helmets and everything.
+Say, I was just crazy to get back when I got your letter telling about
+your experiments and everything. Where’s the diver fellow? Oh say,
+you’re not really talking to him under water! Crickety! Isn’t that
+wonderful to think he can hear you down under the river!”
+
+Tom laughed. “Don’t know if he can,” he replied. “We’ll have to wait for
+him to come up and tell. You see we haven’t got an under-sea sending set
+rigged up yet and the one he’s got is just a sort of makeshift for
+experimenting.”
+
+“Have you fellows heard anything more of that mystery chap?” cried
+Henry, suddenly changing the subject.
+
+“Not a word,” Tom assured him.
+
+“Well, I have then,” declared Henry triumphantly. “I heard him last
+night and I got him again to-day just before I called you fellows. He
+was in the same old place, too.”
+
+“Honest? Say, that _is_ funny!” exclaimed Frank. “What was he saying?”
+
+“Don’t know,” replied Henry, “He was talking some foreign lingo that I
+couldn’t make out, but I got one word. Bet you couldn’t guess what
+’twas—another flower—Oleander this time.”
+
+The boys were so interested in Henry’s news that they had temporarily
+forgotten their under-water companion until Henry uttered a half
+surprised exclamation and jumped away from the square opening in the
+floor over the river.
+
+“Gosh, there he comes!” he cried, as overcoming his first surprise at a
+gurgling splash he glanced through the trapdoor and saw the diver’s
+helmet appearing. “Don’t he look like a regular sea monster?”
+
+A moment later, Rawlins was removing his suit and helmet.
+
+“Did you hear us?” cried Tom the moment Rawlins’ face was visible.
+
+“Did I!” exclaimed the diver. “Did I! Let me tell you I wished I had
+cotton stuffed in my ears. You must think I’m deaf,—yelling like that.
+Did you think you had to shout loud enough to have your voice go through
+the water? And I’ll tell you I thought a tornado’d struck the place when
+your friend here arrived. I even heard the telephone bell.”
+
+Tom and Frank fairly danced with delight. “Hurrah! It works! It’s a
+success! We’ve solved it! It’s under-sea radio!” shouted the excited
+boys.
+
+“I’ll say it works!” declared Rawlins. “But what the deuce were you
+trying to talk Dutch for?”
+
+“Talk Dutch?” cried Tom in a puzzled tone. “We weren’t talking Dutch or
+anything but United States.”
+
+It was Rawlins’ turn to be amazed. “Well, who in thunder was then?” he
+asked. “I heard some one jabbering Dutch or some other foreign
+language—don’t know what ’twas except it wasn’t French or Spanish.”
+
+Henry gave a whoop. “It was that other fellow!” he cried excitedly.
+“I’ll bet ’twas. He was talking just before I rang up as I told you.
+Jehoshaphat! Mr. Rawlins must have heard him under water.”
+
+“I guess that’s it,” agreed Tom. “Funny it didn’t occur to me. Of course
+there’s no reason why he shouldn’t have been heard under water. We’re
+using a tiny little wave length and so’s he, and he’s close to here, you
+know. Did you hear him loudly, Mr. Rawlins?”
+
+“Well, not so as to deafen me the way you did,” replied the diver with a
+grin, “but if I’d understood his lingo I could have told what he was
+talking about. The only word that sounded like sense to me was something
+like Oleander.”
+
+“Then ’twas him!” fairly yelled Henry ungrammatically. “That’s the name
+he was using when I heard him.”
+
+“Well, it just proves this new thing is a peacherino,” declared Tom.
+“Now let’s get busy and fix it up in good shape and make a sending set
+to try out.”
+
+Now that the boys’ first experiment had been such a huge success they
+were more enthusiastic and excited than ever. They had been confident
+that the diver would be able to hear sounds or that he might even
+distinguish words under water, but they had not dared to hope that their
+very first efforts would result in the sound being carried to the ears
+of the man beneath the water as clearly and loudly as though he had been
+present in the same room with the speaker.
+
+“I’ll bet water carries electromagnetic waves better than air,” declared
+Tom. “Why, if this little set can respond to these short five watt waves
+in this way, think what it would mean to a submarine with big amplified
+sets and getting messages sent with hundreds of watts. Why a fellow
+could sit in Washington and talk to submarines and divers all over the
+Atlantic.”
+
+“You’ve hit on a wonderful possibility,” Rawlins assured him. “Of course
+I was pretty close—I didn’t go over a hundred yards from the dock and
+it’s shoal water. I’m anxious to try it down a hundred feet or so and a
+mile or two from the sender. We’ll do that after we get things right—go
+down to my hangout in the Bahamas and give it a real honest-to-goodness
+tryout.”
+
+“It’s all in that new amplifying arrangement and that single control
+tuner Frank hit upon,” said Tom. “And we’re not really responsible for
+either. Mr. Henderson gave us the idea for the tuner and a friend of
+Dad’s invented the tube, but couldn’t get any one interested. You see,
+Henry, this tube is just about 400 times as much of an amplifier as the
+other tubes, and we get a detector and amplifier all in one. Look
+here—it’s the smallest bulb you ever saw—about the size of a peanut and
+we operate it on a flashlight battery with a special little dry cell for
+the filament. Of course they don’t last long, but a fellow can’t stay
+down more than an hour or two anyway and the batteries will run the set
+steadily for five hours. For under-sea work the cost don’t count. What
+we’re up against now is to make the sending set to go with it. The
+receiver was easy. That fits in this special helmet all right and don’t
+have to be waterproof, but the sending set’ll have to be outside and
+it’ll be an awful job to keep the water from short circuiting it.”
+
+As he talked, Tom was showing Henry the set and pointing out its many
+novel features.
+
+“This single tuner is great,” he continued. “It’s fixed so it’s set at a
+certain spot for the normal wave lengths sent from the diver’s home
+station. See, here in the middle at zero. Then, if he wants to get a
+shorter wave he turns it to the left which gives him a range down to
+half his normal wave length, or for longer waves he turns it to the
+right and gets twice his normal length. If he wants to go to long wave
+lengths—for example, if he was a spy or something and wanted to get the
+big sending stations—he’d turn the knob clear to the left and then back
+to the right and around to opposite the zero point. Then he’d be on
+about 2500 meters and that being his utmost length he just has to tune
+slowly towards zero again. And the rheostat works automatically with it
+and so does the variable condenser and it’s not very complicated
+either.”
+
+“But what does he do for an aërial?” queried Henry.
+
+“Doesn’t use one,” replied Tom. “Just has this sort of wire cage
+sticking from his helmet, like a loop, but made of two grids set at
+right angles to each other. But gosh! I never thought about there being
+interferences under water.”
+
+“I suppose Henry understands all that,” interrupted Rawlins laughingly,
+“but it means about as much to me as that Dutch talk I heard. Somehow or
+other I can’t get on to this radio a little bit. When you get that
+sending outfit rigged you’ll have to go down and test it. I’d probably
+bungle something. I didn’t even dare meddle with this gadget for tuning.
+I tried it once and when your voice stopped I just shoved her back and
+let it go at that. That’s when I heard that Dutchman.”
+
+“Then he’s on a different wave length and it proves _we_ can tune out
+under water,” declared Tom gleefully. “That’s another feather in our
+caps.”
+
+Henry quickly grasped the boys’ ideas and together the three worked
+diligently until sundown while Rawlins busied himself devising the
+fittings for his suit to accommodate the sending apparatus and helped
+the boys tremendously with suggestions for rendering a set watertight
+and with advice as to mechanical and other details.
+
+By the time they were obliged to stop their work the plans for the
+under-sea transmission set were well worked out and, with high hopes and
+flushed with the success of their achievements, they locked up the
+workshop and walked up town discussing plans for the morrow.
+
+The following day they went to the dock right after breakfast, for
+school was over for the season and they had all their time to
+themselves. Rawlins was already there and before they left that night
+they had the set nearly completed and Tom declared they would be able to
+give it a test the next day.
+
+Mr. Pauling was of course deeply interested and enthusiastic over the
+boys’ work and promised to go down himself as soon as the instruments
+were perfected. He listened to the boys’ glowing accounts of their work
+and their success and later, when Mr. Henderson called, he too became
+most optimistic regarding their under-sea radio.
+
+“It’s merely a question of experimenting, boys,” he declared. “We were
+on the right track during the war, but radio’s jumped ahead a lot since
+then and whatever the government experts accomplish is kept mighty
+quiet. I’m glad that single control works out so well. We’ll have to
+thank the Huns for that. We found one on a captured U-boat, but as far
+as I know the government never took it up seriously—don’t know why
+unless it was because there was no particular need of it. We never did
+find out what the Germans used it for—for all we know they may have been
+experimenting along under-sea lines too. And if that new tube of
+Michelson’s proves good he’ll make a fortune and have you boys to thank
+for it. I’m coming down to see your outfit just as soon as we get a
+breathing space. We’re rushed to death just now.”
+
+With nothing else to do the boys amused themselves listening at their
+sets which, with so many other interests, had been sadly neglected of
+late, and, out of pure curiosity and never expecting to hear anything,
+Tom turned his loop aërial to the southeast and tuned for the short wave
+lengths used by the mysterious talker they had once followed and tried
+to locate so persistently. To his surprise, the sound of words came
+clearly over the set.
+
+“There he is again!” Tom exclaimed to Frank who was listening to a
+broadcasted speech. “Get him and we’ll see what he says.”
+
+But despite the fact that the boys could both hear the man plainly his
+words were meaningless, for he was speaking some guttural,
+harsh-sounding tongue.
+
+“Oh, pshaw!” ejaculated Tom disgustedly after a few minutes of this.
+“Who cares what he’s saying. I guess it’s some crazy foreigner.”
+
+So saying, he again picked up the broadcasting station and forgot all
+about the incident in his interest as he listened to a lecture on new
+developments in radio.
+
+“Some night we’ll be listening to that fellow talking about the new
+under-sea radio,” chuckled Frank as the talk ceased and the boys laid
+aside their receivers. “Say, won’t it be sport to hear him telling about
+us and know all the fellows are listening to it?”
+
+“Well, we won’t count our chickens just yet,” declared Tom sagely. “Just
+because that receiving set works isn’t any proof the sending set will.
+And without being able to talk back a diver isn’t any better off—or at
+least much better off—if he can hear what’s going on in the air.”
+
+But Tom might have been far more confident, for the following day when
+the test was made it worked much better than their most sanguine
+expectations had led them to think possible. To be sure, their
+experiments came to an abrupt ending right in the midst of the test, for
+the sending set on Tom’s suit leaked and, with a feeble buzz and
+sputter, his words trailed off to nothingness.
+
+But when, upon reaching the surface, Rawlins reported that he had heard
+everything Tom had said and Frank and Henry in the shop had also heard
+him, the boys knew that their plans and the principles of the outfit
+were all right and that only the question of making the set absolutely
+watertight remained to be solved.
+
+“I don’t see why it should not be inside the suit,“ declared Rawlins, as
+the boys were discussing the matter and were at a loss to know how to
+accomplish their aims. “You say these wireless waves go through
+everything and we get them through the suit in the receiving set so why
+shouldn’t they go out through everything just as well. Look here, I was
+thinking over this last night and here’s my idea.”
+
+As the boys gathered about, the diver rapidly sketched his plan of a new
+suit in which the sending set could be placed within a receptacle full
+of compressed air.
+
+“I believe that _would_ work,” cried Tom when he grasped Rawlins’
+scheme. “I don’t see why compressed air should affect the outfit any and
+it’s easy enough to make watertight fittings where the wires come out
+and there’s no tuning to do, We can always use a special wave length and
+if several men were talking under water each one could have his own wave
+length. Yes. I’ll bet you’ve solved the puzzle, Mr. Rawlins.”
+
+Keen on the new plan the boys started a new set, or rather two new sets,
+for they wished to make a test to determine if two men under water could
+converse, while Rawlins busied himself on the special suits and air
+pockets to be used.
+
+“We’ll have to balance the weight of the set against the increased
+buoyancy of this compressed air,” he remarked as he worked. “But I see
+where that’s an advantage. One of your troubles has been the weight of
+batteries and by this air caisson arrangement weight won’t cut any
+figure under water.”
+
+“But suppose the air pocket springs a leak?” queried Frank. “We’d be
+just as badly off as before.”
+
+“Well, I don’t calculate to have it leak,” replied Rawlins, “but if you
+make the sets as near watertight as you can, they’d still go on working
+for some time before they got soaked. And if I can’t make a little
+caisson that’ll hold a hundred pounds of air for ten or twelve hours
+I’ll give up diving and drive a taxi.”
+
+Several days, however, were required to get the set and the air pocket
+suits ready and when, after a test in the workshop, everything seemed in
+perfect working order, Tom and Rawlins donned their suits and prepared
+to descend the ladder through the trapdoor.
+
+Just before his head dipped beneath the surface of the water Tom spoke
+into his mouthpiece and Frank, listening at his instruments, gave a
+start as his chum’s voice came clearly to his ears.
+
+“So long, old man,” came Tom’s cheery voice, which somehow Frank had
+expected would sound muffled. “Keep your ear glued to the set and be
+ready for great news. I’ll bet we give you a surprise.”
+
+The next instant only a few bubbles marked the spot where Tom had sunk
+beneath the surface of the water, and little did he or the others dream
+how much truth was in his parting words or what an amazing surprise was
+awaiting not only Frank but himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE RED MENACE
+
+
+During the weeks while Tom and his friends were busy at their work on
+the under-sea radio, grave and sinister events were taking place, of
+which the boys knew little or nothing, but which kept Mr. Pauling, Mr.
+Henderson and their men in a perpetual state of worry, and of sleepless
+nights and unceasing work.
+
+Close upon the heels of the unprecedented influx of contraband liquor,
+which despite every effort continued undiminished and which had
+completely baffled the officials, came a flood of Bolshevist propaganda
+of the most dangerous and revolutionary character. Suddenly, and without
+warning, it had appeared throughout the country. Every town, city and
+village was filled with it and so cleverly were the circulars, booklets
+and handbills worded, so logical were the arguments and statements they
+contained, so appealing to the uneducated foreign element and the
+dissatisfied army of the unemployed that they were greedily read,
+accepted and absorbed until the country was menaced by a red revolution
+and officials went to bed never knowing what bloodshed and destruction
+the morrow might hold in store.
+
+Almost coincident with this came a wave of crime. Hold-ups, burglars,
+murders, kidnaping and incendiarism swept like an epidemic through the
+big cities. Scarcely a day passed that the daily papers did not bear
+glaring headlines announcing some new and daring crime. Bank messengers,
+paymasters, cashiers and business men were held up at the point of
+revolvers or were blackjacked on the public streets in broad daylight.
+Stores and shops were boldly entered by masked bandits who held up and
+robbed the clerks and customers alike. Taxis and motor cars were
+attacked, their occupants beaten into unconsciousness and robbed and the
+vehicles stolen under the noses of the police. Homes of the rich, banks
+and business houses were entered and ransacked despite electric burglar
+alarms and armed guards. Each day the daring criminals grew bolder. From
+thugs they were changing into murderous bandits; where formerly a man
+was knocked down or blackjacked the victims were now shot in cold blood.
+Murders and homicides were of daily occurrence. Even on crowded
+thoroughfares within sight of hundreds of passers-by men were killed and
+the bandits escaped and no one felt that life and property were safe.
+The police seemed powerless and at a loss. Now and then a bandit was
+captured. Occasionally one would be shot down, wounded or killed by an
+officer or by some prospective victim, but still the crimes continued
+unabated. Indeed, the more the police strove to check the bandits the
+more they appeared to thrive and increase and the bolder they became.
+Lawlessness was rampant and, while the public wondered, criticized,
+clamored for protection, and countless theories were put forth, those in
+the inner circle, the secret agents of the government and the trusted
+ones, knew that, back of it all, the underlying cause and the root of
+the evil was the red propaganda which they were powerless to check.
+
+Many were the secret meetings, the closely guarded conferences held
+between the untiring officers detailed to run the menace to earth, to
+stamp the venomous Bolshevist serpent underfoot, to bring the country to
+its safe and sane law-abiding state of the past. And prominent in all
+such closely guarded, mysterious councils were Mr. Pauling and Mr.
+Henderson.
+
+“There is some one mind directing it all, in my opinion,” declared Mr.
+Pauling. “Some arch criminal—a Bolshevist emissary—some man with a
+tremendous brain, marvelous executive ability, immense personal
+magnetism, but whose mind, heart and soul are warped and twisted. One
+who is such a criminal as the world has fortunately never known before.
+If we can lay our hands on him the rest will be easy. Without a leader,
+without a directive brain, these common criminals will be lost. They are
+arrant cowards, mere tools and yet, by some almost superhuman power, are
+controlled, directed, moved like pawns on a chessboard, by an unseen,
+mysterious being who so far has completely baffled us.”
+
+“I agree with you perfectly,” said Mr. Henderson. “I believe the same
+man, the same arch fiend, is back of the rum-running; that this is
+merely a tryout, a test, to see if we can detect him and that through it
+all is a deep-laid, dastardly plot to inflame the people and at the same
+time enrich himself. To my mind, it savors of some one far greater in
+brain power, in intrigue and in ability than those unshaven, misguided
+Russians. It looks far more as if it were German work—perhaps some high
+officer of the Prussian army or navy—who, afraid of his own republican
+countrymen and filled with a fiendish desire for revenge, is devoting
+himself to the destruction of law and order in the United States.”
+
+“That is very plausible as a theory,” remarked another man, “but it does
+not get us anywhere. If this is so, where does this master mind stay?
+Where are his headquarters? Surely he must have underlings,—lieutenants
+and trusted emissaries and some place, some headquarters, from which his
+nefarious schemes are sent forth. Nothing comes in by mail or by
+passengers we know. Every alien who enters is known. Not a word that
+tends to bear out your theories had been wrung from the men captured
+even though they were on the verge of death or were about to go to the
+electric chair. No, I do not agree with you. It’s merely the aftermath
+of the war. Men were taught to handle firearms and to kill their fellow
+men. They were fed up, encouraged and lived with excitement and constant
+peril. The war ended; they were out of work, they pined for the thrill
+of danger and their viewpoint of life, of property and of right and
+wrong was distorted. Banditry offered an easy way of securing funds; it
+filled their desire for excitement; it satisfied their grudge against
+society and their country and, like all crimes which succeed, it became
+contagious and got a grip on more and more men. It’s all the logical
+outcome of the war and in my opinion the red propaganda has nothing
+whatever to do with it.”
+
+Mr. Henderson smiled. “Perhaps I may be able to change your views,
+Selwin,” he remarked. “I wanted to know your ideas before I came out
+with it. As you all know, I was on special work during the war—detailed
+to decode all suspicious messages that came in by radio or cable and to
+use my vivid imagination to try to find hidden meanings in apparently
+innocent messages. You all know the result, and there is no need of
+recalling specific cases, such as the famous sugar shipment to Garcia
+and the announcement of a baby’s birth but which, thanks to my ‘hunch’
+or imagination or whatever you wish to call it, led to the apprehension
+of the most dangerous female spy of the time and the confiscation of
+those incriminating documents which saved the _Leviathan_ from
+destruction, prevented several thousand of our boys from going to the
+bottom of the sea, kept Brooklyn bridge from being blown to bits, thus
+blocking the Navy Yard, and prevented countless women and children from
+being widows and orphans. But perhaps you do not all know that, back of
+that stupendous plot, that greatest attempted coup of the enemy to
+terrorize and cripple the United States, that supreme effort of a dying,
+beaten nation to turn the tide of war and transform her from the
+vanquished to the victor, was the work of one man. To him was entrusted
+this almost superhuman task. The reward, if he succeeded, was to be
+honors and riches beyond conception. Had he won he would to-day be
+seated upon the throne of England—the despotic, iron-handed governor of
+a German colony with his feet upon the neck of the British people and
+with the colossal indemnity, which it had been planned to exact from our
+country, as his monetary reward. If he failed, his life was to pay the
+forfeit. Not only his life was to be sacrificed, but his lands and
+property were to be confiscated, his family imprisoned, degraded and
+exiled. It was, I think, the greatest, the most stupendous gamble ever
+known. And the gambler lost! By the merest chance, by pure accident, by
+a coincidence which no human being could have foreseen, his messages—the
+vital message—came into my hands and, through a tiny mistake, an error
+which might have passed a thousand eyes unnoticed, the conspirator—this
+gambler in nations and life—was betrayed and all his efforts, his
+widespread plots, his carefully organized plans came to nothing. But yet
+he escaped. Evidently he considered a gambling debt one that could be
+disregarded. His country, or rather his emperor, had overlooked a most
+important matter. He had failed to provide for getting hold of the
+gambler to collect his debt. No doubt, had Germany been victorious, some
+emissary of the Kaiser would eventually have found this man and would
+have exacted payment in full. But with Germany’s downfall he was safe—at
+least as long as he remained out of Germany—and so completely did he
+efface himself that we came to the conclusion that he had committed
+suicide. But, gentlemen, I am willing to wager my reputation that he
+still lives. I have evidence which to my mind is absolutely conclusive
+that he is at the bottom of this Bolshevist propaganda, this influx of
+liquor, this wave of crime.”
