“Then I’ll tell you one thing, you pussy-footers!” he cried furiously. “If this deal isn’t pulled through by the end of a week and if by that time we haven’t our hands on a good chunk of Salper’s money, then I’m through. Do you hear that? I quit!”
The radio boys had heard enough. Silently they tiptoed from their vantage point, putting off the tremendous desire to exclaim about what they had heard until they had put a good distance between themselves and the shack.
Then they overflowed with wonder and excitement.
“Say, wait till we spring this news on Mr. Salper!” cried Herb. “The man will near go off his head.”
“Gosh, you couldn’t blame him,” said Joe, in an awed tone. “I wouldn’t like to have those three fellows after my hard-earned cash myself.”
“Then he was right when he thought there was somebody after his money,” said Bob, striding along so swiftly in his excitement that poor Jimmy had hard work to keep up with him. “We thought he was kind of crazy, but I guess he knew what he was talking about all the time.”
“But I say, you got all the best of it, Bob,” said Herb. “Why couldn’t you let the rest of us get a glimpse of some honest-to-goodness sharpers?”
“They weren’t much to look at,” said Bob, with a frown. “That man they called Mohun was one of the ugliest scoundrels I’ve ever seen.”
“Was he any worse than Cassey?” asked Jimmy, curiously.
“If he was he must have been going some,” added Herb, with conviction.
“I guess nobody could be much worse than Cassey,” said Bob, frowning at the memory of the stuttering scoundrel’s evil acts. “But he’s just as bad. When he jumped at that big fellow with the bushy eyebrows I thought he was going to bite him. He has teeth that stick away out over his under lip.”
“Must be a beauty,” commented Herb.
“I say,” said poor Jimmy, fairly running in his effort to keep up with the other boys, “you’re not going toward the hotel, Bob. May I ask where you are going?”
“Why, Doughnuts, you shouldn’t have to ask,” broke in Joe, before Bob could respond. “Don’t you know there is only one place where we could be going after hearing such rotten news as we’ve just heard?”
“We’re going to the Salpers, of course,” finished Herb, with a condescending air that irritated the plump and puffing Jimmy.
“Well, you needn’t be so fresh about it,” he grumbled, rubbing his empty stomach ruefully. “It’s nearly dark——”
“And it’s dinner time,” added Joe, with a grin. “How well we know you, Doughnuts.”
“Well,” grumbled Jimmy, grinning reluctantly, “I don’t see why the Salpers can’t wait till we can get something to eat.”
“It won’t take us long,” said Bob, who had been thinking hard as they tramped along. “We’ll just stop in and tell them what we’ve heard and then go on. I don’t suppose there is anything that we can do.”
“I guess Mr. Salper will do all that’s necessary when he finds his money threatened,” said Joe significantly.
“I reckon he’s had a hunch that something of this kind has been going on for a long time—in fact, he as much as told us so,” said Bob. “But I guess these rascals were so clever he couldn’t put his finger on them.”
“I wonder what kind of deal they were talking about,” mused Herb.
“It was a crooked one, anyway,” said Bob, decidedly. “All you had to do was to look at them to know that.”
The little shack in the woods was a long way from the Salper place, and so, in spite of their hurry, the boys did not reach it until just on the edge of dark.
The entire family was gathered in the living room of the Salper cottage, even Mr. Salper himself, and the boys threw their bomb right into the midst of them.
Mr. Salper had seemed inclined, as he usually did, to draw apart by himself, but at the very beginning of the boys’ story, he evinced an almost fierce interest.
He questioned them minutely while the girls and Mrs. Salper listened wonderingly.
“You said the name of one of the men was Mohun?” he asked, throwing away the cigar he had been smoking and bending earnestly toward Bob. “What did he look like?”
The disagreeable impression the man had made upon him was still so vivid that Bob had no trouble at all in giving a graphic description of the fellow.
Mr. Salper’s face grew blacker and blacker as he listened and he pulled out another cigar, biting off the end of it viciously.
