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The Boy Scouts' Craig Kennedy, Harper & Brothers, 1925,
with "Craig Kennedy, Radio Detective"
Boys' Life's, October 1923,
with Part I of "Craig Kennedy, Radio Detective"
"THERE must be a thousand discharges for every bolt of lightning that hits a person."
Craig Kennedy and I seemed to be the only intrepid souls at the Nonowantuc Country Club out on the north shore of Long Island overlooking the Sound. The lightning had driven everyone indoors except ourselves.
Craig strode up and down the half-enclosed porch of the club. Out into the blackness of night and the fury of wind-driven rain he peered admiringly at turbulent Nature.
The water was overflowing the gutters of the roof, too much for the capacity of the leaders. It overflowed in miniature waterfalls, gathered with other streams on the sandy road, digging gullies. Not a living moving thing was visible.
"Fortunately, too," went on Craig, "of every hundred streaks of lightning, about ninety are from cloud to cloud, spill-over discharges, mostly horizontal, doing no damage whatever. About ten flashes in a hundred come vertically, that is, down to earth in a straight line. Some flashes come sideways and seem to be crooked, although there are really no flashes zigzagging like the teeth of a saw as artists generally depict lightning."
In the distance down the road the purr of a motor punctuated Craig's remarks. "What a night to be driving a flivver!" he exclaimed. "Only a crime or a death would get me out in this storm!"
A beautiful, awesome flash. Craig with his split-second watch was calculating approximately how far off it struck.
"The intense, straight flashes," he remarked, "are those to be feared—and it is a silly person who stands out in the open when such flashes are seen. He invites trouble, but the invitation isn't always accepted. Did you ever hear the ten commandments about lightning? No?
"Well, the first is, 'Don't stay out on a beach or in a field. Get under cover, if possible. If not, lie down. Don't remain standing.' Then the second: 'Don't stand under a tree. You are forming a part of the line of discharge since the body, particularly the skin if it is moist, is a better conductor than the trunk of the tree.' More people are killed by lightning in this way than in any other. 'Don't stand in a doorway or at a window near a chimney.' Lightning sometimes follows a current of air, particularly a column of rising warm air. And don't laugh at anyone's nervousness during a severe thunderstorm. There's good enough reason to be nervous..."
A dripping station wagon, curtains flapping in the wind, raced up the driveway of the club, interrupting the ten lightning commandments. It stopped with a quick jam of the brakes.
A small figure muffled in a yellow poncho jumped out, an excited collie barking at his heels. In two leaps the boy was on the porch.
With a jerk of his arm he uncovered his head, took a deep breath, as he shook the water off his hair and out of his eyes. He started for the door to the club, then stopped.
"What is it, Ken?" Craig stood and stared. "Anybody hurt?"
"Oh, Uncle Craig—you must come over—right away—to the Gerard house—"
I recognized young Ken Adams, or Craig Kennedy Adams, Craig's nephew, the son of his sister, Mrs. Walden Adams.
My curiosity brought me abreast of them just in time to receive a shower-bath from Laddie, shaking the water off his thick coat.
"What's the matter?"
"A hold-up at Gerards!... Sis and Mother were there... and I was over with Dick, I left Sis crying over her pearls... and Mother's lost her emeralds. Everybody's been frisked of something. Gee!" Ken's face glowed with excitement.
He was a month or so past fourteen, with a high forehead, big, sparkling brown eyes, ruddy, tanned cheeks, a fine firm mouth, a boy whose face and bearing showed initiative, courage, determination.
Craig laid his hand on Ken's shoulder. "Why didn't you telephone?"
"Couldn't. The crooks cut the telephone wires first. I left Dick trying to locate where they were snipped and took our station wagon, beat it with Laddie to you. Come back with me, please, Uncle Craig... Help Dick and me catch these hold-up men!"
Kennedy smiled at me as he slapped Ken good-naturedly on the back. Laddie was jumping about, too, as if he knew that stirring things were about to happen.
"I said only a crime or a death would get me out on a night like this," laughed Craig to me. "Well, Walter, it's a crime."
"I think it is a crime!" I laughed back with a nod out at the veritable cloud-burst.
"Oh, it's not so bad, Mr. Jameson," urged Ken. "It's fun!"
"What was going on at Gerard?" asked Craig. "A party?"
"Yes, the Radio Dance."
"Radio Dance?" repeated Kennedy, "You couldn't get anything over radio in this storm, could you?"
Ken spoke up quickly. "No, Uncle Craig, of course not. But Mr. Gerard, you know, wanted to celebrate the installation of the radio set—oh, it's a dandy, the latest thing.—so he let Vira Gerard invite all the crowd there to a dance....
"Dick Gerard and I had to go—but we hated it. Vira asked a couple of girls over—oh, they were all right—but most of the time they were dancing by themselves. We were watching the radio—" he paused with just a bit of disgust at mere dancing—"thinking what we could get over it besides jazz—how far we could receive—maybe London, you know."
He caught Craig's lips about to move and anticipated the injunction to get back to the subject. "When the storm came up," he added hastily, "it put the radio out. They used canned music. Then we could really get an idea of the parts of the set.... Uncle Craig, it's bully 1... Well, that was when I saw this masked man step in through the French window. First of all he fired one shot up through the porch ceiling, then the girl with him went right up to Ruth..."
"Girl?" I broke in in surprise.
"Yes—a girl."
"Call for Mr. Kennedy!" The club bell-hop appeared in the doorway.
"This is my official invitation to find the robbers, Walter."
Craig hurried in, leaving Laddie, whining and wet, nose to the space between door and sill, waiting and scratching with his paws on the door.
It was not many minutes before Ken was surrounded by admiring ladies of the club. This news was diverting. One must forget even the lightning when a hold-up had taken place so near.
"Oh, dear... dear me! Maybe they'll be here next! I'm going to get my little pistol I always put under my pillow nights after I've looked under the bed!" An excitable little old lady almost ran from the room.
Ken smiled as Craig nodded. "You see, Ken? She believes in preparedness, too!"
Kennedy had just returned from the telephone booth.
"It was my sister Coralie, as I thought. She got over in a closed car to the next estate to get me. The wire was still out of commission. She was worried over you, too, Ken," he nodded reproachfully, "until I told her you were here. I guess you didn't take time to tell your mother you were coming. All right, now. Wait till I get my rubber-coat and we'll be with you."
A FEW minutes later Craig and I were in the front seat while
Laddie and Ken huddled together in the rear of the flivver.
The roads were terrible. The rain beat almost directly in our faces and it was only with difficulty that we could see.
Only once were we passed on the shore road. Coming down at terrific speed from the harbor a yellow racer loomed up. There was a really dangerous crown to the road at this point. The racer seemed to hog the road and we were almost ditched as we pulled over.
That was the only car out. At last we came to the Gerard gate with its two huge wrought-iron eagles standing guard over the high brick piers.
Swinging perilously around the steep curves that led to the Gerard country house at Oldfield on the cliffs over the Sound, we suddenly saw the brilliantly lighted house before us.
Excitement was the order of the moment. Coralie Adams ran out to meet us. Even the rain failed to daunt her. She forgot also to scold Ken. Inside we were surrounded by a group of young people, some angry, others half in tears, most of the fellows disgusted with themselves.
Kennedy caught sight of his pretty niece. "Now tell me, Ruth. How did it happen?"
"Uncle Craig!" She said it with a sigh of relief as she lifted tear-filled eyes. "Grandmother's beautiful pearls are gone! I was dancing with East Evans.... I heard a shot.... We both turned. I saw a gun held by a girl—pointing right at us! The girl laughed a hard laugh at me. 'I've always wanted a string o' them beads!' she said. 'Hand 'em over!' 'Don't move there, bo!' she said to East. 'A fly can pump this gat off if he ain't careful. Stay right where you are, see? I'll have that diamond, if you don't mind!' Easton had to give that up, too."
Ruth shivered and looked about fearfully, still, as if the automatic might reappear and go off merely for the telling about it.
"They came through that French window. We were the nearest and we got it first. There were two of them, a fellow and a girl. The man kept the crowd covered, then, while the girl made all the others give up. They seemed to know what they were after. They must have heard all about this Radio Dance. By that time, of course, the radio was out."
"Yes—jazzed," observed Craig. "Nature's jazz did it."
"I saw East move," broke in Ken. "That's when this girl frisked him. The man had all the others covered by that time. Then the girl saw Professor Vario—you know him, from the Radio Central Station at Rockledge? He started to move, too. 'Say, if you get fresh, I'll fill you full of lead—see?' the girl said. 'Now, freeze! Understand? Quick! I got another engagement, too, to-night. Come on—fork over!' They lined 'em all up along that wall and—"
"They took something from all of us," exclaimed Mrs. Adams, "my emeralds, Mrs. Gerard's diamond necklace—oh, they must have got away with a quarter of a million!"
"Yes, and when I moved, that girl switched the gun at Ruth, instead of me—but she kept her eyes on me! I was stalled!" It was Easton Evans speaking. "She talked like a gun-moll—but she had the hands of a lady!"
Kennedy was a mental electroscope for discovering stray currents of facts.
"There must be something new in order to catch criminals nowadays," Craig had once told one of the fellows in our class after we left college. "The old methods are all right—as far as they go. But criminals nowadays are keeping up with science."
"What a hobby!" our friend had exclaimed. "Never knew of anyone in our set ever taking up a thing like that!"
"It's just your set that needs it most. They're always being shaken down, blackmailed, victimized, until they—the wise ones—are the easiest marks of all!"
So in his casual way Kennedy had traveled to London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna where he had studied the amazing growth abroad of the new criminal science. It was not merely a hobby. He had absorbed about everything from the successors of the immortal Bertillon.
"Mrs. Gerard," queried Kennedy. "May I ask how many there were at the dance?"
"Twenty, including ourselves."
"That's strange," interrupted Easton. "When we were lined up against the wall I counted—sixteen. I thought it was funny—two of them holding up sixteen of us!"
"H'm," nodded Kennedy. "Who were out when the hold-up occurred?"
There was silence for a minute. Then a girl spoke.
"Oh, Mr. Kennedy, I might as well tell you. I was out with Glenn Buckley."
To my surprise it was Vira Gerard. She said it, too, with a certain amount of bravado. Mrs. Gerard colored and was silent. One could see that she was annoyed at Vira. Everyone turned toward Glenn.
"Yes," he nodded, without any show of nervousness, "we had gone over to the east wing of the house to telephone to the Parrs to come over. We couldn't seem to get the operator, tried several times. I thought the line was dead. Finally we decided the storm had put it out of business. We were coming back to the dance when we met Dick and Ken running toward the telephone. That was the first we heard about it, wasn't it, Vira?"
Glenn Buckley was a handsome chap about twenty-one, tall and slender, with dark hair and eyes, eyes that were restless for excitement.
Somehow I wondered if Vira and Glenn were telling the truth. Kennedy nodded, however, in seeming acceptance and it seemed to satisfy them. "Well, who else were out?" he persisted.
A rather pretty brown-eyed girl pushed her way through the crowd to Craig's side. "Hurry up, Jack Curtis—confess with me!"
A good-natured laugh came from the others gathered near. Craig turned with an encouraging smile. "And—you are—?"
The girl smiled mischievously. "Really, Mr. Kennedy, you don't know Rae Larue? Now, Glenn, and Jack Curtis—see—here is one man I don't know and you say I know every fellow in town and country!"
"Oh, I say, Rae, I was only kidding." This was from the chap addressed as Jack Curtis. "A lot of the people were worried over their cars when they saw the storm coming up so fast. I volunteered to go out, drive the open cars into the garage, raise the windows of the closed cars. Rae went with me. But the rain came before we finished. We had to wait." Rae interrupted. "Then the shouts and lights in the house scared us. We got wet but we just had to run back to see what was the trouble."
Again Kennedy nodded. By this time he had a pretty clear idea of entrances and exits of the various people. I followed him through the French door which the crooks had used. He was examining the porch and the steps with his electric bull's-eye. But there seemed to be nothing to indicate who they were or even in what direction they had gone. "Hey, Ken! Where are you, Ken?" I heard another boy, excited, down the broad veranda.
"That's young Dick Gerard," recognized Craig. "Let's see what he knows."
DICK GERARD, Ken's pal, was also about fourteen. His tawny
hair, so much of it, had been the cause of many battles. Those
frank blue eyes had issued challenges to many lads much older
than himself who had dared to insinuate that it was red. Very
fair of skin, with the usual freckles over the nose, long legs
and arms, with boyish awkwardness, he had with it all a smile of
such winning good nature that one just naturally liked Dick.
"Hello, Dick," greeted Kennedy. "Find anything?"
Dick was flattered. His face lighted with happiness as he saw Craig. "Mr. Kennedy! I'm glad you're here. You'll have to take this job. It's too big for us. I'm glad Ken found you at the Club. No, I haven't found anything—much."
The boy stopped abruptly, as his father came on the porch but an encouraging smile from Craig caused him to go on hastily. "I couldn't find any real clues. I guess I'm not much of a detective. But down at the garage there's a chauffeur from the next estate. He heard about the hold-up, came over to get the low-down. He told me he was going up to the station to meet the ten-thirty train just before the storm. He was nearly edged off the road by a big yellow racer coming down. He said he thought it turned up our road. Anyhow that must have been about ten minutes before the hold-up."
"I'm afraid, Richard, that's just backstairs gossip," commented Mr. Gerard, who was a corporation attorney. Dick lapsed into silence.
Craig said nothing but the frown on his face indicated that he felt this was no way to teach the young idea how to shoot, "A yellow racer?" he repeated.
"What ails that car?" put in Ken, undaunted by old Mr. Gerard's conservatism. "They almost dumped our flivver when we were coming back, only that was on the harbor road. Uncle Craig, do you suppose the crooks are driving that car?"