+
+Amazed, the others gazed at Mr. Henderson as he paused after this
+surprising announcement.
+
+“Jove! That’s some statement!” cried one. “If you’re right, Henderson,
+we’ve got our work cut out for us. I can see why he might do it though.
+I know who you mean—there’s no use mentioning names even here. And if it
+is he I can understand why he has picked on Uncle Sam. But, by Jove, old
+man, if ’tis he, then watch your step! He’s no man to forgive or forget.
+He’ll have his eye on you and mark you for a come-back, I’ll wager.”
+
+Henderson smiled grimly. “He has already,” he remarked dryly. “That’s my
+proof that he’s the man. Like all of his kind he’s so confoundedly
+conceited, so cocksure of himself, so puffed up with his own importance
+that, sooner or later, he’s bound to overdo himself. He cannot resist
+the temptation to let some one know what a big toad in the puddle he is.
+He must boast or bust and such men always hang themselves if you give
+them rope enough. Here’s the rope he’s hung himself with!”
+
+As he finished, Mr. Henderson tossed a sheet of paper on the table and
+the others crowded close to examine it.
+
+To the casual observer, it would have meant little. A sheet of ordinary
+note paper with a single line written by a typewriter across it. There
+was no date, no signature, merely the words: “Remember Mercedes and
+Garcia.” But to these keen-eyed, square-jawed, quiet men those words
+carried grave import. To them, it meant more than pages of writing might
+have carried.
+
+“I guess you’re right,” exclaimed Selwin. “That is, as far as his being
+alive and this coming from him is concerned. But why do you think he or
+this has any connection with the other matters?”
+
+“Another coincidence—or perhaps you’ll say imagination,” replied Mr.
+Henderson. “Examine this pamphlet—the latest effusion of our red
+propagandists. Do you notice anything peculiar about it?”
+
+Each man shook his head as the flimsy pamphlet passed from hand to hand.
+
+“Very well,” commented Mr. Henderson. “You notice that it’s not
+printed—that is, with type. It’s a zincotype impression from
+typewriting. And if you look closely you’ll also see that the small “a”
+has a broken tail, the capital “T” has a little twist in one arm of the
+top, the small “e” is flattened or battered and the “B” always shows a
+tiny smudge above it where the character on the same key struck the
+paper owing to the type bar being bent slightly. Now, kindly examine
+this terse note I showed you and see if you do not find the identical
+defects in the same letters.”
+
+“By Jove, yes!” cried one, as they again studied the paper. “Henderson,
+you’re a winner. The machine that wrote one wrote the other. Not a shade
+of a doubt of it. But how about the rest of these dirty sheets and how
+about the bandits and the liquor?”
+
+“I’ve examined several thousand circulars and pamphlets,” replied Mr.
+Henderson, “and all that are typewritten are the same. Our friend is
+doing all the writing on one machine. I imagine he is hanging out
+somewhere and takes no chances by entrusting his work to outsiders. A
+man could do all the typing and could make zinc photo plates in a single
+small room. As for my hunch that the rum-runners are connected with the
+same gang, it’s based on this.”
+
+As he spoke, he placed a small metal object on the table, a bit of lead
+about half an inch in diameter and resembling a small coin. The others
+picked it up and examined it curiously.
+
+“Well, what’s this to do with the matter?” asked one.
+
+“This note,” replied Mr. Henderson, “was left at my door and to prevent
+it from blowing away this bit of lead was placed upon it. You don’t see
+anything suspicious about it, but you may when I draw your attention to
+the fact that this is a metal seal from a particular brand and make of
+an extremely high-priced French West Indian liquor. Until the day after
+I received this reminder of Mercedes and Garcia, there was not, to the
+best of our knowledge and belief, a single bottle of that Pére Kerrman
+liqueur in the United States—except possibly in the private stock of
+some millionaire or exclusive club. Two days later, the country was
+flooded with it.”
+
+“You win!” cried Selwin. “Now about the bandits. Have you got them dead
+to rights, too?”
+
+“Ask Pauling,” replied Mr. Henderson. “He’s the next witness.”
+
+“Here’s my exhibit A,” said Mr. Pauling, as he drew a creased paper from
+an inside pocket and placed it before the assembled officials.
+
+“H-m-m, another threat, eh?” remarked the first one who examined it.
+
+“Yes, commanding me to drop investigation of that hold-up gang that the
+police nabbed on West 16th St. last week. Nothing was said while the
+police were at it, but as soon as I took hold I received this.”
+
+“And written with the same old machine!” exclaimed Selwin. “All right,
+Pauling, I may be from Missouri, but you and Henderson have shown me.
+Now let’s plan a campaign.”
+
+“If these two notes were sent by the same man, as they appear to have
+been,” remarked a quiet man who heretofore had said nothing but had been
+steadily consuming one black cigar after another by the process of
+chewing them between his strong white teeth, “then our game is right
+underfoot, so to speak—right in little old Manhattan probably.”
+
+“Bully for you, Meredith!” cried a small, wiry, nervous man, clapping
+the other familiarly on the back. “‘The mills of the gods,’ etc., you
+know. Where did you fish that idea from?”
+
+“From some place you lack—a brain,” retorted Meredith continuing to bite
+savagely at his cigar. “But, fooling aside,” he went on, “it’s a cinch
+he is. Henderson and Pauling get their notes only two days apart and,
+what’s more, Pauling gets his within twenty-four hours after he starts
+that investigation. No time for word to get any other place and have a
+bit of typewritten paper get back.”
+
+“Huh! Then, according to you, all this red rubbish is also written right
+in the old home-town, eh?” snorted the thin man.
+
+“Yep,” replied Meredith. “Expect that’s why we haven’t nailed its source
+yet. Fact is, I believe there isn’t any rum being smuggled in. Been
+stored here and just being distributed now. Bet we’ve all been walking
+over the trail star-gazing. So darned sure it was all coming in from
+outside we never thought of it being right alongside of us.”
+
+“That’s a possibility,” admitted Henderson and then, dropping their
+voices, the half dozen men earnestly discussed plans, offered
+suggestions, examined mysterious documents stored in a hidden and
+massive safe in the wall and pored over maps and diagrams which no one,
+outside of this inner circle, would ever see.
+
+At the end of two hours, the conference broke up. The papers and
+documents were replaced in their secret vault, the maps and diagrams
+were locked in a steel box and thrust in another safe and the men
+chatted on various matters, discussing the latest news, arguing the
+respective merits of motor cars, expressing opinions as to the next
+pennant winner, telling jokes and thoroughly enjoying themselves as if
+they had not a care in the world and were not literally carrying their
+lives in their hands day and night.
+
+“What’s that boy of yours doing in radio now?” asked Meredith,
+addressing Mr. Pauling when the conversation finally turned towards
+wireless. “Henderson was telling me about their ‘radio detective’ stuff.
+Great kid—Tom.”
+
+“Oh, he and Frank Putney are working on a submarine radio scheme. I met
+a young chap at Nassau with a new-fangled diving suit and he and the
+boys are trying to work out a radio outfit to use under water. Say,
+they’re succeeding, too.”
+
+“Jove! that’s a great scheme!” exclaimed another. “Under-sea wireless!
+Well, I’ll be hanged, what won’t our kids be up to next!”
+
+“Wish we’d had anything as good to tinker with when we were kids,”
+declared Selwin. “I remember how every one laughed at Marconi when he
+first started wireless. My boy’s crazy over it now. Well, I must be
+getting on.”
+
+Rising, Selwin slipped from the room, sauntered casually about the
+corridor, noted the seemingly inattentive janitor brushing imaginary
+dust from a window frame, knew that the lynx-eyed guard was on his job,
+and without a sign of recognition made his way to the elevator and the
+street. At intervals of half an hour or so the others left, some by the
+same corridor, others through an outer room, where an office boy seemed
+dozing in a chair over a lurid, paper-covered novel—but upon whose
+boyish, freckled cheeks a closely-shaven, heavy beard might have been
+detected by a near examination—while still others took a roundabout
+route and descended to the street on the opposite side of the building.
+At last, only Mr. Pauling and Henderson were left and the two friends,
+glad of a chance to have a quiet smoke and to be free from care for a
+short time, sat chatting and talking over Mr. Pauling’s last trip to the
+West Indies.
+
+“It was positively baffling,” stated Mr. Pauling in reply to a question.
+“I knew they were filled to the gunwales with liquor and I knew as well
+as I wanted to that the cargo was going to the States and yet, when they
+got here and our men boarded them they were either empty or carried
+legitimate cargoes or else they never touched our ports and came back
+empty. It’s common talk that the stuff is going to us, but no one has
+given away how it’s done yet. Why, I even had one trailed—shadowed by a
+disguised cutter—and they kept her within sight for days and then I’ll
+be hanged if she didn’t come back without a sign of cargo. Now where did
+they land it? Only solution is they got cold feet and heaved it
+overboard.”
+
+“More likely they met some other craft during the night and
+transhipped,” suggested Mr. Henderson. “I imagine that’s how they get it
+in. Have some prearranged signal and spot and ship the stuff in at
+another port while they sail boldly into harbor. Of course we’re
+watching for them and let up on other places and while we’re boarding
+the suspect the other craft gets in on some unfrequented bit of coast
+and meets a truck or car. It’s not hard. We can’t guard _all_ the coast
+with our force and I’m sure that game’s played sometimes, if not always.
+We’ve taken a lot of stuff that afterwards proved to be colored water or
+cane-juice and of course they didn’t bring that from Cuba or the Bahamas
+just for the sake of getting our goats.”
+
+“And then there were the Chinese,” resumed Mr. Pauling. “Of course there
+we’ve another difficulty because, once set ashore or near shore, John
+can look after himself and doesn’t need a truck to carry him out of our
+sight. Just the same I’d give a lot to know the secret of their putting
+it over on us.”
+
+“I’ve often wondered if those boys—Tom and Frank—weren’t right about
+that strange conversation they overheard,” ruminated Mr. Henderson. “I’m
+morally certain they were all right in their cross bearings with their
+loops, although I didn’t tell them so—and yet we found nothing there.
+Have you asked the boys if they’ve heard anything more of it lately?”
+
+“No, but I will,” Mr. Pauling replied. “They’ve been so busy with this
+new idea I expect they’ve forgotten all about it. I promised I’d go down
+to see their— Hello, there’s the phone. Wonder who ’tis.”
+
+Leaning forward, Mr. Pauling drew the extension phone towards him,
+lifted the receiver and placed it at his ear.
+
+“Yes, this is Mr. Pauling speaking,” he said. Then his face blanched,
+his cigar dropped from his fingers and in anxious, frightened tones he
+cried, “What’s that you say? Frank! What’s that? Tom under water!
+Calling for help! Having a fight with—with what? Never mind! Calling
+through the radio! Yes, I’ll be down instantly!”
+
+Slamming the receiver on its hook Mr. Pauling leaped to his feet.
+
+“It’s Frank!” he cried. “Says Tom’s calling for help from under water.
+Lord knows what’s up! Send Jameson and a bunch of men. Order a patrol
+down. Rawlins’ dock, foot of 28th. You know the place. Come yourself,
+too!”
+
+Jerking open a drawer, Mr. Pauling grabbed up a heavy revolver, shoved
+it into his pocket, dashed through the door and as he passed the
+supposed janitor gave a terse order. “Get inside!” he exclaimed,
+“Henderson needs you.” The next instant he was plunging down the stairs.
+With a bound he cleared the last few steps, hurtled like a football
+player through the pedestrians on the sidewalk, leaped into his waiting
+car and the next instant was violating every traffic law as he drove
+madly through the streets. Once only did he slacken speed when, as he
+rounded the corner, he caught a glimpse of one of his men and with a
+gesture summoned him. Instantly, the man obeyed, leaped on the running
+board and as the machine again darted ahead clambered in beside Mr.
+Pauling.
+
+Before Mr. Pauling’s footsteps had sounded on the stairs, before the
+secret service man in the janitor’s overalls could dodge inside the
+room, Mr. Henderson was talking over a private wire to the nearest
+police station. Ten seconds later, he was rushing downstairs with the
+erstwhile janitor at his heels and hard on the wake of Mr. Pauling’s car
+his runabout went tearing in the same direction.
+
+As they swung from Fourth Avenue into 28th St., gaping crowds lined the
+sidewalks craning their necks and peering down the street where, far
+ahead, the police patrol was startling the neighborhood with its
+clanging bell as it followed the lead of Mr. Pauling’s car.
+
+What had happened, what danger was menacing his boy, Mr. Pauling could
+not guess. But that Tom was in deadly peril he felt sure. Frank’s
+agonized tones proved that, and while his incoherent, stammering words
+carried no explanation Mr. Pauling knew that his son was calling for aid
+from under the water, that something terrible had occurred. Through his
+mind had instantly flashed the threat of the bandit chief, the threat to
+make him sweat blood if he continued his investigations. Could it be
+that? Had the thugs captured or attacked Tom to injure his father? And
+where was Rawlins? With nerves already strained from overwork and
+failure to accomplish what the government demanded of him, Mr. Pauling,
+who was noted for his self-possession, his calmness and clear-headedness
+in the most trying and perilous moments, was now mad with fear and his
+teeth actually chattered with nervousness. His car, racing at break-neck
+speed, seemed almost to crawl. Every corner seemed to be purposely
+blocked by traffic. He thought he had never seen so many persons
+crossing the streets, so many slow-moving, horse-drawn vehicles impeding
+his progress. He cursed aloud, handled his levers with savage jerks,
+gritted his teeth and mentally prayed he would not be too late. Now,
+behind him, he could hear the clanging, oncoming patrol truck—he knew
+Henderson had lost no time. Before him lay the end of the street, the
+river and the docks. With a reckless twist he swung the car into the
+waterfront street, took the turn on two wheels, drove it diagonally,
+regardless of cursing truck-men, across the cobbled road, and with
+squealing brakes, brought it to a skidding stop by Rawlins’ dock. Before
+it had lost headway he had leaped out, the detective at his side, and as
+he burst into the boys’ workshop a crowd of blue-clad policemen were
+jumping from the still moving patrol and were crowding at his heels.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE CRY FROM THE DEPTHS
+
+
+Henry watched Tom’s head disappear, he saw the little silvery bubbles
+rising, for an instant he could distinguish the darker shadow in the
+water which marked his friend, and then nothing but the rippling green
+surface of the river was visible through the open trapdoor in the floor
+of the dock. He and Frank were alone, Tom and Rawlins were beneath the
+river, and yet, down there at the bottom of the gurgling water, the
+unseen two could hear every word spoken in the room above. It was
+marvelous, fantastic and almost incredible. But even more wonderful and
+impossible events were about to take place. Frank had already heard
+Tom’s parting words over the set, although not a sound had issued from
+his helmet, and now, with the others under the water, Frank was again
+talking.
+
+“Yes, I can hear you finely,” he said. “Say, it’s wonderful. Where are
+you? Right under the dock? I’m going to let Henry talk to you. I feel as
+if I were dreaming!”
+
+As Henry listened at the set and Tom’s words came to his ears he
+actually jumped, for he had never expected the words to come as plainly
+and distinctly as if Tom had been in the room with him and talking to
+him direct.
+
+“That you, Henry?” came Tom’s voice. “Gee, but it’s great. I can hear
+you just as well as if I were up there. Does my voice sound loud?”
+
+“Loud as if you were standing alongside of me,” Henry assured him. “I
+can’t believe you’re really under water.”
+
+So, for some time, the three boys and Rawlins conversed, chatting and
+laughing, expressing their wonder and delight in boyish expletives and
+overjoyed at finding their plans and their work had proved such an
+immense success.
+
+“We’re going off a ways,” announced Tom, at last. “Mr. Rawlins wants to
+find out how far away we can hear and send. We’re going to walk down the
+river. You keep talking and after we’ve gone a few hundred yards we’ll
+call you. If you don’t reply that you heard us we’ll keep walking back
+and trying until you do get us. Then we’ll know our range.”
+
+For a time, the two boys on the dock kept up a steady conversation with
+Tom and Rawlins, and, much to their surprise, the sounds of their
+friends’ voices continued as loud as when they were directly under the
+dock.
+
+“It’s a funny thing,” remarked Frank during a lull in the under-sea
+conversation, “I thought they’d get out of range very soon. I never
+would have believed that these little fifty-meter waves could carry that
+far with only a two-foot grid for an aërial. The water must be a heap
+better for waves than the air.”
+
+Then there was an interval when no sounds came in and Frank was about to
+call to Tom when, to his ears, came a suppressed “Wha—wha” followed by a
+hoarse “Sssh!”
+
+Whether Rawlins had intended this for Tom or himself Frank did not know,
+but he decided that, for some unknown reason, the diver wished silence
+and so wisely refrained from speaking.
+
+“I would like to know what Mr. Rawlins wanted to be quiet for,” said
+Frank, holding his hand over the mouthpiece of his microphone. “But I
+suppose there’s some good reason for it.”
+
+Scarcely had he ceased speaking when he was startled by a sharp
+exclamation of surprise from Tom.
+
+So unexpected was it that Frank responded involuntarily. “What’s that
+you said?” he asked, exactly as though Tom had been there in the room.
+But there was no audible reply, merely some faint sounds like subdued
+whispers, followed by silence.
+
+“Gee, there’s something mighty funny going on!” exclaimed Frank,
+addressing Henry. “Tom said ‘Gosh’ something and then, when I answer he
+doesn’t say a thing—just some little sounds like whispers. Say, I _do_
+wonder what they’re up to!”
+
+“Oh, I expect they’re trying to see if they can talk together without
+your hearing them,” suggested Henry. “Probably that’s why Mr. Rawlins
+told you to be quiet.”
+
+“Well, I’m going to find out,” declared Frank. “They’ve no right to keep
+us wondering like this.”
+
+“Hello!” he cried into the microphone. “What on earth’s the matter? I
+haven’t heard a word from you two for five minutes. Can you hear me?”
+
+But instead of Tom’s voice in reply Frank was amazed to hear thick,
+guttural words rapidly spoken, and among them he made out only one that
+he understood, the name “Oleander.”
+
+“Henry!” exclaimed Frank, speaking in hushed tones as if he feared being
+overheard, “Henry, there’s that fellow talking again—the one you and Mr.
+Rawlins heard—talking in Dutch or something!”
+
+Then the strange voices ceased and very faintly and indistinctly Frank
+heard Tom’s voice asking,
+
+“What does it mean?”
+
+Frank was puzzled. “What does what mean?” he inquired into the
+microphone. But the reply, if Tom made one, was drowned out and confused
+by Rawlins’ voice. Frank could not distinguish all the words, but he
+knew from the sounds and intonations that Tom and the diver were
+discussing some matter between them and he refrained from interrupting.
+
+Then the voices ceased and Frank called, begging Tom to explain matters,
+asking if anything was wrong. But for a moment there was no reply and he
+wondered if his voice could be heard.
+
+Then to his ears came Tom’s familiar “Gosh!” a few unintelligible words
+and a shrill whistle, followed by Rawlins’ voice. Part of it Frank could
+not catch but as he strained his ears he distinctly heard Rawlins
+exclaim:
+
+“We’re in a dangerous place! Come on. Let me go first!”
