A WHISPER IN THE NIGHT
The next night found Curlie in the secret tower room alone. Joe Marion
was away helping to run down a case of "malicious interference."
It was curious business, this work of the radio secret service. Though
he had been at it for months, Curlie had never quite got used to it. A
detective he was in the truest sense of the word, yet how different from
the kind one reads about in books.
He laughed as he thought of it now. Then as his tapering fingers
adjusted a screw, his brow became suddenly wrinkled in thought. He was
troubled by the two cases which had lately developed: the one at the
hotel and that other, the station that moved. How was he to locate that
powerful secret station in the hotel? How was he to discover the owner
of that mysterious moving radio? He could not answer these questions.
And yet somehow they must be answered. He knew that.
The operator in the hotel was sending on 1200 meter wave lengths. State
messages were constantly being sent across the Atlantic on 1200;
messages of the greatest importance. There was a conference of nations
at that moment going on in Europe. America's representative must be kept
in constant touch with the government officials at Washington. If this
person at the hotel persisted in sending messages on 1200 meter wave
lengths an important message might at any moment be blurred or lost.
Not less important was the breaking in of this moving operator on 600.
This was the wave length used by ships and by harbor stations. Great
steamships sometimes waited for hours to get a message ashore on 600. If
this person were to be allowed to break in upon them they might wait
hours longer. Thousands of dollars would be lost. And then, as we have
said before, the message of some ship in distress might be lost because
of this person's interference.
"When, oh, when," sighed Curlie, "will people become used to this new
thing, the radiophone? When will they learn that it is a great, new
servant of mankind and not a toy? When will they take time to instruct
themselves regarding the rights of others? When will they develop a
conscience which will compel them to consider those rights?"
The answer which came to his mind was, "Perhaps never. But little by
little they will learn some things. It is my duty not alone to detect
but to teach."
He shifted uneasily in his chair, then held his ear close to the loud
speaker tuned to 200. A message came floating in to him across the air,
a mysterious whispered message.
"Hello, Curlie," it said. "You don't know me, but you have seen me--"
Automatically Curlie's fingers moved the radio-compass backward and
forward while his mind gauged the distance. His right hand scrawled
some figures on a pad, and all the time his ears were strained to catch
the whisper.
"I have seen you," it went on, "and I like your looks. That's why I'm
talking now."
For a second the whisper ceased. There was something awe-inspiring about
that whisper. As he sat in his secret chamber away up there against the
sky, Curlie felt as if some spirit-being was floating about out there in
the sky on a fleecy cloud and pausing now and then to whisper to him.
"I saw you," the whisper repeated. "You are in very grave danger. He is
a bold and treacherous man. It's big, Curlie, _big_!" The whisper rose
shrilly. "But you must be careful. You must not let him know the place
where you listen in. I don't know where it is. But I do know you listen
in. Be careful--careful--careful, c-a-r-e-f-u-l-" The whisper trailed
off into space, to be lost in thin air.
Wiping the beads of perspiration from his face, Curlie sat up. "Well,
now," he whispered softly to himself, "what do you know about that?
"One thing I do know," he told himself. "I'd swear it was a girl's
whisper, though how you can tell a girl's whisper is more than I know.
Question is: Which one is it--hotel station or the one that moves?"
For a moment his brow wrinkled in thought. Then with an exclamation of
disgust he exclaimed:
"That's easy! I've got their location!"
He figured for a few seconds, then put a pencil point on a certain spot
on his map.
"There!" he muttered. "It's the hotel, the exact spot."
Suddenly he started. There came the rattle of a key in the door.
"Oh!" he exclaimed as Coles Masters shoved the door open, "it's you. I'm
glad you're here. Got something I want to look into. Want to bad. Mind
if I take an extra hour?"
"Nope."
"All right. See you later." With a bound he was out of the door and
down the stairs.
"That boy," muttered Coles Masters, with a grin, "will either die young
or become famous. Only Providence knows which it will be."
Curlie did not leave the elevator at the first floor. Dropping down to
the sub-basement, he wound his way in and out through a labyrinth of
dimly lighted halls, at last to climb a stair to the first basement.
Then, having passed into his accustomed eating place, he paused long
enough to purchase a Swiss cheese sandwich, after which, with cap pulled
well down over his eyes, he made his way up a second flight of stairs
into the outer air.
