A MYSTERY OF THE ETHER
Jessie knew that by carefully moving the slides on her tuning coil
she could get into touch again with the talk to which she and Amy had
been listening. But now the broadcasted cry for “Help!” seemed of so
much importance that she wanted to hear more of this air mystery.
“He-lp!” The word came to their ears over and over again. Then: “I
am a prisoner. They brought me here and locked me in. There is a red
barn and silo and two fallen trees. He-lp! Come and find me!”
“For pity’s sake, Jess Norwood!” shrilled Amy. “Do you hear that?”
“I’m trying to,” her chum replied. “Hush!”
“It must be a hoax.”
“Wait!”
They listened and heard it repeated, almost word for word. A red
barn and a silo and two fallen trees. These points the strange voice
insisted on with each repetition.
“I can’t believe it!” declared Amy.
“It is a girl. I am sure it is a girl. Oh, Amy!” gasped Jessie.
“Suppose it should be the girl whom we saw carried off by those two
awful women?”
“Bertha Blair?”
“Yes. Of course, I suppose that is awfully far-fetched——”
“Wait! Here it comes again,” whispered Amy.
“Come and find me! Help! I am a prisoner! The red barn and the silo
with the two fallen trees.”
How many times this was repeated the girls did not know. Suddenly
something cluttered up the airways—some sort of interference—and the
mystery of the ether died away. No matter what Jessie did to the
tuning coil she could not bring that strangely broadcasted message
back to their ears.
“What do you know about that?” demanded Amy, breathlessly.
“Why—why,” murmured her chum, “we don’t know much of anything about
it. Only, I am sure that was a girl calling. It was a youthful voice.”
“And I feel that it is Bertha Blair!” exclaimed Amy. “Oh, Jessie, we
must do something for her.”
“How can we? How can we find her?”
“A red barn with a silo and two fallen trees. Think of it! Did you
ever see a place like that when you have been riding about the
country?”
“I—nev-er—did!” and Jessie shook her head despondently.
“But there must be such a place. It surely is not a hoax,” said
Amy, although at first she had thought it was a joke. “And there is
another thing to mark, Jess.”
“What is that?”
“The place where this girl is kept a prisoner has a broadcasting
station. You can’t talk into a radio set like this. There has to be
electric power and a generator, and all that—such as Mark Stratford
showed us there at Stratfordtown.”
“Of course.”
“Then don’t you think, Jessie, the fact that it is a broadcasting
plant where the girl is imprisoned must narrow the inquiry a good
deal?”
“How clever you are, dear,” declared Jessie. “But a red barn with a
silo and two fallen trees! Why, Amy! we don’t know in which direction
to look. Whether to the north, south, east or west!”
“No-o. I suppose——Oh, wait, Jess!” cried the excited Amy. “We don’t
really know where those women took that girl we saw carried off. They
drove out the boulevard as far as we could see them. But, do you
remember, we met that Mrs. Bothwell again in the big French car that
very evening?”
“When we went to Parkville with Nell and the Brandons!” Jessie said
eagerly. “I remember she passed us. You pointed her out to me.”
“And she turned out of the very road we took to go to Parkville,”
said Amy, with confidence. “I believe that red barn with the silo
must be over beyond Parkville.”
“It might be so,” admitted her chum, thoughtfully. “I have never been
through that section of the state. But Chapman knows every road, I
guess.”
“Doesn’t your father know the roads, too?”
“But Daddy and Momsy have gone to Aunt Ann’s in New York and will not
be back to-night,” Jessie explained.
“Anyhow we couldn’t go hunting around in the dark after this
broadcasting station, wherever it is,” Amy observed.
“Of course not,” her chum agreed, taking the harness off her head.
“Come down to the telephone and I’ll see if Chapman is in the garage.”
They ran downstairs, forgetting all about the radio concert they were
to have heard, and Jessie called up the garage to which a private
wire was strung.
The chauffeur, who had served the Norwoods ever since they had had
a car, answered Jessie’s request quickly, and appeared at the side
door. Amy was just as eager as Jessie to cross-question the man
about a red barn with a silo. He had to ask the girls to stop and
begin all over again, and——
“If you please, Miss Jessie,” he added, widely a-grin, “either let
Miss Amy tell me or you tell me. I can’t seem to get it right when
you both talk.”
“Oh, I am dumb!” announced Amy. “Go ahead, Jess; you tell him.”
So Jessie tried to put the case as plainly as possible; but from the
look on Chapman’s face she knew that the chauffeur thought that this
was rather a fantastic matter.
“Why, Chapman!” she cried, “you do not know much about this radio
business, do you?”
“Only what I have seen of it here, Miss Jessie. I heard the music
over your wires. But I did not suppose that anybody could talk into
the thing and other folks could hear like——”
“Oh! You don’t understand,” Jessie interrupted. “No ordinary radio
set broadcasts. It merely receives.”
As clearly as she could she explained what sort of plant there must
be from which the strange girl had sent out her cry for help.
“Of course, you understand, the girl must have got a chance on
the sly to speak into the broadcasting horn. Now, all the big
broadcasting stations are registered with the Government. And if
secret ones are established the Government agents soon find them out.
“It might be, if the people who imprisoned this girl are the ones
we think, they may have a plant for the sending out of information
that is illegal. For instance, it might have some connection with
race track gambling. One of the women is interested in racing and the
other in automobile contests. If the broadcasting plant is near a
race course or an autodrome——”
“Now you give me an idea, Miss Jessie!” exclaimed Chapman suddenly.
“I remember a stock farm over behind Parkville where the barns are
painted red. And there is a silo or two. Besides, it is near the
Harrimay Race Course. I could drive over there in the morning, if you
want to go. Mr. Norwood won’t mind, I am sure.”
“Would you go, Amy?” Jessie asked, hesitatingly.
“Sure! It’s a chance. And I am awfully anxious now to find out what
that mysterious voice means.”