+
+Frank’s face paled. “Jehoshaphat!” he exclaimed to Henry who, realizing
+that something mysterious was taking place beneath the river, was
+bending close. “Jehoshaphat! They’re in danger! Say, what _can_ it be?
+Maybe they’re caught in quicksand or a current or under a boat.”
+
+Pleadingly, with fright and worry expressed in his tones, Frank begged
+Tom to reply, to tell him what was wrong, what the danger was. For a
+space he waited anxiously for his chum’s reply and then, at last, it
+came.
+
+“It’s all right,” called Tom. “Don’t worry. Stop talking and just
+listen!”
+
+Frank turned to Henry and disconnected the microphone by throwing off a
+switch to make sure that no sound could be sent.
+
+“I guess they’re all right,” he said. “But I’m worried just the same.
+Why should he want me to be quiet and just listen. Oh, I _do_ wish
+they’d come back.”
+
+“There’s those foreign words again,” he announced presently, “and, say—I
+didn’t think of it before—there are two talking now.”
+
+Then followed silence, not a sound, not even a hum or buzz of
+interference greeted his ears and anxiously he listened, half fearful
+that some awful casualty had happened to Tom and Rawlins out there
+somewhere under the turbid waters of the river.
+
+The moments passed terribly slowly to the two boys and then Frank again
+gave a start as he heard Tom ejaculate “Gosh!” followed by some rapid
+low-spoken words, only one of which Frank could catch—the word “wreck.”
+
+“That’s it,” he announced to Henry with a sigh of relief. “They’ve found
+a wreck. Gee! perhaps they’ve found treasure.”
+
+Henry laughed gayly. “Oh, that’s good!” he exclaimed. “Treasure in the
+East River! You must think you’re down in the West Indies or somewhere.”
+
+“Well, I don’t see what’s so awful funny about finding a wreck or
+treasure in the East River,” declared Frank petulantly. “Lots of boats
+have sunk here and why shouldn’t one of ’em have treasure on it? I don’t
+mean millions of dollars worth of gold or jewels of course—like pirates’
+treasure—but there might be a box of money or something.”
+
+“You’re way off,” replied Henry. “They wouldn’t leave a wreck here for a
+week. They’d get it up or blow it up right away. Why, a wreck here would
+block the channel. No, sir, you heard ’em wrong.”
+
+“I did not!” stoutly maintained Frank. “I know Tom said something about
+a wreck. I don’t care what you say. How do you know there isn’t some old
+wreck out there somewhere? It may have been there for years; how would
+any one know?”
+
+“Why, Mr. Rawlins and Tom aren’t the only divers who ever went down
+here,” insisted Henry. “The city and the government and wrecking
+companies and contractors have divers going down all the time. I’ve
+watched ’em working heaps of times. Father’s a construction engineer and
+I know he always has divers at work around New York. Some of ’em would
+have found a wreck if it had been there.”
+
+“Well, anyway we’ll know pretty soon,” said Frank. “They can’t stay down
+much longer. They must——”
+
+With a startled cry his words ended and his scared, pale face told Henry
+that something dreadful had happened. Ringing in Frank’s ears, shrill,
+filled with deadly terror, the shriek of a boy frightened almost out of
+his senses, came Tom’s despairing cry—a wordless, awful scream.
+
+“What’s the matter?” Frank forced his paralyzed tongue to form the
+words. “Tom! Oh, Tom! What’s wrong? Why did you yell?”
+
+“Help! Send for help!” rang back the answer. “It’s awful”—followed by
+words so filled with mortal terror that Frank could make nothing of them
+and then—“Get Dad! Get the police!”
+
+Frank waited to hear no more. Dropping the receivers he leaped across
+the room, jerked the receiver from the telephone and frantically called
+for Mr. Pauling’s number. But in his fright and terror, his fear for
+Tom, his hurried words were a mere jumble to the operator.
+
+“Can’t hear you,” came the girl’s voice. “What number did you say?”
+
+Again Frank yelled. “Watkins 6636!” he cried, striving to make his words
+clear.
+
+“Watkins 3666?” inquired the girl, and Frank could almost hear her
+masticating gum.
+
+“No, 6636!” he screamed. “Hurry!”
+
+The seconds that followed seemed like years to Frank. Across his brain
+flashed a thousand fears and he suffered untold agonies as he stood
+there, sweat pouring from his face. What if Mr. Pauling should not be in
+his office? Suppose the line were busy? What if the girl got the wrong
+number? How slow she was! Had she forgotten the call? Would no one
+answer? And then, when he was sure he must have waited hours, his heart
+gave a great leap, a load seemed lifted from his mind as he heard Mr.
+Pauling’s cheery, deep-throated:
+
+“Hello! Who is it?”
+
+“It’s Frank!” fairly screamed the boy. “Tom’s in trouble! I don’t know
+what—he’s under the river—with Mr. Rawlins. He wants help! Sent for you!
+Wants police!”
+
+Then, when at last Mr. Pauling had succeeded in grasping the message and
+in excited tones had shouted, “All right, I’ll be down instantly!” Frank
+sank limply to the floor.
+
+But the next second he was up and at the table by the radio set.
+
+“Have you heard anything?” he inquired anxiously of Henry, who had taken
+up the receivers and had been listening while Frank called Mr. Pauling.
+
+“Not a word,” replied Henry.
+
+“Oh, gosh! Oh, I _do_ wish they’d hurry!” exclaimed Frank. “Oh, they’re
+terribly slow! And how _will_ they get to him? How do we know where he
+is?”
+
+Slowly the minutes dragged by. Each tick of the cheap clock on the table
+seemed to spell Tom’s fate and still no sound came from beneath the
+river. Once, Henry thought he caught a word, an exclamation half
+suppressed, but he could not be sure. He had called Tom, but no reply
+had come. Were the two dead? Had some awful calamity overtaken them at
+the bottom of the river? Was this to be the tragic end of all their
+experiments? Was Tom’s death the reward for their success?
+
+Then, from far up the street, came the clamor of a bell, and the screech
+of a motor horn sounded from nearer at hand.
+
+At the same instant Henry uttered a glad, joyous cry. “They’re all
+right!” he shouted. “I just heard Rawlins tell Tom to go ahead!”
+
+With a quick motion, he threw in the switch and at that moment Frank’s
+ringing shout of joy filled the room.
+
+But before Henry could call to Tom, before he could utter a sound,
+hurrying, tramping footsteps echoed from the dock, the door burst
+inwards with a bang and into the room leaped Mr. Pauling. Beside him was
+a heavy-jawed man with drawn pistol and over his shoulder through the
+open doorway the boys saw the visored caps and blue coats of police.
+
+“They’re safe!” yelled Frank, trying to make his voice heard above the
+excited, shouted interrogations of Mr. Pauling. “We just heard them.”
+
+Mr. Pauling leaped towards the open trapdoor, the police crowding at his
+heels. Henry dropped his instruments and joined them and all crowded
+forward.
+
+A shadow seemed to hover in the dull water and a slender affair of wire
+broke the surface.
+
+“They’re here!” screamed Frank.
+
+“Thank God!” echoed Mr. Pauling fervently.
+
+Hardly had the words of thankfulness left his lips when he uttered a
+startled cry, and, throwing himself face downward at the edge of the
+trapdoor, plunged his arms into the swirling water. The dim shadowy form
+of the diver whose helmet had just appeared, had swayed to one side; his
+hands, clutching the upper rungs of the ladder, had loosened their
+grasp, his arms had wavered and had taken a feeble stroke as if trying
+to swim and from the receiver on the table had issued a despairing cry,
+a choking, gurgling groan, ending in a gasp.
+
+Whether the swaying, half-floating form was Tom or Rawlins, Mr. Pauling
+could not know, for in the suits identity was lost, but trained as he
+was through long years in a service where to act instinctively meant
+life or death, he instantly dropped to the floor and clutched at the dim
+figure beneath. Had he delayed for the fraction of a second he would
+have been too late, but, as it was, his fingers closed on one of the
+diver’s wrists. The next instant he had grasped the other arm and a
+moment later, with Henderson’s aid, he had dragged the dripping, limp
+form onto the dock and the two men were cutting the suit and helmet from
+the unconscious form. But they already knew it was Tom. The boy’s limbs
+projecting from the short tunic had proved this and Mr. Pauling’s face
+was white and strained as they dragged the khaki-colored garment and the
+helmet from his son.
+
+“Thank Heaven Rawlins fixed those suits so he could not breathe flames!”
+exclaimed Mr. Henderson, as the helmet was drawn from Tom’s head. “He’s
+breathing, Pauling!”
+
+As he spoke, there was a disturbance at the door and the police stood
+aside as an ambulance surgeon pushed his way hurriedly into the room. He
+bent over Tom in silence for an instant and then he glanced up and Mr.
+Pauling read good news in his eyes.
+
+“Don’t worry!” he exclaimed. “He’s not hurt. Hasn’t breathed any water.
+Just in a faint, I think. He’ll be around in a moment. Hello! Here’s
+another!”
+
+While he had been speaking, another helmeted form had appeared, dragging
+a limp figure, and, holding to the latter’s legs still another diver was
+climbing up the ladder.
+
+“What the dickens!” exclaimed Mr. Henderson glancing up. “Who the devil
+are these? Two divers go down and four come up!”
+
+Dropping the apparently lifeless diver on the floor Rawlins dragged off
+his helmet, glanced about in a puzzled way and then, without waiting to
+ask questions exclaimed, “Here, Doctor! Quick! Get at this chap!”
+
+At his words, the doctor and his assistant sprang to the side of the
+form on the floor and rapidly stripped off his helmet and, as the man’s
+face was exposed, even the hardened surgeons could not restrain a gasp
+of horror and amazement. The face was horrible to look upon. It was
+scorched, seared, blackened, the eyebrows burned off, the eyelids
+hanging in shreds, the sightless eyes staring white and opaque like
+those of a boiled fish. Rawlins gave a single glance at him.
+
+“Oh, Lord!” he ejaculated. “He’s done for! He’s had flames from the
+chemicals in his helmet! Poor devil, he _must_ have suffered!”
+
+Then, turning to Mr. Henderson, he exclaimed.
+
+“Better get the suit off this other chap. Don’t know who he is, but he’s
+something rotten! Guess it’s a good thing the police are here.”
+
+As Mr. Henderson and Rawlins stepped towards the man who still wore his
+suit, the fellow raised an arm and leaped, or tried to leap, away, quite
+forgetting the heavy, lead-soled boots he wore. The result was that he
+tripped and fell heavily and, before Rawlins or Henderson could reach
+him, he was twisting and rolling towards the gaping trapdoor. An instant
+more and he would have been in the water, but just as he reached the
+edge of the opening, Frank, who with Henry had been staring open-mouthed
+and dumbfounded at the surprising and incomprehensible events taking
+place so rapidly before them, sprang forward and slammed shut the door
+which, in falling, pinned the fellow’s legs beneath it. Then, as if
+fearing the man might wriggle free, the excited boy jumped upon the
+heavy planks. But there was no fight or attempt to escape left in the
+fellow and, as several policemen rushed forward and seized him, he
+submitted without the least resistance and a moment later had been
+stripped of his suit.
+
+Once more it was Mr. Henderson’s turn to be amazed, for, as he caught
+sight of the man’s face, as he saw the closely-cropped, bullet-shaped
+head, the tiny, close-set piggish eyes and the big loose-lipped mouth he
+could scarcely believe his eyes and uttered a sharp exclamation of
+wonder.
+
+“Put the bracelets on him and don’t give him a chance!” he ordered the
+police and, as the shining irons snapped with a click about the man’s
+wrists and the officers led him to one side, the small piglike eyes
+glared at Mr. Henderson with such mingled hatred, brutality and ferocity
+that the boys shivered.
+
+Rawlins was now bending above Tom beside Mr. Pauling and when, a moment
+later, the boy took a long, deep breath and his eyes fluttered open, the
+anxious, strained expression upon the diver’s face vanished.
+
+“I’ll say he’s a good sport!” he ejaculated. “Poor kid! Don’t wonder he
+went clean off! And he saved my life too—with his under-sea radio at
+that!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+ASTOUNDING DISCOVERIES
+
+
+Perhaps it may seem as if the boys had met with success too easily and
+had accomplished far more in a short time than would be possible. But as
+a matter of fact they had encountered innumerable difficulties, had made
+numbers of mistakes, had been faced with failure or negative results
+time after time and would have given up in despair had it not been for
+the encouragement of Mr. Pauling and Mr. Henderson and the never-ceasing
+optimism of Rawlins. Indeed, Rawlins had done fully as much to make the
+under-sea radio a success as had the boys.
+
+Although he did not or could not become an adept at radio and insisted
+that it was all Greek to him, yet he was a born inventor and a
+mechanical genius. He had been diving since he was a mere boy, his
+father and grandfather had made deep-sea diving their profession, and he
+felt as much at home under water as on land. Hence, to him, there was
+nothing mysterious or baffling about the depths and he could see no
+valid reason why anything that could be accomplished on shore should not
+be accomplished equally well under water. He had distinguished himself
+by devising a submarine apparatus for taking motion pictures at the
+bottom of the sea and it was while engaged in making a sub-sea film that
+he had invented and perfected his remarkable self-contained diving suit.
+To him, with his experience, the shortcomings of the suit—the danger of
+the chemicals flaming up if they came in contact with water—were of no
+moment, for, as he had explained to the boys, he automatically shut the
+valve if for any reason he removed his lips from the breathing tube, the
+action being as natural and unconscious as holding one’s breath when
+swimming under water.
+
+But he at once realized that if the suits were to become a commercial or
+practical thing, or if the under-sea radio was to be used, it would be
+necessary to make the apparatus absolutely safe and fool proof. He
+therefore set to work at once to devise an entirely new system and
+absolutely refused to allow the boys to don suits and go down until he
+had thoroughly tested out and proved the new equipment. It was not an
+easy matter, but in the end he succeeded, and, risking his own life in
+the experiment, he gave the safety suit a most severe tryout. It
+fulfilled his greatest expectations and feeling sure that no matter how
+careless or inexperienced the wearer might be there could be no
+accident, as far as the suit and oxygen generator were concerned, he was
+satisfied.
+
+He freely expressed his satisfaction and his indebtedness to the boys,
+insisting that if it had not been for them and their radio he never
+would have improved the suit and made it practical for any one to use
+without danger. In addition, there were innumerable other changes and
+alterations which had to be made to adapt the suits to radio work, and
+so, by the time the boys were ready to make their tests, they were using
+suits which bore but little resemblance to those Rawlins had first shown
+them.
+
+Upon the helmets were the odd grids of wire at right angles like some
+great crown; the compressed air receptacles containing the sending sets
+were attached to the shoulders like old-fashioned knapsacks, and the
+front of the helmet resembled some grotesque monster’s head with the
+protuberance which contained the compact little receiving set like a
+huge goiter. Indeed, as Henry had remarked when he first saw Rawlins
+appearing dripping from the river, they looked like weird and fearful
+sea monsters. So, if the reader imagines that the boys and Rawlins had
+had an easy time or that their success was of the phenomenal kind which
+occurs only in fiction, he is greatly mistaken and the impression is due
+wholly to the fact that their failures and troubles have not been
+chronicled.
+
+And now, having explained this, let us return to the boys when, their
+sub-sea sending set complete, the test was about to take place. As Tom
+sank beneath the water and slowly descended the ladder he was more
+excited and thrilled than ever before, for he was about to try an
+experiment which, if successful, would mark a new era in radio telephony
+and he was keyed up to a high pitch when at last he dropped from the
+final rung of the ladder and settled, half-floating like some big,
+ungainly fish upon the river bottom. Through the half opaque green water
+he could see the irregular, grotesquely distorted and hazy form of
+Rawlins appearing gigantic and phantomlike. He might have been fifteen
+or fifty feet away, for despite the fact that Tom had been down several
+times he could never accustom himself to the deceptive effects of
+distance under water and when he stretched his hand towards the
+indistinct figure he gave an involuntary start when he found Rawlins
+within arm’s length. As his hand touched the clammy rubber surface he
+uttered an exclamation of surprise and the next instant gave a joyful
+yell, for at his ejaculation he had heard Rawlins’ voice in his ears
+asking, “What’s wrong?”
+
+“For heaven’s sake, don’t yell so!” came Rawlins’ words in response to
+Tom’s, “Hurrah, it’s working!”
+
+“I’ll tell the world it’s working!” continued the diver, “but don’t
+shout. I’m talking in my lowest tones. Here, how do you like this?”
+
+Tom’s ears were almost split as a thunderous bellow filled his helmet,
+and involuntarily he clapped his hands to the outside of his helmet over
+his ears.
+
+“That’s a lesson,” he said in his lowest tones. “Sorry I didn’t know,
+Mr. Rawlins. It won’t happen again. I guess these helmets act like
+sounding boards or something. Hello, there’s Frank’s voice.”
+
+Clear and distinct they could hear Frank asking if there was trouble and
+Tom barely checked another outburst as he realized that the boys on
+shore could talk with them and could hear what was going on under the
+water.
+
+“We can hear everything you say,” went on Frank’s voice. “Can you hear
+us and each other?”
+
+“Gee, you bet we can!” replied Tom. “Isn’t this just great?”
+
+“Say, are you whispering?” inquired Frank. “I can hardly hear your
+voice.”
+
+“No, but don’t shout so,” answered Tom. “Down here everything just
+roars. We have to talk low or we’ll deafen each other. I’ll bet we don’t
+need head phones on our ears under water.”
+
+“Henry’s going to talk with you,” Frank announced, “he’s just crazy to
+try.”
+
+For the next half hour the boys talked back and forth between the
+workshop and the bottom of the river and then Rawlins and Tom ascended
+the ladder and removed their suits.
+
+For fully five minutes, the boys pranced, danced, hurrahed, yelled,
+laughed and made such a racket celebrating their success that it was a
+wonder the river police did not break in thinking a horde of Indians had
+taken possession of the dock. And if the truth must be told, Rawlins was
+just about as excited and acted as crazily as the youngsters.
+
+But at last they calmed down and Frank, mad to go down, donned Tom’s
+suit.
+
+“Try it without the phones,” Tom advised him. “Then you can talk loudly
+enough to be heard up here without deafening Mr. Rawlins.”
+
+To Tom, listening at the set on the dock, it seemed little short of
+uncanny to hear Rawlins and Frank talking from under the water, and
+indeed, it impressed him as even more remarkable than hearing those on
+shore when he was below the surface.
+
+Both Rawlins and Frank assured him that the sets worked far better
+without the receivers on their heads, and even when Frank spoke in his
+loudest tones Rawlins replied that it did not deafen him as before.
+
+“Now let’s try tuning, Frank,” said Tom. “I’m going to vary my wave
+length and see if you can pick it up. Then change yours and I’ll see if
+I can get you.”
+
+As Tom spoke, he altered the sending waves slightly and breathlessly
+waited. Presently Frank’s voice came in.
+
+“Got it!” he exclaimed. “Had a bit of trouble at first, but it’s all
+right now. Now see if you can get this.”
+
+As he spoke his words ended in a high, shrill squeal, but an instant
+later, as Tom turned the knob on his tuner, the words suddenly returned
+in a most startling way, the squeal seeming to change magically into
+words.
+
+“Hurrah, I got it!” cried Tom jubilantly. “Come on up, Frank, Henry
+wants a chance.”
+
+“You’ve certainly struck a wonderful thing here,” declared Rawlins, when
+he and Henry came up and had removed their suits. “How far do you
+suppose it will work?”
+
+“That’s something we’ll have to find out,” replied Tom. “But the sounds
+come so loudly I’ll bet it’s good for a long distance. Somehow or other
+we get sound a lot louder inside a helmet than outside. I don’t just get
+the reason, but I expect it’s either because the whole air vibrates to
+the diaphragm of the receivers inside the helmet and no sound waves are
+lost or else because the helmet itself acts like a sounding board or
+maybe there are some sort of amplified waves set up.”
+
+“I guess it’s the air being inclosed,” said Rawlins. “When I used to
+wear a regular suit and used an ordinary phone under water it was the
+same way, but I never thought of it in connection with radio. The whole
+thing gets me, there’s millions in this if we can patent it. Let’s go
+down once more and give her a real tryout. We’ll take a hike down river
+a few hundred yards and see if the boys get us. If they don’t we’ll come
+back and keep trying and if they do we’ll go on down as far as we can.