"Oh, anybody might hurry to-night," insisted Mr. Gerard. "The speed of the car doesn't amount to anything."
"Not an illogical deduction, though, Ken," encouraged Craig. "The fact of a strange, high-powered car hanging around, off the highway and the main country road, out here by Oldfield, coming up the harbor road, later, certainly does look suspicious."
"Maybe if we watch out for it, it will give us a clue," replied Ken with animation.
"I don't think you'll see it around here again," I remarked.
"No; perhaps not," Craig considered. "This is the first place robbed out here. There will be more—in other places."
Ruth and Professor Vario joined us, Ruth still grieving over the loss of her pearls. The Radio Central at Rockledge from which Vario came was some ten miles east along the shore of the Sound. The station covered an area of ten square miles, with twelve rows of 410-foot towers radiating for a mile and a half from the central station, without a doubt the largest radio plant of its kind in the world.
Professor Vario was handsome, dark and serious, with a cultured foreign appearance.
"You know," observed Craig to Vario, "there's no invention that has changed the character of crime quite like the automobile. The crook can strike and make a get-away in it. In less than an hour he may be in a town more than a dozen miles away. But fortunately, invention keeps pace with invention. We can also use automobiles for pursuit. Then there are the telephone and telegraph, and the radio."
"I wouldn't build up any false hopes about what the radio can do in catching criminals, especially such as these," observed Professor Vario with a shrug. "However, if you get the telephone working again, of course, I'll be glad to instruct the station."
With the two boys and myself Kennedy set to work to find the spot where the wires had been severed. We found it near the house and by shortening the line a bit Craig had the service restored.
He lost no time in spreading the alarm. First he called the sheriff, got his deputies at work looking for the yellow car, as well as alarming the garages of the country. His next move was to get the state troopers watching the ferries from the island. Then he called our friend Deputy O'Connor of the city force to watch the bridges. Lastly he took advantage of Professor Vario's offer to broadcast an alarm from the big Radio Central station.
It was late when we left Oldfield but there seemed to be nothing further to do but wait for some new clue to develop as a result of this alarm.
"Who was that mystery girl, with the bag, who gathered in the stuff with the hands of a lady and the voice of a gun-moll?" I queried as we were returning to the club far after midnight.
Kennedy shook his head. "It comes down to this, Walter— whether it is just another crime in the wave of crime that seems to have been hitting country places this summer—or is it a job pulled off with the assistance of some one at the dance?"
IN the morning there was no news of the yellow racer.
Deputy O'Connor had no report of it crossing any of the bridges. Nor had the state troopers any word of it crossing by any of the ferries from the island. It was therefore practically certain it was on Long Island yet, for it was a marked car that would not likely slip by without being picked up.
I had telephoned in to the Star a story of the radio robbery and already our news photographers had arrived. I knew that reporters from the other papers must be on the way, that it could not long remain the Star's exclusive story.
It was a good story for the Star. There is no doubt that people rather enjoy reading of the difficulties of the rich. The thrill of a venturesome hold-up, the romance of the missing jewels, many of them heirlooms that were priceless, the pretty girls and their escorts would provide a sensation for many thousands who would never own a pearl necklace.
Newspaper publicity is a necessary evil but I made up my mind to soften it as much as possible and save the Gerards and the others as much as I could, so I accompanied the camera men to act as a buffer between them and Mrs. Gerard.
I think she appreciated it. As for Vira, she fought shy of the cameras but seemed rather anxious to be with us, to talk to us.
"I scarcely understand that girl," I ventured to Craig aside, "unless it is that she wants to know how much we have found out."
Craig smiled non-oommitally but did not answer. Vira was coming toward us again, with her mother.
Suddenly I heard her exclaim. "Look! Ken: Why, Ken, what have you been doing?"
"I had a fight." Ken was quite frank about it. "Where's Dick? Is he back?"
Craig surveyed him and Ken grinned a sickly grin at us. "Whom were you fighting with, Ken?"
"Hank Hawkins—that mucker." He stopped.
"Why, he is much bigger than you," interrupted Vira..
"He doesn't think so now," Ken said it quietly but with the unconscious pride of victory in a good cause.
"Ken, why were you boys fighting? I wish Dick and you would be—less like savages." Mrs. Gerard was severe but there was a motherliness about her tone as she saw his plight.
"Dick wasn't in this, Mrs. Gerard. Don't think that. I'm glad he wasn't. If he had been, it would have been Dick instead of me." He checked himself, evidently didn't want to say too much.
I looked the boy over—a swollen eye that would be black before long, a cut over the lip, hair rumpled, dirty, coat minus a couple of buttons. He surveyed himself gloomily now but smiled hopefully at Mrs. Gerard as she said, "Come inside, Ken. I'll fix the buttons, clean, you up a little—before your mother sees you."
Ken nodded appreciatively at Mrs. Gerard. But I fancied he gave Vira a quick, somewhat troubled look.
"What was it all about, Ken?" Craig asked it aside and under his breath.
Ken swallowed hard, flushed a bit, finally answered, never lifting his eyes to Craig but closely watching the tracing of his foot on the porch. "Well—er—you see—it was this way, Uncle Craig. I needed more money than my allowance. I spent all that—on radio. I wanted to get some other things for it. So I tried to earn it. I heard Hank Hawkins made a dollar the other day working for the captain of that former sub-chaser's that's anchored in Die harbor. It gave me an idea. I could do the same. I rowed out to the boat. Hank was on it, all right, with some of the crew. They shouted to me, what I wanted, and I shouted back I wanted to earn some money, too."
Craig smiled, amused. After all the sons of millionaires are boys, too. The love of independence, the desire to earn and work for themselves makes them kin to all boys. "Well, did you earn it?"
Ken shook his head, disgusted. "No. Hank called me over and I came close to the chaser. They turned the hose on me from the deck."
"Who is this Hank Hawkins?" asked Kennedy.
"He's the son of Homan Hawkins, the banker," supplied Mrs. Gerard, with obvious disapproval. "Both Mr. Hawkins and Hank's mother are quite—well, sporty—always away somewhere. I believe they are on a cruise now, with some friends. Hank is a clever boy—but left too much to servants."
Kennedy nodded. "What did you do then. Ken?"
"Rowed back to shore, sat in the sun on the other side of the dock, and waited for Hank. He was a long time coming."
Kennedy laughed and urged the boy to go on. "Well, Hank came ashore at last in his skiff—and we had a rough and tumble. Hank doesn't fight fair. It took me a little longer to lick him—but I finally got him down and he was glad to—to beg off." Ken stopped again much as before. He was not going to say too much.
Mrs. Gerard was anxious to fix him up and he left, head thrust forward, chest out, his arms curved out slightly at his sides, fists still clenched.
"Great kid," I smiled as Mrs. Gerard shook her head with an amused tolerance. "I suppose he's progressing upward from the cave man, eh?"
Craig however was serious. "Yes... but that fight was over something else. Ken always looks me in the face when he's telling the whole truth, and he didn't look at me just now. He has something that worries him."
"I wonder if Vira is in it in some way?" I whispered. "I thought I saw him look strangely at her."
"That's what suggested it to me," was Craig's brief answer.
The butler appeared with word that Craig was wanted on the telephone.
"It was Easton Evans," he reported. "He's down at his laboratory boathouse. He has some news."
I KNEW that East Evans had been Ken's scoutmaster, that for a
couple of years they had been at Pine Bluff Camp during part of
the summer. Ken Adams was a bright boy but had been backward
about some things. The camp had made a man of him—90 per
cent, now in the arithmetic that he had flunked before—all
because it had taught him responsibility. Ken Adams this year had
won a cup for camp spirit, too. East Evans was much interested in
radio. So Ken was allowed the freedom of East's "laboratory" in
the old boathouse.
"Besides," considered Craig, "Easton can get the truth out of Ken if anyone can."
I realized now that Kennedy had great respect for Easton, for while Craig was at work establishing and carrying on a sort of "Craig Kennedy" laboratory for the Navy during the war, Easton, then a boy, was a patrol leader very active in organizing the auxiliary coast guard of the Boy Scouts. They had helped mobilize the boy power of the nation. Nothing much was ever said about it during the war, but in this work for the Navy Department the boys, especially those with Easton, had discovered an unbelievable number of suspicious radio installations, as well as many more that might have been at a moment's notice turned to use against the United States.
It was only a few minutes when the three of us were in Easton's wireless workshop. It was an old boathouse on the estate of his family where he had done some remarkable things with wireless.
Outside he had a big aerial from two poles. Craig looked with admiration at the completeness of the workshop inside, the hack saws, mitre saws, crosscut saws, frames, chisels, gouges, files, vises. There were drills, hand, breast, geared and twist, pliers with all sorts of noses. There were wire, copper, iron, aluminum, plain and insulated, of all sizes, flexible insulated wire cord, enough to supply a store. Fibre board and bakelite, porcelain insulators, tubing, sheet brass, sheet copper, everything at the very finger tips of the young inventor.
Easton Evans was a graduate last year of a famous engineering school, son of a well-known engineer, and himself an inventor with an aptitude for radio. He had worked on wireless transmission of photographs, a wireless dictograph, directed by Craig himself, a wireless telautograph and just now was installing some radio attachment to an airboat. The lower part, underneath the laboratory, of the boathouse had been converted into a hangar, where he housed his hydro-airplane, the Sea Scout.
"Well, broadcasting from the Radio Central did some good," he greeted Craig. "I've just picked up a radio fan up in the country who says he saw the yellow car over toward Smithtown."
"So, they are chasing all over the country," nodded Craig. "I expected it. Well get more." He was looking out of the window at the harbor. "I suppose you have observed a subchaser that's been anchored here a couple of days?"
"Yes," returned Evans slowly. "But not particularly, except that it seemed to be equipped with wireless. Naturally I always look for that. I don't see how a boat can be without it."
"Well, what's this mystery craft doing?" pursued Kennedy "Rum running?"
"Not likely."
"Well, what?"
"I'm sure I have no idea."
"Where does she lie?" Kennedy was over by the window.
"Why, she went out this morning, I think, just now."
Over by the window Craig managed to explain that Ken was holding back something about a scrap with Hank Hawkins. Easton nodded, went to work, puttering with some wireless apparatus. Ken watched.
"What makes you so quiet, Ken? Are you stalking a ghost?"
"No ghost—I hope—East."
"Too bad you couldn't have put on the gloves with young Hawkins and had a gallery to cheer. I should like to have seen the bout myself. Tell me, what was it about?"
Ken looked dubiously at Easton and then at us. "H Uncle Craig told you about the fight," he said reproachfully, "he probably told you the reason... I..."
Just then the telephone pealed loudly, and Easton answered. Ken's face showed relief at the diversion of cross-examining.
"All right. Mr. Kennedy! You're wanted. Somebody, a garage keeper at Smithtown, has been trying to locate you, and the Gerards told him you were here."
I was surprised at the look on Kennedy's face. "Wait for me. I'll be right over. I'm leaving now." Then he turned to us all quickly. "Shut up the place, Easton. I'm going to take you and Ken with me over to Smithtown. I may need you."
IT was perhaps a quarter of an hour when Kennedy's roadster
with us hanging all over it pulled up before the garage. A little
old man ran out to meet us. He was wildly excited.
"I got away and he don't know it!"
"Who doesn't know it?" asked Craig.
"The driver of the yellow racer. He tied me up late last night. I've been hours trying to get free." He rubbed his wrists still. "I wish I'd been like that fellow Houdini I saw once."
"Who are you?"
"Me? I'm Lenihan. I take care of the Jardine country place. The folks are in Europe, so the place is closed up. I live in a little lodge near the garage, up from the entrance gate."
"Then the yellow racer came there? Was it in the garage when you left?"
"Yes, yes. I'd like to catch him, too, trussing me up the way he did. He tied me to a chair ana then locked me in—but I got out. You can't keep a good man down!" His false teeth shook and chattered as he laughed.
"Hop aboard, Lenihan, I'll run you right over to the place."
"Got guns?"
"You bet. Hurry. What did the fellow look like?"
"Tough; one of these city taxi fellers and gun-men."
Kennedy frowned, puzzled at the identification.
Just inside the gate he stopped the car where the road bent around and we proceeded on the thick turf silently toward the lodge and garage. Kennedy circled them so that we could approach under cover of some bushes.
"Two doors—sliding—one padlocked—the other with the lock broken—but closed," he observed.
There was no sound, no sign of activity. Finally we emerged from our screen of bushes. Ken and East started for the door.
"Don't open it! Wait, boys," called Craig.
"Stop!"
Ken laughed with excitement. "Are you scared, Uncle Craig?"
"No, but they know I am after them. That's all."
Along the drive where the grass had evidently been cut had been left a long-handled, wooden rake. Craig took the rake and with the handle, standing several feet to one side, pushed at the sliding door, slowly opening it.
Bang—bang—bang—bang—bang—bang!
We could hear the fusillade of bullets clipping the trees down the drive.
A moment and Kennedy started forward toward the door.
"Craig!" I exclaimed. "Take your own advice!"
"There's no one in there now."
Sure enough he turned in the open doorway unharmed and we followed.
Inside the now empty garage we found an automatic fastened to a sort of cradle of timber, against the rear wall, and an arrangement of cord from the door, around the wall, back to the hair trigger.
"It makes a very serviceable set-gun," observed Craig. "You see, I was expected."
Kennedy was searching about inside the garage. On the floor I noticed some dark spots.
"Grease—new spots," I exclaimed.
"No, the tire tracks of the car are here—and here. Those spots are outside the tire marks, not between them. On both sides, too." Craig was on his knees examining. "Those tire tracks will be like the finger-prints of a criminal!" he cried. "You can identify a car by tire tracks, often. Every worn spot, bruise, imperfection in a tire is just like the loops and whorls and arches on your fingers. We can identify that car—if we can ever get up to it."
"But those spots..."