“That’s the fellow I’ve been suspecting all along,” he said, finally. “Slick fellow, that Mohun. Whenever a man gets too eager to do things for you I’ve learned to suspect him. Yet, closely as I’ve watched this man, I haven’t been able to get a thing on him. As far as we could find out, he was perfectly square. But, by Jove, this puts an entirely new face on things.”
He paused for a moment, puffing hard on his cigar while the others all watched him anxiously. The ill humor which had been hanging over him for so long seemed magically to have vanished. Now that his suspicions had been so unexpectedly justified, bringing with them the need for action, the broker was a different man, entirely. His brow had cleared and there was an eager light in his keen eyes.
“You fellows have done me the greatest of possible services,” he said, turning to the radio boys—he had forgotten up to that time to thank them for what they had done. “If you could know what it means to me to have this information——”
He broke off, running his hand excitedly through his hair, his eyes gazing unseeingly out of the window.
“I must act and act quickly,” he muttered, after a minute. “There is surely no time to lose. You said this man Mohun was urging haste?” he added, turning to Bob.
The latter nodded. “Said he’d quit if they didn’t get a move on, or words to that effect,” he told his questioner, and Mr. Salper smiled a preoccupied smile in response.
“Then Mohun will get what he wants. He has a way of getting what he wants,” he said, again with that air of speaking to himself. “I’m glad to know it’s Mohun—very glad!”
Although Bob had given as good a description as was possible of the other two men who had been in the shack with Mohun, Mr. Salper did not recognize them.
“Probably a couple of dark horses,” he said, and dismissed the subject. Evidently, to him, Mohun was the most important of the rascals and the one it was necessary to deal with at once.
After repeated thanks from Mr. Salper and outspoken gratitude on the part of Mrs. Salper and the girls, the boys managed to get away.
They hurried on toward the Mountain Rest Hotel, talking excitedly of what had happened.
“That was sure just dumb luck,” remarked Joe as he sniffed of the cold brisk air and began to realize that he was very hungry. “Our happening on that little shack just as we did,” he added in response to an enquiring look from Bob.
“You bet,” agreed Herb. “That was the time our luck was running strong. It will do me good if those scoundrels get come up with, especially the one with the big teeth.”
“Oh, stop talking and hurry up,” begged Jimmy, who, in his eagerness to get back to the hotel and dinner, was actually leading the others. “It seems ten miles to the house when your poor old system is crying aloud for grub.”
They laughed at him but followed his example just the same, for they had been tramping many hours and their appetites were never of the uncertain variety.
But just before they reached the welcome lights of the cottage they realized to their surprise that it was snowing again. So fast were the flakes coming that by the time they reached the door of the hotel they were well powdered with them.
“Hooray!” shouted Herb. “We sure are getting our money’s worth of snow this winter.”
“You bet,” agreed Bob, adding happily: “And this one looks like a ‘lallapaloosa.’”
True to Bob’s prediction, the snowstorm proved to be a fierce one even for this season of unusual snows, and when the boys awoke the next morning they found that the ground had taken on an extra covering and the branches of the trees were weighted down with the heavy fall.
“Say, fellows, look what’s here!” cried Joe as he roused his mates, sleepy-eyed from their comfortable beds. “Old Jack Frost sure was busy last night.”
“Guess he thinks it’s Thanksgiving,” Bob agreed as he hurried into his clothes, keeping one eye on the frosty landscape and fairly aching to make part of it. “Hurry up, fellows, let’s go out and have a snow fight.”
“You’re on,” agreed Joe, and then began the race to see who would get from their cottage to the hotel and to the breakfast table first.
They arrived there—at the breakfast table, that is—at one and the same time and ate as ravenously as though they had not broken their fast in a week. Mr. and Mrs. Layton watched them and smiled, wishing that they might once more eat with such lusty appetites.
Before the boys had finished breakfast, it had begun to snow again, making the landscape appear more than ever blizzardy and bleak. Eagerly the boys buttoned up heavy sweaters, prepared to fight the storm to a finish.