+Then, if we find it’s O. K. we’ll try to get your folks to let you go
+down to Nassau and we’ll show the world, I’ll bet.”
+
+“That’s a good idea,” agreed Tom. “You keep listening and now and then
+talking, Frank, and as soon as we lose your voice we’ll send and then
+walk back until we get you again. That way we can find if we can hear
+farther than you can or whether it’s the other way about.”
+
+Donning their suits, Tom and Rawlins once more descended the ladder and
+half-floating, half-walking turned downstream. Rawlins had already
+cautioned Tom to keep close to his side and to hold to his hand, for,
+with the mud stirred up by their feet and carried by the current with
+them, it was impossible to see more than a few feet and Rawlins knew the
+danger that lay in becoming separated.
+
+Even with the radio connecting them with the boys on the surface Tom
+might easily get confused and hopelessly lost if he strayed or was
+carried from sight of Rawlins and while Tom knew that, by turning on
+more oxygen, he could bob to the surface, yet danger lurked in this as
+he might emerge in the path of some steamer or motor boat and be run
+down or torn to pieces with the propellers. As long as they kept close
+to shore, following the docks and piers, there was no danger, for the
+only vessels in the vicinity were canal boats and barges which were not
+in use, the piers for several hundred yards having been used merely for
+storage and as warehouses for some time. Moreover, by keeping under the
+docks they were perfectly safe and Rawlins had no intention of going out
+into the channel with its swift currents and constantly passing tugs,
+ferryboats and small craft. So, half feeling his way and moving by the
+diver’s intuitive sixth sense of direction and holding to Tom’s hand,
+Rawlins moved slowly down the river.
+
+Frank’s words were constantly in their ears and now and then they
+replied, and somehow to Tom there was a most remarkable sensation of
+making no progress whatsoever. There was nothing visible by which to
+gauge their motion and, as the voice through the set continued to sound
+exactly the same and did not grow fainter with distance, he seemed to be
+standing still, although exerting himself and constantly stepping or
+rather pushing himself forward. He was so intent on this and so
+interested in the novel experience that he scarcely realized that
+Frank’s voice had suddenly grown faint and was interrupted by an odd
+buzzing sound which instantly brought back the memory of the sounds they
+had heard when listening to the mysterious speaker with their loop
+aërials. He was just about to speak and ask Frank if he could hear when
+he felt Rawlins jerk his arm. He floundered forward and the next instant
+was dragged between the spiles of a dock where the water was dark with
+shadows.
+
+“What,—what—” he began, but instantly checked his words as a low “Ssh!”
+from Rawlins reached his ears. Not knowing what had happened or why
+Rawlins had suddenly acted in this strange manner, confused and
+bewildered, Tom peered about through the murky water. At first he saw
+nothing save the surrounding spiles, seeming to move and sway in dim,
+shadowy forms—the bottom of a canal boat with yard-long streamers of sea
+weeds waving from its barnacle-encrusted planks; a piece of trailing,
+rusty cable; a few rotting, water-soaked timbers protruding from the
+mud; and a shapeless mass which might have been almost any piece of
+jetsam cast into the river. Then like phantom shapes, so indistinct,
+hazy and formless that he was not sure they were not shadows in the
+water, he saw two figures—two moving things that, for a brief instant,
+he thought must be huge, dull-green fish nosing about the mud. And then,
+as he gazed fixedly at them from between the spiles, a strange
+unreasoning fear clutched at his heart and he felt an odd, prickly
+sensation on his scalp and at the back of his neck, for the moving,
+sinister, unnatural things were approaching, moving noiselessly, slowly,
+but certainly towards him as though they had scented his presence and
+were bent on hunting him out.
+
+What were they? What strange, unknown, impossible sea monsters were
+these? He was frightened, shaking, and in his terror had forgotten
+completely about the radio outfit. Glad, indeed, was Tom that Rawlins
+was beside him, that the diver was armed—for Rawlins, he knew, never
+went down without a hatchet in his belt ready for use in case of an
+emergency such as fouling a rope or timber. But why didn’t Rawlins
+speak? Why had he ordered him to be silent? The sea monsters could not
+hear; what was the reason?
+
+And then, so suddenly that it came as a shock, he realized that the
+approaching forms, the grotesque shapes, were no sea creatures, no
+gigantic savage fish, but men! Men in diving suits much like their own.
+Men walking in the odd, half-sprawling, half-floating, forward-leaning
+posture he knew so well. But great as was Tom’s relief at this discovery
+his wonderment was doubly increased. Who were they and what were they
+doing here? Why had Rawlins drawn him into hiding? What did it all mean?
+Then, just as he was about to disregard Rawlins’ whispered orders and
+ask, the two figures disappeared. Without reason, without warning, they
+vanished from sight as if by magic.
+
+So dumbfounded was Tom that involuntarily he uttered an ejaculation of
+surprise and fairly jumped when, faint but clear, he heard Frank ask,
+“What’s that you said?”
+
+But before he could reply, Rawlins was speaking. “Come on!” he
+whispered, his voice being as low as if he feared the others might hear
+and, quite forgetting that he was under water, cut off from all
+conversation with other human beings save the boys. “Come on, I don’t
+know who they are, but there’s something funny. They’ve got suits like
+mine and the Lord knows who they are or how they got ’em. I’m going to
+find out where they went.”
+
+Slipping between the spiles with their slimy, weed-grown surfaces,
+Rawlins, holding to Tom’s hand, struggled forward into the lighter
+water. Beside them rose a dark wall of masonry and reaching this Rawlins
+proceeded to feel his way along it. Before they had traveled ten feet
+the diver uttered a sharp ejaculation. Beside them in the wall, loomed a
+huge, black hole, the mouth of a great sewer.
+
+“They went in here,” whispered Rawlins. “Come on!”
+
+A moment later they were in utter blackness, feeling their way forward
+along the walls.
+
+And now, very thin and faint, Tom heard Frank’s voice again. “What on
+earth’s the matter?” he asked. “I haven’t heard a word from you two for
+five minutes. Can you hear me?”
+
+Tom was about to answer for they were evidently at nearly the limit of
+receiving range and his mouth opened, his lips formed the words of his
+reply, but no sound issued from them. Clear, loud and harsh, guttural
+words rang in Tom’s ears. This was not Frank’s voice nor Henry’s; the
+words were not even English. Amazed and uncomprehending Tom was
+speechless and then, among the incomprehensible foreign syllables, came
+a word he recognized, the one word “Oleander!”
+
+Instantly he knew that by some strange freak, by some mystifying
+coincidence he was again hearing that unknown man to whom he had so
+often listened. It seemed strange, weird, uncanny to have it coming to
+his ears here in the old disused sewer, but after all, he reflected, why
+not? Rawlins had heard it once before, there was nothing remarkable
+about it and he was on the point of asking his companion if he had heard
+and of trying to tell Frank, when once more his words were stayed.
+Before him the stygian darkness suddenly grew light, a brilliant beam
+stabbed down from overhead and through the strangely illuminated water
+Tom saw the two men in diving suits standing beneath a square opening
+down which a ladder was being thrust. But why, he vaguely wondered, was
+the water so transparent? How was it that he could now see clearly for
+many yards? And then, with a start, it dawned upon him that he was not
+looking through water, that there was nothing between him and the trap
+save air. He was standing with head and shoulders out of water.
+
+And now the gruff, guttural words were once more beating in his ears and
+the next instant he saw the strange divers seize a dangling rope, tipped
+with a great iron hook, dip it under the water and then, as the hook
+again ascended, he saw a dripping, cigar-shaped object like a torpedo
+slowly rise from the water and disappear in the opening above. Close
+behind it the two divers followed up the ladder, the ladder was drawn
+up, the light snapped out and the next instant Tom and Rawlins were once
+more in absolute darkness.
+
+“What does it all mean?” exclaimed Tom, finding his voice at last.
+
+“What does what—” commenced Frank’s voice, only to be overwhelmed and
+drowned out by Rawlins’ louder words.
+
+“Search me!” replied the latter. “Something rotten going on here. Don’t
+know what, but I intend to find out. Did you hear them talking?”
+
+“Hear them?” replied Tom not understanding. “Of course not. But I heard
+that same chap you heard the other day—talking Dutch or something.”
+
+“That was them!” announced Rawlins decidedly. “Tom, they’ve got
+under-sea radio, too. It’s those chaps we’ve been hearing, I’m beginning
+to get it. That word Oleander. That’s a password—a countersign. Just as
+soon as they spoke it the door opened. There’s some deep mystery here.
+What the deuce that torpedolike affair was I don’t know. Perhaps they’re
+trying to blow up some building. This sewer is under a busy part of the
+city. Hear those trucks and surface cars overhead?”
+
+Absolutely dumbfounded, heedless of Frank’s insistent but weak voice in
+his ears, striving to grasp all this astounding statement of Rawlins’,
+Tom stood speechless for a moment. And then an idea flashed through his
+mind.
+
+“Gosh!” he exclaimed. “Say, Mr. Rawlins, they’ll find us. If they’ve got
+radio they can hear us too! Say, perhaps they’re listening to us now.
+Come on, let’s get out of here.”
+
+Rawlins’ surprised whistle came shrilly to Tom’s ears.
+
+“You’re right!” replied the diver. “We’re in a dangerous place. Come on.
+Let me go first.”
+
+Crowding past Tom, Rawlins hurried as fast as the constantly deepening
+water and the darkness would permit and presently, though to Tom it
+seemed hours, a lighter space appeared ahead and a few moments later
+they once more were standing at the bottom of the river.
+
+They had turned to retrace their steps towards their own dock and were
+following along the old wall when once more they were halted in their
+tracks. Again to their ears, borne to them by the radio waves, came the
+harsh foreign words.
+
+So close did the words sound in their ears that instinctively, without
+stopping to think that the speakers might be hundreds of feet or even
+yards distant, the two crouched back in a recess of the masonry,
+flattening themselves against the slime-covered, weed-draped stones and
+gazing apprehensively towards the spot where the old sewer pierced the
+wall.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE BATTLE BENEATH THE RIVER
+
+
+As they crouched there, Frank’s voice was taking on a frightened tone
+and Tom could now hear it much more plainly. But Tom’s mind was filled
+with the danger of being discovered and he scarcely dared reply, for
+somehow, although there was no foundation for his fears, he was filled
+with a terrible dread of these under-sea workers, these unknown
+mysterious divers who had lifted the ominous-looking metal cylinder
+through the trapdoor in the disused sewer. That, even if they heard him
+and his friends, they could not trail them or locate them under water
+never occurred to him. In fact, he had quite forgotten that he and
+Rawlins were under water or were as invisible to others a few yards away
+as other objects were to them. He felt as though he could be as easily
+seen as if on land, and that, if he spoke, his words would at once
+betray his whereabouts. But he also realized that Frank’s voice could be
+heard by others as well as by himself and so, steeling himself to the
+effort, he called back, “It’s all right. Don’t worry. Stop talking and
+listen.”
+
+Instantly, Frank’s voice ceased and Tom drew a breath of relief and then
+he gulped and pressed close to Rawlins, for before him in the water, as
+if attracted by the sounds of his voice, the two dim forms of the
+strange divers once more appeared. For a space they remained motionless
+as though listening and perspiration broke out on Tom’s forehead and
+chills ran up and down his spine as he heard distinctly the sounds of
+low-toned words in the same guttural tongue, and he was certain,
+positive, that his voice had been heard, that the others were striving
+to locate him, and that at any moment Frank or Henry might become
+curious or impatient and speak. In his terrified mind he could picture
+those big, sickly green, distorted beings creeping towards him, their
+wide-flung arms waving uncertainly like the tentacles of a huge octopus
+as they lurched forward; he could imagine the fixed, expressionless
+stare of those great goggle-eyed glasses in the squat neckless helmets
+and, as the current caused light and shadow to waver and change, the
+figures seemed actually moving towards his hiding place.
+
+It was terrible; he no longer thought of them as fellow men, no longer
+looked upon them as human beings; his fears had transformed them to
+submarine monsters, weird, uncanny, intelligent but bloodthirsty
+creatures, and so great was the tension, so fearful the vision conjured
+up by his overwrought imagination that he would have screamed had his
+mouth not been parched and dry and incapable of uttering a sound. It was
+like a nightmare, a dream in which one is powerless to move or to cry
+out; where one cannot compel muscles or mind to function; where one
+feels that it cannot be real, cannot be possible and yet is filled with
+sweating, blood-curdling terror that it is. And then, after what seemed
+hours of torture, but was barely ten seconds from the time the men had
+emerged from the sewer, their voices ceased and to Tom’s inexpressible
+relief they appeared to fade into the murky green water. They were
+moving away, soundlessly, mysteriously, without visible effort, and Tom
+noticed with his fright-filled eyes that above them was poised an
+indistinct, cigar-shaped object, the same torpedolike affair he had seen
+lifted from the sewer, and he realized that somehow, by some means, the
+men were dragging this along with them into the dim, green distance.
+
+He was aroused by Rawlins’ whisper and a touch on his arm.
+
+“I’m going to follow,” were the barely audible words. “No danger. Must
+see where they go. Come on.”
+
+Recovering from his fright, now that the divers were retreating, and
+rather reassured by the sound of his companion’s voice and words Tom
+moved forward from the wall but still grasping Rawlins’ hand.
+
+They could not see the figures before them, for the muck stirred up by
+the others’ passage concealed them as effectually as a smoke screen, but
+it also served to betray their whereabouts and to conceal Tom and
+Rawlins as well. For some distance—several hundred yards Tom
+thought—they moved along, following close to the wall that bounded the
+shore and ever with the slowly drifting column of muddy water to guide
+them.
+
+Once or twice the murk seemed to drift away, and each time Rawlins
+instantly halted, waiting to see if those they were trailing had come to
+a stop, but each time the mud again rose before them and they resumed
+their way.
+
+Tom had no idea of the distance or direction they had traveled. The
+effort he made to walk was his only guide and he knew that the same
+effort, the same number of steps on land, would have carried him a long
+way, but he also knew that under water his progress was snail-like, that
+a step might carry one a few inches or several feet or not at all,
+depending upon the current, and he wondered vaguely if Rawlins knew his
+way, if he could find his way back, or if he intended to bob to the
+surface to get his bearings when he finally decided to return to the
+dock. And Tom smiled to himself as he pictured the looks of surprise,
+the screams of fright which would greet their unexpected and sudden
+appearance if Rawlins did this and they should bob up beside some
+crowded recreation pier or ferry ship. But Rawlins had halted again.
+
+Before them now the mud was thinning out, the water was being swept
+clear of silt and Rawlins drew Tom beside him behind a huge block of
+stone which had been dumped at the base of the wall. Slowly and
+gradually the water cleared. It was evident that those they were
+following were no longer stirring up the mud and so must have come to a
+stop and, as the sediment drifted off and the dim green light filtered
+through the water, Tom peered into the vast illimitable void. It was
+like looking through thick green glass or like glass made half-opaque by
+one’s breath upon it and for a time Tom could see nothing. Then, as the
+water became still clearer, he saw the faint outlines of timbers and
+spiles and a dark object looming ominously, like a cloud, which he
+recognized as the bottom of some vessel. Against the lighter water over
+his head, a shadow passed and the greenness quivered and wavered and he
+knew a small boat was being rowed above them; but no sign could he see
+of those they had been following.
+
+Then Tom noticed something else, something that rose above the dark
+bottom of the river as a darker mass, something that resembled a great
+bank of mud or a reef of rock. Irregular in outline, dark green as seen
+through the water, unlike anything he had ever seen, yet somehow it had
+a vaguely familiar look; it did not seem quite like mud or rock of any
+natural formation, but rather like some sort of boat. Yes, that was
+it—like the hull of a boat—it reminded him of a picture of a sunken
+wreck. Perhaps it was. Yes, now that the thought had entered his head,
+he could see that it was a wreck; he could make out the stump of a mast,
+the remains of deck houses, something like portions of rails. But what
+was it doing here? Why should a sunken hulk be lying in the East River?
+Of course it was out of the channel, it was lying partly beneath a dock
+or pier and Tom noticed that the spiles of the pier sagged and that
+several were broken off under water. Evidently the pier was an old one,
+perhaps disused, and maybe the old hulk had been sunk during some fire
+which had destroyed the pier at the same time.
+
+All these thoughts flashed through Tom’s mind as he peered into the dim
+greenness and then all were wiped from his brain as he caught a glimpse
+of the two divers moving from among the spiles. Tom was as much at sea
+as ever as to the distances under water. He could not tell whether the
+wreck was fifty or five hundred feet away. He was not at all sure that,
+if he reached out, he could not touch the old hulk or even the moving
+forms. The next moment the two had reached the side of the wreck and
+then, to Tom’s amazement, they seemed to disappear within it, to step
+through the sides as though it were only a shadow in the water.
+
+“Gosh,” he ejaculated unconsciously, “they went into that wreck!”
+
+“Wreck!” came Rawlins’ whispered words. “Wreck! That’s no wreck. That’s
+a submarine. That’s their hangout!”
+
+So absolutely thunderstruck was Tom at Rawlins’ words that he could not
+even reply. But now he saw that what he had mistaken for a waterlogged
+sunken hulk was indeed an under-sea boat, a submarine and a big one. He
+had never seen a submarine except from above water before. He had no
+idea how such a craft would appear under water. He did not realize that
+the narrow deck almost awash, the tiny superstructure and conning tower
+which are all the landsman sees are but a very small portion of a
+submarine’s whole; that out of sight, and never exposed above the
+surface of the sea, is a big boat-shaped hull with rudders and
+propellers; that the cigar-shaped Jules Verne type of submersible so
+familiar in fiction is not a thing of fact; and that the modern
+submarine if seen under water might easily be mistaken for an ordinary
+vessel’s hull.
+
+It was not at all surprising therefore that Tom had mistaken the
+submerged craft for the hulk of a steamer or ship, for submarines were
+the last thing in his mind and no one would have dreamed of seeing one
+here beneath the surface of the East River.
+
+Now, however, Tom could see that what he had mistaken for the stump of a
+mast was the conning tower; what he had thought were shattered deck
+houses and rails were the superstructure; and he could now even make out
+the lateral horizontal rudders and the vertical rudder and screws.
+
+But this made the mystery still greater. It was even more wonderful to
+find a submarine here than a sunken vessel. Of course, Tom knew there
+were plenty of the navy’s submarines forever knocking about, and for an
+instant it occurred to him that it was one of these engaged in making
+some test and that the divers whom they had seen were members of the
+boat’s crew.
+
+Then instantly he remembered the men had spoken in a foreign tongue,
+that they had carried a mysterious object to the trapdoor in the sewer,
+and that they had taken the same or a duplicate object from the sewer.
+
+It was all inexplicable, puzzling, unfathomable.
+
+Rawlins’ voice recalled him to the present.
+
+“They’ve gone,” said the diver. “I want to find out who and what she is.
+You stay here. I’ll be away only a moment.”
+
+As he spoke, he released Tom’s hand and with a final caution for the boy
+not to follow or move away, Rawlins floundered towards the submarine.
+
+Interestedly Tom watched him. He noticed that Rawlins did not stir up
+the mud and then, for the first time, he discovered that the bottom was
+hard and sandy. Somehow all sense of fear and danger had left him. How
+foolish he had been, to be sure! No doubt, he thought to himself, it was
+the unexpected appearance of the men and their grotesque forms which had
+aroused his imagination. There was Rawlins, still moving away and
+looking as terrible and awesome as had the others—even more so, if
+anything, with his proboscis-like helmet topped by its grid and the
+container on his shoulders giving him the appearance of being
+humpbacked.
+
+He wondered how far the submarine was from where he stood. Rawlins now
+seemed close to it and yet he could not possibly tell whether his friend
+was really near to the craft or not. It was all most interesting, most
+baffling and most unreal and dreamlike. He wondered what Frank and Henry
+would think of his long silence. He wondered if they could hear him or
+he could hear them. Surely there would be no danger in speaking now.
+Even if those in the submarine heard him they could not tell whether it
+was some one under or above the water who was speaking. Why hadn’t he
+thought of that before? There never _had_ been any danger. Of course, if
+these men had under-sea radio they must hear messages from those on land
+as well as the boys.
