THE STUTTERING VOICE
There was a stir of interest and exclamations of surprise as those in
the store crowded closer to get a better view.
"That explains it," said Mr. Talley, as he examined the missile. "I was
sure that no mere ball of snow could break that heavy window. To put
such a stone in a snowball was little less than criminal," he went on
gravely. "If that had hit any one on the temple it would almost
certainly have killed him."
"It was coming straight for my head when I dodged," said Bob.
"That's another proof that it wasn't any ball we threw that broke the
window," put in Joe. "Each one of us is willing to swear that there was
no stone in any ball that we threw."
"Not only then but at any time," put in Herb. "Only a mean coward would
do a thing like that. None of us has done it any time in his life."
"I believe that," replied Mr. Talley. "I've known all you boys ever
since you were little kids and I know you wouldn't be capable of it."
"That's all very well," said Mr. Larsen. "But that doesn't pay for my
window. Whether any of you boys threw the ball or not you can't deny
that you were engaged in a snowball fight right in front of my windows.
If the fight hadn't been going on the window wouldn't have been
smashed."
There was a certain amount of justice in this, and the boys were fair
enough to acknowledge it.
"I suppose you are right there, Mr. Larsen," said Bob regretfully. "We
ought to have kept out of range of the windows, but in the excitement we
forgot all about that. Then, too, we never would have supposed that any
ordinary snowball would have broken the window. Perhaps that was in the
back of our minds, if we thought of it at all."
"Is the window insured?" queried Mr. Talley.
"Yes, it is," answered the storekeeper.
"Well, then, that lets you out," remarked Mr. Talley, with a note of
relief in his voice. "That puts the matter up to the insurance company.
If they want to take any legal steps they can; and of course they ought
to be compensated by the parents of the boy who may be found guilty of
having thrown the ball with a stone in it. For my part, I doubt very
much that it can ever be proved, unless the boy himself owns up to it."
"Think of Buck Looker ever owning up to anything!" muttered Jimmy.
"As for these boys," continued Mr. Talley, "I am perfectly sure in my
own mind that they are telling the truth. You'll have to look for the
culprit in the other crowd, and I've already told you who they are, or
who one of them is, at least."
"Well," said the storekeeper, who by this time had cooled down
considerably, "that, I suppose, will be something for the insurance
company to settle. But by the terms of my contract with them I'll have
to help them all I can to find out the responsible party, and I'll have
to give them the names of all the boys concerned in the fight."
"That's all right," responded Bob. "You know our folks and you know that
they're good for any judgment that may be found against them. But I'm
sure it will be somebody else that will have to pay the bill."
There was nothing more to be done for the present, and the boys filed
out of the store, after having expressed their thanks to Mr. Talley for
the way he had championed their cause.
"Gee!" murmured Joe, as they went up the street toward their homes, "I
know how a fellow feels now after he's been put through the third
degree."
"It was rather a hot session," agreed Bob. "But I'm glad we had it out
with him instead of running away. It's always best to take the bull by
the horns. And you can't blame Mr. Larsen for feeling sore about it. Any
one of us would probably have felt the same way."
"Sure thing," admitted Herb. "But think of that dirty trick of Buck
Looker in putting stones in snowballs! It wasn't only that one that went
through the window. Every time I got hit it made me jump."
"Same here," said Jimmy. "I was thinking all the time that they were the
hardest snowballs I ever felt, but it never came into my mind that there
were stones in them."
"Trust Buck to be up to every mean trick that any one ever thought of,"
returned Bob. "He hasn't got over the way we showed him up at Mountain
Pass. He thought he had us dead to rights in the matter of that burned
cottage, and it made him wild to see the way we came out on top. He and
his gang would do anything to get even."
"It will be interesting to see what he'll say when this matter of the
window is put up to him and his pals," remarked Herb.
