A PUZZLING MYSTERY
For the second time that evening the radio boys thought they must be
dreaming.
Cassey! Cassey the swindler, whom they had compelled to make restitution
to the victim he had wronged. Cassey the thug, whom they had captured in
that wild chase after he had looted the safe and nearly killed the
operator in the sending station. Cassey the convict, who, to their
certain knowledge, had been sentenced to a long term in prison.
What was Cassey doing over the radio? That it was that scoundrel they
had no doubt. The stuttering, the tones of the voice, the occasional
whistle which he indulged in in order to go on--all these things they
recognized perfectly. It was the wildest kind of improbability that he
had a double anywhere who could reproduce him so perfectly.
Gone now was any thought of the aria from Lucia. Bob motioned
frantically to Jimmy to hand him a pencil and a sheet of paper. Then he
jotted down the words, as after great efforts they fell one by one from
the stutterer's lips. As Bob did this he bent over the paper in frowning
perplexity. The words themselves were intelligible, but they did not
seem to make sense, nor was there anywhere a connected sentence.
Finally the stammering voice ceased, and after they had waited several
minutes longer to make sure that it would not resume, the boys took off
their headphones and gazed at each other in utter bewilderment.
"Well, I'll be blessed!" exclaimed Joe. "That villain Cassey, of all men
on the face of the earth! What do you make of it, Bob?"
"I don't know what to make of it," confessed Bob. "It has simply knocked
me endways. I never thought to hear of that rascal again for the rest of
my life. Yet here he is, less than a year after he's been sentenced,
talking over the radio."
"Perhaps he's received a pardon," hazarded Jimmy.
"Not at all likely," answered Bob. "It isn't as though he were a first
offender. He's old in crime. You remember the raking over the judge gave
him when he sentenced him. Told him if he had it in his power he'd give
him more than he actually did. No, I think we can dismiss that idea."
"Isn't it possible," suggested Herb, "that he's employed as radio
operator in the prison? He understands sending and receiving all right."
"That doesn't strike me hard either," Bob objected. "Likely enough the
prison is equipped with a wireless set, but it isn't probable that
they'd let a prisoner operate it. It would give him too good a chance to
get in touch with confederates outside the jail. Then, too, his
stuttering would make him a laughing stock.
"The only explanation that I can see," he went on, "is that he's
escaped, and he's sending this message on his own hook. Though what the
message is about is beyond me."
"Just what did you get down?" asked Jimmy curiously. "I caught a few
words, but I don't remember them all."
"It's a regular hodgepodge," replied Bob, spreading out the sheet of
paper, while they all crowded around to read.
"Corn--hay--six--paint--water--slow--sick--jelly," read Joe aloud.
"Sounds to me like the ravings of a delirium patient."
"And yet I'm sure that I got all the words down right," said Bob
perplexedly. "It must be a code of some kind. We can't understand it,
and Cassey didn't mean that any one should except some one person whose
ear was glued to a radiophone. But you can bet that that person
understood it all right."
"I wonder if we couldn't make it out," suggested Herb.
"No harm in trying," said Joe, "though compared to this a Chinese puzzle
is as simple as A B C. Let's take a hack at it, anyhow. We'll each take
a separate sheet of paper and try to get something out of it that makes
sense."
For nearly an hour the boys did their best. They put the words in
different orders, read them forward and backward. But the ideas conveyed
by the separate words were so utterly dissimilar that they could frame
nothing that had the slightest glimmering of sense and they were finally
compelled to give it up.
"If time were money, we'd spend enough on this stuff to make us
bankrupt," Joe remarked, in vast disgust, as he rose to get his cap.
"Dan Cassey was foxy when he made this up. We'll have to give the rascal
credit for that."
"Yes," admitted Herb, "it's the best kind of a code. Any one of those
words might mean any one of a hundred thousand things. A man might spend
a lifetime on it and be no nearer success at the end than he was when he
started. The only way it can be unraveled is by finding the key that
tells what the words stand for. And even that may not exist in written
form. The fellows may simply have committed them to memory.