+
+In that case they would never have had suspicions if they had overheard
+the boys’ conversation. They would never dream that others possessed the
+apparatus and would have assumed that the speakers were on shore. There
+was no danger; he was sure of it, and he was about to call to Frank when
+his attention was arrested by Rawlins’ actions.
+
+Tom had been idly watching him and had seen him reach the submarine. He
+had seen Rawlins moving around the craft, evidently examining it, and he
+had lost sight of him as Rawlins had slipped around the blunt bow. But
+now Rawlins suddenly appeared, backing into view, waving his arms to
+maintain his balance and floundering. And he held something in one hand,
+something that he waved menacingly above his head, some object that
+glittered even in the dull, subdued, green light.
+
+For the space of a second, Tom was puzzled and then he knew. It was
+Rawlins’ hatchet! Something or some one was attacking him and scarcely
+had this knowledge flashed through Tom’s mind when, from behind the
+submarine, the two figures appeared, clutching arms pawing at the water
+as if swimming, bodies bent far forward, their every attitude, every
+motion betokening speed, speaking of straining efforts to come within
+reach of Rawlins, despite his threatening, keen-edged hatchet.
+
+Wildly excited, filled with deadly fear, terrorized at Rawlins’ plight
+as was Tom, yet through his mind ran the thought, the subconscious
+feeling, that it was all unreal—a dream or a delusion. It was
+unspeakably and inexpressibly uncanny to see the three men evidently
+exerting every effort and yet moving so silently and slowly, seeming to
+float like weightless bodies in some semi-transparent, green medium. It
+reminded Tom of a slow motion picture—one of the films where a man or a
+horse, leaping a hurdle, appears to float lightly as a bit of
+thistledown through the air—and watching, the boy was fascinated. But
+only for the briefest moment.
+
+Scarcely had the three come within Tom’s view when Rawlins stumbled over
+an upjutting stub of spiling, the hatchet flew from his hand and before
+he could half rise the others were upon him.
+
+At this, the spell was broken. Tom screamed aloud and the next instant,
+like a voice from another sphere, he heard Frank speaking.
+
+“What is the matter, Tom? What’s wrong?” came in troubled, worried
+tones. “Why _did_ you yell?”
+
+Here then was help. They were still within reach of those ashore and in
+terse, excited, fear-wrung tones Tom answered.
+
+“Help! Send for help!” he yelled, entirely forgetting that no one knew
+where he was or where to send help even if help could have reached them
+there under the river.
+
+“It’s awful!” he continued. “Two men—divers—from a submarine—fighting
+with Mr. Rawlins! They’re attacking him—struggling with him! Get Dad,
+get the police!”
+
+Then, faint and as from a vast distance, he heard Frank’s voice calling
+excitedly for Mr. Pauling’s telephone number. He knew his chum was
+summoning aid and he sat rigid, watching with staring eyes the struggle
+taking place beneath the river. Rawlins had arisen; by a tremendous
+effort he had flung aside one man, but the other was grappling with him,
+fighting desperately, and as Tom saw something flash in the water above
+the struggling men’s heads he realized that the stranger held a knife.
+
+Now they had drawn closer, they were some distance from the submarine
+and the very instant Tom noticed this a wild cry of alarm rang in his
+ears.
+
+At the sound, Tom saw one man start to plunge towards the under-sea
+boat, and to the boy’s astonishment he saw that the craft was moving and
+was slipping rapidly from its resting place. Although the man struggled
+desperately to reach it he might as well have stood still, for scarcely
+did Tom realize that the submarine was under way ere it was a mere
+shadow and a second later had faded into the murky green.
+
+And now Tom saw that Rawlins was the aggressor, the man who had been
+chasing the submarine was swaying drunkenly, whirling in a half-circle,
+his arms waving helplessly, while his companion had broken away from
+Rawlins and was standing, with hands upraised, and backing slowly away
+from the latter who leaned towards him with the other’s knife in his
+hand.
+
+“Kamarad!” Tom heard in thick tones. “Kamarad!” and the boy’s heart
+jumped as he heard the words of surrender, the words which had become so
+familiar to thousands of men in the trenches, and Tom, with a shock of
+surprise, realized that the divers were Germans.
+
+Now he could hear Rawlins’ words, spoken as if to himself or as if he
+thought the others could hear.
+
+“Yes, you dirty skunk!” Tom caught. “I’ll tell the world you’ll
+surrender. All right, right about face and forward march and no nonsense
+or I’ll puncture that suit and your hide under it.”
+
+And then Tom’s brain had another sudden jolt. Of course the German could
+hear. Of course Rawlins had heard his cry of surrender. What a dolt he
+had been! They had radio sets, they could hear everything that was said
+as readily as he could. That was why they had given up the fight, yes
+that was it, that was why the submarine had cleared out. They had heard
+his cry for help, had heard him tell Frank to summon police. How could
+they know that their whereabouts was not known, that it was mere chance
+that he and Rawlins had stumbled upon them? No doubt they imagined they
+had been watched, trailed and surrounded and the submarine, rather than
+run the risk of being captured, had deserted the two men at the first
+sound of alarm being given. It was all clear to Tom now. The battle was
+over. Rawlins was victorious, the men were his prisoners. Now Rawlins
+was speaking again and Tom saw that the second man was being
+half-dragged along by his fellow. But Rawlins’ words aroused Tom to
+instant activity.
+
+“Are you all right, Tom?” asked Rawlins. “Come over here. We need a
+hand. This chap’s hurt somehow. Can’t get an answer out of him. Short
+circuited or something. We’ve got to get him out somehow.”
+
+Lunging forward, Tom bumped into Rawlins before he had taken six steps
+and gave a startled exclamation. Was it possible the fight had taken
+place so close? But he had no time to think on this matter. The second
+man was helpless, dead, as far as appearances went, and Rawlins,
+stooping quickly, cut the lead-soled boots from his feet.
+
+Thus relieved of the weights, the body partly floated and with Tom
+holding to one arm and the captured man grasping the other, while
+Rawlins kept a hand on Tom and directed the way, the strange under-sea
+procession floundered through the water, along the wall, past the black
+sewer mouth and towards Rawlins’ dock.
+
+And now Tom again heard Frank’s voice.
+
+“Where are you?” it asked. “Your father’s coming. How can they find you?
+Are you all right?”
+
+“Everything’s all right,” answered Tom. “We’re coming back. Be there
+soon!”
+
+Hardly a minute later, Tom saw the familiar piers near their own dock.
+He had thought they had wandered far, but they had not been two hundred
+yards distant at any time. A moment later, they reached the foot of the
+ladder.
+
+Telling Tom to go up, Rawlins half lifted the unconscious man and with a
+gruff warning to his fellow started to mount the rungs. Evidently the
+words were heard by the anxious, waiting boys above, for Tom heard
+Frank’s shout of joy and he called back as he drew himself towards the
+open trap.
+
+But before his head emerged from the water, a crash like thunder sounded
+in his ears, there was a sound of tramping, hurrying footsteps, shouts
+and cries and Tom’s brain reeled. What was happening? Had the men’s
+confederates learned of their capture? Were their fellows breaking into
+the laboratory to rescue them? Were the ruffians wreaking vengeance on
+Frank and Henry?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+RADIO WINS
+
+
+As the confused sounds, the crash, the tramp of rushing feet, the
+excited men’s voices and Frank’s high-pitched tones came dimly to Tom’s
+ears, a deadly sickening fear swept over him. Had they escaped the men
+from the submarine only to fall into the clutches of their confederates?
+
+He had been under a tremendous strain, he had been terribly frightened,
+his heart had been almost bursting with excitement and he had been under
+water for much longer than ever before. The combination was too much for
+him. His head swam, he reeled, swayed; fiery sparks and flashes seemed
+to dance before his eyes; he felt a numbness stealing over him. Wildly
+he clutched at the ladder in a last despairing effort and seemed
+sinking, slowly, softly into a vast billowy void.
+
+He opened his eyes and uttered a surprised cry. He was lying on the
+floor of the laboratory and his father, anxious-eyed, was bending over
+him while close at hand were Frank, Henry and Rawlins. Beyond and as a
+confused mass Tom’s eyes saw blue-clad figures and with a start he rose
+to a sitting posture.
+
+“Gosh!” he exclaimed, staring about and for the moment not
+comprehending. “What’s the matter, Dad? What’s happened?”
+
+“Are you all right, Tom?” asked Mr. Pauling. “We got you just in time.
+You fainted just as you reached the ladder top. Don’t you remember?”
+
+Tom’s senses had now fully returned.
+
+“Yes, Dad,” he replied. “I do now. Did Mr. Rawlins tell you about it?
+Gee! We _did_ have a time! Are those men here?”
+
+“Safe and sound, Tom!” Mr. Henderson’s voice assured him. “That is, one
+of ’em is. The other’s in bad shape.”
+
+“Yes, Rawlins told us something of what happened,” put in his father as
+Tom rose unsteadily to his feet. “Look out, Son! You’re weak yet. Sit
+down or you’ll go off again.”
+
+Leaning on his father’s arm, Tom staggered to the proffered chair and
+dropped weakly into it. Then he gazed about the room and at the crowd of
+men within it.
+
+His father and Mr. Henderson, Rawlins, Frank and Henry were there.
+Near-by, was a strange, heavy-jawed man and beyond, near the door, were
+half a dozen policemen. But where were the two divers they had captured
+under the river? Then Tom saw that a heavily built, tow-headed man stood
+between two of the blue coats, his hands manacled and a sullen glare in
+his piglike eyes while, half hidden beyond two stooping men, was a form
+stretched upon the floor. But before he could form a question his father
+was giving quick sharp orders to the men.
+
+“Get the Navy Yard!” he commanded, and as the heavy-jawed man jumped to
+the telephone, he snapped out: “Tell the commandant that Pauling’s
+speaking.” Then, before the operator had even asked the number, Mr.
+Pauling was uttering commands to the police. “Leave a couple of men here
+to guard the prisoners and get over to that block quick as you can. Get
+all available men you can pick up. Draw a cordon around it and don’t let
+any one in or out. Take my car! It’s up to you fellows to nab this
+bunch—if they haven’t got wise. On the jump now, Reilly! Take every one
+and everything that seems suspicious! Get me?”
+
+Even before his last word rang out the policemen were hurrying towards
+the street, and an instant later, Tom heard the roar of their motor and
+the clang of their bell as the patrol dashed off.
+
+“Navy Yard on the wire!” announced the man at the phone and Mr. Pauling
+grabbed the receiver.
+
+“This is Pauling!” he announced shortly. “That you, Admiral? All right!
+Got important matter.”
+
+Then, to Tom’s amazement, his father broke into the most utter
+gibberish, calling out a confused but rapid list of figures and words.
+
+“That’s done!” he exclaimed, as he slammed back the receiver and turned
+towards Tom. “There’ll be a dozen destroyers and chasers combing the sea
+for that sub within fifteen minutes.” Then, with a different note in his
+voice, he asked, “Do you feel all right, Son?”
+
+As Tom answered, his father turned towards the men bending above the
+figure on the floor. “Come here when you have a chance, Doctor,” he
+called. “Want you to have a look at my boy.”
+
+At his words, one of the men rose and hurried to Tom’s side.
+
+“Had a close call, my boy!” he exclaimed, as he took Tom’s wrist and
+drew out his watch. “Good thing Rawlins fixed up these suits so you
+couldn’t inhale flames. Different case with that chap yonder. He’s in
+bad shape. Trying to fix him up to get him to hospital. Afraid there’s
+no hope for him though! Oh, you’re O. K. Fit as a fiddle! Pulse fine!
+Nothing wrong with him, Pauling. Just a bit of nerves, I expect, and
+strain of being down too long.”
+
+Hurrying from Tom’s side he again devoted himself to the injured man.
+
+Things were moving so rapidly that Tom was dazed and was striving his
+best to gather his wits together and to understand all that was taking
+place. Mr. Henderson and Rawlins were talking earnestly in low tones,
+but Tom could not hear a word they said and was busy replying to his
+father’s, Henry’s and Frank’s questions and plying them with queries in
+turn.
+
+Presently Rawlins and Mr. Henderson rose and as the former came to Tom’s
+side the other strode across the room and, facing the prisoner, stared
+fixedly into his face.
+
+“I guess you’re all right, Tom,” said Rawlins, the tone of his voice
+betraying far more solicitude than was conveyed by his words. “You’re
+some kid, I’ll tell the world! You’ll be famous if you don’t watch out.
+Say, old man, I’m mighty sorry I kept you down so long. Never thought
+about you not being accustomed to it. I was so darned interested in that
+sub and those men I forgot about the danger to you, Tom. And say, Mr.
+Henderson thinks we’ve made some haul! I’ve been telling him the whole
+yarn—the Dutch talk and all the rest. Henderson thinks he recognizes
+that Hun we brought up and sees a big plot behind all this. Too bad the
+other fellow got flames and can’t talk. Your radio’s all to the mustard,
+I’ll say!”
+
+At this moment Mr. Henderson’s voice interrupted them. As he had stared
+searchingly but silently at the prisoner the latter’s shifty eyes had
+fallen and he shuffled his feet uneasily. Then, without warning and so
+suddenly Tom and the others jumped, Henderson snapped out:
+
+“Open your mouth!”
+
+So unexpected was the command that the prisoner, long trained to instant
+and implicit obedience to orders, involuntarily threw back his head
+opened his enormous mouth.
+
+“Thought so!” ejaculated Mr. Henderson and then, even before the
+surprised man’s jaws closed, he yanked aside the fellow’s denim shirt
+exposing the hairy freckled chest with a livid white scar diagonally
+across it.
+
+“That’s enough!” snapped out Mr. Henderson. Then, addressing Tom’s
+father he remarked, “It’s he, Pauling. No question of it. Good day’s
+work this—thanks to Rawlins’ suits and Tom’s under-sea radio.”
+
+“Wha-what’s it all about?” demanded Tom, absolutely at a loss to grasp
+the meaning of all the orders, the strange telephone message and Mr.
+Henderson’s statements. “Who _are_ the men and _what_ were they doing?”
+
+“Never mind now,” replied his father. “We’ll get home first. Feel ready
+to go?”
+
+“Oh, I’m all right now,” declared Tom. “Only a bit tired out.”
+
+“Call for a couple of plain-clothes men to stay here,” Mr. Pauling
+ordered, turning towards the heavy-jawed man. “Don’t want any one
+meddling with the instruments. Keep that trap shut and bolted and don’t
+sleep on the job.”
+
+Then, to the surgeons, “Soon as he comes to and can talk, call me up. If
+he says anything, write it down. Don’t let any one—any one, mind
+you—speak with him.”
+
+The surgeon nodded in assent and as the other man again went to the
+telephone Mr. Pauling and Rawlins half lifted Tom, and, accompanied by
+Frank, Henry and Mr. Henderson, the party left the workshop. Already the
+two policemen had left with their prisoner and were pressing through a
+curious crowd which had gathered outside and which was held in check by
+more stalwart, blue-coated men.
+
+“Gosh! you’ve got the whole of the New York police here!” exclaimed Tom.
+
+“Not quite that,” laughed his father, “but Henderson surely did call
+enough of them. Guess they thought we were going to raid a liner.”
+
+“Well, you didn’t name any limit,” replied Mr. Henderson chuckling. “You
+said ‘call the police’ and I called ’em. Might as well be on the safe
+side, you know.”
+
+As Mr. Pauling helped Tom into Mr. Henderson’s car he saw the man whom
+Rawlins had captured in his spectacular battle under the river being
+shoved into a patrol wagon.
+
+“Do tell me who he is,” begged Tom. “Is he a German spy?”
+
+His father laughed. “You’ve forgotten the war’s over and done with and
+there are no spies,” he replied. “No, my boy, he’s not even a German.
+But you’ll have to wait a bit before I can tell you anything more.”
+
+“Well, where did you send those policemen, then?” asked Tom. “You can
+tell me that.”
+
+Mr. Pauling’s eyes twinkled. “They’ve gone to get your phantom radio
+man,” he replied. “Henderson’s men couldn’t find him before, but I’ll
+wager we located him this time. You see, Reilly happened to know about
+that old sewer and he says it runs under the block where you located the
+sender of those odd messages. Henderson thinks if he finds one he’ll
+find the other. We’ll run around past there and see if anything is
+happening.”
+
+As Frank and Henry crowded into the little car, the boys saw a stretcher
+bearing a shrouded form being carried from their workshop to an
+ambulance, and the next moment they were moving slowly through the crowd
+which reluctantly made way before the insistent screams of the horn.
+
+Close behind them came another car with Mr. Henderson and Rawlins and a
+moment later they were through the crowd and speeding towards the block
+to which Mr. Pauling had dispatched the police.
+
+As they swung around a corner they saw a surging, densely packed throng
+blocking the street, while from beyond came the sounds of shouts and
+cries. Above the heads of the people the boys could see the glaring
+brass and shining paint of two patrol cars and, moving here and there,
+rising and falling as if tossed about upon a troubled sea, the
+low-visored, flat-topped caps of policemen.
+
+“Can’t get through there!” declared Mr. Pauling, as his horn screeched
+and fell on unheeding ears. “Looks like a riot!”
+
+Mr. Henderson had leaped from his car and was beside them. “Guess the
+men found something,” he remarked. “I’ll push through and see what’s
+up.”
+
+With Rawlins by his side, he wedged his way into the crowd and the two
+were instantly swallowed up. But a moment later they reappeared, hats
+and collars awry, coats torn open, and panting.
+
+“Whew!” exclaimed Mr. Henderson. “Might as well try to get through a
+solid wall. Hello! There’s another wagon!”
+
+As he spoke, a bell clanged harshly and above the heads of the mob a car
+crowded with police could be seen forcing its way towards the center of
+the disturbance which appeared to be a large garage.
+
+At this moment a huge, lumbering motor truck crept slowly from the
+garage door and an angry bellow rose from the crowd. But even an East
+Side mob must give way before a five-ton truck and the crowd, surging
+back to make way for the truck, swept around the boys and the two cars
+and engulfed them like a sea of rough clothes and angry, grimy faces.
+
+“How the dickens can we get clear now!” exclaimed Mr. Henderson, as to
+save themselves from being knocked down and trampled underfoot he and
+Rawlins leaped upon the running boards and flattened themselves against
+the body of the car.
+
+“Expect we’ll have to stick here until the crowd leaves,” replied Mr.
+Pauling, and added, “Unless they pick us up car and all and carry us
+out.”
+
+Now the crowd was surging still farther back as though pressed by an
+irresistible force and above the bellowing, moving, multicolored wave of
+human heads and shoulders appeared a half-dozen mounted police, their
+well-trained horses forcing back the human wall which, despite jeers,
+taunts, threats and imprecations, gave way steadily before them.
+
+As the police drew near and the crowd thinned out, one of the officers
+caught sight of the two cars and their occupants.
+
+“Here you!” he shouted, urging his horse towards the car. “Get them
+flivvers out o’ here! Right about now and move lively!”
+
+Mr. Pauling chuckled and Mr. Henderson grinned. “Show us how!” cried
+back Mr. Pauling.
+
+“No sassing back there!” stormed the policeman now riding close. “Get a
+move on or I’ll pinch the bunch of ye for interferin’ with the police,
+resistin’ an officer and blockadin’ traffic. I’ll get enough charges
+against ye to send youse to the island for a year.”
+
+Mr. Henderson and Tom’s father were shaking with laughter. “Don’t be
+foolish, officer. Don’t you see we can’t move?” Mr. Henderson asked.
+
+The policeman’s face grew purple with anger and he pushed his mount
+close beside the car, calling to a fellow officer to help him.
+
+Exasperated by the crowd, naturally quick-tempered and in a frenzy of
+rage at these “swells,” as he mentally dubbed them, defying his orders,
+he drew his club and raised it threateningly.
+
+Mr. Henderson leaped from the running board to the policeman’s side and
+in tones which even the angry blue coat recognized as authoritative
+exclaimed,
+
+“Here, that’s enough from you! You’ll find yourself broke if you don’t
+look out. Your job’s to protect citizens—not to abuse them!”
+
+A look of mingled amazement and anger swept over the officer’s face.
+
+“An’ who may youse be?” he began, hunching himself forward and shooting
+forth his pugnacious jaw.