"Why, they came here to give the yellow racer a quick coat of camouflage—some of that rapid drying auto paint. You'll find it a gray racer, now!"
"Yes, yes; it was a wonderful car," volunteered Lenihan.
UNDER Kennedy's questioning it developed that Lenihan had had
a glimpse of it. He told that the yellow racer had been equipped
with wireless apparatus carried under the extra rear scat that
was closed down when driving. From his description we decided it
must have been one of those field sets that could send probably
up to twenty-five miles under good conditions.
"I wonder who operates it?" I asked, thinking back over last night. "Jack Curtis—what docs he know? Glenn Buckley—could he? I'm just considering possibilities."
"I don't know about Jack," answered Easton. "But of course it was Glenn who got the Gerards to put in the wireless outfit there. Finally he had Professor Vario from the Radio Central come to help him install it. At least that's what Glenn said. The truth is, of course, that Professor Vario really had to do all the work. Glenn just messes around with radio. He has acquired a vocabulary, the radio lingo, but that's about all. When it comes to doing anything, he's a child."
It came to this. The yellow racer, now the gray racer, and the gang were gone. This had been only one of the places used in an emergency. Where had they fled? Where next would they strike?
They let me drive back. Craig and Easton wanted Ken to talk about the fight.
"Fighting is bad business, Ken," began Easton casually after a bit. "You didn't have to wait on the beach for Hank. It wasn't exactly necessary."
"When a fellow turns a hose on you, and—" Ken stopped.
"And what?" urged Craig.
"Insults you," Ken finished hastily. "I'd lick him for that—and so would you, East."
"What did he say?"
"Called me a name." The answer sounded weak even to Ken.
It was Easton who added the last straw. "What did he call you, Ken? You showed more restraint than that in camp two years ago."
The boy sat silent, troubled. He hunched his shoulder up and bit his lip.
"Tell me, Ken. I want to be a true friend. Let me." Easton put his hand on Ken's shoulder. "Spill it, Ken. Come clean. Maybe we can help.
"Oh, East... it isn't about myself. That's why I act so stubborn over it."
"Is it about Vira?" cut in Craig quickly.
Ken startled. "Yes, Vira—and Ruth." He paused. "I had to fight to keep that mucker from telling lies on my sister."
"Lies?" Craig repeated. "Yes, lies—about Ruth. I don't believe him. That kid is everything that a scout should not be!"
"What did he say about the girls?" urged Craig.
Ken did not hesitate now that he had made the decision to make a clean breast of it.
"Hank Hawkins knew about the robbery, of course. He had heard of it. He wanted to find out more, pump me, and when I wouldn't tell he sneered at me and said,' Do you think it was an inside job?' It made me mad. I didn't like the way he said it and I asked him what he meant by that. Then he spilled that his father and mother had seen Vira. Rae, Glenn, Jack Curtis—and Ruth—at the races at Belmont Park. I s'pose... there wasn't anything wrong in that." He hesitated doubtfully.
"Well, Ken," encouraged Craig, "at least you see what evil does. You can't tell how far it may spread, where it will lead you next, what it will get you into."
"Anyhow," resumed Ken, "that's what I told him. 'What's wrong in that?' Then he hollered back at me, 'And they lost money, too—a lot of money—betting on the races. What was I to say? I shouted back,11 don't believe it!' 'Maybe,' he says, 'they needed some money to pay their racing debts.' Well, that was too much. I waded in to make him eat those words... He ate 'cm I No one is going to call my sister a thief—and get away with it! Those others might have bet—but I don't believe Ruth did!"
At last I had heard what I had expected, the truth about the fight. I knew there had been something Quixotic back of it. From what I heard, I could not help thinking of Hank Hawkins, "the kid who is everything a scout should not be," like the Artful Dodger in "Oliver Twist."
Hank's insinuations made me think of this story of his father and mother having seen the young people betting at the races at Belmont Park. "And they lost, too—a lot of money!" I thought of the Vira insinuation; also of his attempt to involve Ruth Adams with them. That was what had really made Ken fight—for his sister. But were all the others in it, too? Did they really lose? What might that attempt to copy sporty high life have started?
Ken volunteered: "Dick had heard it all from Hank before, too; so it wasn't new to me."
"Why didn't Dick tell?"
"No one asked him," came Ken's quick answer. "He wouldn't squeal on Vira, anyhow. Besides, his father always says: 'Little boys should be seen and not heard!'"
Kennedy shook his head. I knew why. It was more of Mr. Gerard's old-fashioned false philosophy about boys. Mrs. Gerard understood boys better. But Mr. Gerard had forgotten. A course in scoutmaster training would have done him good. Craig said nothing to lessen Ken's respect. Mr. Gerard was a fine man. I felt sure that before they got through Ken and Dick would teach the great corporation attorney something. "Where is Dick?" asked Kennedy. "Getting the goods on Hank Hawkins!"
"Goods? What goods? What do you mean?"
"Why, that's just it You see, Hank Hawkins has suddenly come into some money—money enough to buy a radio set up in the village that Dick had his eye on. And then we heard that he is looking at looker's flivver, second hand, for sale for $160. He says he's going to buy it, asked Mr. Tooker to hold it a couple of days, showed some money and gave a deposit of fifteen dollars on it... Now where did he get that money? That's what Dick wanted to find out."
"But where is Dick? Where would you look for him now?"
"At our camp, now, I s'pose, on the shore, where we sleep out almost every night."
"We must see Dick," decided Craig, waving to me to keep on the road back to Gerards'.
WE were not many minutes in returning to the Gerard place.
Reporters were all over it now. Belle Balcom, who wrote the
"sob-sister" stuff for the Star, complained to me that
these were very elusive young people. She could not find
them—Vira, Glenn, Ruth, Rae, Jack Curtis. They were all
keeping out of the way; their excuse was they didn't want their
names in the paper. I wondered whether it was a conspiracy of
silence.
Where was Dick, anyhow? He was not about the house. No one had seen Dick come back since he left early in the morning. In fact, I fancied that for some reason there was a spirit of anxiety that brooded over things. Even the servants about the place seemed worried about it They loved the boy.
With Ken we hurried down to the Gerard shore on the bay. The estate stretched from the sound to the bay. Through a lane of beautiful old trees and past green lawns we followed to a sandy white beach.
Down along this shore the boys had their own camp, an army tent, two cots, with netting over them, camp-table, folding-chairs. In front was a fireplace they had built of beach stones, a huge pot and cooking utensils.
But there was no evidence of Dick about. The tent opening was flapping idly in the breeze.
"He isn't in the sail-boat, either," muttered Ken.
Up the shore we heard a yelp.
It was Laddie, Ken's collie, dripping wet, panting, tongue out.
As Laddie came up, he jumped up on Ken, tried to grab his coat in his teeth in his joy, and pulled it. Then he ran off a bit ahead, jumped and barked.
"Down, Laddie, charge!" ordered Ken.
But Laddie in his exuberance wouldn't. Again he pulled at Ken's coat. Again he ran ahead, jumping and barking.
"Just a minute, Ken," interposed Craig. "He has something to tell!"
Craig started after Laddie. With a yelp of delight as Craig followed him it seemed as if the dog were saying, "Attaboy! This man understands me!"
Along the shore, down the beach, Laddie scampered.
Kennedy paused. There were the prints of a boy's feet in the wet sand—also the tracks of a dog.
"Dick and Laddie!" exclaimed Ken. "But whose are these?" asked Kennedy. He was pointing to parallel tracks of the feet of a man and a girl.
We followed them, down to the water's edge, or where it had been. There were marks where a boat had been beached, marks left as the tide went out.
"Look!" exclaimed Ken keenly.
Here was a long scratch in the sand, as with a foot, and at the end two wings, as if to make of it an arrow—pointing west!
Then along the shore, further to the west, toward the city, we came on prints of the dog alone, going up, the other way.
"Laddie cannot talk but the tracks talk for him," cried Craig. "They took Laddie off with Dick... Laddie jumped overboard, either on his own or on Dick's order... came back to tell us!"
Craig considered a moment. "Ken—run up to the house, ask the cook if she has any paraffin—you know—the cakes they melt and pour over the tops of jelly in jelly glasses."
Ken took it at the scout's pace—running and walking alternately. It was uphill so he ran twelve and walked about twenty paces. He was back in less than five minutes, in an incredibly short time, reversing it, running twenty-five and walking twelve downhill, and not a bit blown by it.
Over the fire he had kindled, in the pot Craig melted all the paraffin. Then he hurried down the shore with the molten wax.
"I want to do this before the tide comes in. Those footprints in the wet sand are like molds."
He poured the wax into one print of the man's foot. The walls broke and caved. He chose another. This time it held and he picked up a sandy hut accurate reproduction of the sole of a man's shoe, even to the marks of the rubber heel.
Next he tried the prints of the girl. This proved easier, for he had selected one that was sharper and not dried out at all.
Ken was silent I glanced at him when he thought no one was looking. He was tracing with his tanned fingers one of the prints of his friend's foot There were tears gathering in the corners of Ken's eyes. He realized it, straightened, then leaned over quickly to Laddie and wiped his face on the dog's silky fur that was drying. He saw me looking as he turned with clenched fists. "Mr. Jameson, I believe Hank Hawkins knows something about this!"
Laddie saw us all straining our eyes scanning the water with nothing in sight. Suddenly Laddie sat down on his haunches and howled dismally, mournfully.
Ken gulped, as he patted the dog's head. "Uncle Craig, he's like me. He misses Dick."
A host of questions tumbled over each other in our anxious minds. Who was the head of this gang? Who were in it? Where were they now? Above all, where was Dick?
Boys' Life's, November 1923,
with Part II of "Craig Kennedy, Radio Detective"
OUT of breath, bare-headed, running frantically down the little path through the woods, a short cut to the beach from the house, Mrs. Gerard made her appearance. "Is it true, Mr. Kennedy, what Walker just told me?"
Her eyes were pleading for a denial. "It can't be! Why should they take Dick away?"
Her lips trembled pitifully. But her searching glance at Craig's face offered no encouragement. She sank down hopelessly on a big boulder on the beach and vainly strained her eyes seaward for some sight of Dick. Tears were now streaming down her cheeks.
Cupping her hands suddenly about her lips she called. "Dick! Dick!"
The cliffs in the back echoed it with a hollow, desolate sound. She clasped her hands, rose in desperation. "I can't stand it! Oh, my boy—my baby!"
She turned as she felt a light hand on her arm. Moving quietly over the sand Ken had come up to his pal's mother. "Mrs. Gerard," he said bravely, "I—I feel awful, too!" Then he straightened his slender shoulders as he involuntarily put his hand in hers. "I am going to get him back for you... Uncle Craig and I will get him!"
Laddie seemed to feel Ken's determination. He leaped about wildly. The intelligent animal seemed to fathom the trouble among his best friends. Laddie intended to help, too.
THERE are some beautiful things in this old world that make us
all nobler and more gentle, things tinged with the glow of the
spiritual. One of them is a mother's brave, sad smile when she
tries to keep her courage up in the illness, or death, or loss of
a beloved child. It was in such a rarely beautiful moment that
glowed the understanding heart of this mother. Never was an offer
of help such as that given by Ken more fully appreciated than
when Mrs. Gerard gave him that sweetly troubled smile and
squeezed his hand. Her boy was gone. She realized the value of
the boy before her.
Again she turned to Craig. "Mr. Kennedy, do you suppose it has anything to do with the disappearance of the jewels?"
"I wouldn't be surprised if your son had come upon some information that made his presence here dangerous to the gang," answered Craig, doing his best to reassure her.
"Do you suppose they will—take care of him?" she asked anxiously.
"There are a woman's footprints in the sand, too," I ventured. "She will probably have more thought for him than if he had been carried off just by men."
Her face lighted with a faint ray of hope. "You don't suppose they will try to keep him—teach him to steal?"
Ken drew himself up. "I know Dick would never be a thief. He is the whitest pal I ever knew. Those Fagins'll never win Dick!"
We could now hear the hum of a motor on the drive up by the house. "Maybe someone has some news," cried Mrs. Gerard.
Soon we caught sight of Craig's sister, Mrs. Adams, followed by the Gerard chauffeur, Walker, coming toward us. The two mothers exchanged a sympathetic greeting. There was a touch of compassion in Coralie Adams's manner.
"Walker just told me, Christine, about Dick. I am so sorry for you. Don't hesitate to call on us for help—no matter how big or how trivial a thing it is we can do... I came over for Ruth. Have you seen her?"
Craig spoke up. "She isn't here, Coralie."
"Well, where is Vira?" It recalled her own daughter to Mrs. Gerard. "I've been so upset over Dick I haven't thought of Vira. It's strange she isn't with me. Why doesn't she come to help me?"
"Mrs. Gerard," Walker touched his cap. "Miss Vira went out in her roadster. She was mighty nervous, I thought, ma'am, over something. She spoke sharply to me. It didn't seem like Miss Vira."
"When did she go?" asked Craig.
"Right after your first visit this morning, sir."
"Did Vira go alone?" questioned Mrs. Gerard.
"Yes, ma'am. Just a short time after she left Miss Ruth drove up in her little car. When she found that Miss Vira was gone she didn't wait long. She drove off, too. I thought she was nervous, too. I haven't seen them or the cars since."
Walker dropped back, as Coralie Adams and Christine Gerard exchanged glances. Craig drew them aside and lowered his voice.
"Have you heard what Hank Hawkins told Ken about Ruth, Vira and Glenn? No?" He dropped his voice even lower so no one could hear and gossip. "It seems his mother and father saw them lose money betting on the races, at least that's what Hank says. He says they seemed worried over the losses, and then hinted to Ken, here, that the robbery was an inside job for that reason. That was what the fight was about, really. Ken wouldn't believe that Ruth could be so foolish. And I think it's something about it all that Dick was trying to find out."