"Not a doubt in the world what he'll say," replied Joe. "He'll swear
till he's blue in the face that he never dreamed of using a stone in the
snowballs. Do you remember how he told us that he'd lie in court to keep
us from putting anything over on him? Any one that expects to get the
truth out of Buck is barking up the wrong tree. I guess the insurance
company would better kiss their money good-by."
"I'm afraid so," returned Bob. "It was dark and there probably weren't
any witnesses who saw them put the stones in, and it is likely that the
company will have to let the matter drop."
The lads had reached Bob's gate by this time, and they separated with a
promise to come over and listen in on the radio later on.
Bob told the whole story to his parents at the supper table that night,
and his father and mother listened with great interest and some concern.
"I'm sorry you were mixed up in the thing at all, Bob," his father
remarked thoughtfully. "Being in it, however, you acted just as you
should have done. Just how far you and your friends may be held
responsible, in case they can't find the one who actually threw the ball
that broke the window, I'm not lawyer enough to say. It's barely
possible that there may be some ground for action on the score of
culpable carelessness in taking part in a snowball fight in front of
store windows, and of course you were wrong in doing that. But the total
amount involved is not very great after all, and it would be divided up
among the parents of the four of you, so there's nothing much to worry
about. It would gall me though to have to pay for damages that were
really caused by that cub of Looker's."
"I'm sorry, Dad," said Bob. "I'm hoping yet that something may develop
that will put the thing up to Buck, or whoever it was of his gang that
actually threw the ball."
"Let's hope so," returned Mr. Layton, though without much conviction in
his voice, and dismissed the subject.
A little while afterward the other three boys came over to Bob's house
to listen in on the radio concert. So much time, however, had been taken
up in discussing the afternoon's adventure that they missed Larry's
offering, which was among the first on the program. This was a keen
disappointment, which was tempered, however, by the probability that
they could hear him some evening later in the week.
"Sorry," remarked Joe. "But it only means that we still have a treat in
store when the old boy begins to roar and growl and hiss so as to make
us think that a whole menagerie has broken loose and is chasing us. In
the meantime we can fix up that aerial so as to get a little better
results."
"Funny thing I noticed the other day," remarked Bob, as they embarked
upon some experiments.
"All sorts of funny things in the radio game," observed Joe. "Something
new turns up every day. Things in your set that you think you can't do
without you find you can do without and get results just about as
usual."
"Just what I was going to tell you," returned Bob. "You must be
something of a prophet."
"Oh, I wouldn't go quite so far as to say that," replied Joe, with mock
modesty.
"Isn't he the shrinking violet?" chaffed Jimmy.
"Stop your kidding, you boobs, and let a regular fellow talk," chided
Bob. "What I was going to say was that while I was tinkering with the
set I disconnected the ground wire. Of course I thought that would put
the receiver out of business for the time, and I was almost knocked
silly when I found that I could hear the concert that was going on just
about as well as though the wire had been connected. How do you account
for that?"
"Don't account for it at all," replied Herb. "Probably just a freak, and
might not happen again in a thousand times. Likely it was one of the
unexplainable things that happen once in a while. Maybe there was a
ground connection of some kind, if not by the wire. I wouldn't bank on
it."
"It's queer, too, how many kinds of things can be used as aerials," put
in Joe. "I heard the other day of a man in an apartment house where the
owner objected to aerials, who used the clothesline for that purpose.
The wire ran through the rope, which covered it so that it couldn't be
seen. It didn't prevent its use as a clothesline either, for he could
hear perfectly when the wash was hanging on it."
"Oh, almost anything will do as an aerial," chimed in Jimmy. "The rib of
an umbrella, the rainspout at the side of the house, the springs of a
bed give good results. And that's one of the mighty good things about
radio. People that have to count the pennies don't have to buy a lot of
expensive materials. They can put a set together with almost any old
thing that happens to be knocking around the house."
Bob had been working steadily, and, as the room was warm, his hands were
moist with perspiration. He had unhooked an insulated copper wire that
led to his outside aerial. His head phones were on, as he had been
listening to the radio concert while he worked.