He shivered as he emerged into the open street. Whether this chill came
from the damp cool of the night or from nervous excitement, he could not
tell. The memory of the whispered warning bore heavily upon his mind.
Turning his face resolutely in the direction of the hotel, he walked
three blocks, then hailed a passing taxi. When the taxi dropped him, a
few minutes later, he was still four blocks from the point of his
destination. Covering this distance with rapid strides, he came to the
rear of the hotel. There, dodging past a line of waiting taxis, he came
at length to a dark corner where a stone bench made an angle with the
wall of a building directly behind the hotel.
Crouching in this corner, he glanced rapidly from right to left to learn
whether or not his arrival had been detected. Satisfied that for the
moment he was safe, he cast a glance upward to where the aerials of the
radiophone glistened in the moonlight. From that point he allowed his
gaze to drop steadily downward until it reached the windows of the
sixteenth floor. There it remained fixed for a full moment.
There came from between his teeth a sudden intake of breath.
Had he seen some movement at the window to the right of the wires that
led to the aerials? He must see, no matter how great the risk.
Drawing a small pair of binoculars from his pocket, he fixed them on the
spot. He then turned a screw at the side of the binocular and suddenly
there appeared upon the wall of the building a round spot of brilliant
light. The size of a plate, this mysterious spot moved rapidly backward
and forward until it at last rested upon the wires by the window.
"Ah!" came in an involuntary whisper from the boy's lips.
A hand, the slender, graceful hand of a girl had been clearly outlined
against the wall. Quickly as it had been withdrawn, Curlie had seen that
between the thumb and finger of that hand was the end of a wire.
"Been tapping the aerial. A girl!" he muttered incredulously. "And it
was she who whispered to me out of the night."
He had been crouching low. Now he rose, stretched himself, pocketed his
instrument and was about to make his way out of the yard when, with the
suddenness of a tiger, a body launched itself upon his back.
So unexpected was the assault that the boy's body closed up like a jack
knife. He fell, face down, completely doubled up, with his face between
his knees.
"Now I got yuh!" was snarled into his ear. The weight on his back was
crushing. He could scarcely breathe.
"You--you have," he managed to groan.
"You'll come along," said the voice.
Curlie did not speak nor stir. The weight was partly lifted from his
back. The man had dropped one foot to the ground.
Now Curlie, had he been properly exercised for it when he was a child,
might have turned out a fair contortionist. He was exceedingly slim and
limber and had learned many of the tricks of the contortionist. He had
done this merely to amuse his friends. Now the tricks stood him in good
stead.
He did not attempt to rise by straightening up, as most persons would
have done. When the pressure grew less, he lay still doubled up, face
down upon the ground.
This gave him two advantages. It led his assailant to believe him
injured in some way and at the same time left him in position for the
next move.
When the pressure had been sufficiently removed for his purpose, he took
a quick, strong breath, then with a rush which set every muscle in
action, he thrust his head between his knees, gripped his own ankles and
did a double turn over which resembled nothing so much as a boulder
rolling down hill.
The next instant, finding himself free, he sprang to his feet, dodged
behind a taxi, shot past three moving cars, leaped to the pavement,
skirted a wall, then dodged into an alley.
Down this alley there was a doorway. Into the shadow of this doorway he
threw himself. There was a hole in the wooden door. A hook could be
reached through the hole. The hook quickly lifted, he found himself
inside a narrow court at the back of a large apartment building. There
was a driveway from this court into the street beyond.
Assuming a natural pace, he made his way down this driveway and out into
the street where, with a low whistled tune, he made his way back toward
the heart of the city. Five blocks farther down he paused to adjust his
clothing.
"Wow! but that was a close one," he muttered. "Don't know who my heavy
friend was but he sure wanted to detain me for some reason or other. But
say!" he mused; "how about that girl? Hope I didn't get her in bad by
flashing that light on her hand.
"But then," he thought more soberly, "perhaps she is the principal bad
one. Perhaps she is whispering on 200 just to mislead me. Who knows?
You've got to be wise as a serpent when you play this game, that's what
you've got to be. There's just two kinds of radio detectives, the quick
and the dead." He chuckled dryly.
"Well, I guess Coles Masters will think I'm one of the dead ones if I
don't rush on."
Hurrying to the next street, he boarded a car to make his way back to
the secret lower room.
During his absence things had been happening in the mysterious radio
world that hangs like a filmy ghost-land above the sleeping world.