"I'll tell you what I'll do!" Bob exclaimed. "I'll get the prison
to-morrow on the long distance 'phone and ask them about Cassey. I'll
tell them all about this radio message, and it may be a valuable tip to
them. They may be able to locate the station from which the messages
come, if there are any more of them. You remember how Mr. Brandon
located Cassey's sending station the first time."
Bob was as good as his word, and got in communication with the prison
just before school time. The warden was gruff and inclined to be
uncommunicative at first, but his manner changed remarkably after he
heard of the radio message and he inquired eagerly for the slightest
details.
"Yes, Cassey has escaped," he told Bob. "He got away about two months
ago. He had behaved himself well for the first six months of his
imprisonment, and we made him a trusty. In that capacity he had access
to various parts of the prison and occasionally to my own quarters,
which are in a wing connected with the prison. In some way that hasn't
yet been discovered he got possession of clothes to cover his prison
uniform and got away one day from the yard in which he was working.
Probably with his help, two others got away at the same time. Their
names are Jake Raff and Toppy Gillen, both of them desperate criminals
and in for long terms. Likely enough the three of them are operating
together somewhere. We made a careful search for them and have sent out
descriptions of them to the police of all the important cities in the
United States. But this clue of yours is the only one we have, and it
may prove a most important one. I'll see that the Federal radio
authorities are notified at once. Keep in touch with me and let me know
if you come across anything else that seems to point to Cassey. His
escape is a sore point with me, and I'd be glad to have him once more
behind the bars. You can be sure he'll never get away again until he's
served out the last day of his sentence."
With a warm expression of thanks the warden hung up his telephone
receiver, and Bob hurried off to school to tell his comrades of what he
had learned.
There was no chance for this, however, before recess, as he had been
kept so long at the telephone that he was barely able to reach the
school before the bell rang.
When at last he told them of his talk with the warden, they listened
with spellbound interest.
"So the villain managed to escape, did he?" ruminated Joe. "That's a
black mark against the warden, and it's no wonder he's anxious to get
him back. I'd hate to be in Cassey's shoes if the prison gates ever
close on him again."
"You'd think it would be a comparatively easy matter to capture him,"
suggested Herb. "The fact that he stutters so badly makes him a marked
man."
"You can bet that he doesn't do any more talking than he can help,"
replied Joe. "And, for that matter, I suppose there are a good many
thousand stutterers in the United States. Almost every town has one or
more. Of course it's against him, but it doesn't by any means make it a
sure thing that he'll be nabbed."
Buck Looker and his cronies happened to pass them in the yard just at
that moment and caught the last word. Buck whispered something to Carl
Lutz, and the latter broke out into uproarious laughter.
It was so obviously directed against Joe that his impulsive temper took
fire at once. He stepped up to the trio, despite Bob's outstretched hand
that tried to restrain him.
"Were you fellows laughing at me?" he asked of the three, though his
eyes were fastened directly on Buck's.
"Not especially at you," returned Buck insolently. "But at something you
said."
"And what was that?" asked Joe, coming a step nearer, at which Buck
stepped back a trifle.
"About getting nabbed," he said. "It made me think of some fellows I
know that were nabbed last night for breaking windows."
"Oh, that was it!" remarked Joe, with dangerous calmness while his fist
clenched. "Now let me tell you what it reminds me of. It makes me think
of three cowards who smashed a window last night with a stone packed in
a snowball and then ran away as fast as their legs could carry them.
Perhaps you'd like me to tell you their names?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," retorted Buck, changing color.
"Oh, yes, you do," replied Joe. "And while I'm about it, I'll add that
the fellows who smashed the window were not only cowards, but worse. And
their names are Buck Looker, Carl Lutz and Terry Mooney."
"What's that?" cried Buck, bristling up, while an angry growl arose from
his cronies.
"You heard me the first time," replied Joe; "but to get it into your
thick heads I'll say it again. The cowards, and worse, I referred to are
named Buck Looker, Carl Lutz and Terry Mooney."