+
+Mr. Henderson stepped a bit closer and turned back the lapel of his
+vest.
+
+The sudden change in the man’s attitude and expression caused the boys
+to burst out laughing. Surprise, incredulity, fear, and regret all
+spread over his big Hibernian features in turn. His half-raised arm
+dropped to his side, he seemed to shrivel and shrink in size, his pale
+blue eyes seemed about to pop from between his red-lashed lids.
+
+Then Irish humor came to his rescue. Drawing himself stiffly up he
+saluted and with a twinkle in his eyes blurted out,
+
+“B’gorra, Sir, ’tis sorry I am. But how was I to know, Sir? What with
+your kelly dinted in and your tie adrift and all. Sure I’ll see ye
+through here in a jiffy.”
+
+The crowd had now been driven far back, and, escorted by the mounted
+men, the two cars proceeded slowly up the street until opposite the
+garage. A few idlers were still hovering about and were being chased
+away by blue coats, but inside the garage the boys could see a closely
+packed mass of men with policemen’s caps much in evidence, while the
+broad doorway was blocked by officers with drawn clubs.
+
+As Mr. Pauling brought his car to a stop, a plain-clothes man pressed
+through the line of police and hurried to the car.
+
+“What’s up?” demanded Mr. Pauling as the man came close. “Find
+anything?”
+
+“Find anything!” repeated the other, his gimlet eyes fairly glistening
+with satisfaction. “You bet your—beg your pardon—I’ll say we did. Got
+the whole bunch—men, cars, booze an’ all. Want the story now?”
+
+“No, don’t stop now, Murphy,” replied Mr. Pauling, “After everything’s
+cleaned up come around to the house and we’ll hear the whole yarn, the
+boys are entitled to know it. I’m expecting a call to the hospital at
+any time and must be on hand. Glad you got them.”
+
+“I guess I’ll stay and see the fun,” said Rawlins, “that is, if I may.”
+
+“Let Mr. Rawlins in, Murphy,” commanded Mr. Pauling. “He’s one of our
+crowd and all right. Wouldn’t have got this job over without his help.
+See you later.”
+
+As the car drove off, the boys saw Rawlins pushing through the cordon of
+police by Murphy’s side and all three breathed a sigh of regret that
+they, too, could not remain to see what exciting and interesting things
+were taking place within the garage.
+
+But they realized that it was no place for boys and, to tell the truth,
+all three were quite ready and willing to go home and have a chance to
+calm down and rest. Tom, of course, had been through a racking
+experience and was utterly exhausted nervously and physically, and
+Frank, who was younger and of a far more nervous temperament, had been
+so worried and frightened over Tom’s plight and the uncertainty of what
+was occurring under the water that he had become almost hysterical when
+it was all over. Even Henry had experienced enough excitement to last
+him for some time and boylike was crazy to rush home and tell his
+parents all about the remarkable adventures of the afternoon.
+
+Leaving Henry at Gramercy Square, Mr. Pauling drove the car home while
+Mr. Henderson went to his office and Tom and Frank, who was staying at
+the Pauling home while his parents were in Europe, breathed a sigh of
+satisfaction when they found themselves once more in the cool, quiet
+interior of the house on Madison Avenue.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+HENDERSON HAS AN INTERVIEW
+
+
+When, after parting with Mr. Pauling and the boys, Mr. Henderson drove
+towards his office, he was in high good humor. The afternoon, thanks to
+the boys’ radio and Rawlins’ diving suits, had been a most eventful and
+highly satisfactory one. Not only had the discoveries resulted in the
+raid on the garage, the seizure of a vast amount of contraband and
+probably the breaking up of the gang of rum-runners which for so long
+had baffled his men and himself, but it had brought in two prisoners,
+one of whom at least he had recognized and was mighty glad to see.
+
+But despite all this he was sorely puzzled and cudgeled his brain to
+find a reasonable explanation for many things which seemed inexplicable.
+If, as it seemed, the garage had been a hiding place for smuggled
+liquor, what connection did it have with the submarine and the divers
+Rawlins had captured? Had the contraband been brought there in the
+under-seas boat, and if so how? He knew, as Rawlins had already pointed
+out, that a submarine could not go in and out of any port—in the West
+Indies or elsewhere—without attracting immediate attention, for there
+were not many of the craft knocking about and even if the natives of the
+islands had kept the secret some of the government’s agents who were
+scattered through the West Indies would either have seen or heard of the
+craft. Mr. Pauling, for example, had personally been to Cuba and Nassau
+and while he had seen schooners leave with cargoes only to return empty
+without being reported from any American port, still he had found or
+heard nothing which would indicate a submarine unless, yes, that might
+be possible—the schooners might have transferred their cargoes to the
+under-sea boat in mid-ocean or at some uninhabited island.
+
+But even in that case, the native sailors, the mulattoes and negroes,
+surely would have talked about it. To them, a submarine would have been
+far too remarkable and interesting a thing not to have told their
+wondering cronies and families about it. And where, assuming this was
+so, had the bootleggers secured the vessel?
+
+Rawlins had assured him the submarine was a German U-boat of a recent
+type, such as had been off the United States coast during the latter
+days of the war, but she could not be one of these, for the Navy, he
+knew, had accounted for them all. Had the Germans taken to rum-running?
+Had they secretly retained one or more submarines, and, knowing the
+enormous profits to be made, put them to use carrying cargoes of liquor
+from the West Indies to the United States? Of course this was possible,
+but somehow Mr. Henderson, who was famed in the Service for his
+“hunches,” which nine-tenths of the time proved right, had a feeling
+that there was something deeper, some mystery behind it, and he had high
+hopes of fathoming this or at least of throwing some light upon it by an
+interview with the unharmed prisoner.
+
+That he would obtain a confession or even much information from the
+fellow, he very much doubted, for he knew the man of old—knew him for a
+sullen, arrogant and thoroughly desperate man and one who could and did
+keep his mouth shut under the most severe grilling. Mr. Henderson deeply
+regretted that the other prisoner had been injured by inhaling the
+flames in his helmet, for with two men, each thinking the other had
+betrayed him, there would be a good chance of getting at the bottom of
+things, but it was almost hopeless now. The surgeons had stated that the
+man was doomed, that he could not possibly survive his terrible burns
+and that it was doubtful if he ever regained consciousness. Mr. Pauling
+was to be summoned when the wounded man came to his senses, if he ever
+did, and in the meantime the other prisoner was to be brought before Mr.
+Henderson by two of his own men whom he had despatched for the purpose,
+for, while he and Mr. Pauling coöperated with the police in many ways,
+they had no desire to let the police learn of many matters that were
+taking place or hear statements or confessions which they might repeat.
+
+As soon as Mr. Henderson reached his office, where the erstwhile janitor
+was on guard, he hurried the latter off and then, taking some documents
+from a safe and lighting his pipe, he proceeded to study the papers with
+minute attention. He was interrupted in this by the return of the
+messenger who was accompanied by a small, wiry, dark-haired man whom Mr.
+Henderson addressed as “Ivan” and who seated himself in a proffered
+chair and proceeded to make himself quite at home with an immense black
+cigar.
+
+“It’s Smernoff!” announced Mr. Henderson presently. “Got him to-day
+under very remarkable circumstances—no matter what. Recognized him at
+once although he’s shaved off his beard. Examined his mouth and chest to
+make sure. I expect him here in a few moments. Do you happen to know if
+he ever served in the German army?”
+
+“Sure, yes, I know,” replied the Russian. “Not in the army, no, but the
+navy.”
+
+“What was his job?” demanded Mr. Henderson.
+
+“That I do not know,” replied the other with a shrug of his shoulders.
+
+“H-m-m,” muttered Mr. Henderson. “Well, I want you to be here to
+interpret. He doesn’t speak much English or won’t. I guess they’re
+coming now.”
+
+A moment later, there was a rap on the door and the janitor—once more in
+jumper and overalls—left by another entrance and armed with dustpan and
+broom proceeded to busy himself in the hallway exactly as if he had not
+been interrupted several hours previously by Frank’s excited summons to
+Mr. Pauling.
+
+At Mr. Henderson’s “Come in!” two heavily built men in civilian clothes
+entered, crowding closely one on either side of the sullen man who had
+been captured by Rawlins.
+
+Not until they had seated themselves at Mr. Henderson’s orders would any
+one have suspected that the pig-eyed man was a prisoner or was
+handcuffed. For a space, Mr. Henderson gazed steadily and silently at
+the prisoner who returned his stare, hate and venom in his eyes, and
+then, turning to Ivan, Mr. Henderson ordered him to ask the fellow
+certain questions.
+
+It is not necessary to repeat the conversation, or rather the queries
+and replies, and for some time no satisfactory information was brought
+out, the captive absolutely refusing to admit anything or to say a word
+which might incriminate himself or his fellows. But when, after a deal
+of questioning, Mr. Henderson had Ivan hint that the men captured in the
+raid on the garage had betrayed the Russian and his fellow diver, the
+man’s face took on a demoniacal expression, his eyes blazed and a
+torrent of curses and foul oaths burst from his lips.
+
+A moment later, he checked his furious outburst and replied quickly to
+many of the interrogations put to him through the interpreter.
+
+It was soon evident, however, that he was either extremely ignorant of
+many matters or else was an accomplished liar, and, while the
+information he gave cleared up many matters which had puzzled Mr.
+Henderson previously, still the most important and mysterious features
+of the whole case remained as much a mystery as ever.
+
+“I guess that’s all we can find out, or all he’ll tell,” declared Mr.
+Henderson at last. “Take him away and be mighty careful to have him well
+guarded. He’s a slippery rascal and we don’t want him getting away this
+time.”
+
+As the men with their prisoner left the room, Ivan rose as if to go.
+
+“Sit down!” Mr. Henderson ordered him. “I may need you again at any
+minute. We’ve got another man to question yet.”
+
+Ivan’s eyebrows rose in surprise, but he had long been employed as an
+interpreter in Mr. Pauling’s service and had learned not to ask
+questions or make comments, no matter how amazing or perplexing a matter
+might appear. So, again seating himself comfortably, he lit another of
+his huge cigars and waited patiently and silently for further orders.
+
+Meanwhile Mr. Henderson was going over his hastily written statements of
+the prisoner and with his knowledge of the man’s past and his “hunch”
+was striving to dovetail the information with surmises and records so as
+to form a complete whole.
+
+It was interesting and fascinating work—this building up a case from
+fragments and conjectures—a sort of jig-saw puzzle with many of the
+parts missing, and Mr. Henderson was an adept at it. Indeed, he often
+spent hours, when he had time to spare, playing the game with imaginary
+or hypothetical cases exactly as a person will play a game of solitaire.
+It was this ability to piece together stray bits of evidence, and his
+almost uncanny intuition, that had secured the high position he held and
+had won the envy and admiration of all in the Service who knew him,
+although his friends good-naturedly chaffed him about his “imagination,”
+as they called it.
+
+But on more than one occasion his imagination, or intuition or sixth
+sense or whatever it might be, had brought most astonishing results; as,
+for example, the capture of a band of plotters; to which he had referred
+when discussing the flood of Bolshevist literature and the wave of crime
+with his coworkers.
+
+Now, as he studied his notes of Smernoff’s statements and at times half
+closed his eyes as if concentrating on some far-off matter, a smile
+spread across his features and from time to time he nodded approvingly.
+
+“I’d wager it is,” he commented to himself. “Everything points that way.
+The submarine, Smernoff—a fanatical socialist—those remarkable deep-sea
+suits—the under-sea radio, the mystery about it all and yes—the time
+hitches perfectly. Bloody sort of brute he is—wish I could get him for
+that—sorry it’s out of our hands. Jove! I hope that mate of his lives
+long enough to give us what we want. Smernoff admits _he_ knows. By
+Jove, it would be a coup! Wonder if those boys even dream what their
+experimenting has led up to!”
+
+He was still deeply engrossed in his occupation when the phone bell rang
+and Mr. Pauling’s voice came to him. “He’s conscious,” said the latter,
+“Come to the hospital as quickly as possible. Yes, I’m going this
+instant. Of course. Bring Ivan.”
+
+“Come along, Ivan!” exclaimed Mr. Henderson, as he hung up the receiver,
+and grasping his hat he hurried from the room into which the janitor
+instantly popped like some sort of automaton.
+
+As soon as the ambulance bearing the injured prisoner had reached the
+hospital, the man had been taken to a private room and the doctors had
+devoted every attention, every latest appliance, every resource known to
+modern medicine and surgery to patching the horribly burned and
+disfigured fellow up in order to prolong his life until he could regain
+consciousness. In the hospital a more thorough examination had revealed
+the fact that the interior of his mouth was not so seriously burned as
+had been thought when first aid was being administered at the dock.
+Evidently he had had presence of mind enough to snap off the valve and
+to shut his lips at the first burst of flames from the chemicals when,
+startled by the submarine deserting them, he had instinctively cried out
+a warning to his mate and had allowed water to enter the tube.
+
+“There’s about one chance in ten thousand that he may live,” announced
+the gray-haired surgeon to his assistant. “He has not inhaled flames and
+it all depends upon his constitution. The shock was enough to kill an
+ordinary man outright, but it will be no kindness to have him survive.
+If it were not for Mr. Pauling’s orders I’d take the responsibility of
+letting him go, I believe. Gad! Can you imagine any one living with a
+face like that or caring enough to live to undergo the agony that he’ll
+suffer if he becomes conscious?”
+
+“Not me!” replied the younger man. “I’d think it a Christian act to let
+cases of this sort find relief in death, but I suppose every man has a
+right to his life if he wants it. Have any idea why Mr. Pauling’s so
+keen on having him come to and talk?”
+
+The elder man gazed at his assistant in a peculiar manner.
+
+“No!” he snapped out at last. “And I’m not fool enough to ask or wonder.
+It’s none of our business and I intend to follow orders to the letter.
+But you can bet it’s something important. Just peep outside the door.”
+
+With a puzzled expression, the young doctor opened the door cautiously
+and looked to left and right. On either hand, standing silently, but
+with watchful eyes, were two heavily built men, dressed in civilian
+clothes, with soft, dark felt hats on their heads and, even to the
+intern’s unpracticed eyes, detectives.
+
+“Guess there _is_ something doing,” he remarked as he closed the door,
+“couple of Bulls out there. What do they think—that he’s going to jump
+up and run with that face and with both eyes burned out?”
+
+The other glanced up from where he was bending close above the cot and
+raised a finger for silence. Then, an instant later, he straightened up.
+
+“Get Mr. Pauling at once!” he commanded. “Tell him the man is liable to
+become conscious at any instant—that he may live, but if he wants to be
+sure he had better come immediately.”
+
+In the mean time, at the Pauling home, Tom had been relating his story
+of the strange and exciting events which had taken place under the
+river.
+
+“Now, Son,” said Mr. Pauling, as Tom had thrown himself upon the lounge
+in the library while his mother hovered anxiously over him, “if you feel
+able, tell us all about it. Rawlins told us the main facts while you
+were getting over your fainting spell, but, as many important matters
+and far-reaching consequences may result from your discoveries and
+captures, I would like to know all the details. Just as soon as you feel
+tired, stop. Your health and welfare are the most important
+things—everything else can wait if necessary. I would not ask you now,
+only I know your mother is anxious to hear the story and, moreover, if I
+am called to the hospital, I would like to have as much information as
+possible. A lot may hinge on that.”
+
+“Oh, I’m quite all right, Dad,” Tom assured his father. “Of course I’m
+tired, but I don’t mind talking. In fact I’d like to.”
+
+So, for some time, Tom narrated his adventures, beginning with the
+descent to test the set at a distance and ending with the crash that
+sounded in his ears as he was about to emerge from the water and leaving
+out no detail of his sensations, thoughts or fears.
+
+“I think it’s all quite clear,” declared Mr. Pauling when he had
+finished. “I’m sorry I cannot divulge everything to you now or explain
+all the mysteries which surround the astounding discovery that you boys
+and Mr. Rawlins have made. But later I can and will, as I know you must
+be dying of curiosity. And I can assure you of one thing: Uncle Sam will
+be under a great obligation to you and your radio.”
+
+“But you said you’d tell us who the man was whom we captured and what
+they were doing in the garage,” Tom reminded him.
+
+“Yes, I can do that,” replied his father, “but you two boys must learn
+to keep secrets and not repeat anything I tell you. The man you and
+Rawlins brought in—the one who was not hurt I mean—is a Russian, a rabid
+‘red,’ and Henderson recognized him and later identified him beyond
+question by a peculiar tooth and the scar on his chest. At one time he
+was convicted of a serious crime against our government, but escaped
+mysteriously from prison. I doubt very much if we get much information
+from him, as he knows he must serve out his term—with a bit added to
+it—and he is a close-mouthed rascal. We hope more from his companion, if
+he recovers consciousness and can talk. If he knows he is dying he may
+confess at the last minute. As far as the garage is concerned, as you
+know, we put two and two together and decided the blind sewer had some
+secret opening in the block where you boys located the mysterious
+sending set. The fact that both those messages and the conversations you
+heard under water included the names of flowers convinced us that they
+emanated from the same source and as Rawlins assured us the conversation
+in what he called Dutch, but which was probably Russian, came from the
+men under water, it confirmed our suspicions that the man you boys
+located was talking to men under water or on the submarine and that
+somewhere in the block we would find the key to the mystery and more.
+From what Murphy says, and the appearance of things, we succeeded beyond
+our expectations. I was afraid that the rascals might have overheard you
+and Rawlins or that the submarine, which evidently knew that they were
+discovered, might have warned them. If so, we moved too quickly for
+them.”
+
+“But _are_ they bootleggers?” asked Frank.
+
+“No doubt,” replied Mr. Pauling, “and many other worse things. When
+Murphy and Rawlins arrive we’ll probably know more and if the wounded
+man confesses we’ll solve many mysteries which remain to be unraveled.”
+
+“Well, I’m mighty glad the old under-sea radio worked,” declared Tom,
+“but I wouldn’t go through that experience again, not for—no, not for
+Uncle Sam himself.”
+
+At this moment the doorbell rang and a moment later Rawlins dashed into
+the room, his eyes bright and a happy grin on his boyish face.
+
+“I’ll tell the world it’s great!” he exclaimed, “They got pretty near
+everything—booze, trucks, men, and that mysterious radio. And a
+truckload of books and papers—cleaned out a regular nest. That man
+Murphy is a corker, Mr. Pauling. He said to tell you he’ll be over in a
+little while. They were just cleaning up when I left.”
+
+Tom jumped up. “Hurrah!” he cried. “Then we were right all along! We
+always said that fellow was one of a bootlegger gang. Gee, Frank! They
+can’t laugh at radio or radio detectives now. It wins!”
+
+“I’ll say radio wins!” cried Rawlins.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE CONFESSION
+
+
+Before the conversation could be continued, the desk telephone rang and
+Mr. Pauling instantly answered.
+
+“Hello!” the boys heard him say. “Hello! Good! Right away. Call
+Henderson. Yes, have everything ready. He’ll live perhaps? Yes,
+Henderson will bring Ivan. Keep a record of everything. Good-by!”
+
+As he ceased speaking, Mr. Pauling sprang up. “It’s Doctor Hewlett,” he
+announced as he started for the door, “The man’s regaining
+consciousness. He may talk at any moment and I must rush there. If
+Murphy calls, send him over.”
+
+An instant later, Mr. Pauling was hurrying to his car and the boys, Mrs.
+Pauling and Rawlins commenced discussing the events which had followed
+one another so rapidly during the past few hours.
+
+Rawlins had to tell the story all over again to Tom’s mother and Frank
+gave his version. Then all speculated on what the mystery surrounding
+the submarine and the raid on the garage might be.
+
+“It’s rather too bad that Fred can’t tell us anything yet,” said Mrs.
+Pauling, “but I realize, in his position, secrecy must be maintained.
+However, after it’s all over I suppose we shall know—that is, if the
+newspapers don’t tell us first. They usually manage to find out such
+secrets somehow.”