"I am frantic!" exclaimed Mrs. Gerard. "As far as mine are concerned, better to lose the jewels a hundred times than—" She stopped. Even the sound of the words was ugly. "Oh, Vira!... I didn't think she was much more than a child until the other day." She was dabbing at her eyes with her lace handkerchief. "But she has been going to all sorts of dances and...."
"What sort of dances?"
"The cabarets in the city—and roadhouses out here."
Craig involuntarily elevated his eyebrows.
"Oh," she wailed, "it's not a question of morals—alone. After all, sometimes common sense and foolishness are fair equivalents for right and wrong."
Craig looked up quickly, genuinely surprised at this bit of modern worldly wisdom.
"I mean," she corrected, "when girls—and boys—do stupid, dangerous things trouble follows... if not at once, a bit later. I'm afraid this is a case of it." Kennedy was doing his best to soothe both mothers. "If we were only in the city," muttered Easton, "we could at least alarm the police—get the Bureau of Missing Persons."
Craig smiled patiently. "You forget the Radio Central at Rock Ledge—and the telephone. I can do all that here, too. I can call up and get the police of the country here by telephone. Besides, from Rock Ledge I can alarm the police of the world. Every ship, every amateur station on any wave length—the wireless of the world—are open to me there..."
"That's it!" cried Ken. "Let me go with you!"
"Broadcasting by the police for stolen cars, for missing people, in crimes of all sorts is getting to be a greater success, every day," added Craig, trying to infuse enthusiasm and hope.
"Yes," exclaimed Easton. "I'm a dub. In my own line, too! Never thought of Rock Ledge broadcasting station. Of course. Why, XYXZ can do it!"
WE left Mrs. Gerard and Ken's mother together in mutual
anxiety about their daughters.
On the way to Rock Ledge we passed the Hawkins estate. "I really wanted to quiz that young man," observed Craig, "to find out if possible just how much he knows."
As we neared the entrance drive we could see a flivver stalled near the gate.
"That's Hank, now," exclaimed Ken. "There he is tinkering with a tire." He smiled. "They're not demountable rims, anyhow!"
A hot, perspiring boy stood up as he heard our motor pull up. He was very blond, the type whose eyebrows and eyelashes and hair are all of the same lightish hue. His face was flushed from his work and now he scowled as he recognized Ken. "What're you hangin' 'round here for?" he demanded. "Can't a fellow look at you, Hank?" countered Ken. "Just because we had a fight doesn't say that I keep on holding anything against you. That's all done and settled."
"Settled?" Hank smiled diffidently. "Not if I know it."
"Don't be a kid, Hank. Forget it. That your new car?"
Hank's face nevertheless was sullen. "I can't say I blame you for keeping me off—if you can make money enough to get a flivver as good as this. What did they make you do for the money? Aren't they coming back? Isn't there a chance for a fellow?"
"None of your business, Ken Adams, see? I worked for that boat—the 'Scooter'—harder'n you ever worked."
There was a pause in the verbal hostilities.
"Heard any more about the Gerard robbery?" asked Craig, casually looking over his own motor. "What made you think it was an inside job?"
Hank looked at Ken scornfully. "Been peaching, eh?"
"Not exactly. I just told the folks what you said about Vira, Ruth and the rest, that they lost a good deal of money betting on the races and about the hold-up and paying for gambling debts."
"Well, is it so? Did they?"
Craig saw another fight brewing. "Well," he cut in, "it takes money to buy automobiles as well as pay gambling debts."
"Yes," shot back Hank as if prepared, "and I have money in the bank. I oughtn't to have trouble getting credit. Besides I paid my first instalment—and Dad will see that Tooker gets the rest when he comes home. There, that's where I got my money!"
All the time I couldn't help the feeling that Hank was precocious, that he was proving a mental alibi, that it was vain to seek the truth out of this boy in a hurry. There was more immediate business before us and Craig left Hank to a later time.
AT the great Rock Ledge station, we at length found ourselves
in a small room, quite plain except for the draperies that were
artistically arranged to hide the bare walls. There were a few
plants and flowers about, also. At one end stood a beautiful
reproducing piano. Some of the best known artists had played on
it actually. All had played on it through the perforated paper
rolls. There were phonographs of all the standard well-known
makes and an automatic organ. A small table with a silk-shaded
lamp added a touch of hominess. There were a few, not many, deep
easy chairs.
But the most important piece of furniture, the thing that impressed Ken more than anything else on his first visit to a broadcasting studio, was the cabinet containing little lamps and many switches with a great deal of wiring, comprising what is known as the modulating equipment. It was a wooden framework covered with copper screening to prevent the delicate apparatus from being disturbed by electrical and magnetic influences within the room itself. Various conductors connecting up the cabinet and the transmitter were sheathed in beautiful, bright and neatly woven copper sleeves or tubes for the same reason.
"There's the little transmitter, mounted on that portable stand," an attendant pointed out to Ken as the boy took it all in. "The radiophone transmitter, proper, is located in a little room under the roof over our heads. There are a couple of operators, for it contains all the elements of actual transmission. When this studio is to broadcast, it is connected by this switch over here with the radio station upstairs. Here's a wire telephone to it, too."
Kennedy hardly needed to be told the intricacies himself. It was an old story to him. He had seen it all often before, the radio telephone transmitter upstairs, which consisted of a cabinet closed in by iron grill-work to prevent damage to the delicate vacuum tubes, five of them for the normal operation. At the extreme end of a long operating desk or table was the transmitter. On the table were ordinary telephone instruments, radio apparatus, a receiving set with amplifiers, telephone head sets and a loud speaking device by which the operators could hear the speech or music rendered downstairs, only here actuated by the long-distance receiving set.
"Here's the thing you talk into, Ken, the phonetron, the 'dish-basin,' 'the barrel,' as some people call it."
The attendant was looking at his watch and at a schedule to determine other programs on the wave-length, and when it would be possible to broadcast the alarm.
Ken looked curiously at the little hole in the cylinder dangling from an adjustable stand in front of Craig.
"Is it about the right height?" asked the careful attendant "You prefer to stand? All right. How's that? Now, don't forget—talk directly into that little hole—good and loud. Keep up your voice, sir. About three inches away, from the transmitter. There. Now, wait until I tell you."
The minutes seemed an eternity. Would it never be possible for Kennedy to soar on wings of wireless to the rescue of Dick?
"All set?... Let's go!"
"Broadcasting a general alarm to all police departments and radio owners." Kennedy repeated it, then slowly went on: "Look out for Dick Gerard, fourteen years old, kidnapped some time this morning in a former sea patrol boat, 'The Scooter,' off Nonowantuc, Long Island. If you have any information either as to the boy or the boat please communicate with Craig Kennedy, the Nonowantuc Club, Nonowantuc, Long Island."
Slowly and distinctly Craig launched into a brief description of the sub-chaser followed by a detailed description of Dick, and ending with a repetition of his name and address at the Club.
Kennedy finished. There was a silence in the room. I looked about stupidly. Not that I could have expected anything else than silence. But it was weird, uncanny. Craig had spoken to a mute, invisible audience. Was it one, a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand? No one could do more than guess. Above all, would it reach the right one? Somewhere, someone had this information without doubt.
I could not get out of my mind an impression similar to one I had had in a motion-picture studio. I suppose in one case it is one-sided acting, pantomime; in the other one-sided speaking, monologue. The audience was somewhere else. Anyhow, the same motto applied to both: "Get it across!" It was a new art, scarcely a couple of years old then, an old story to Kennedy, perhaps, but full of interest to me as a reporter.
"Broadcasting as a business will settle down some day, I suppose. This Radio Central service is really a public service. But just now it's like the talking-machine companies selling you an instrument—and giving away records, if you can imagine that!"
We turned at the voice in the door. Professor Vario had just heard we were there and had come in. Kennedy and Easton nodded.
"Sometimes," went on Vario with a smile, "the radio is a temperamental thing—that is, if you can say inanimate things are temperamental. There's a natural depravity about it. But I think conditions are fine, just now. I mean to say that it has worked best when nobody was around to appreciate it and often not so good when it's on parade. The radiophone with its delicate tubes and controls sometimes lies down on the job at the wrong moment. But we don't have much trouble of that sort here."
"STEP on the gas, Uncle Craig! Let her out a bit!" Ken urged
as we started back in Craig's car from the Radio Central at Rock
Ledge. "There isn't much traffic."
"All right, Ken. I want to get back to get the answers to my radio appeal."
Craig indulged Ken's intense desire for a burst of speed and we were soon whizzing along the turnpike back to the Club. I enjoyed the look of supreme satisfaction on the boy's face as the wind whipped the color to his cheeks and his blue eyes sparkled with that ancient desire to win as we passed one after another of the few cars on the road.
Suddenly Ken yelled. "Stop! Stop! Up that road! Didn't you see?"
Craig jammed on the brakes at the expense of brakebands and tires. "What's the matter?"
Ken laughed with excitement. "Did you see that road we just passed? I think I saw Vira's roadster down there."
"Yes?" Craig had a wholesome opinion of Ken's keen sense of observation. He shot into reverse and back we went to the little side road of loose brown soil and sand, not much better than a lane.
"Yes—it is! I know it! That's her license number. Dick and I have seen that car so much I remember it. Let's go down there and see Vira, see who's with her. She might know something of Dick."
"If we go down there," Craig said slowly, "Vira and whoever is with her are going to shut right up." He looked at the boy. "Ken, I'm going to let you play detective. Use your eyes and ears, now—not your tongue!"
Ken turned seriously down the lane and we returned to the club. Among a load of mail for Craig was a telegram:
YOUR MESSAGE WAS GOOD AND CLEAR. BUT WHY DID YOU SUDDENLY STOP WHEN YOU BEGAN TO TELL US YOUR OWN SUSPICIONS AND CLUES?
P.S. I DON'T APPROVE OF PHONOGRAPH SELECTIONS IN RADIO BROADCASTING ANYHOW. I CAN BUY RECORDS.
K 903—DEER PARK, LONG ISLAND.
"I like your radio fraternity," I commented. "They certainly do take an interest in one another and go out of the way to show it. And they're brutally frank."
Easton laughed. "You should see my mail! If they don't like a thing they almost take it as a personal insult."
"There's a catch in it somewhere," considered Craig seriously. "What does he mean? I didn't stop. I went right on to the end. And the phonograph record. That must have been interference!"
We had scarcely finished lunch at a secluded end of the porch when Ken hurried in, hot, tired, but with the zeal of one bearing news.
"Was Vira alone?" demanded Easton.
"With Glenn at first. They were both so anxious they could hardly sit still."
"Did you find out what was the matter?" asked Craig.
"I didn't ask, directly, of course. But I asked 'em other questions that might lead to it. They told me little boys shouldn't be so inquisitive. But, say, when I told Vira about Dick, she was wild. She cried as if her heart would break."
"What did you do then, Ken?" Craig prompted.
"I sneaked around back and came into a little rear entry where I could hear the voices of Vira and Glenn. Then I heard my sister Ruth drive up."
"Ruth!" exclaimed Easton.
"Yes. They expected her, too."
"How do you know that?"
"Oh, by what they said. 'Did you get it, Ruth?' they both asked together. 'Will he give it to you?'"
"Who? What?" asked Kennedy.
Ken shrugged, disappointed. "I didn't have time to find out. Ruth laughed and said, 'Yes.' When they heard that, Vira and Glenn took a few steps, dancing steps, on the floor, they were so happy. But they were all broken up about Dick. I couldn't overhear what it was that Ruth came to tell them about. Another car drove up. Rae Larue and Jack Curtis jumped out and then Ruth and Vira made me sick. They shut up like clams, wouldn't say a thing about what I was there to hear."
"Is that all, Ken?" asked Craig.
"Well, they all seemed uncomfortable there. I heard Rae say to Ruth that she liked the tea room because it was so quiet—no reporters, no photographers, no Uncle Craig to ask questions! They seemed glad, too, that there was a wireless. I saw Jack Curtis draw a curtain in front of a very complete set, with the loud speaker. He adjusted and tuned and twirled knobs, watching the dials and indicators until at last he had it. He seemed just to be seeing if it was working. Anyhow it was right after that they saw me listening—and I beat it."
"You did mighty well, Ken," encouraged Craig, then to us he added: "These dance places, cabarets, roadhouses have given a new twist to the case."
A boy appeared with an anonymous telegram from someone on a cruiser, or other motor-boat with a wireless, cruising along the north shore.
The burden of his message was that he had seen a boat answering the description of the Scooter putting into the harbor west of Eaton's Light, headed toward the "Binnacle," an inn on the shore of the inner harbor.
Craig decided to investigate this tip.
The Binnacle down along the shore was a queer old roadhouse furnished like a huge cabin to suggest an old clipper ship. Outside it displayed the usual sign: "Radio Concerts Daily." There was wireless at the Binnacle and broadcasted music. An orchestra in New York was broadcasting.
"There are other harbors inside those two headlands, you know," urged Easton, "one to the west, Lloyd's, and Duck Harbor to the east."
Suddenly, through the windows, the orchestra in New York seemed interrupted to us... Buzz-Oz... Buzz-Oz-Oz...
A shade of annoyance passed over Eastern's face. B-z-z... dot—dash—dot—dot—dash. Easton scowled intently. By habit he was reading the Morse.
"Did you get that?" he exclaimed.
Kennedy nodded. "Yes... Paging Miss Vira Gerard... Meet me at the Binnacle to-night in the Radio Room.... No name." The dots and dashes ceased. B-zzzzzzz... buzz... buzz... The orchestra was on again.
"The radio room, eh?" muttered Craig. "Let's look about."
Casually, like ordinary curiosity seekers, Kennedy and the rest of us mounted some steps to the second floor. Down the hall through a door ajar we could see a deserted private dining room. Kennedy walked in.
