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CURLIE CARSON LISTENS IN
by
ROY J. SNELL
The Reilly & Lee Co.
Chicago
Printed in the United States of America
Copyright, 1922
by
The Reilly & Lee Co.
All Rights Reserved
Curlie Carson Listens In
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I A STRANGE MESSAGE 9
II SOMETHING BIG 20
III A WHISPER IN THE NIGHT 34
IV A GAME FOR TWO 46
V IN THE DARK 55
VI A REAL DISCOVERY 64
VII CURLIE RECEIVES A SHOCK 75
VIII CURLIE MEETS A MILLIONAIRE 84
IX A MYSTERIOUS MAP 95
X THE FIRST LAP OF A LONG JOURNEY 107
XI "MANY BARBARIANS AND MUCH GOLD" 117
XII OUT TO SEA IN A COCKLESHELL 126
XIII A GHOST WALKS 134
XIV THE COMING STORM 141
XV S. O. S. 151
XVI A CONFESSION 160
XVII A BLINDING FLASH OF LIGHT 170
XVIII THE STORMY PETREL GETS AN ANSWER 177
XIX THE MAP'S SECRET 185
XX A SEA ABOVE A SEA 194
XXI THE BOATS ARE GONE 203
XXII THE WRECK OF THE KITTLEWAKE 211
XXIII THE MIRACLE 219
XXIV THE STORY OF THE MAP 227
XXV OFF ON ANOTHER WILD CHASE 234
CURLIE CARSON LISTENS IN
CHAPTER I
A STRANGE MESSAGE
Behind locked and barred doors, surrounded by numberless
mysterious-looking instruments, sat Curlie Carson. To the right of him
was a narrow window. Through that window, a dizzy depth below, lay the
city. Its square, flat roofs formed a mammoth checker-board. Between the
squares criss-crossed the narrow black streets. Like a white chalk-line,
drawn by a careless child, the river wound its crooked way across this
checker-board.
To the left of him was a second narrow window. Through this he caught
the dark gleam of the broad waters of Lake Michigan. Here and there
across the surface twinkled the lamps of a vessel, or flashed the
warning beacon of a lighthouse.
A boy in his late teens was Curlie. Slender, dark, with coal-black eyes,
with curls of the same hue clinging tightly to his well-shaped head, he
had the strong profile and the smooth tapering fingers that might belong
to an artist, a pickpocket or a detective.
An artist Curlie was, an artist in his line--radio. Although still a
boy, he was already an operator of the "commercial, extra first-class"
type. So far as license and title were concerned, he could go no higher.
A pickpocket he was not, but a detective he might be thought to be; a
strange type of detective, however, a detective of the air; the kind
that sits in a small room hundreds of feet in air and listens; listens
to the schemes, the plots, the counterplots of men and to the wild
babble of fools. His task was that of aiding in the capture of knaves
and the silencing of foolish folks who used the newly-discovered
radiophone as their mouthpiece.
"Foolish people," Major Whittaker, Curlie's superior, who had called
him to the service, had said, "do quite as much damage to the radio
service as crooks. Fools and knaves must alike be punished and your task
will be to help catch them."
Wonderful ears had Curlie Carson, perhaps the most wonderful ears in the
world. In catching the fine shadings of diminishing sounds which came to
him through the radio compass, there was not a man who could excel him.
So Curlie sat there surrounded by wire-wrapped frames, coils, keys,
buttons, switches, motors, dry-cells, storage batteries and all the odds
and ends which made up the equipment of the most perfect listening-in
station in the world.
As he sat there with Joe Marion, his pal, by his side, his brow was
wrinkled in thought. He was reviewing the events of the previous night.
At 1:00 a.m., the witching hour when the crooked ones, the mean ones,
come creeping forth like ghosts to carry on doubtful conversations by
radio, a strange thing had happened. A message had gone crashing out
through space. Wave lengths 1200 meters long sped it on its way. There
was power enough behind it to carry it from pole to pole, but all it had
said was:
"A slight breeze from the west."
Three times the message had been repeated, then had come silence. There
had been no answer though Curlie had listened long for it on 1200 meter
wave lengths and five other lengths as well.
Sudden as had come the message, fleet as had been its passing, it had
not been too fleet for Curlie. He had compassed its direction; measured
its distance. On a map of the city which lay before him he had made a
pencil cross and said:
"It came from there." And he was right for, strange as it may seem, an
expert such as Curlie can sit in a hidden tower room such as his was and
detect the exact location of a station whose message has set his ear
drums aquiver.
The location had puzzled him. There was not a station in the city
licensed to send 1200 meter wave lengths. The spot he had marked was the
location of the city's most magnificent apartment hotel. The hotel
possessed a radiophone set. Its antennae, hung high upon the building's
roof, were capable of carrying that 1200 meter message with all that
power behind it, but the radio equipment of the hotel had no such power.
