BROADCASTING
Darry and Burd were planning another trip on the _Marigold_, and so
had little time to give to the girl chums of Roselawn. Burd wickedly
declared that Darry Drew was running away from home to get rid of
Belle Ringold.
"Wherever he goes down town, she pops up like a jack-in-the-box and
tries to pin him. Darry is so polite he doesn't know how to get away.
But I know he wishes her mother would lock her in the nursery."
"It is her mother's fault that Belle is such a silly," scoffed Amy.
"She lets Belle think she is quite grown up."
"She'll never be grown up," growled out Darry. "Never saw such a kid.
If you acted like her, Sis, I'd put you back into rompers and feed you
lollipops."
"You'd have a big chance doing anything like that to me, Master
Darry," declared his sister, smartly. "Even Dad--bless his
heart!--would not undertake to turn back the clock on me."
Before the two young fellows left Roselawn again, they did the girls a
favor that Amy and Jessie highly appreciated. It was done
involuntarily but was nevertheless esteemed. Mark Stratford drifted up
the Bonwit Boulevard in his big and shiny car and halted it in front
of the Norwood place to hail Darry and Burd.
"Here's the millionaire kid," called out Alling. "Know him, girls?
He's quite the fastest thing that lingers about old Yale. Zoomed over
the German lines in the war, stoking an airplane, although at that
time he was only a kid. Mark Stratford. His family are the Stratford
Electric Company. Oodles of money. But Mark is a patient soul."
"'Patient'?" repeated Jessie, wonderingly, as she and Amy accompanied
the young fellows down to the street.
"Sure," declared Burd. "Most fellows would be impatient, burdened with
so much of the filthy lucre as Mark has. But not he. He is doing his
little best to spend his share."
However, and in spite of Burd's introduction, Mark Stratford proved to
be a very personable young man and did not look at all the "sport."
Jessie considered that Burd was very probably fooling them about Mark.
The young folks were talking like old friends in five minutes. In five
minutes more they had piled into the car for a ride.
Mark's car "burned up the road" so fast that in half an hour they came
to Stratfordtown where the huge plant of the Electric Company lay, and
on the border of which was the large Stratford estate.
Jessie and Amy did not care anything about the beauties of the show
place of the county. While riding over the girls had discussed one
particular topic. And when Mark asked them where they wanted to go, or
what they preferred to see, Jessie spoke out:
"Oh, Mr. Stratford! take us to the plant and let us go into the radio
broadcasting room. Amy and I are just longing to see how it is done."
"Oh, _that!_" exclaimed Mark Stratford.
"We're crazy about radio, Mr. Stratford," agreed Amy.
"Some radio fiends, these two," said Darry. And he told his friend to
what use the girls had already put Jessie's set for the benefit of the
church bazaar.
"If you girls want to see how it's done, to be sure I'll introduce you
to the man in charge. Wait till we drive around there." Stratford was
as good as his word. It was a time in the afternoon when the Electric
Company's matinee concert was being broadcasted. They went up in the
passenger elevator in the main building of the plant to a sort of
glassed-in roof garden. There were several rooms, or compartments,
with glass partitions, sound-proof, and hung with curtains to cut off
any echo. The young people could stare through the windows and see the
performers in front of the broadcasting sets. The girls looked at each
other and clung tightly to each other's hand.
"Oh, Amy!" sighed Jessie.
"If we could only get a chance to sing here!" whispered Amy in
return.
It did not mean much to the boys. And Mark Stratford, of course, had
been here time and time again. A gray-haired man with a bustling
manner and wearing glasses came through the reception room and Mark
stopped him.
"Oh, Mr. Blair!" the collegian said. "Here are some friends of mine
who are regular radio bugs. Let me introduce you to Miss Jessie
Norwood and Miss Amy Drew. Likewise," he added, as the gentleman
smilingly shook hands with the girls, "allow me to present their
comrades in crime, Darry Drew and Burdwell Alling. These fellows help
me kill time over at Yale, to which the governor has sentenced me for
four years."
"Mr. Blair?" repeated Jessie, looking sideways at her chum.
"Mr. Blair?" whispered Amy, who remembered the name as well as Jessie
did.
"That is my name, young ladies," replied the superintendent, smiling.
"You don't know anything about a girl of our age named Blair, do you,
Mr. Blair?" Jessie asked hesitatingly.