As he looked about as interested as if he planned to give a banquet there, Craig opened a cedar chest between two closet doors. He beckoned to Easton.
"A radio frequency amplifier," exclaimed Easton, "all wired up, too!"
Craig hastily closed the chest upon the complete paraphernalia, thought a moment, then stood up on the chest, running his finger along the picture moulding that circuited the room. He blew the dust from his fingers and wiped them on his handkerchief. . "About forty feet of wire placed behind the picture moulding about the room where it's out of sight... The receiving outfit in a cedar chest where no one can see it... Humph!"
In his interest Easton took another look in the chest. "Here's a camera," he whispered.
Kennedy turned it up. The number "5" showed. Deftly Craig unloaded it and dropped the roll of film into his pocket and the box back in the chest.
"That's all very interesting," he remarked under his voice, "and there's something mighty mysterious about this place and that hidden radio set, but just shut up that chest again, Easton, before we have fifteen men on a couple of dead men's chests!"
FROM the radio room a splendid view of the bay, through the
headlands and out into the Sound, could be had. Ken was looking
out of the window. Only the harbor in front of us could be seen.
The two harbors on either side were across necks of land with
hills.
Ken was thinking only of Dick. "Uncle Craig!" he suddenly exclaimed in an excited whisper. "There's a yacht tender—coming up to the dock! It looks familiar, like the tender the 'Scooter' carried. It is, too. Two sailors in it, one at the engine, the other at the wheel—and a boy with them! I'll bet—it's Dick! They're taking him ashore!"
Just for a fraction of an instant Kennedy looked. What were they doing that for? Was the chase on water getting too hot? Had it been to throw us off?
"Hurry!" he ordered. "Let's get down there to that dock—not along the road; they'll see us. Take it along that path in the shrubbery. We'll get them!"
Quickly and unobserved we got out of the Binnacle, crept down the path to cut them off, get Dick.
They had come just up to the dock. One sailor was on the float, the other still at the engine. There was a shout and an oath from the men, hardened, husky old salts.
Dick had leaped overboard the moment their attention was relaxed in docking the tender!
We stopped short, watching Dick as he struck out diagonally down toward the shore. Dick was a good swimmer, too. Hand over hand he was making a swift crawl for it.
The sailor on the dock started down to the shore while the man in the tender spun his engine and shot out to intercept Dick or at least cut him off and force him to land.
Instead of down the dock we turned along the sea wall bulkhead from which the dock jutted out, keeping between the boy and the sailor ashore.
The tender put in, beached, and the other sailor leaped out just as the boy, wet and bedraggled, struggled up the sand.
"Dick! Oh, Dick!" called Ken.
But Dick had time for no more than to see and hear. The sailor was too close to him. He started to run in the only direction possible, away from us.
Easton turned to grapple the man from the dock, who was pursuing. It had been three of us to two of them. Now as Craig and I pressed on after the sailor and Dick, it was two to one. It looked easy.
A shot whizzed over our heads, another pinged in the sand. Along the road back of us, on the shore from the dock, came the sudden hum and roar of a motor, cut-out open.
"The gray racer!" gasped Ken, as we ran.
It stopped, engine still turning over. Other shots fell about us, but wide. I took one hasty look over my shoulder as we ran. Two strong-arm men had leaped out of the racer. I thought. Now it was four to three, just a bit against us. I prayed that they had emptied their guns, but they were too careful for that.
An instant and the two thugs had toppled Easton overboard in the water at the sea wall as the sailor released himself. It was now four of them against two of us, not counting Ken.
Fearless of shots Kennedy pressed on and I followed.
Suddenly there was what sounded like a volley back of us. I turned. It was the gray racer, back-firing.
Off the road it swooped, careening madly over the sand, until it hit on the hard sand where the tide had left it wet. Then with rapidly gathering speed it bore down at terrific racing pace. Kennedy stopped short, drew his automatic and I did the same. I think we got one of them in the arm, but unfortunately it wasn't the driver. On he sped past. I turned toward the sailor ahead with my last shot. He had caught up with Dick running exhausted in his wet clothes. As I raised my gat, he swung the boy about as a shield between him and me. I moved my arm and sent the bullet crashing after the racer endeavoring to puncture a rear tire. The bullet caromed off the gray body as it sped on.
Slowing up an instant the gray car picked up the sailor with Dick pinioned to him, then with gathering speed made for a point where the road again approached the beach.
I turned with Craig and ran back, but only in time to see the other sailor shoving off the tender and circling away a couple of hundred feet out to sea.
"THAT Radio Room is some kind of den with all that secret
installation—for somebody," remarked Kennedy.
"Who is it?" asked Easton, drying out in the sun. "We'd better go up and find out."
Kennedy shook his head. "They wouldn't tell. And they would tip off the gang. We'd get nothing. No. We've just simply got to hear what is said in this Radio Room to-night at the Binnacle."
"How?" Ken asked it eagerly. I think he hoped that Craig would detail him for more detective work.
"My wireless dictograph!" exclaimed Easton. "Can't we use that?"
"Your wireless dictograph?" repeated Craig. "Bully! Just the thing. We can't be there. There's no place to which we could string a dictograph wire without being seen, either. Where is the little mechanical eavesdropper?"
"In my laboratory." Easton's face fell.
But Craig looked at his watch. It took only an instant for him to calculate that there was still time to install it. We were soon on the way back to Nonowantuc.
Easton Evans had done some remarkable things with wireless and he had a wonderful equipment in his boathouse-laboratory. But all the equipment in the world would not have availed him without the hard work he had done, the study, and that spark of inventive genius inherited from his famous father.
"So this is the latest form of the Evans Wireless Dictograph?" complimented Craig, picking up the familiar little round black vulcanized transmitter of the dictograph like that which he had used so many times before on wired machines. "Did you find that my last suggestion about the hook-up worked better, Easton?"
"Much better." Easton was packing the parts as he hastily enumerated them, his sending set, batteries, coils of wire, small portable antenna. The receiving set he left in the laboratory.
UP the road on the way back, passing the Club, we met
Professor Vario going in the other direction. He waved.
"I was coming down to see you, Evans," he explained as we pulled up a moment. "I had a new device of my own I wanted to show you. But, of course, if you're going somewhere..."
"Yes," replied Easton. "I would have liked to see it. What is it?"
"Well, you know so many amateurs have difficulty in finding the wave length of the broadcasting stations," returned Vario hurriedly, with the pride of an inventor himself, "that I have concluded that some simple method of tuning and calibrating the set would clear things up, especially for those who are some distance away from the sending stations. They have weak signals to begin with and must listen in on very nearly the proper tune if they are to get any signals at all."
"I see," nodded Easton, interested but anxious to get along. "For that purpose a wave-meter is needed, eh? It's something for the radio like a pitch pipe for a piano tuner."
"Exactly. Mine is simply a calibrated oscillating circuit and is one of the simplest circuits to build.
"I'll be glad to show it to you, Evans, some other time when you have leisure."
"And I want to see it, too. So long." As we sped along back toward the Binnacle, Easton added, "I didn't want to offend him. Vario's the best radio trouble-finder in the world. If there's anything wrong, hell set it right."
With his usual assurance, Craig sought out the manager of the roadhouse and in a few confident words informed him that he was a representative of the Board of Underwriters come to look over the radio installation as it affected the insurance of the inn to see whether it conformed to the regulations and if any changes were necessary to make it do so.
So we got on the flat part of the roof of the Binnacle to make an inspection of the aerial, the ground, lightning switch and so on.
"Now, we'll have to work quick," urged Craig.
Already he had selected and carried up to the roof the apparatus. First he fished with a line down the chimney until he located which flue it was that went down to the Radio Room below. Then, dangling down, he lowered the dictograph transmitter until it must have hung about a foot from the floor of the hearth back of an iron grill-work which I now recalled under the mantel of the old-fashioned room below. Meanwhile on the flat roof, Easton had been busy placing the sending set.
We pulled up again near the Club. There was a message there from Ken's mother inquiring about him.
"Walter, I think you'd better take Ken to her in the car," decided Craig. "I have a few things to do. I'll see you at our rooms. And you, Easton?"
"I think I'd better go make sure that the receiving end of that dictograph in the laboratory will work right for to-night."
Ken was loathe to leave. "I wonder where Dick is?" he repeated sadly. "Where's the gray racer?"
"Well," reassured Craig, "wherever Dick is, it is not where the gray racer is. Of that you may be pretty sure."
"But they carried him off in it, Uncle Craig."
"And we saw them. Yes. That's just why Dick is probably not with the racer yet. Think a moment, Ken. They knew we knew he was on that boat. So what did they do? They planned to transfer him to land. Now it is reversed. It wouldn't surprise me if he was back on that boat, now."
"But how could they get hold of the boat?"
"How? The racer had a wireless field outfit. The boat has its wireless, has it not?"
IT was some time before I rejoined Kennedy at the Country
Club. Then I found that he had been developing the roll of film
from the camera at the Binnacle.
"What do you see there?" he asked, holding up the strip.
I turned toward the light and looked carefully. "A boat. Looks like one of those scout patrols built for the Government during the war. Why! It must be this 'Scooter'!"
Craig smiled. "This camera was autographic, by the way. The name is written under it, and the date."
"But by whom? Whose writing is it?"
"That's something to find out later. Never mind it now. What is that shore line, do you think? Do you recognize it? Take my magnifying glass."
I studied it intently a few minutes. "It looks like the shore there at the Binnacle."
"That's what I thought. I wanted your opinion. Now look at the next, with the same shore line."
"Why, that's Ruth, Vira, Glenn!" I exclaimed.
"And that other girl is Rae Larue. That fellow back of them is Jack Curtis. I'm going to keep these very carefully—that boat, the shore, the young folks—and the handwriting."
Kennedy said no more and we kept rather quiet until evening when Craig and I rejoined Easton at his laboratory.
Carefully and deftly Easton had begun to tune up his wireless dictograph. He had it arranged so that two or even more could listen in, mindful of the legal requirements for evidence that must be corroborated.
It was rather difficult at first to get the fine adjustment but at last he got it. He looked over at Kennedy and smiled. "Get that?" Craig nodded, and Easton adjusted again.
We all listened for several minutes. Then, at last, we could hear a noise like footsteps. Easton smiled quietly. The dictograph was working!
Through the high resistance phones of the headpiece we now heard voices almost as if from the old-time phonograph. We strained our attention to recognize them. None of us did so and I doubt if Ken could have helped us in that either.
They were men's voices, men of a low cunning apparently, a breed of crooks used by clever criminals who plan and plot and leave the dirty work to such dapper gun-men.
"Did you see the boy yet?"
I started at the words. Did they mean Dick?
"No," came the other voice. "I'm going to see him later, at the house. I guess he's got the info, all right."
It couldn't have been Dick, then. Were we going to hear the plans for another robbery?
"What's it to be? Another dance, a little porch-climbing, a second-story job, what? That last shindig had a kick in it!"
"Naw. The next place is closed up. Ought to be quiet."
"Say, bo, are they sure of this kid that's the gay cat for us?" There was just a trace of anxiety in the tone.
"Yeh—the Chief has him right, see? He'll eat out of his hand. And that lad knows all the rich guys out here, what they have, where they keep it, what their habits are, everything. Say, he is a dozen gossipy old maids rolled into one boy—better than a sewing circle. Funny part is, he's welcome in all their houses. Most of them never know how soon they might need favors from his father!"
"His old man's a banker, ain't he?"
"Sure; and a sporty one, too. Did you know what the Chief has found out?"
"Naw. What?"
"They're using wireless to track that Gerard kid who saw this young Hank signaling to the Scooter. The dam kid read the signals, knew the whole business. It's a good thing they got him carried off when they did. The Chief was afraid the broadcasting'd make trouble. They took him off the boat. Sulky little devil, too, always trying to make a break for it. Wouldn't wonder if they had him back on the boat, now. This Kennedy seen 'em take him away in a car. Pretty close figuring, too. Easier to keep him on a boat."
I could scarcely restrain my excitement. Somebody else was to be robbed soon. But, most important of all, the boy who was giving the information was Hank Hawkins, "the gay cat." He was the lookout, the advance guard, in the houses, studying the habits of the rich victims I No wonder he was buying flivvers and the best in radio sets.
There came a sound of confusion over the dictograph, as of several people entering at once, laughing, talking and what seemed like a slight coughing. We could make out the names of Vira and Glenn. Rae Larue and Jack Curtis seemed to be there, too.
I focused my attention on the earpieces over my head. Now I anticipated some real news. Surely would be revealed the connection of these young people with the two gun-men to whom we had listened.
I heard Vira's voice, sharp, none too cordial.
"You can do this much for us! You can tell Mr.—
"Blatt!"
It was exasperating. To be so near the truth and then this interference!
Easton tinkered and tickled and adjusted. All he got was something that sounded like some fool amateur on the same wavelength. He tried to stop it, shut him off. The interference was there to stay, as it always is when one is listening in on something pretty good. Someone had jammed in on the radio wavelength.
"You may be sore," encouraged Kennedy philosophically, "but you needn't be surprised, Easton. A couple of years ago there might have been fifty thousand amateurs. Last year they said there were six hundred thousand. To-day there must be at least a couple of million. You ought to be pleased. When you go into the business, there's a mighty big market for your inventions!"
It was all over with the wireless dictograph. For the use of the ether is not limitless. It will accommodate just so many wireless messages and no more, at least until some invention is perfected like the quadruplex telegraph that allows four messages at once on one wire. When this limit of the ether is reached, the air becomes like a boiler factory. There is survival of the strongest, the loudest. This newcomer was stronger. Easton looked about the laboratory helpless.
A moment later the shrill siren whistle on the village power-house split the air.
"Fire!" Easton exclaimed. He counted the blasts. It was a signal. "The Club!"
Speeding up from the Evans' place, along the road as cars converged from ail over the country, we joined the jostling mob in working clothes and evening dress.