It seemed that they were not the only ones whom the storm had lured forth. There were a number of people gathered in front of the hotel and, since they seemed rather excited about something, three of the boys joined them to find out what the fuss was all about, Jimmy remaining behind for the time being to take a nail from his shoe.
“The telegraph wires are all down,” said a man in response to Bob’s question. “There’s a man been raving around here like a crazy man, declaring he has to send a telegram. Nobody can seem to make him understand that since the wires are all down such a thing is impossible.”
“He might telephone,” Joe suggested, but the man who had been their informant took him up quickly.
“They’re down too,” he said. “We’re as marooned here, as far as any communication with the outside world is concerned, as though we were stranded on an island in the midst of the ocean. This storm has done considerable damage.”
“I should say so,” remarked Joe, as the gentleman turned to some one else and the boys started on a tour of the place to look over the prospect. “I’ll call it some damage to knock down both telephone and telegraph wires at one fell swoop.”
“That talk about our being just as badly off for communication with the outside world as though we were on an island isn’t quite correct,” observed Herb. “That fellow seemed to forget all about trains.”
“I suppose he meant quick communication,” said Bob. “We could send a message by wire in an hour or less, while it would take two or three times that time to send the same message by rail.”
“That’s so,” agreed Herb, staring up at the wires which had fallen beneath their weight of snow. “I’d hate tohaveto get a message through for any reason just now. But look,” he added, pointing to the hotel. “Our aerials are still up anyway.”
“I wonder who the fellow was who was so anxious to telegraph,” said Joe, after a few minutes. “He must think himself in bad luck.”
Bob brought his gaze from the damaged wires and stared at the boys, and at Jimmy who just then came puffing up.
“Say, I bet that was Mr. Salper,” Bob said. “Don’t you remember last night that he said he must get a message through to his broker first thing in the morning?”
“By Jove, the storm knocked it clear out of my head!” exclaimed Joe. “Say, I feel sorry for him, all right.”
“Wish we could help him some way,” said Herb anxiously. “It would never do to let that fellow Mohun and his pals get off with the filthy lucre just when we thought we’d double-crossed them so nicely.”
“I guess that’s where Mr. Salper would agree with you,” said Jimmy, with a grin. “Especially since the filthy lucre belongs to him.”
They walked on in silence for a few moments, chagrined at the thought that the storm had played so into the hands of Mr. Salper’s enemies.
They had learned from Mr. Salper the night before that Mohun of the protruding teeth was not the kind of man to let a golden opportunity pass. He would rush the “deal” through while Salper was out of town, and, from the latter’s impatience, they had gathered that the next few hours would, in all probability, be the crucial time.
“Burr-r-r!” cried Jimmy suddenly, wrapping his arms as far as they would go about his chubby body and shivering with the cold. “This weather sure does make a fellow wish for a fur overcoat. The thermometer must have gone down twenty degrees over night.”
“Hear who’s talking!” scoffed Herb. “With all that fat on your bones, Doughnuts, you haven’t a chance in the world of feeling cold.”
“I suppose you know more than I do about it—not being me,” retorted Jimmy, scathingly. “I’d just like you to feel the way I do; that’s all.”
“Well, it isn’t what you might call unpleasantly hot,” observed Bob. “I must say I’m not sweltering, myself.”
“Guess it isn’t much colder than this up at the North Pole,” agreed Joe, as he turned his sweater collar up higher about his ears. “Might as well rig up as an Eskimo and be done with it.”
“Reminds me of that Norwegian, Amundsen,” said Bob. “He sure intends to discover the North Pole with all the fancy trimmings, this time.”
“What do you mean?” asked Herb, with interest.
“Do you mean to say you haven’t read about it?” demanded Jimmy, indulgently. “Why, he’s the fellow who is going to have his ship all dressed up with wireless so that when he smashes his ship against the North Pole he can let everybody know about it.”
“It’s a great idea, I call it,” said Joe, enthusiastically. “Up to this time, explorers haven’t had any way of communicating with the outside world, and so if they got in trouble they just had to get out of it the best way they could or die in the attempt.”
