JOE RECEIVES VISITORS.
It was some days later that Joe was sitting alone in the station on
Wireless Island, as the boys had come to re-christen their temporary
abiding place. Nat was ashore helping Ding-dong construct a wireless
plant on his own place, as the Bell boy, whose father was a well-to-do
business man, needed his son to help him in stock-taking, an operation
which would take some time. Ding-dong didn’t much relish the idea of
being cut off from his chums entirely for even that length of time, so
it had been decided to put up a light-powered plant at his place, that
he might be in touch with Nat and Joe whenever he or they desired.
Nat was not to be back till night-fall when he would bring with him Nate
Spencer, the owner of the destroyed _Albicore_, to help cook and make
himself handy around the place. Nate had not yet bought another boat and
jumped at the chance of spending a short time on the island.
Joe was reading a book dealing with the wonders of wireless when a
quick, sharp step on the gravel outside the hut aroused his attention.
“Now, who in the world can that be?” he exclaimed half aloud.
He rose from his chair to go to the door, but before he reached it two
men blocked the entrance. Both were strangers to him and Joe did not
much care for their looks.
“Hey, kid, who’s in charge around here?” demanded one of them, a rough,
unshaved customer with a red face and shifty eyes. His companion was
furtive-faced and had little blinky, red-rimmed eyes like a ferret’s. He
suggested a man who was always on the lookout for something.
“Yes, who’s the boss?” came from this second individual.
“I am just at present,” rejoined Joe; “what do you want?”
“We want to send a message,” was the gruff rejoinder, “and dern quick,
too.”
“We don’t handle any commercial business,” replied Joe; “this is a
private plant.”
“Oh, we know all about that. That’s just the reason we took the trouble
to get a boat and come here,” was the reply.
“Yes, our business is private and confidential, and we don’t want no
nosy operator at a public station ashore to know nothing about it,”
supplemented the ferret-eyed man.
“Where do you want to send the message?” asked Joe, who by no means
liked the situation. The men spoke in a dictatorial, bullying sort of
way and appeared prepared to enforce their wishes by violence if no
other way offered. Joe had no weapon on him, and the only revolver on
the island was in Nat’s trunk.
In reply to Joe’s question, the red-faced individual pointed seaward.
“You mean you want to send a message to a ship?”
“Yes, a message in cipher.”
Joe shook his head.
“If it had been some really urgent matter I might have helped you out,
but as it is, I’m afraid I can’t do anything. You’d better try one of
the stations ashore.”
The red-faced man scowled; but an instant later he assumed what was
meant to be an ingratiating manner. He drew out a wallet and tapped it
meaningly.
“I’ll make it worth your while,” he said.
“Sorry, but I can’t do it,” was Joe’s rejoinder.
“I’ll make it right with you, kid,” urged the other.
“Nothing doing,” said Joe firmly. “Sorry you’ve had this trip out here
for nothing, but you’ll have to go back again if you want to send a
cipher message to any ship.”
The ferret-eyed man came close to his companion.
“Bill, you do it yourself,” he whispered, but not so low that Joe didn’t
hear him.
“Oh, I’m too rusty. Haven’t tapped a key since I was fired for selling
information on that Wall Street pool.”
“Oh, you can do it all right enough,” insisted the other.
“Well, if the kid won’t do it, I guess I’ll have to try,” was the reply,
and the two men started out of the shanty and walked toward the wireless
hut.
“Hold on there!” cried Joe, springing forward and laying a detaining
hand on one man’s arm. “I can’t allow any interference with the
apparatus yonder.”
The red-faced man whipped round like a shot.
“Can’t, eh?” he sneered. “I’d like to see you stop me. Ed, grab him!”
The ferret-eyed man seized Joe and pinioned his arms before the boy had
a chance to resist.
“There, that’ll be about all from you, my rooster,” grinned the
red-faced man. “Bring him along, Ed, we may need him.”