"Guess we'll make a swell bucket brigade!" nervously laughed a young chap in a Tux.
Up one corner of the south wing of the Club licked a hungry red shaft of flame.
I looked in dismay. On the third floor were our rooms!
A moment and Kennedy was bounding up the stairs. I was after him. Through the stifle of smoke, fighting his way, he plunged, flinging his shoulder at our door. It did not yield. He turned the knob. It was unlocked.
Our rooms were full of fumes by this time. Outside were licking up the flames. There was no chance to save more than an armful of stuff. Craig flung open a drawer. Empty.
The films were gone!
Suffocating fumes of chemical extinguishers sent us both now blindly staggering, struggling, groping, gasping, back.
Outside the bells and the shouts of the firefighters. Inside, with handkerchiefs wet and crushed over nose and eyes, stumbling along, Craig made me precede him. It was terrible. I felt that I couldn't last much longer. I saw now why he had sent me out ahead.
We were now near the bend of the corridor that led to the first flight of stairs—and fresh air. I was gasping for oxygen. I could hear Craig coming behind me. I made a supreme effort to reach the last flight of steps and staggered to the balustrade. At the rail I fell all the way down. The air at the foot was a little better. I crawled to the entrance.
Through a haze I could see Ken's white face, anxious and haggard, straining to pierce through the screen of smoke. He was holding Laddie by the collar. Laddie was straining to get away. I knew for whom Ken was looking.
"He's coming!" I gasped huskily. "He's back of me!"
Ken nodded, sympathy written on his face. By this time some guests had gathered to help me.
I was sure Craig was getting the same attention. Had I known what was actually taking place I would have crawled back some way to help him even if it meant passing out with him.
Craig had watched me turn the corridor. He had realized that the smoke, the fumes from the chemicals were getting me more than they were affecting him. So he had urged me to go first so he could watch, help me along if I weakened. As I stumbled down the stairway, everything was getting hazy to him also.
He turned to make the bend in the corridor. A man with a wet handkerchief over his face suddenly confronted him.
"I been sent to get you, Craig Kennedy! Now—take that!"
Craig had been stumbling along with his elbow bent, his forearm protecting his face. Before he had a chance even to see, he felt a terrific blow on his head. Everything became smoke then—oblivion. Craig had been blackjacked in the fumes!
Ken, with Laddie, was scarcely able to hold himself back. He waited a few second after I stumbled out. Then when Craig failed to follow, Ken started to enter the smoke-filled wing of the Club. A man stood before him.
"You can't go in there, kid! Want to die?"
"Let me by, please. My Uncle Craig is there. I must help him."
"Naw, kid. He ain't. That other guy jumped out of the window. He's with the crowd, now."
Ken was shaking with fear and excitement. The man blocked his way. But he knew he couldn't afford to take any chances when the life of his uncle was at stake. One of his pals was gone. He knew his other pal was in danger. His mind worked fast.
"Laddie! Get Uncle Craig! In there!"
The man tried to stop the dog. But Laddie was too quick for him.
"Don't you like your dog!" he sneered at Ken.
Ken knew nothing but the desire to make sure that Craig was safe. He watched, the man still blocking him. Laddie ran swiftly and close to the floor. Canine instinct was protecting him from the noxious fumes. Ken listened. Three loud barks!
In a few seconds Laddie was back, out in the air, jumping excitedly. Again he started in, an invitation to Ken to follow. The stranger blocked Ken.
"I tell yer, yer can't go, kid! Maybe yer don't care for the purp but I won't let yer kill yerself!"
"I will go! You won't stop me!" shouted Ken.
The man aimed a blow at Ken's head. The boy ducked in time to save himself.
Laddie never hesitated. With a low growl, a quick and well-calculated spring, he was at the man's throat. No one could hurt his young, master and get away with it.
Ken did not stop to watch the outcome of the struggle between man and dog. The man gave way. Ken sprang through, the door desperately, calling back, "Hold that man!" He kept close to the floor, almost crawling on his belly. Laddie had done so. He must have had a reason. The air was just a bit better down at the floor.
Up the stairs, crawling quickly, feeling all about him, he made his way dizzily to the bend in the corridor. There he touched a man's arm.
It must be his Uncle Craig's. Ken's heart gave a leap. He had found him.
A cold nose rubbed his face. Laddie was there, too.
"Good old Laddie!" he gasped. "Help me get him down!"
With the strength of desperation in danger, the boy put his arms under Craig's shoulders and dragged him to the stairs.
"Help me, Laddie!"
The dog seized the other shoulder of Craig's coat in his teeth. Ken summoned all his remaining strength. Interminable moments and they had Craig down the stairs where rescuers lifted him and carried him far out on the grass.
Ken and Laddie were the heroes of the night. If Craig had been in there a minute longer he might never have come through.
The man who had blocked the way now glowered as three townspeople held him. He had stumbled at Laddie's leap. Ken's call back had brought others where the dog was standing over the prostrate gangster.
Now to every question he maintained a surly, sullen silence. But the blackjack in his pocket told the story.
"You may have set the fire for all we know," menaced Martin, the village constable. "You don't talk much, stranger, but I'm going to hold you for that!" He swung the blackjack before the thug's face, and jerked his thumb at Craig.
OUT on the lawn Craig at last blinked, eyes still stinging,
head still in a whirl.
"Wh-who did it?" I gasped. "Who got the films?"
Kennedy took a long breath, smiled quietly.
"I don't know who got the prints I made. The negative itself was in the club safe half an hour after I finished with it this afternoon. It's autographic. That handwriting is still in the safe for scientific identification. I'll hang this thing on some one—yet!"
Boys' Life's, December 1923,
with Part III of "Craig Kennedy, Radio Detective"
UNDER the giant old oak trees where we were resting after our frightful experiences in the smoke-filled wing of the burning club, the breezes fanned our still smarting eyes and aching heads. I did not feel good for much and Craig must have felt worse. The only compensation was that everything had come out all right with no loss that could not be repaired. Even the negatives and the samples of handwriting were safe. The fire was under control and only a part of the wing of the club building was damaged.
I looked, still dazed, about me. Laddie seemed to feel just as we did. He sat on his haunches before Craig, head up, panting, with his bright red tongue hanging out of his mouth. Now and then rather deliberately he would put his paw on Craig's knee, leaving it there long enough to get a caress and a word from Craig. Laddie had the approval of those he loved, and each time he responded with an animated wagging of his tail, which shows that, after all, dogs and men are rather close in feeling. Each appreciates a kindly word.
"I don't see any of the young people here at the fire, Waller," remarked Craig. "Nothing ever stopped me from going to a fire. With cars and motorcycles nowadays, I should think they'd all be here."
I had felt too badly to notice it. But as I looked about I realized that I saw no signs of Ruth and I saw that Easton was looking for her, too, now. Ken was some distance of! with his mother. As for Vira and Glenn, Rae and Jack Curtis, I thought that they evidently had something more thrilling than a fire to think about.
Kennedy beckoned Ken over and asked him a question. "Yes, Uncle Craig," he answered, "I did see Hank, for just a minute. No, he didn't seem to be doing anything—just hanging around the hose cart. When he saw me he disappeared. I haven't seen him since."
"Maybe doing a little appraising of the guests," I put in sourly. "He might find something to report to that choice gang of friends of his."
Craig shook his head. "It's too bad about that boy. There is really a great deal in him if someone would head him straight. Anyhow, I'm going to find out about those young folks."
He stood up, weakly at first, but as his sister Coralie came over, it seemed that his anxiety about Dick Gerard's kidnapping and all the rest gave him strength. He took the arm of Mrs. Adams and they sauntered over to the main part of the club that had not been harmed by the fire.
"I can account for all but Rae Larue and Curtis," he said as he came back. "We called up. Coralie found that Ruth had come in a little while ago. Then we talked to Mrs. Gerard. Vira and Glenn had just come in."
"We heard Curtis and Rae over the wireless dictograph," I suggested. "I wonder—"
"They hadn't reached the Larue house yet. And when I called up the Ashton place where Jack Curtis is visiting, they told me he was with Rae Larue."
The Club manager happened by. "That gangster who tried to kill you, sir, is a surly brute," he nodded. "Not a word out of him."
Kennedy seemed appraising his own strength. "Tell them to hold him. I'll give him a third degree to-morrow."
The manager shook his head as he turned away muttering to me, "I'll bet Mr. Kennedy finds out for himself long before that guy will tell a thing. He's a tough egg!"
Easton joined us. He seemed relieved when he heard that Ruth was home:
"No more to-night," he smiled. "You fellows are all in, both of you. Besides, you're burnt out and the club's full. Come down to my boathouse. I have four dandy bunks out on the open porch. I built them myself. Sleep out there with me."
THE gulls cat-calling in the harbor waked us in the early
morning.
Kennedy called the Hawkins' number. Evidently one of the maids answered as I gathered from the one-sided conversation.
"Hank isn't home?"—"Not in, all night?"—"You don't know where?"
Craig turned to us. "I don't know as I blame that boy half as much as I blame his parents. What do they know about him, anyway? Now I want to see Ruth and the rest."
Easton Evans was troubled. At the mention of Ruth he suddenly began tinkering with the radio apparatus nearest at hand. He did not relish Craig quizzing Ruth. He thought too much of her. Still, he said nothing, but at last steeled himself to go through with it.
The first to greet us at the Adams place were Ken and Laddie, who at once attached themselves to us. Mrs. Adams seemed distressed.
"Craig," she whispered, "I can't get Ruth to tell me a thing. It's the first time she has ever refused and I feel dreadfully about it."
"Don't worry, Coralie. I can't think Ruth's stubbornness will be very serious. She is too much like you, dear. She will come to you soon, I feel sure."
There was no time to say more. Ruth herself was coming from the house to the porch.
Ruth this morning was entrancing. Besides, to me, she had an air of mystery. She was not only beautiful to look at but interesting, something to study. Could those laughing frank eyes of Ruth know of crime, of anything coarse? It was hard to believe. Yet had I not heard her myself over the dictograph at the Binnacle talking with those gun men who had just been planning another hold-up? It seemed incredible.
"Good-morning, Ruth." It was Craig. Easton was still out with Ken and Laddie trying to find why one cylinder on the car was missing fire. I bowed and sauntered farther along the porch, but not so far that I could not hear. Mrs. Adams turned toward the house.
When Ruth saw her mother leaving also, an appealing look came in her eyes. "Now, Uncle Craig! Please don't start to tear me out. You pull the answers from me—and I don't want to lie to you!"
"Why did you think I was going to question you? Do you know anything that might lead me to pull answers from you?"
Ruth hung her head and flushed.
"Ruth!" Craig said it gently. She raised her eyes at last pleadingly. "Ruth, do you know where little Dick Gerard is?"
Her eyes widened. "No," she gasped.
"Do you know who stole the jewels the other night?"
"No, Uncle Craig, I don't... And it isn't fair to ask me things like that."
"Well, when I hear a girl talking to men who a moment before were planning another little job at the Binnacle, it makes me think." Ruth looked back at him startled and silent, but he went on. "What about these racing debts that Hank Hawkins tells of?"
"Racing debts?" repeated Ruth now. "I have no racing debts. There! I haven't done anything very wrong, Uncle Craig, and it is my right to keep quiet if I want to. I don't want to be rude—but I can't talk to you—now—and I —love you so much!" Ruth was sobbing. "And —I—won't—talk! So there!" She had run from the porch.
Kennedy may not have learned much, but I am sure he was satisfied. Taking Ken and Laddie along he drove over to the Gerard place.
Vira was alone over by the garage, evidently waiting for someone.
Kennedy led up to a question recalling what Ken had overheard at the Wild Rose Tea Room: "Did you get it, Ruth? Will he give it to you?"
"What was it, Vira?" Craig added. "Who? About the races?"
Vira looked up quickly. What she read in Kennedy's eyes was evidently enough. She knew he knew.
"Ruth didn't lose anything," she blurted out now. "But Glenn and I did. Mr. Parr, a friend of Ruth's father—Ruth went to see him—get a loan on her security—for us."
"And did she get it?"
"Yes. Just in time. We got the cash, settled our debts, last night."
Kennedy seemed to accept it. "Well, that takes care of you and Glenn. What about Rae and Curtis?"
"I don't know. Jack has a friend in a bank. He said he could get it from him."
"Did he?"
"Really, Mr. Kennedy, I don't know."
IN the house Kennedy again tried to get the Larue place and
then the Ashton place where Curtis was visiting. It seemed that
each had got home late but had gone out early in the morning
again.
Kennedy called the Club. "Any messages for me?" he asked the clerk. On the back of an envelope he wrote something repeated over the wire, then hung up.
"Amateur sleuths of the wireless are very valuable," he remarked as we left Vira and climbed back into the car. "This was from our old friend, K 903, Deer Park, Long Island, whoever he may be." Craig held the envelope down before us now.
I read the message:
"Every hour, on the quarter, I am picking up some fellow sending on 250 meters. It is about a boy, but no name is ever mentioned. Could it be the Dick Gerard you are looking for? Try it yourself—on the quarter after the hour—250 meters. Last message was: 'Kennedy and Jameson are away from Evans's boathouse.'"
Easton and I looked up quickly. "That's mighty important," exclaimed Craig.
"Yes," broke in Easton. "But from where does this sending come? From the gray racer to the boat?"
Kennedy nodded. "Without a doubt. But where is the gray racer?"
"If we could only find that gray racer," cried Ken, "then we might get a line on Dick."
"Why—my direction finder—of course!" put in Easton.
"Well, I can't forget the last part of that message," I insisted. "'Kennedy and Jameson are away from Evans's boathouse.' To me that's a reason for fearing for the boathouse."
"Then we'd better get back there quick, get your direction finder, see if everything there is all right," agreed Craig.
In the car, Ken was animated and excited. "This is like tracking!" he shouted.