"I'll have to miss the rest of that selection, I guess," he remarked
regretfully, as he unhooked the wire. "It's a pity, too, for that's one
of the finest violin solos I ever heard. Great Scott! What does that
mean?"
The ejaculation was wrenched from him by the fact that although he had
disconnected the wire he still heard the music--a little fainter than
before but still with every note distinct.
He could scarcely believe his ears and looked at his friends in great
bewilderment.
"What's the matter?" asked Joe, jumping to his feet. "Get a shock?"
"Not in the sense you mean, but in another way, yes," replied Bob, still
holding the exposed end of the copper wire in his fingers. "What do you
think of that, fellows? I'm an aerial!"
"Come out of your trance," adjured Herb unbelievingly. "They talk that
way in the insane asylums."
"Clap on your headphones," cried Bob, too intent on his discovery to pay
any attention to the gibe.
They did so, and were amazed at hearing the selection as plainly as did
Bob himself.
The latter had been holding the disconnected wire so that his fingers
just touched the uncovered copper portion at the end. Now he hastily
scraped off several inches of the insulation and grasped the copper wire
with his hand. Instantly the volume of sound grew perceptibly greater.
Hardly knowing what to make of it, he scraped off still more of the
insulation.
"Here, you fellows," he shouted. "Each of you take hold of this."
Joe was the first to respond, and the sound became louder. Then Herb and
Jimmy followed suit, and it was evident that they served as amplifiers,
for with each additional hand the music swelled to greater volume.
The boys looked at each other as if asking whether this was all real or
if they had suddenly been transferred to some realm of fancy. They would
not have been greatly surprised to wake up suddenly and find that they
had been dreaming.
But there was no delusion about it and they listened without saying
another word until, in a glorious strain of melody, the selection came
to an end. Nor did they break the silence until a band orchestra was
announced and crashed into a brilliant overture.
While it was still in full swing, Bob had an inspiration. He took off
his headphones and clamped them on to the phonograph that stood on a
table near by. Instantly the music became intensified and filled the
room. When all their hands were on the wire, it became so loud that they
had to close the doors of the phonograph.
"Well," gasped Bob, when the last strain had died away and the
demonstration was complete, "that's something new on me."
"Never dreamed of anything like it," said Joe, sinking back in his
chair. "Of course we know that the human body has electrical capacity
and that operators sometimes have to use metal shields to protect the
tube from the influence of the hand. And in our loop aerial at Ocean
Point you noticed that the receptivity of the tube was modified when we
touched it with our fingers."
"Of course, in theory," observed Bob thoughtfully, "the human body
possesses inductance as well as capacity, and so might serve as an
antenna. But I never thought of demonstrating it in practice."
"So Bob is an aerial," grinned Herb. "I always knew he was a 'live
wire,' but I never figured him out as an antenna."
"And don't forget that if Bob is an aerial we're amplifiers," put in
Jimmy.
"There's glory enough for all," laughed Joe. "We'll have to tell Doctor
Dale and Frank Brandon about this. We've got so many tips from them that
it's about time we made it the other way around."
They were so excited about this new development which they had stumbled
upon purely through accident that they sat talking about it for a long
time until Bob chanced to look at his watch.
"Just have time for the last selection," he remarked, as he reconnected
the aerial. "We'll wind up in the regular way this time. It's an aria
from Lucia and I don't want to miss it."
He had some difficulty in making his adjustment, as there was a lot of
interference at the moment.
"Raft of amateurs horning in," he muttered. "All of them seem to have
chosen just this time to do it. I wonder----"
He stopped as though he had been shot, and listened intently. Then he
beckoned to the others to adjust their headphones.
Into the receiver was coming a succession of stuttering sounds that
eventually succeeded in framing intelligible words. Ordinarily this
might have provoked laughter, but not now. They had heard that voice
before.
It was the voice of Dan Cassey!