Struggling in the man’s grasp, Joe was dragged to the wireless hut. In
one corner of the structure was a closet with a stout oak door in which
some of the valuable parts of the plant were locked up when the island
was left for any considerable period. The door had a strong padlock and,
having thrust Joe inside, the men banged the door and snapped the
padlock. The door had a small slit in it, which was lucky, or Joe might
have suffocated in the stuffy place. Through this slit he wrathfully
watched the men as they went up to the table on which the apparatus was
adjusted.
The red-faced man inspected it a bit dubiously.
“I’m all right pounding brass on the regular key and I know a bit of
wireless, although I hadn’t learned very much when I was canned for that
deal you know about.”
“Oh, you can work it all right,” his companion assured him.
He drew out a paper and handed it to the ex-operator.
“Here’s the cipher code and the message. Now get busy and tap it out and
then we can vamoose.”
Joe was entirely powerless to aid himself. The door was thick and strong
and there was no possibility of his being able to open it; and, even had
he been able to, it wouldn’t have done any good. His captors were burly,
strong men and looked vicious to a degree, and had he managed to get out
they would assuredly have given him rough treatment. No; there was
nothing for it but to remain quiet and be keenly alert to what was going
forward in the room outside.
The red-faced man sat down to the key and at first fiddled clumsily with
it. But he soon acquired confidence and then began to flash out his
message. By listening Joe readily learned that he was trying to raise
the steamer _Vesta_ from San Diego for Vancouver, Canada. After a long
interval Joe saw a grin of satisfaction come over the man’s face.
“He’s raised her,” thought Joe, and he was correct in his conjecture.
Flash-crackle-bang! went the spark, and Joe by close listening heard the
man instruct the operator on the _Vesta_ to deliver a message to a man
named Albert Carter. Then followed a jumble of code words utterly
meaningless to Joe.
The sender repeated his message and then rose from the table.
“Well, I’ve done the best I can,” he said, “and I guess it’s all right.”
“Sure it is. Anyhow, he can’t kick. You’ve done what you could to help
out a pal.”
“Let’s be getting along, then. I’ve no fancy for sticking around here.”
“What about him?”
The ferret-eyed man nodded his head in the direction of the closet where
Joe was confined.
“Leave him where he is. We want a start, don’t we? Some one will be
along and let him out, I guess.”
“Well, so long, sonny,” cried the ferret-eyed man with a chuckling laugh
that made Joe’s blood boil, “much obliged for the accommodation.”
“You’ll get in trouble over this,” roared out Joe furiously, “you see if
you don’t.”
“Oh, I guess not,” said the man who had sent the message, with a coarse
laugh. “Well, shake a day-day, kid. You might have made some money and
have saved me the bother of showing you that I could work your wireless
without your aid.”
Joe knew it would be useless to reply, so he bottled up the vials of his
wrath and remained silent. The men left the hut and no doubt made their
way back to their boat in which they had come from the mainland.
“Well, of all the nerve,” sputtered Joe in his prison. “If that isn’t
the limit! There’s something mighty crooked about all this,” he went on
to himself. “They got word to some one on board that ship bound for
Canada, and the trouble they took to do it shows that there is something
mighty suspicious about the whole affair.”
He went on thinking—there was nothing else to do,—and racked his brain
to recollect what he could of the message. But this wasn’t much, for of
course the code words were as meaningless as Greek to him.
“I do wish I could figure out what it was,” he said to himself, “if only
I could and get word to that ship about the manner in which the message
was sent, I might be the means of preventing some grave wrong being done
to somebody; for I am sure those men are no good. You could tell that by
their faces, let alone their actions. Hello!”
Joe stared through the slit in the door at the entrance to the wireless
hut. It had been suddenly darkened by the figure of a man.
“Anybody around here?” came a voice.
“Yes, I’m here,” cried Joe eagerly, for he knew by the voice that it was
neither of the men who had treated him so roughly.
“Where the dickens are you?” came the natural inquiry.
“Here in the closet.”
“Well, what in Sam Hill!——”
The figure came forward and Joe almost dropped with surprise right there
and then. He had good reason.
The newcomer was Hank Harley, old Israel’s nephew. It certainly was an
afternoon of surprises for Joe.