+
+“Well, I admit I can’t see head nor tail to it,” declared Rawlins. “Of
+course, as long as Mr. Pauling says those chaps are Russians and were
+talking Bolshevik I suppose they are and were; but I _know_ that sub was
+a Hun boat—not one of the big, latest U-boats, but the kind that was
+over on our coast here once or twice. I’ve done a lot of work studying
+submarines and they can’t fool me. Now, of course there’s no reason why
+a Russian should not use a German sub if he could get hold of it, but
+what were they doing over here in the East River is what gets me. I
+don’t believe they were just rum-runners, even if Murphy and his crowd
+did find a lot of booze over there, and what was that cigar-shaped
+sub-sea gadget they were pulling along with ’em?”
+
+“Why, I think that’s all simple,” declared Tom. “They probably brought
+liquor in here with the submarine and carried it to the garage in that
+torpedolike thing.”
+
+Rawlins shook his head. “No, old man,” he replied. “A sub would never do
+for a rum-runner. Why, every port in the West Indies is watched and the
+whole world would hear if a sub poked her nose into a harbor and tied up
+to a dock to load rum. It’s too bad we didn’t tackle those chaps out
+there before they got to the sub. We might have brought in that torpedo
+arrangement, too.”
+
+“Gee, I’d forgotten all about that!” exclaimed Tom. “What became of it?”
+
+“Why, didn’t I tell you?” replied Rawlins. “They shoved it into the
+submarine. I was watching ’em do that when they spotted me. If they’d
+had sense they’d have gone in after it and cleared out, but instead,
+they had to try rough-house stuff and got left. I expect they thought
+we’d seen too much and didn’t know I was armed. Then, when their mates
+in the sub heard you yelling for help and heard Frank’s replies, they
+thought the game was up and pulled stakes without stopping for the two
+chaps below.”
+
+“I wonder if they’ll get her—the destroyers, I mean,” said Frank.
+
+“I doubt it,” replied Rawlins. “The sea’s a mighty big place and the
+Lord knows where she’ll emerge. No knowing which way she headed either.
+For all any one knows she may have scooted over to some hangout on Long
+Island or swung around up the Hudson or slipped into the sound or stood
+out to sea. But I doubt if she’ll try getting out of the harbor
+submerged. Too risky. She might bump into a liner or a ship any minute
+and she’d have to go blind—no periscope out, you see, because she’ll
+know we’d have chasers, looking for her. No, I expect they’ll submerge,
+rest on the bottom in shallow water somewhere and wait until night. Then
+she could sneak out to sea with just her conning tower out. There’s
+about one chance in a million of finding her and that’s the only way we
+slipped up. Just as soon as I saw her I knew something crooked was going
+on—knew it soon as ever I put eyes on those fellows in self-contained
+suits—infringing my patents, darn ’em—and I planned to get back and
+notify the authorities. Then we could have nabbed her and her whole
+crew. Slipped up by letting those Bolshevik birds spot me. And Tom—did
+you notice those fellows didn’t have those gadgets on their helmets? How
+do you suppose they worked their radio without ’em?”
+
+“Gosh!” exclaimed Tom. “I didn’t think of it at the time, but it’s so.
+Say, what became of their suits? We can examine their outfits and find
+out all about it.”
+
+“Suits are safe enough down at the dock,” Rawlins assured him. “You’ll
+have some fun examining them, I’ll say.”
+
+“Why didn’t you ask Mr. Murphy all about what it meant?” inquired Frank,
+who had been pondering on the mystery.
+
+Rawlins gave a hearty laugh. “You don’t know friend Murphy,” he
+answered. “I’ll say I asked him, but you might as well ask a lamp-post.
+I know why they call potatoes Murphys now—all eyes and no mouth. That’s
+him, too. Nice and pleasant and everything, but not a mite of
+information. When I asked him first time he just looked me all over as
+if I was some kind of a rare specimen. ‘Mr. Pauling says youse is on the
+level,’ he said, ‘and I’ll take his word if he says the devil himself
+has turned saint. But my orders is to say nothing to nobody till I
+reports to Mr. Pauling and my orders stays orders till he gives me new
+ones. He’s told me to let youse in here and to look after youse and that
+I’m doin’, but never a word did he say about tellin’ of youse anything,
+an’ that I won’t. What youse can see youse can see and welcome and what
+youse may overhear youse can hear, but I’d advise youse to not repeat
+it, and now draw your own conclusions.’”
+
+The boys laughed. “He looked like that,” said Frank. “I can just imagine
+him saying it.”
+
+“And what did you say?” inquired Mrs. Pauling. “I have met that man
+Murphy—he’s one of Fred’s right-hand men.”
+
+“Oh, I knew he was right and just slapped him on the back and told him
+he was a good skate and I’d put in a good word for him at any time. Told
+him I didn’t want to butt in and wouldn’t bother him with any more
+questions.”
+
+“Didn’t you see anything?” asked Tom.
+
+“About as much as you could see when we were in the crowd in the car,”
+laughed Rawlins. “The garage wasn’t packed full, but there were about a
+million plain-clothes men and police there and Lord knows how many
+trucks, and everything that was going on was in the center. But I did
+see them piling a lot of boxes and papers and a lot of radio stuff into
+a truck and I heard a policeman smack his lips and say: ‘Glory be, but
+it’s a burnin’ shame to think of all the good booze that’s goin’ to
+waste nowadays. Sure it makes me throat feel dry as a load of hay to
+think of it.’”
+
+“Perhaps,” suggested Mrs. Pauling. “These men you found have some
+connection with the Bolshevist threats and crimes that the papers say
+are taking place. Fred never lets us know much of what is going on, as
+he thinks I’ll worry. But whatever it is, I feel sure it has something
+to do with the troubles and worries Fred has had recently. Both he and
+Mr. Henderson have been working hard both day and night on something and
+Fred has looked as if he had some great problem on his mind.”
+
+“Well, I hope it’s that,” declared Tom. “Say, wouldn’t it be great if we
+really _had_ helped Dad and the government on something more important
+than smuggling liquor.”
+
+“There’s the bell again,” exclaimed Frank. “Perhaps that’s Mr. Murphy.”
+
+Frank’s surmise proved correct and Mrs. Pauling repeated her husband’s
+orders to him. Scarcely waiting to hear, the detective turned and
+hurried off.
+
+“I suppose we might as well have dinner,” said Mrs. Pauling, after
+Murphy had gone. “There’s no use waiting for Fred, he may be away all
+night. You’ll have dinner with us, won’t you, Mr. Rawlins?”
+
+Dinner over, the four returned to the library and hour after hour
+dragged on with no word from Mr. Pauling.
+
+Finally, Rawlins rose to go and was saying good night when the front
+door opened and Mr. Pauling, Mr. Henderson and the detective Murphy
+arrived.
+
+“Didn’t wait dinner for me, did you?” cried Tom’s father, a note in his
+voice that his wife knew meant relief and elation. “Glad you didn’t.
+Sorry we were so late, but couldn’t get away a minute sooner. Didn’t
+even have a chance to telephone to you. But we’re as hungry as bears. I
+suppose there’s a bite to eat.”
+
+Then, seeing Rawlins, hat in hand, he continued, “Don’t go, Rawlins.
+Soon as we’ve eaten we’ll try to satisfy your curiosity and the boys’
+and,” he added mischievously, “the wife’s, even if she does say she
+hasn’t any.”
+
+“They’re in mighty good spirits,” declared Rawlins when the three men
+had disappeared in the direction of the dining room. “So I guess
+everything’s come out O. K.”
+
+“Yes, Fred’s had a great load lifted from his mind, I know,” agreed Mrs.
+Pauling, “and I’m very glad. I’ve really been worried about him lately.”
+
+“Well, we’ll soon know what ’tis,” said Tom. “Gosh! I can scarcely
+wait.”
+
+At last they heard the voices of the three men, laughing and chatting,
+as they left the dining room, and an instant later they entered the
+library.
+
+“Now I suppose you four want the truth, the whole truth and nothing but
+the truth,” laughed Mr. Pauling, as he motioned the others to seats and
+settled himself in his own favorite chair. “I don’t think there’s much
+that I cannot reveal now—except a few matters which have no direct
+bearing or interest on the part you boys and Mr. Rawlins have played.
+Well, let’s see. I guess I’d better begin at the garage—you know already
+that Henderson identified the prisoner and how we had a hunch that the
+affair centered in that block where the boys’ radio compasses located
+the phantom speaker. I had an idea our men would have to surround the
+entire block and make a house-to-house search, but the rascals saved us
+that trouble. Evidently their friends had warned them that something was
+wrong and Reilly’s men arrived just in time. They found a truck just
+leaving the garage, and, remembering my orders to hold every one and
+everything that looked suspicious, they stopped the truck—when the
+driver put on speed as soon as he glimpsed the police. That was
+suspicious and when they overhauled it they found it loaded with liquor.
+Inside the garage, they found four more trucks and a crowd of men and
+Murphy here tells me they put up a mighty good fight. That, of course,
+drew a crowd and East Side crowds have no use for the blue coats. The
+result was a free for all until another wagon arrived with reserves and
+in the fracas several of the men in the garage broke away and
+disappeared in the crowd.
+
+“However, they got six and found enough contraband liquor in the trucks
+and in a secret room under the floor to stock a dozen saloons. Most of it
+was in this hidden room or cell under the floor, and very cleverly
+hidden, too. Had a door formed by a false bottom to a repair pit and all
+they had to do was to run a truck over the pit as if being repaired and
+pass up the goods from below. There were other things in that room, too.
+About twenty-five thousands dollars’ worth of furs and jewelry—all stolen
+here or hereabouts; opium to the value of a hundred thousand or so, to
+say nothing of morphine, cocaine and other drugs. In addition, there were
+several thousand copies of red propaganda circulars and pamphlets, a neat
+little engraving and printing plant and a second trapdoor that opened
+into the old sewer. And the radio set was there also. A receiving
+set—made in Germany by the way—and the transmission outfit. That was the
+cleverest thing yet—according to Henderson who knows more about it than I
+do. He tells me the what-do-you-call-it—aërial—was a folding affair
+stretched across the inside of the roof and so arranged that it could be
+drawn back between the girders entirely out of sight. Now I don’t know
+any of the technical part of this and I’ll let Henderson explain it all
+to you boys later if you wish. But the main thing, as I understand it,
+was that they could send several thousand miles with the outfit on one
+kind of a wave or could talk to a person a few blocks away with another
+sort. At any rate, we never would have found that if we hadn’t found the
+secret cell and the machine and a man at it. I’m not surprised
+Henderson’s men never located it.
+
+“That’s all about the garage. It was the headquarters and clearing house
+of a dangerous gang of international cutthroats and rogues. They had
+been robbing right and left, carrying their loot in motor cars and
+trucks to the garage and hiding it in the secret room. Then from there
+it had been carried in watertight containers, like miniature
+submarines, through the old sewer to the submarine by the divers. Each
+time the submarine came in she brought a cargo of liquor, drugs, cigars,
+plumes, and other contraband and took away all the valuables and
+receipts from sales. The conversations you overheard were between those
+in the garage and other members of the gang, and the reason you boys did
+not hear the other speaker was because he used a radio telegraph
+instrument—that’s right, isn’t it, Henderson—and a very weak or short
+wave—let’s see, a ‘buzzer set’ you called it, wasn’t it? Well, you can
+get all that from Henderson, anyway.”
+
+“But how on earth did you find all that out?” asked Rawlins, as Mr.
+Pauling ceased speaking to light a cigar.
+
+“Well, it took a little urging,” replied Mr. Pauling. “Murphy and his
+men hinted to their prisoners that they’d been given the tip by the men
+on the submarine and so, of course, they told all they knew in the hope
+of getting lighter sentences and Henderson had the Russian up at his
+office with Ivan and let _him_ think we knew all about him and the
+submarine through tips given by the other crowd. As a result, we got
+pretty complete information from both sides. But”—here Mr. Pauling
+lowered his voice and signaled for Murphy to stand guard at the door—“we
+couldn’t get what we wanted from either the Russian or any of the gang
+at the garage. They’d tell us certain things—give us details and facts
+about matters of which we already knew—such as the means of
+communication, the submarine, etc., but beyond that they would not go.
+
+“Short of torture I don’t believe they’d let out a word. And we knew—we
+were positive—that back of it all was something deeper—a stupendous plot
+aimed at the very heart and life—the very existence of the United States
+and England. And we felt equally positive that back of this was an arch
+criminal or rather arch fiend—a man with a tremendous brain, almost
+unlimited power and marvelous resources. We could see many things which
+linked this petty smuggling, the hold-ups and burglaries, the
+rum-running and drug-importing with events of far greater importance.
+But we had no proof, no evidence to go on.
+
+“Some of our men thought they knew who this head—this nucleus of the
+whole affair was but they could not be sure—they would not even dare
+mention his name—and so we were handicapped, working in the dark. But
+now we do know. We know far more than I dare tell any one, than I dare
+think. The injured man has placed it all in our hands. It was the most
+astounding revelation I have ever known or ever expect to hear. I cannot
+tell you all—I did not even permit Murphy or the doctor to be by the
+man’s bedside while he spoke and as soon as I knew he could speak and
+understand English I sent Ivan off, too. Only Henderson and I heard what
+he said. This man was—yes, I say ‘was,’ because he is dead—was one of
+those misguided men who plotted against England and became a tool of the
+Germans. He betrayed his cause and his leaders, and, despised, hunted
+for the traitor and coward that he was, not safe either in England,
+Ireland or Germany, he became a man without a country, an enemy of all
+organized governments, a fanatical ‘red’ and a trusted emissary of this
+arch criminal I referred to.
+
+“When he became conscious he raved and cursed frightfully, swearing he
+had been betrayed and in his mad desire for vengeance—knowing he had but
+a few moments to live—told us as best he could with his scorched and
+blackened lips and tongue what we longed to know. It was unbelievable,
+incredible, more marvelous than Jules Verne’s stories, but true, we
+know, from the way it dovetails in with other facts in our possession.
+
+“Among other things, we learned that many mysteriously missing ships—the
+many passenger and merchant vessels which never reached port—were
+deliberately sunk, torpedoed without warning and all survivors put to
+death in cold blood merely to secure the gold and other valuables on
+board. All this treasure, all the loot from robberies and crimes
+committed in the United States and abroad, all the receipts from
+smuggling and the sales of drugs and liquors were to swell the fund this
+master plotter was accumulating to accomplish his final purpose.
+
+“This he told us towards the last—when each breath was a mighty effort,
+when each word was wrung from him with torture—and he even tried to tell
+us where it was hidden, where this vast treasure is concealed, cachéd,
+and where we might find the headquarters of this monster in human form.
+He was telling us and was striving, straining to give us the location.
+He had mentioned the locality in a general way, was giving us the
+latitude and longitude and had gasped out three figures when he died—the
+words unfinished, the secret sealed within his lips and—most important
+of all, with the name of that ruthless, relentless master-fiend
+unspoken.”
+
+The boys’ eyes had grown round with wonder as Mr. Pauling was speaking.
+Mrs. Pauling leaned forward, her face flushed, her lips parted. Rawlins
+had remained as silent, as immovable as if carved in stone, and even Mr.
+Henderson and Murphy had been so engrossed, so interested, although they
+knew the story as well as Mr. Pauling, that they had allowed their
+cigars to go out.
+
+“Jehoshaphat!” exclaimed Tom, when his father ceased speaking. “Gosh! We
+_did_ butt into something worth while!”
+
+“Oh, Gee!” ejaculated Frank in disappointed tones. “Then you don’t know
+where that treasure is after all!”
+
+“No,” replied Mr. Pauling, “not within several hundred miles. But the
+treasure is not the important thing, it’s the man himself we want.”
+
+Rawlins rose, his eyes shone with unwonted brilliancy, his face was
+flushed.
+
+“I’ll say that’s some day’s work!” he cried. “But I’ll bet we _can_ get
+that loot—and that whole bunch of crooks, too. I’ve a scheme, Mr.
+Pauling, but I want a little time to think it over and get my brain
+straightened out. There’s been too much crowded into it during the last
+ten hours.”
+
+Mr. Pauling stared at Rawlins as if he thought he might have taken leave
+of his senses. Then, realizing that Rawlins was in earnest, he said
+quietly, “All right, Rawlins. I don’t know what your scheme may be, but
+I’ll be glad to hear it whenever you’re ready. Call me up and we’ll hear
+it when you have it worked out. We owe you more than I can express to
+you now.”
+
+A moment later Rawlins had gone and hardly had his footsteps died away
+when the telephone tinkled.
+
+“Yes!” exclaimed Mr. Pauling as he listened. “Remarkable! Absolutely
+deserted! Well, I guess that chapter’s closed. Thanks for letting me
+know.”
+
+“Sorry Rawlins has gone,” declared Mr. Pauling as he hung up the
+receiver and wheeled about. “That was the Admiral calling. One of the
+destroyers has found the submarine!”
+
+“Gosh! then they’ve caught more of the gang!” cried Tom.
+
+“That’s the astounding part of it,” replied his father. “She was found
+drifting, her upper works just awash, about one hundred miles out to sea
+and _not a living soul on board her_!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+RAWLINS’ PROPOSAL
+
+
+When Rawlins called on Mr. Pauling the following day the first thing
+that greeted him was the announcement that the submarine had been found.
+
+So excited were the boys that for some time they could not convey an
+intelligible idea of the matter and before Rawlins could grasp the
+details of the discovery they were plying him with questions as to his
+opinion in regard to it.
+
+“What do you think became of the men?” cried Tom.
+
+“Do you suppose it was their boat?” demanded Frank.
+
+“How do you think it got so far away, if it’s theirs?” put in Tom.
+
+“We puzzled over it for hours last night and no one can explain it,”
+declared Frank.
+
+“Easy, boys, easy!” laughed Rawlins. “One thing at a time. Shorten sails
+a bit and let me get my bearings. You say the destroyer found a
+submarine floating just awash and absolutely deserted one hundred miles
+off the coast? I don’t believe it _was_ that sub!”
+
+“Could you identify it by a description—anything about it?” asked Mr.
+Pauling.
+
+“Well, I don’t know,” admitted Rawlins. “I know it was a German sub and
+I’d recognize it if I saw it; but whether I can be sure of it by a
+description depends upon the description.”
+
+“They’re towing her in,” Mr. Pauling informed him. “She was disabled and
+unable to come in under her own power. Until she arrives all we know is
+that she is a German boat—one of the medium-sized craft—that she carries
+torpedoes and a gun and that she is painted sea-green.”
+
+“Fits her like an Easter bonnet,” declared Rawlins. “Under water I could
+not be sure of her color, but it was not black or gray—everything takes
+on a greenish look under water. Did they find anything suspicious on
+her?”
+
+“That I can’t say,” replied Mr. Pauling. “They didn’t report whether
+they made any discoveries or not.”
+
+“But if it _is_ the submarine, where are the men?” reiterated Tom.
+
+“Search me,” replied Rawlins. “A lot of things may have happened to
+them. Something may have gone wrong so they were obliged to come up and
+knowing they would be captured they took the sub’s boats. Or again, they
+may have decided to desert the sub and scatter—probably they knew the
+chaps we got, and suspected they’d confess. It would have been an easy
+matter to run in close to shore, take to the boats and land and then
+sink the boats in shallow water so as to leave no trace. Or some ship
+might have picked them up. By the way, I’ve been puzzling over
+something. How do you suppose that sub got in and out of the West Indies
+without being seen and reported. If she carried contraband in and loot
+out she must have gone to some port.”
+
+“Why, didn’t I explain that?” asked Mr. Pauling. “Must have slipped my
+mind when relating the story yesterday. The prisoner told us how they
+managed. The submarine never entered any port—unless you consider the
+hiding place of the chief of the gang a port—but picked up her cargoes
+in mid-ocean.”
+
+“Oh, I see, transferred them from another ship, eh?” said Rawlins.
+“Stupid of me not to think of it.”
+
+“Not quite right yet, Rawlins,” chuckled Mr. Pauling. “It was this way.
+A vessel would sail from a West Indian port with a cargo and would drop
+it overboard at a designated spot. Then the submarine would pick it up.
+If they had transferred on the surface they might have been seen and
+rough weather would have interfered. Moreover, if those on the schooners
+saw the submarine or knew of her they might have talked. They imagined
+the things were to be grappled or brought up by divers. The head of this
+bunch takes no chances.”