"I have no daughters," returned the superintendent, and the expression
of his face changed so swiftly and so strangely that Jessie did not
feel that she could make any further comment upon the thought that had
stabbed her mind. After all, it seemed like sheer curiosity on her
part to ask the man about his family.
"Just the same," she told Amy afterward, when they were in the
automobile once more, "Blair is not such a common name, do you
think?"
"But, of course, that Bertha Blair couldn't be anything to the
superintendent of the broadcasting station. Oh, Jessie! What a
wonderful program he had arranged for to-day. I am coming over
to-night to listen in on that orchestral concert and hear Madame Elva
sing. I would not miss it for anything."
"Suppose we could get a chance to help entertain!" Jessie sighed.
"Not, of course, on the same program with such performers as these the
Stratford people have. But----"
They happened to be traveling slowly and Mark overheard this. He
twisted around in his seat to say:
"Why didn't you ask Blair about it? You have no idea how many amateurs
offer their services. And some of them he uses."
"I'll say he does!" grumbled Burd. "Some of the singers and others I
have listened in on have been punk."
"Well, I'll have you know that Jessie and I wouldn't sing if we could
not sing well," Amy said, with spirit.
"Sure," agreed Burd, grinning. "Madame Elva wouldn't be a patch on you
two girls singing the 'Morning Glories' Buns' or the 'Midnight
Rolls'."
"Your taste in music is mighty poor, sure enough, Burd," commented
Darry. "Jessie sings all right. She's got a voice like a----"
"Like a bird, I know," chuckled Alling. "That is just the way I
sing--like a Burd."
"I've heard of a bird called a crow," put in Mark Stratford, smiling
on the two girl chums. Jessie thought he had a really nice smile.
"That is what your voice sounds like, Alling. You couldn't make the
Glee Club in a hundred and forty years."
"Don't say a word!" cried Burd. "I'll be a long time past singing
before the end of that term. Ah-ha! Here we are at Roselawn."
They got out at the Norwood place and the girls insisted upon Mark
coming in to afternoon tea, which Amy and Jessie poured on the porch.
The chums liked Mark Stratford and they did not believe that he was
anywhere near as "sporty" as Burd had intimated. Naturally, a fellow
who had driven a warplane and owned an airship now and often went up
in it, would consider the driving of a motor-car rather tame. As for
his college record, Jessie and Amy later discovered that Mark was a
hard student and was at or near the head of his class in most of his
studies.
"And he drives that wonderful car of his," said Amy, with approval,
"like a jockey on the track."
The girl chums did not forget the concert they expected to enjoy that
evening, but Darry and Burd left right after dinner for the moorings
of the _Marigold_ at City Island. They took Mark Stratford and some
other college friends with them for a three days' trip on the yacht.
Jessie and Amy were eager to see the _Marigold_; but their parents had
forbidden any mixed parties on the yacht until either Mr. and Mrs.
Drew, or Mr. and Mrs. Norwood could accompany the young people. That
would come later in the summer.
Amy ran over to the Norwood place before half past eight. The concert,
Mr. Blair had told them, was to begin at nine. Jessie had learned a
good deal about tuning in on the ether by this time; and there is no
other part of radio knowledge more necessary if the operator would
make full use of his set.
"The bedtime story is just concluded, Amy," Jessie said when her chum
came in. "Sit down. I am going to get that talk on 'Hairpins and
Haricots' by that extremely funny newspaper man--what is his name?"
"I don't know. What's in a name, anyhow?" answered her chum, lightly.
Amy adjusted the earphones while her friend manipulated the slides on
the tuning coil. They did not catch the first of the talk, but they
heard considerable of it. Then something happened--just what it was
Amy had no idea. She tore off the ear-tabs and demanded:
"What _are_ you doing, Jess? That doesn't sound like anything I ever
heard before. Is it static interference?"
"It certainly is interference," admitted Jessie, trying to tune the
set so as to get back upon the wave that had brought the funny talk
about 'Hairpins and Haricots.'
But it did not work. Jessie could not get in touch with the lecture.
Instead, out of the ether came one word, over and over again. And that
word in a voice that Jessie was confident must come from a woman or a
girl:
"Help! He-lp! He-e-lp!"
Over and over again it was repeated. Amy who had put on her head
harness again, snatched at her chum's arm.
"Listen! Do you hear that?" she cried in an awed tone.
A MYSTERY OF THE ETHER