OVER THE RADIO
The latter part of the evening was given over to the radio, and the two
sat listening in with the receivers on their ears.
O.U.J. was furnishing a varied program that evening. Pee-wee liked
O.U.J. for the performers were a happy, bantering set, seeming to make
the distant listener one of their own merry party. Moreover, O.U.J. was
a night owl pursuing its wanton course of song and laughter after other
stations had said good night and gone to bed. Evidently Plarry Blythe
who sang songs and jollied the silver-tongued announcer had no home; at
least he never went to it.
Emerson had never listened to a radio and he found it novel and
entertaining. The ear pieces did double duty for they not only
transmitted the voices of the night to Emerson but they effectually shut
off Pee-wee’s voice as well. He talked but Emerson did not hear him.
It must have been nearly midnight and time for all respectable
broadcasting stations to be home and in bed. Certainly it was time for
Pee-wee to be in bed. But O.U.J. kept it up, and as the hour grew later
they sang the latest songs. Lateness was their middle name. At last the
Jamboree Jazz Band struck up. This outlandish and earsplitting group,
compared with which the noises of a boiler factory were like a gentle
zephyr, usually heralded the conclusion of the program. Pee-wee liked
the Jamboree Jazz Band. Emerson, educated to good music, listened with
rueful amusement.
Suddenly, in the very midst of the _Jumping Jiminy One Step_, the
Jamboree Jazz Band ceased to play. For a few moments a holy calm seemed
to have fallen upon the still night. Then came a series of weird squeaks
and plaintive wails as if the spirits of the air were uniting in an
uncanny chorus. One of these spirits seemed to have gone completely out
of its head, shrieking uncontrollably.
Schooled to such a contingency, Pee-wee’s hand sought the little knob by
which the unseen performers might be lured back to their duties.
But the weird voices only screamed the more discordantly. Then they
ceased altogether. With both hands Pee-wee tried desperately to find the
music but his frantic efforts were of no avail. The Jamboree Jazz Band
was as silent as the grave. _The Jumping Jiminy One Step_ had stepped
away altogether.
“What’s the matter?” Emerson asked.
“Wait a minute,” Pee-wee said, frantically preoccupied with the
mechanism.
But the _Jumping Jiminy One Step_ had evidently jumped too far and he
could not overtake it.
“They stopped right in the middle,” said Emerson.
Then suddenly Pee-wee caught the friendly, ingratiating voice of the
announcer at O.U.J. Nothing could ruffle that gentlemanly tone. He would
have announced the end of the world in a voice of soft composure.
“Listen!” said Pee-wee, “he’s saying something.”
He was certainly saying something. He had evidently begun saying it
before Pee-wee had succeeded in arresting that soft voice. From the
rather startling nature of his announcement (or such of it as our
listeners-in heard) it seemed likely that the Jamboree Jazz Band had
been summarily silenced in the interest of this important matter. The
boys listened attentively, Pee-wee spellbound as the voice continued:
“... and the police department of New York will be glad of any
information that might be helpful in running down this car.”
“Listen!” Pee-wee gasped in a tragic whisper. “He’s finished, we missed
it,” said Emerson. But the announcer continued, hesitating now and then,
as if putting into his own words a request made from some other source,
“Every effort is being made to head off this car in Westchester County
in this state but it is thought not unlikely that the thieves may have
crossed one of the Jersey ferries with it, probably an uptown ferry, and
be heading through northern New Jersey. If the car was stolen by
gypsies, as is suspected——”
Here the announcer’s voice was drowned in a riot of irrelevant sounds
characteristic of Pee-wee’s radio set, and when our hero succeeded in
catching the voice again, the announcer was concluding his thrilling
appeal to listeners—in New Jersey. “The car was a Hunkajunk six touring
car thought to be occupied by gypsies, the license number is 642-987
N.Y. but the number may have been obscured to prevent identification.
Any information concerning this car should be telephoned at once to the
police authorities where the car was seen. This is station O.U.J., New
York City. Please stand by for continuation of our regular program.”