Craig nodded to his young nephew. "Indeed, Ken, detective work is like scouting, in some respects. It is tracking—of another sort."
"It's like scouting in this respect, too," said Easton. "My motto is, 'Be prepared.' That's why I've been collecting in my laboratory all sorts of new scientific devices and inventions, just like your Uncle Craig. You never know when you'll need to use them."
"Scouting through the ether," added Craig approvingly.
Everything seemed all right at Easton's boathouse-laboratory when we returned. We were still discussing the messages picked up by the wireless fan at Deer Park.
Kennedy turned to the wireless dictograph again. A moment and his forefinger, raised, caught our attention. Easton and I hastily adjusted headpieces....
All I could make out was a muffled whisper, a man's voice. But it was lost. It was evidently a smothered caution.
"Someone's hunting for the transmitter," muttered Craig.
We looked at each other. We were powerless to stop it.
Through the dictograph came a ringing, metallic noise, as if someone had wrenched out the iron grill work in front of the fireplace under the old mantel in the room at the Binnacle.
The diaphragm reproduced a crashing crack.
The dictograph transmitter had been smashed.
Kennedy laid down the earpieces thoughtfully. "Well—that's that I Now for some other way to get a line on where they're taking little Dick Gerard."
Already Easton had started to take from a rather large cabinet his direction finder, talking to young Ken about it as he did so.
The telephone rang and Craig took it, pulling over toward himself a pad lying on the table and writing hurriedly.
"It seems that a number of radio fans have been trying to get me," he remarked as he hung up and went over what he had written.
I knew now that it was another fan message repeated to Kennedy from the club.
"Some of them of course are nuts," he went on. "But most of them are serious. It takes a person of more than average intelligence even to dabble with radio, much more to understand it well. Now, this is the same chap on the cruiser that seems to be idling along the sound shore, you remember, the fellow who sent the anonymous telegram and reported the Scooter going in at the Binnacle?"
We gathered about him to read. The message was from little Dick himself!
"Tell my mother, Mrs. Gerard, at Oldfield, L.I., that I am safe and will be back the first chance I can get to swim ashore. No harbors here. All I can see is the low cliffs along the sound shore. That is all now. —Dick Gerard."
"The first chance I can get to swim ashore," repeated Ken, with a thrill. "Dick's a good swimmer—only I hope he doesn't try it out in the middle of the sound."
I must admit that I felt the thrill of it myself. Somehow Dick had cleverly contrived an opportunity to communicate with the outside world by the Scooter's own radio! One might be sure a boy like that would be able to take care of himself, I thought.
"No harbors here. All I can see is the low cliffs along the sound shore," read Easton.
"He must be somewhere to the east of us, then, on the boat," concluded Craig.
I wondered. Where did these noises of space reported by the radio fans come from? Where was the gray racer, now? Above all, where was the Scooter?
Kennedy called up Mrs. Gerard at Oldfield and reassured her anxiety with this message just pulled down from the air about the missing boy.
With redoubled energy and care Easton Evans returned to work on his direction finder.
"In theory it is comparatively simple," he explained. "The principle is a 'loop'—copper wire wound eight times around a frame four feet square. It's in the method of winding and the attachments that I have, I think, improved on anything that has ever been done before. Of course, the proof of it is how it works for us."
EASTON hung the queer little loop from a standard, free to
turn. As he moved it, I saw that the loop could be pointed in any
direction and that by another device it could be held there.
Next he connected up his receiving set. That took some time, for it needed fine adjustment. Kennedy was noting the time and I knew he was calculating just how long before a given moment it was necessary to start to set it up.
Easton now began turning the loop slowly, listening.
"It's a directional receiver," commented Kennedy.
"Yes. It must be orientated toward the hidden sender. Whatever the direction of the station from which the impulses come originally, this loop must be on some line that radiates from it."
"It is really then a radio compass."
"Perhaps that would be a good name for it."
Kennedy looked closely at his watch. "The quarter after the hour is less than thirty seconds off, Easton," he warned. "Now, everybody, be quiet."
Easton, straining his attention, slowly swung the loop. His face lighted up and we knew that in the earpieces he must be getting something. A moment, swinging the loop back and forth through a most minute arc, he stopped it, locked it, so to speak. It was pointed.
"What was the message?" I asked eagerly.
"'Apparatus O.K.'"
What did that mean? I was about to ask when I realized that it was the direction now that was the important thing, not the message.
I saw that Kennedy and Easton with the aid of Ken were fixing the direction exactly on a fine compass. It was almost due east of us. "That checks up with the last fan message," nodded Craig. "And it can't be far off, either," added Easton. "The signals were not so weak."
Kennedy paused only long enough to call up the local authorities to have them notify others to the east of us to scour the county to locate the gray car.
Then we were off, carrying the direction finder with us. The hardest part came when we left Ken and Laddie to guard the boathouse laboratory. It was hard enough for Ken; Laddie needed almost to be disciplined to go back. I felt sorry for Ken. He was unwilling to miss anything in the hunt for his pal, Dick. But it was his duty to stay on guard and he took it gracefully, even with a smile, waving as we climbed the hill, looking back at the boy and the dog.
We headed eastward, as near as the roads permitted. To keep the direction, it was necessary often to get off the main road, and we went slowly, keeping a lookout in all directions for anything suspicious.
THE quarter after the hour was approaching again as Kennedy
warned Easton. We stopped the car and Easton began again his
particular setting up, first I noticed getting the standard set
by the aid of a very fine spirit level attached to it.
Here in the middle of an open field where we had stopped we waited anxiously. At last Easton began to get it.
"The message this time was 'All set for noon'—whatever that may mean," reported Easton. "Now, the direction. It seems we must be pretty nearly right, not quite far enough south of the cast we've been following."
We made the start again. This time the road got worse and more tortuous through the woods as we got further out on the island.
ANOTHER quarter after the hour was coming on, and we were on a
sandy road in the midst of scrub oaks, Easton made his set up,
adjusted, listened. This time I saw him swing the loop pretty
far, almost to the north.
"I'm getting a much finer direction now," he said. "Stronger impulses. We're nearer."
It almost made me think of the old parlor game, "Getting warmer!"
"The message this time was peculiar," Easton said as he hustled in making the exact direction. "'Just heard local officers hunting us. Will lie low until to-night.' We'd better hurry."
THERE seemed no better way than to keep on on the road, if you
called it a road, upon which we were. A few hundred yards ahead
it swerved in the direction we wanted and rose over the brow of a
hill. It was a terrible road but the sight was beautiful now.
Before us, tucked away here, next door to nowhere, was an abandoned farm with an old red barn, rotting, roof sagging.
"You bet that's it!" cried Easton.. "See! The sound is just beyond—and this is the only thing that even resembles a road to it."
We made our approach cautiously, mindful of a set-gun the last time we had trailed the racer when it received its gray baptism after being once yellow.
There had been no time for traps. Our approach had been signalled by a lookout. There had been only time to wreck the gears.
Here at last was the gray racer, abandoned and dismantled. But we were just a moment too late. The crooks had fled.
Kennedy looked at it hastily. "Tires correspond with the tire tracks left in the Jardinc garage—the make—the marking—even the imperfection on the right front tire."
He gingerly lifted the cover to the rear extra seat of the racer. Under it was the remains of a mighty fine little wireless field set, just as old Lenihan at the Jardine place, had described it. Only that too was dismantled and rendered useless.
"We're too late," I muttered. "The birds have flown!"
OUR big job still lay before us. Kennedy hastened to return
from the abandoned farm. In the nearest town he stopped only long
enough to send back a constable to salvage as much as the law
could of the wrecked racer and its incriminating equipment, for
evidence. Then he continued back to the laboratory boathouse as
fast as he could to relieve Ken. I marveled at his calmness and
confidence, even though I knew that Craig always held something
back to turn the trick in any emergency. 9
We were coasting down from the top of the hill a hundred feet or so from the boathouse when Craig jammed on the brakes and must have scraped a dollar's worth of rubber off the tires.
Just over the tops of the trees could be seen the roof of the boathouse. That was all right. But beyond, out in the harbor in front of it, was a little motor boat with two boys in it. They seemed to be wrestling.
"That boat's Hank's!" exclaimed Easton.
"Ken and Hank!"
"What are they towing?" I broke in.
"Looks like an old covered duck boat," observed Craig.
Several hundred feet out in front of the boathouse they were, fighting, apparently-over the steering wheel. The motor boat was running wild.
Just then the noon whistle on the powerhouse shrilled.
Suddenly Hank broke away, cut loose the duck boat.
The next instant, like a three-foot flash of a motion picture, there was a huge column of water and a puff of smoke, black wreckage of the little duck boat... Bam! came the deep report, echoing arid reverberating among the wooded Nonowantuc hills.
Another instant and it cleared in the fresh breeze. The motor boat was awash, both boys in the water.
Kennedy released the brakes and we shot down the hill like a roller coaster. We hurried out on the dock to Easton's speed boat, and after the boys.
A few minutes later we pulled in Ken and Hank, bedraggled, exhausted, but unhurt. The water about the engine had stopped it. I seized the painter and we started to tow the boat ashore.
"What was it?" demanded Craig of the two boys.
Hank, now scared, was silent. Not so Ken. Ken blurted out, "I heard a noise from where I was, on the road side of the boathouse. It seemed to come from under the workshop."
I recalled that the boathouse was on the side of a hill, the workshop on what might be called the second floor. Under the workshop had once been the boat loft But Easton had converted that into a hangar, with a skidway down into the water. In it he had the hydroaeroplane on which he had been working, installing his new radio ideas.
"I saw Hank," panted Ken. "He had come up to the boathouse, alone, in his little motor boat. He seemed to be shoving an old duck boat under the hangar. He had been towing it. 'What you want, Hank?' I yelled. 'I'm leaving this for East, see? Beat it!' he yelled back. Well, I jumped on his boat. I don't know why. But I did. I must have felt there was something wrong. I swung the boat clear. The engine was turning over slowly. Gave the pier a kick, grabbed at the wheel. That's what Hank and I were fighting over."
Ken paused for breath, but Craig urged him on. "Hank had a boat-hook, first. I got that away from him; at least it dropped overboard. Then, out in the harbor, he stopped fighting—just as the whistle on the power house blew for noon. 'You're a fool, Kent' be shouted. 'Take your hands off me, before I bite!... Look!... That thing in the duck boat's going to explode!' Well, he broke away, ran back, cut the rope. There was an explosion, a geyser of water and stuff. I thought it was the engine, or the gas tank, or something. I felt as if the fly-wheel had hit me—till you picked me up... But, fellows, the boathouse is safe!"
I had been watching Hank and his small motor boat now as we came back to the dock. I could not resist a startled glance as, tucked away in the duffle with great care, I caught sight of an electron tube, with filament and grid, precisely the latest type used in radio receiving. It was floating, fast to something. I nudged Kennedy, but Kennedy was quicker than I. He had seen that the fishing pole was equipped as a miniature aerial.
Why, even when he was supposed to be fishing, did Hank carry this compact wireless receiving set? What must he always be in touch with? What message could he expect that he must be listening in?
It was at least clear enough that with this receiving apparatus on the end of a bamboo pole, Hank must have known something about this attack on the boathouse. Was "fishing" to be his alibi?
A few sharp questions elicited the fact that he had been told by the skipper of the Scooter to place the' duck boat under the boat-house just before twelve o'clock, noon.
"But that—Dr—fish pole?" asked Craig, pointing to it
"That was in it, wired. Only I took it out and carried it in my boat I was afraid it would get overboard. The wire was long enough."
Kennedy looked long and steadily at Hank without speaking. How much more than he was telling did this boy know?
"But, Craig, how was it done?" I asked at length.
"It must have been a sort of wireless incendiary bomb," he said slowly. "It is possible to arrange a firing device on a bomb so that a certain signal may set it off. Of course, you realize that that's mighty different from setting off any other bomb or explosive, although I don't say there never have been any wireless fires or explosions. I don't know. But a wireless incendiary bomb might be made by a clever man. The problem would be to get it placed where it could be fired at the proper time. That was Hank's job."
"But," I queried. "None of us were there. Why do it?"
Kennedy paused a moment. "Because they must realize that this is the one place that contains the apparatus to ferret them out and catch them!"
AT first Hank was inclined to be surly. But as Craig persisted
in his questioning, the boy's terror grew. This man knew more
than he thought possible for him to know, more than even Hank
knew. It might be to his interest to give some information, now.
The mere mention of the justice of the peace made Hank feel
colder than the wet clothes on his back.
"Why did you lie about my sister Ruth?" This was Ken to Hank. "I'm glad I licked you now, you—you mucker! She never lost anything betting on the races. She never bets. You know it."
"I—I know—I know it, Ken," stammered Hank. "But I wanted to throw you off and you wouldn't be thrown. Ruth's all right."
Upstairs in the laboratory, by calling the club, Craig found that there was another message from the fellow on the cruiser who had, the day before, given us the tip about the Scooter putting in near the Binnacle.
"Saw the scout patrol boat headed southeast down the Sound," the message read.
"Toward the ocean!" Easton said it, startled.
"There's still another message from that radio fan, K 903 at Deer Park," added Craig. "I wrote it down as they read it over the wire. Listen. 'Aboard the Scooter, headed out. I hear the men talk about Block Island. This is Dick—' That's where the message broke off, as if they had found him using their own wireless."
Kennedy's eyes had been fixed hypnotically on Hank. Hank now sniveled. He had broken down. "Yes... up north somewheres... Nova Scotia... that's where they take the stuff... I don't know."
We could only look at each other startled. Here at last was some clue, to the fleeing Scooter. But how get to it, how stop the fast boat?
Easton paced across the workshop floor. He lifted a trap door, started silently to climb down to the former boat loft below.
We climbed down after him. Already Easton was smeared and greasy, coat off, covered with perspiration, working feverishly.