+
+“Ah, now I see a light dawning!” exclaimed Rawlins. “I think that solves
+several puzzles. You remember those messages you boys heard? Well, they
+always, or nearly always, included numbers—‘thirty-eight fifty,
+seventy-seven’ was one, I believe—and ‘good bottom’ and similar things.
+I often wondered about those, but I’ll bet those were the spots where
+the sub was to find cargoes dumped. Hasn’t that Russian Johnny come
+across with anything more about the high Muck-a-Muck of the bunch and
+where he hangs out?”
+
+“No, I had another long session with him, but he swears he knows nothing
+about it and for once I am inclined to think he is telling the truth,”
+replied Mr. Pauling. “He insists that he never visited the place—never
+saw the chief and does not even know who he is—except that all spoke of
+him as of a supreme being or a king. His story is that only a few
+men—just enough to man the submarine—including the fellow who died, went
+to headquarters. That the others, including himself, were always put
+ashore at a small island in the West Indies where they had a camp and
+that they walked to the island from the submarine and from the shore to
+their under-sea craft in diving suits.”
+
+“That’s a probable yarn,” assented Rawlins. “Did he tell you the name of
+the island?”
+
+“He says he doesn’t know it himself, that there were a few natives there
+when he first arrived, but that under orders from their superiors they
+murdered the blacks in cold blood.”
+
+“Dirty swine, I’ll say!” exclaimed Rawlins. “Well, I know the West
+Indies a lot better than I know New York and if we can squeeze some sort
+of a description from old pig-eye I’ll wager I can locate that hangout.
+But now about that other business—those messages—have you got the notes
+you made of them, boys?”
+
+“Sure,” replied Tom, “At least, Mr. Henderson has. We gave them all to
+him.”
+
+“Well, we’ll need ’em if Mr. Pauling thinks my proposition all right,”
+said Rawlins. “I hadn’t got it quite settled as to details when I came
+in, but the capture of that sub—if she is the one—has cleared it all
+up.”
+
+“I can tell you better what I think of any proposal you may have after I
+have heard it,” said Mr. Pauling.
+
+“All right, here goes,” laughed Rawlins. “You see from what you told us
+about that dead fellow’s confession, I am pretty sure the big ‘I am’ of
+the bunch is hanging out somewhere in the West Indies. You said he was
+giving you the place and had mentioned three figures of latitude and
+longitude when he kicked off. Now I don’t know what those figures are,
+but there are not such an everlasting lot of combinations of figures in
+the islands—that is, where a man could have a secret hangout—and I know
+’em like a book—better than any book in fact—and if I had those figures
+I’ll bet I can locate the old Buckaroo. Not only that, but with my suits
+and the boys’ radio and my submarine chamber—the same as I use for
+taking under-sea pictures—we could get the loot and everything else if
+he’s got any of it under water.
+
+“I rather figured, from what you said, that might be where he’d hide it,
+especially as he seems stuck on under-sea work. Why, if the old cove
+himself had a house under the sea I could find him! If they used this
+new-fangled radio under water up here you can bet your boots the old
+guy’s using it where he hangs out and if we’re any place near we can
+pick him up and the boys can locate him with that radio compass
+business. You see he probably won’t be wise to any one else being on to
+the radio business. I was afraid that sub might get back and give it
+away, but the chances are that if the men aboard her got ashore they
+either won’t dare show up down there and will just fade away or else we
+can beat ’em to it.
+
+“Taking that sub gave me another idea and a good one. We can fix up the
+old boat and go scouting for old Stick-in-the-mud in that. If he or any
+of his gang see her they’ll think it’s all right and that their gang’s
+still in her. I know a pretty good lot about handling a sub and we can
+pick up a few good ex-navy men I know. Now don’t you think that’s a
+corking good scheme, Mr. Pauling?”
+
+Mr. Pauling hesitated, thinking deeply, before he spoke.
+
+“It has its good points,” he admitted at last, “but it’s rather a wild
+scheme—just what I should expect from a boy who’ll tackle two strangers
+and a submarine single-handed under water—and there’s not one chance in
+ten thousand that it will succeed. You see, the West Indies are a pretty
+good-sized place and you’d have to go by guess work a great deal, even
+with the figures the man gave us. However, I’m willing to aid and abet
+the scheme, as any chance—no matter how remote—of getting that arch
+fiend is worth trying. I can get the submarine without trouble and can
+secure men who can be depended upon, but who’s going with you on your
+wild-goose or wild-man chase?”
+
+“Why, we are!” cried Tom and Frank in unison.
+
+“The dickens you are!” exclaimed Mr. Pauling. “I should say not!”
+
+The boys’ faces fell. “Oh, Dad, please let us go,” begged Tom. “It will
+be great—going in a submarine and trying to find that fellow with our
+radio. Why won’t you let us go?”
+
+“Too much risk,” replied his father. “I’ve had one fright over you and
+that’s enough.”
+
+“Well, that rather knocks out my plans, too,” declared Rawlins. “I’d
+counted on the boys going to work the radio end of it—seems kind of hard
+on them to let some one else do it after they invented the thing and
+were responsible for getting the men and the sub. If it hadn’t been for
+them I’d never have got ’em, as it was their hearing Tom yell for help
+that made ’em surrender, and you’d never have thought of that block and
+the garage if they hadn’t located those messages with their radio
+compasses. I don’t think there’s any danger, Mr. Pauling.”
+
+“I don’t agree with you,” declared Mr. Pauling in positive tones. “If
+you go after that man there’s every danger. You can’t tell what force he
+may use or how an attempt to capture him might turn out.”
+
+“But I had no idea of attempting to get him alone,” replied Rawlins in
+surprise. “My plan was to have a trim little destroyer right handy and
+then, when we’d located Mr. Big Bug, we’d report to the jackies and let
+them do the dirty work. The boys wouldn’t have to be where there was any
+scrapping going on and that old ex-German sub is never going to be my
+coffin if I can help it, I’ll tell the world. No, sir, my idea was just
+to do the scouting, so to speak—secret service under the sea—and let the
+boys be in on the preliminary intelligence work running the secret
+service of the air as you might say.”
+
+“Well, I suppose in that case there would be little risk,” admitted Mr.
+Pauling, “and as you say, they _are_ really the ones who should be
+allowed to have charge of their own apparatus as they have earned the
+right to it. I’ll have to give a little more consideration to the matter
+before I decide, however. Possibly I may wish to go along also—or I may
+be asked to, when I put this matter before my superiors. Now here are
+those figures given by the dying man and the notes made by the boys.”
+
+Unlocking a drawer, Mr. Pauling took out a packet of papers and spread
+them before Rawlins, while the two boys, now that events had taken a
+more hopeful and promising turn, laughed and talked excitedly to each
+other, wildly enthusiastic at the bare possibility of going on the
+unique search.
+
+For a few minutes Rawlins studied the various sheets intently and
+silently, comparing the figures which the boys had heard spoken and the
+ones given by the dying Irishman, and at last he glanced up.
+
+“These numbers of the boys’ will need a lot of study,” he declared, “but
+these the chap in the hospital gave are dead easy. One of ’em is
+nineteen and as there’s no longitude nineteen in the West Indies, or
+within two thousand miles of the islands, it must be latitude, so there
+we have a clue right out of the box—nineteen north latitude. Now if we
+take a map and follow along nineteen we’ll know it must be within a few
+miles of it that we’ll locate old Beelzebub. It can’t be over sixty
+miles north of that meridian or the man would have said twenty instead
+of nineteen, and it can’t be south of it or he’d have said eighteen and
+something. So we can be dead sure the old duck hits the hay somewhere in
+a sixty-mile belt bounded by meridians nineteen and twenty. Now here are
+the other two numbers—sixty and seventy-five. You say he sort of lost
+consciousness between these and you thought he said southwest by south.
+Well, sixty might be longitude—the sixtieth meridian is in the West
+Indies—but he might have meant sixty anything and so, if it _is_
+longitude he was getting at, it brings us down to a space six hundred
+miles east and west and sixty miles north and south—quite a considerable
+bit of land and water to search—about 36,000 square miles—but only a
+little of it’s land, so it don’t cut such a figure. That’ll take
+in—let’s see—some of the Virgins, I think, and a lot of little cays and
+quite a bit of Santo Domingo, but shucks, that’s not such a heap. But
+I’ll admit this seventy-five gets my nanny. It’s not minutes—’cause
+there are only sixty minutes to a degree and it’s a dead sure cinch that
+it’s not latitude or longitude if those other numbers are, and if it’s
+latitude it would be in the Arctic instead of the Caribbean and if it’s
+longitude it’ll knock calculations out for about a thousand miles and
+will take in all of Santo Domingo and Haiti, a bit of Cuba and most of
+the Bahamas. Looks as if we might have some jaunt. And I don’t get those
+compass bearings. However, maybe when they get that sub in and search
+her we’ll find some chart or something. When do you expect——”
+
+At this moment the telephone rang and Mr. Pauling answered.
+
+“Ah, fine!” he exclaimed. “Expect to be in within an hour! Yes, I’d be
+glad to. I’m bringing some others with me—Mr. Rawlins and the boys. Yes,
+queer we were just talking of it. Good.”
+
+“It was the navy yard,” explained Mr. Pauling as he hung up the
+receiver. “They say the submarine is coming in now and will be at the
+yard in half an hour. The Admiral wants me to be on hand to board her as
+soon as she arrives and I’d like you and the boys to come along.”
+
+“Hurrah!” yelled the two boys. “Now we’ll see what they had on her.”
+
+“And we’ll know if she’s the right sub,” added Rawlins. “Though it’s
+dollars to doughnuts that she is—it’s not likely there’s more than one
+lost, strayed or stolen sub knocking about in these waters.”
+
+When they reached the Navy Yard the submarine was just being docked and
+twenty minutes later they were entering her open hatch. The boys had
+never been within a submarine before and were intensely interested in
+the machinery, the submerging devices, the air-locks and the torpedo
+tubes, but their greatest interest was in the radio room. But here, much
+to their chagrin and disappointment, they found practically nothing.
+There were a few wires, some discarded old-fashioned coils, some
+microphones and receivers and a loop aërial. Everything else had been
+removed and nothing was left to show what sort of instruments had been
+used. The boys were about to leave when Tom noticed something
+half-hidden under a coil of wire, and, curious to see what it might be,
+pulled it out.
+
+“Gosh!” he exclaimed as he saw what it was. “These chaps were using that
+same single control. This is part of it. Look, Frank, the dial is just
+the same as the one Mr. Henderson gave us.”
+
+“Gee, that’s right!” agreed Frank. “But then,” he added, “after all it’s
+not surprising. You know Mr. Henderson said the one he gave us came from
+a German U-boat.”
+
+“Not a thing in the radio room,” announced Tom, as the boys rejoined Mr.
+Pauling. “Everything’s stripped clean, but they used the same sort of
+tuner that Mr. Henderson gave us. Where’s Mr. Rawlins?”
+
+“Somewhere under our feet,” laughed his father. “He went down to examine
+the hull. Wants to be sure this is the same boat.”
+
+A few moments later the door to the air-lock was opened and Rawlins
+appeared.
+
+“I’ll say it’s the same old sub!” he exclaimed. “There’s a dent in her
+skin near the stern on the port side. I noticed it before and it’s there
+all right. Found anything up here?”
+
+“No, nothing of any value to us,” replied Mr. Pauling. “The boys say the
+radio’s been stripped from her and we haven’t been able to find a chart
+or a map or a scrap of paper aboard. We found two of those carriers
+though—the cigar-shaped affairs you saw the divers towing through the
+water; but they’re both empty. If these fellows took anything from the
+garage they disposed of it before they left the submarine.”
+
+“Were the boats on her when they found her?” asked Rawlins.
+
+“No, no sign of them,” replied the officer who was with them. “I boarded
+her first thing, but there was no sign of life aboard and no boats.”
+
+“It’s darned funny!” commented Rawlins. “If these lads took to the boats
+they did it deliberately and took mighty good care to clean the old sub
+out before they left. That disposes of the theory that they were
+compelled to leave. Do you know what the trouble was with her machinery,
+Commander?”
+
+“Haven’t found out yet,” replied the officer. “We’ll have the engineers
+aboard as soon as Mr. Pauling is through inspection.”
+
+“Didn’t see any signs of small boats near where you found her, did you?”
+inquired Rawlins.
+
+The officer shook his head.
+
+“No,” he replied, “but it was pretty dark and they might have been
+within a few miles—very low visibility.”
+
+“And no other vessel that might have picked them up?” continued Rawlins.
+
+“Not a sail in sight—except a fishing smack about ten miles off. We ran
+down to her and boarded her. Thought they might have sighted the sub, or
+picked up the men. They hadn’t done either. Bunch of square-heads that
+didn’t seem to know what a sub was, just dirty fishermen.”
+
+“Dead sure they were?” asked Rawlins. “Didn’t notice where she hailed
+from, did you?”
+
+The officer flushed.
+
+“Afraid we didn’t,” he admitted, a trace of resentment at being
+questioned in his tones. “She hoisted sail soon after we left her.”
+
+“And nothing peculiar about her in any way, I suppose?” suggested Mr.
+Pauling.
+
+“Well, I didn’t see anything,” replied the commander, “but I believe one
+of my bluejackets made some remark about her rig. He’s a bo’sun’s mate
+and an old man-o-warsman—Britisher but naturalized citizen and served in
+the British navy. Would you like to question him? I’m no expert on
+sailing craft myself.”
+
+“Better talk to him, Rawlins,” suggested Mr. Pauling.
+
+As there seemed nothing more to be discovered on the submarine the party
+left the under-sea craft and walked to the destroyer which had found
+her. The sailor to whom the officer had referred proved to be a grizzled
+old salt—a typical deep-sea sailor and the boys could not take their
+eyes from him. Touching his gray forelock in salute, the man hitched his
+trousers, squinted one eye and reflectively scratched his head just over
+his left ear.
+
+“Yes, Sir,” he said, in reply to Mr. Rawlins’ question. “She _was_ a bit
+queer, Sir. Blow me ef she warn’t. Man an’ boy Hi’ve been a sailorin’
+most thirty year an’ strike me if Hi ever seed a Yankee smack the like
+o’ her, Sir. What was it was queer about her, you’re askin’ on me? Well,
+Sir, ’twas like this, Sir. She had a bit too much rake to her marsts,
+Sir, an’ a bit too high a dead-rise an’ her starn warn’t right an’ her
+cutwater was diff’rent an’ her cuddy. She carried a couple o’ little
+kennels to port and sta’board o’ her companion-way, Sir—same as those
+bloomin’ West Hindian packets, Sir. An’ as you know, Sir, most Yankee
+smacks carry main torpmas’s and no fore-torpmas’ while this e’er hooker
+was sportin’ o’ sticks slim an’ lofty as a yacht’s, Sir, an’ a jib-boom
+what was a sprung a bit down, Sir. But what got my bally goat, Sir, was
+the crew. Mos’ of ’em was Scandinav’ans, Sir, but the skipper was a
+mulatter or somethin’ o’ that specie, Sir, an’ blow me hif he didn’t
+talk with a haccent what might ha’ been learnt at Wapping, Sir.”
+
+Rawlins whistled.
+
+“I’ll say there was something queer about her!” he exclaimed. “Anything
+else? Did you note her name and port?”
+
+Once more the old sailor scratched his head and shifted the tobacco in
+his cheek before replying.
+
+“Cawn’t say as how Hi did, Sir,” he announced at last. “You see, Sir,
+she had her mainsail lowered, Sir, and a hangin’ a bit sloppy over her
+stern, Sir, an’ we was alongside an’ didn’t pass under her stern, Sir.”
+
+“What sort of boats did she carry and how many?” asked Rawlins.
+
+“Dories, Sir, six of ’em,” replied the sailor, “anything more, Sir?”
+
+“No, I think that’s all. Thanks for the information,” replied Rawlins
+and then, reaching in his pocket he handed the man several cigars.
+
+Touching his forelock again and with a final hitch of his trousers the
+sailor turned and strolled off with the rolling gait of the true
+deep-water seaman.
+
+“Well, what do you make of it?” asked Mr. Pauling, when the sailor was
+out of earshot.
+
+“I’ll say it’s blamed funny that packet was hanging around near the
+sub,” replied Rawlins. “It might be a coincidence—Bahama smacks _do_
+come pretty well up here during the summer—and she might have been a
+rum-runner, but putting two and two together I’d say she was waiting for
+the sub and that the crew were on board her when the destroyer came up.”
+
+“Jove!” ejaculated Mr. Pauling. “Then you think she was a West Indian
+boat?”
+
+“I don’t think, I know!” answered Rawlins. “A Bahama schooner—not any
+doubt of that. Only Caribbean craft carry those two deck-houses and that
+sprung jib-boom and the darkey skipper with the English accent just
+clinches it. I’ll bet those square-heads were Russian Johnnies or Huns
+off this darn sub. Say, if we don’t get a move on they’ll beat us to the
+islands yet!”
+
+“Gosh!” exclaimed Tom. “I’ll bet they took their radio outfit aboard.”
+
+“I’ll say they did!” declared Rawlins. “And like as not they’ll be under
+full sail for the Caribbean by now and working that radio overtime to
+get word to the old High Panjandrum down there.”
+
+“Not if I know it!” cried Mr. Pauling. “Come along, Rawlins. I’m going
+to see the Admiral.”
+
+The result of that hurried and exceedingly confidential interview was
+that, as the boys and Mr. Rawlins were crossing the Manhattan Bridge in
+Mr. Pauling’s car, they looked down and saw a lean, gray destroyer
+sweeping down the river with two others in her wake, black smoke pouring
+from their funnels, great mounds of foam about their bows and screeching
+an almost incessant warning from their sirens as they sped seawards
+bearing orders to overhaul and capture a Bahama schooner that, under a
+cloud of canvas, was plunging southward on the farther edge of the Gulf
+Stream, her mulatto skipper driving his craft to her utmost, while aloft
+two monkeylike negro seamen were busily stretching a pair of slender
+wires between the straining lofty topmasts.
+
+Two days later, a black-hulled liner steamed out from New York’s harbor
+and dropping her pilot also headed southward for the Bahamas. Upon her
+decks stood Tom and Frank with Mr. Pauling and Mr. Henderson by their
+sides, while in the Navy Yard, with a marine guard tramping ceaselessly
+back and forth about her, a submarine was being feverishly fitted for a
+long cruise.
+
+After much discussion, Mr. Pauling had at last given consent to the boys
+joining in the search for the mysterious master mind whose plans had so
+far come to grief through their efforts, although he refused to consider
+letting them go south on the captured submarine. But the boys had no
+objections to this, for they did not look forward with any pleasure to
+an ocean voyage in the sub-sea boat and were filled with excitement at
+the thoughts of the adventures in store for them when they joined
+Rawlins, and the submarine at a prearranged meeting place in the
+Bahamas.
+
+As they watched the skyline of New York fade into the mists of the
+summer afternoon and the smooth gray-green sea stretched before them
+beyond the Narrows, they were thinking of the adventures which had so
+strangely fallen to their lot in the great city and Tom chuckled.
+
+“Remember when we first called ourselves radio detectives?” he asked
+Frank, “Gosh! we never thought we’d even strike anything the way we
+did.”
+
+“You bet I do!” rejoined Frank. “Say, wasn’t Henry sore because he
+couldn’t go and wasn’t he crazy to find out what we were going for? It’s
+great! And we’re real radio detectives now—working for Uncle Sam, too!”
+
+“Rather, I should say, ‘radio secret service,’” said Mr. Henderson who
+stood beside them. “But don’t talk about it. Remember the first thing
+for a person in this service to learn is to hear everything, see
+everything and say nothing.”
+
+“We will!” declared the boys in unison.
+
+“That’ll be our motto!” added Tom. “Isn’t it a bully one?”
+
+“As Mr. Rawlins would say, 'I’ll say it is’!” said Frank.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+BY A. HYATT VERRILL
+
+    THE RADIO DETECTIVES
+    THE RADIO DETECTIVES UNDER THE SEA
+    THE RADIO DETECTIVES SOUTHWARD BOUND
+    THE DEEP SEA HUNTERS
+    THE BOOK OF THE MOTOR BOAT
+    ISLES OF SPICE AND PALM
+
+D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
+
+Publishers, New York
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RADIO DETECTIVES ***
\ No newline at end of file