"Something crooked about that," he had mumbled to himself.
His first impulse had been to call the police. He did not act upon it.
They might blunder. The thing might get out. This law-breaker might
escape. Not five people in all the world knew of Curlie's detecting
station. He would work out this problem alone.
Now, as he sat thinking of it, he decided to confide this new secret to
his pal, Joe Marion.
"Yes," he told himself, "I'll tell him about it at chow."
At this moment his mind was recalled to other matters. New trouble was
brewing.
"A slight breeze from the west," his mind went over the message
automatically, "and the wind was due east. Don't mean much as it stands,
but I suspect means a lot more than it seems to."
Just above Curlie's head there hung a receiver. To the right and left of
him were two loud-speakers. Before him ranged three others. Each one of
these was tuned to a certain wave length, 200, 350, 500, 600, 1200
meters. Each was modulated down until sounds came to Curlie's delicately
tuned ear drums as little more than whispers. A concert was being
broadcast on 350. The booming tones of a baritone had been coming in as
softly and sweetly as a mother's lullaby. But now Curlie's ear detected
interference.
Instantly he was all alert. The receiver was clamped down over his ears,
a half dozen switches were sent, snap, snap, snap. There followed a dead
silence. Then in a shrill boyish voice, together with the baritone's
renewal of his song, there came:
"I want the world to know that I am a wireless operator, op-er-a-a-tor.
Hoop-la! Tra-la!"
Curlie smiled in spite of his vexation. He acted quickly and with
precision. His slender fingers guided a coil-wound frame from right to
left. Backward and forward it glided, and as it moved the boyish
"Hoop-la" rose and fell. Almost instantly it came to a standstill.
"There! That's it!" he breathed.
Then to Joe Marion, "It's a shame about those kids. They won't learn to
play the game square. Don't know the rules and don't care. Think we
can't catch 'em, I guess."
His hand went out for a telephone.
"Superior 2231," he purred.
"That you, 2231? Just a moment."
He touched a key here, another there. He twisted a knob there, then:
"That you, Mulligan?" he half whispered. "Good! There's a kid on your
beat got a wireless running wild. Yes. Broke in on the concert. Don't be
hard on him. No license? Yes, guess that's right. Take away his sending
set. Give him another chance? Let him listen in. What's that? Location?
Clarendon Street, near Orton Place; about second door, I'd say. That's
all right. Thanks, yourself."
Dropping the receiver on its hook he tossed off his headpiece, snapped
at five buttons, then settled back in his chair.
"These kids'll be the death of me yet," he grumbled. "Always breaking
in, not meaning any harm but doing harm all the same. I don't feel so
very sore about them though. It's the fellows that go in for long wave
lengths and high power, that break in on 500, 1200 and 1800, that do the
real damage. Had a queer case last night. Looks crooked, too." He was
silent for a moment then he said reflectively:
"Guess that's about all till midnight. It's after midnight that the
queer birds come creeping out. I'm going to tell you about that one last
night, over the ham sandwich, dill pickle and coffee. No use to try
now--we'd sure get broken in on."
Joe Marion, who had been taken on as an understudy by Curlie, was at the
present time working without pay. At times when trouble developed on
two different wave lengths at once, he took a hand and helped out. For
the most part he merely looked, listened and learned.
His pal he held in the greatest admiration. And who would not? Had he
not, when this great big new thing, the radiophone, came leaping right
into the world from nowhere, been able to take a hand from the very
beginning and become at once a valuable servant of his beloved country?
Had he not at times detected meddlers who were endangering the lives of
men upon the high seas? Had he not at one time received the highest of
commendations from the great chief of this secret service of the air?
To Joe there was something weirdly fascinating about the whole business.
Here they were, two boys in the tower of the highest building in a great
city. Five people knew of their presence. These five were high up in the
radio secret service. No message sent out by them could ever be traced
back to its source. They did not use the air. That would be dangerous,
easily traced. They did not use the telephone alone. That, too, would be
dangerous. But when a radiophone had been connected to the telephone
wire and tuned to a certain wave length, then they talked and not even
the person they talked with would ever know whence came the message.
This was a necessary precaution for, from this very tower, dangerous
bands of criminals, gangs of smugglers, and all other types of
law-breakers would ultimately be brought to justice. And if these but
knew of the presence of this boy in his tower room, some dark night that
tower would be rocked by an exploding bomb and the boy in his room would
be shaken to earth like a young mud-wasp in his nest.
"I'll tell you," said Curlie, as he rose to answer a tap on the door, "I
believe that affair last night was some big thing; but what it was I
can't even guess."
He opened the door to let in Coles Masters, his relief, then motioning
to Joe he took his cap and left the room. Down the winding stairs which
led to the elevator several stories lower down they made their way in
silence, at last to enter a cage and be silently dropped to the ground
hundreds of feet below.