Craig looked about keenly. The former boat-house had indeed been transformed into a real hangar. There was the almost new hydroaeroplane. Easton looked up from his work.
"Look over things, Mr. Kennedy, see if everything looks all right to you, down to the pontoons," he called to Craig.
"What's the idea?" I asked Easton.
"I'm tuning up. I wasn't quite ready to show off this radioplane yet—hut, hang it all, we must get that Scooter before she gets out into the ocean—with Dick!"
KENNEDY spread the net far and wide to intercept the
Scooter.
Within a few minutes he had the Radio Central, the New York police wireless station, all the big private broadcasting stations, everybody, sending out periodical signals of alarm. He had turned the radio world veritably upside down in the search.
In the meantime I had taken the crushed Hank down to Constable Martin and left him in his charge, hastening back to Craig and Easton.
"Yes, this is one of the newest of sciences," I overheard Craig remarking to Ken, "telautomatics."
"Tel-auto-matics," repeated Ken slowly.
"That's it—literally control of motion at a distance. You probably know it by another name. There's something weird, fascinating about the very idea."
"I sit here safely—for instance, upstairs—turning switches, pressing buttons, depressing levers," added Easton. "Ten miles away, perhaps, a vehicle, an automobile, a boat, an aeroplane, a submarine, obeys me!"
"Oh, sure. You mean wireless control."
"Exactly, Ken," continued Easton. "The thing may carry enough of the latest and most deadly explosive, enough to blow anything to kingdom come. Yet it obeys my will. It goes where I direct it It explodes when and where I want it to explode. And it wipes off the face of the earth anything I want annihilated. That's what can be done by telautomatics!"
I regarded Easton and Kennedy now with genuine admiration.
"I won't go into my radio-combinator, my telecommutator, my audion relay and all the rest," he went on. "You see, I have letters on the keys of the radio-combinator—forward, back, start propeller motor, stop propeller motor, rudder right, rudder left, light signals forward and aft, and all the rest It's really a case of what they call delayed contact The machinery is always ready. But it delays until the right, selective impulse is given. I take advantage of the delay to have the signal repeated back to me, to check up on it."
Easton and Kennedy completed their preparations in an incredibly short time now, and there was just room for Ken and me, also, by squeezing into the "tub," as Ken called the passenger part of the seaplane. Laddie tried to jump.
"Oh," pleaded Ken, "take Laddie, too!"
Easton shook his head, but finally agreed.
We swung the doors open and they ran the air-boat in Its cradle down the skidway. It plunged into the quiet waters of the harbor. The staccato whirr of the propeller rose to a screeching drone. We took on in a cloud of spray, leaping lightly from the surface of the water up into the air, climbing, climbing.
Kennedy made us understand that in response to his last broadcasting he had picked up another message from the cruiser that had already twice communicated with us.
"They've got Rae Larue and Jack Curtis on the cruiser!" he exclaimed, "put aboard it by the crew of the Scooter. See if you can sight it, East It should be along here, somewhere."
We made it out at last through a glass, and Easton planed down to the surface, taxied along astern until they threw us a rope. I read the name, Sea Vamp. Craig and I managed to get aboard leaving Easton and Ken with Laddie in the plane.
Through my mind had been ringing a statement of Craig's on the night of the robbery. "Is it just another in the wave of crimes this summer against country places—or has it been pulled off with inside help of someone at the dance?" I felt now we should see.
AS we entered the low cabin of the Sea Vamp down steep
steps, we could see Rae Larue and Jack Curtis sullenly scanning
our faces. Rae was just as pretty in her middy blouse and
bloomers as she had been in evening gown the night of the
dance.
"Why were you on the Scooter, and how did you get off?" demanded Craig. "Were you kidnapped, too? Is Dick still aboard?"
"He was when I left," answered Rae ignoring the first questions with a quick glance at the face of Jack.
Craig did not forget. "Why did the Scooter leave you?"
The owner of the cruiser answered. "They were put off, Mr. Kennedy. I thought I ought to let you know. They might have news of the missing boy."
"You know," chimed in his wife, a very pretty woman, "we know the Gerards well."
Neither Rae nor Curtis seemed inclined to talk. The owner of the Sea Vamp continued: "I was looking for this Scooter, and I saw it, signalling to us. When it drew alongside I heard a fight. But I didn't see anybody except a couple of sailors. One of them shouted, 'Take these folks aboard? We are putting out to sea and they don't want to go. Any port will do!' Well, I said I would. I could hear more quarreling. My wife heard a man shout that he was through with them and they could say what they pleased about the Gerard robbery. That settled me. I took 'em aboard, tried to get you, held them. Do you know them?"
"They were guests—moving the cars out of the rain—the night of the hold-up," replied Kennedy tersely.
Rae and Curtis looked at Craig, then at each other. More silence. Rae particularly made me think of the bravado of a child who has done wrong and is determined to brave it out by a display of arrogance. Feeling genuine terror with some people makes them show a false courage that won't stand much strain.
"How did you get mixed up in this, Curtis?" switched Kennedy. "When crooks fall out, it seems honest men get the truth!"
There was no answer from Jack; only a scowl.
"I seem to recall East Evans that night saying, 'She had the hands of a lady—and the voice of a gun-moll.' You have the hands, Rae. What about the voice? Can you throw it, disguise it?"
Her color deepened. "I'll not answer such an impudent question, Mr. Kennedy!"
"We'll see what you'll admit," pursued Craig calmly.
"Why!" exclaimed the wife of the owner of the boat. "Are they the burglars?" She shuddered, almost.
"I can't tell, just yet. But I intend to find out one thing, soon."
"Not by making me talk!" defied Rae.
"You don't need to talk. I have copies of the footprints on the beach, of a man and a girl, who took Dick off."
Rae was a little actress. But she could not hide a flash of real anxiety on her face now. Protest was of no avail. There were too many of us against them. Craig insisted on comparing their shoes with the paraffin footprints.
"They fit!" he exclaimed.
Rae was now in tears in spite of Jack and her bravado. "We—we'll own up, Mr. K-Kennedy," she sobbed. "We were roped in—then threatened, compelled, to hold up that dance... Gambling did it. We both owed a small fortune in gambling debts!"
Craig was not too severe, yet. "Who are the others? Who is the one they call the Chief—the one to whom Hank was signalling when Dick saw him?"
Craig never finished that question. The wife of the owner interrupted. "Hank! Hank—who?"
"Hank Hawkins," replied Craig shortly.
"What did he do?" she gasped, as the owner stood and merely stared.
"Do? He gave all the information in that neighborhood for the burglaries; was paid for it; was the little errand boy for the gang. Why do you ask?" Craig said it rather sharply.
"I—I'm his mother—Mrs. Hawkins!"
"So!" interposed the man gruffly. "Hank was in it! We haw helped to trap our own boy—helping to find Gerard's! Don't talk any more to these people, my dear!"
Kennedy drew himself up. "You have done no trapping. Others did that for you. You have committed a worse crime than your boy has, in my opinion. God gave you a life to guard and protect. What will your answer be when He asks? Hank's downfall is your failure as parents. I leave these people with you, on your honor, to deliver to Martin at Nonowantuc."
Craig turned shortly on Curtis as he placed his foot on the ladder to leave the cabin. "You needn't tell who the Chief is, either. I am on my way to get him. I haven't time to waste now on you. These people will hold you. We'll find what to do with you later. I am going to get the boy you kidnapped!"
Again we took off in the whirring of propeller blades, a gorgeous cutting of spray, another leap into scouting in the air.
"Did you know who these people were all the time?" I asked Craig.
He nodded. "I had them looked up in the registry. Also do you know who K 903, at Deer Park, is?"
"No. Who?"
"Mr. Parr, friend of Ruth's father, with a big estate in the middle of the island!"
I thought of how Ruth had got, through him, the money to save Vira and Glenn from the evils of gambling, of Rae and Curtis in the toils, of their false ethics of crime, their clannish silence. Who was the man higher up?
WE had not been flying five minutes when Kennedy shouted above
the rush of air and pointed ahead. There was the Scooter
at last!
Easton depressed his altitude and we swung along until shortly the naked eye could make out for certain the lines of the Scooter putting out into the ocean.
"Good heavens!" exclaimed Easton, "What's that speck in the water, between us and him? Can it be someone—swimming? It is! It must be Dick!"
Could it be that Dick, as he had threatened in his radio messages, had seen and taken a last long chance, that he had gone overboard, risking everything on a marathon swim like that, with not a chance in a thousand of making shore?
A moment and Easton taxied in spray and was rocking and pitching only a few feet from the swimmer.
It was ticklish business but he maneuvered until he was able to swing about Fortunately it was not very rough. As for Dick he was still pretty fresh. His outdoor life counted now in the saving of him.
With a final effort Craig and I dragged him aboard. Ken was crazy; Laddie almost wild.
There wasn't time for much talking as he told how, like a true scout, he had read signals that made him dangerous, signals that Hank wig-wagged to the Scooter from the hill back of his house. They had to carry Dick Gerard off—or kill him.
"Oh, boy! Dick, won't your mother be glad?"
"Yes. I knew you'd help me, Ken. But I never expected you to come down out of the sky and do it Keep quiet, Laddie! You mustn't rock this boat! Say, I'm hungry! Oh, to get home to Mom—hot cakes and syrup—and you, you old scout, across the table, counting how many I eat!"
"Here, Kennedy, take this plane. I'll take the radio!"
Craig seized the other of the double set of controls. The Scooter was plunging ahead. The chase had succeeded. But how to stop that boat? They were defiant.
Easton swung a switch of his radio apparatus. A little light gleamed overhead. He depressed another. Another signal overhead changed. "Go!"
Like a bolt flew the arrangement overhead, a long torpedo-like affair of aluminum, with wings and pontoons for all the world like the plane we were on, only in miniature. It was flying, with the buzz of a hornet Easton pressed a lever. It swung in its flight.
"The principle of the thing is that I use Herzian waves to actuate relays on the radio-plane," muttered Easton. "That is, f send a boy with a message. The grown man docs the work, so to speak, through the relay. I can sit here and send my little David anywhere to strike down Goliath!"
We were now moving ourselves, getting closer to the Scooter. The Scooter changed its course. Instantly Easton pulled a lever. The little radioplane changed its course by exactly the same degree.
This little hornet flew over them, turned, came back, swooped, straight at the boat. A man on the deck with a gun fired once, twice, three times at it. No such marksmanship could stop that thing. The man seemed to realize it. I nerved myself for the explosion of the radioplane. To my amazement it rose, circled, like a wasp, turned and started back.
The man with the gun went below. We were now close enough to see that they were signalling that they would stand by, surrender, that we might come aboard.
"I thought they would!" cried Easton. "No reason in the world for sending a little treasure ship like that to Davy Jones!"
THE radioplane settled down to the water as he directed it. We
came up astern of the Scooter. Easton was busy recapturing
the radioplane and restoring it to its place as we boarded the
boat.
"Where's the Chief?" demanded Craig.
"Below!" A foreign looking sailor jerked his thumb down a companionway toward a cabin. Back of us now were Ken, Dick, and Laddie. Easton was coming along over the side, too.
Craig stepped down the steep ladder-steps. The cabin door was locked. He threw his weight against it.. But it was stout. It did not yield. I joined him. Still it resisted.
Suddenly the lock turned. The door opened just a bit. A hand, with a big Colt, protruded—the Colt yawning a deadly blue black mouth directly at Craig.
Before we knew it Laddie leaped. His teeth sank into that wrist. The Colt discharged through the deck, as the man inside swore with pain. Laddie held on. Craig swung open the now unlocked door and disclosed a man on the floor, clutching a smoking gun, rolling over and over with the tawny collie.
Craig seized Laddie firmly with one hand, spoke sharply to him. Laddie fell back. Then he dragged up from the floor the Chief—Professor Vario!
"So—it is you who are head of the biggest gang of dress-suit yeggmen that ever operated!" exclaimed Craig, holding him off at arm's length. "You picked out a rich section of the country to work. I gathered as much from some negatives that showed me someone was trying to involve the sporty set of young people in the gang. The kodak was autographic. I found that the handwriting was the handwriting of Professor Vario. That's why Rae Larue was so particular to single you out that night and threaten you in the hold-up. It was your alibi for being head of the gang!"
Instantly I recalled Vario as the killjoy at the Radio Central when he had cautioned us not to build any false hopes about what radio might do in catching crooks such as these. I smiled to myself. Well, the radio had caught them.
Kennedy smiled. "I shall not forget you and your new wave-meter, Vario. It must have been you who listened in on our wireless dictograph, found out what we were doing, told your gang, had them smash it. The fact is, I don't think anything ever went out of the Radio Central about this case while you were employed there that was straight—not the first night, nor when we broadcasted. That time you used the switch that all stations have, cut me off, sent out canned music on XYXZ, the moment you learned I was there. A radio fan picked that up and told me. Vario, I have been massing evidence against you. It takes a radio detective to catch a radio crook!"
Craig turned Vario over to Easton who had just come in. It needed no one better than Easton to guard him, as he gloated over the downfall of his polished rival for Ruth.
"Talk about Kidd and Morgan and Blackbeard! They were piker pirates to you!" laughed Kennedy as he unearthed from its secret hiding place a casket.
In it were the Adams pearls that Ruth had worn, the emeralds, Mrs. Gerard's diamond necklace, Easton's diamond ring, jewels worth a million or more, the product of a score of robberies.
"I think father ought to be proud of me now," cried Dick, who had the keenest desire to be like the parent who did not always understand him. "As a lawyer I wonder if he could do any better than we've done?"
"I think he'll be glad to help the District Attorney to see that this fellow gets what's coming to him!" exclaimed Craig, turning to Dick and Ken. "This case ought to give you boys a chance, next, to see how the wheels of justice grind. Some day you've got to run the machine, you know."
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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