“While now,” Bob took him up eagerly, “his wireless messages will be picked up by hundreds of stations all over the world and in case of need ships and teams of huskies and even aeroplanes can be rushed to his rescue.”
“Exploring de luxe,” murmured Herb, with a comical look. “Pretty soon there won’t be any such thing as adventure because there won’t be any danger. We’ll have radio to watch over us and keep us from all harm.”
“It’s all right for you to talk that way,” said Jimmy. “But I bet if you were one of these explorer chaps you’d be mighty glad to have something watch over you and help you out of a tight fix.”
“Yes, I guess those fellows need all the help they can get,” agreed Bob, soberly. “It isn’t any joke to be away out there with hundreds of miles of ice and water between them and civilization.”
“They say even the sledges are to be equipped with radio,” Joe broke in. “So that they can keep in touch with the ship all the time and through the medium of the powerful sending set aboard the boat the ship itself can be kept in constant touch with the outside world.”
“There are planes too, equipped with radio,” added Bob. “And they say each plane is outfitted with skids so that it can land safely on the ice.”
“I should think there would be danger in that,” remarked Jimmy, rubbing his hands vigorously to set the blood circulating again. “They say the ice is awfully rough and bumpy and spattered with small hills of ice. I should think a pilot would have a jolly time trying to make a landing under those conditions.”
“They intend to cut out the ice about the ship so as to make landing possible,” explained Bob. “And in the other places the skids help them to make a sure landing. Say, wouldn’t I like to make one of that expedition!” he added, with enthusiasm.
“I wonder how long they expect this expedition to take,” said Herb. The idea of exploring the arctic with radio as a companion was a fascinating one to him and at that moment he would have made one of Amundsen’s hardy crew, if such a thing were possible, with the greatest joy.
“They expect it will take them five years, maybe six.” It was Bob who answered the question. “Their idea is to travel as far as possible north before the ice gets thick. Then when the floes close in about them they will drift with the ice over the pole—or, at least, that’s what they hope to do.”
“What gets me,” said Jimmy plaintively, “is how they are going to know when they get to the pole anyway.”
Herb made a pass at him which the fat boy nimbly avoided.
“Why, you poor fish,” said the former witheringly, “you sure will be a full-sized nut if you ever live to grow up. I suppose if you got to the North Pole you’d expect to see a clothes pole with the clothes line wrapped around it, ready for use.”
Unconsciously their feet had carried the radio boys in the direction of the radio station and now they were surprised to find themselves confronted by the building itself.
“We’ve come some way,” Herb began with a chuckle, but Bob cut him short excitedly.
“Look!” he cried. “Didn’t I tell you that radio was the best ever? Just cast your eye on that aerial. You don’t see that trailing on the ground, do you?”
For a moment the other radio boys failed to grasp the significance of his words. Then they let out a great shout of triumph. For what Bob had said was true. Where other means of communication with the outside world failed, radio stood firm.
The aerial was there, towering as serenely against the slaty sky as though there was no such thing as a snowstorm. The great marvel of radio! For no wires, other than the antenna, were needed to carry its messages to the farthermost parts of the world!
For a moment the boys were awed as the real significance of the modern miracle was borne home to them. It was magnificent, it was inspiring merely to have the privilege of living in such an age.
“Well, Mr. Salper doesn’t need to worry,” said Joe, at last. “There’s always radio on the job if he wants to get a quick message through to New York.”
“It’s queer he didn’t think of it,” agreed Bob, adding, as the intense cold struck still more deeply into his bones: “Come on in, fellows. I’d like to see what the operator has to say to all this excitement.”
“You bet,” said Jimmy, adding fervently: “And it will give us a chance to thaw out.”
When the boys reached the room which had become so familiar to them, they found that here too, the old régime had been interrupted. Several men were gathered in the far corner of the room, talking earnestly, and the long table where the operator could be seen daily bending earnestly over his beloved apparatus was vacant. The operator himself was nowhere to be seen.
Sensing something unusual, the boys came forward hesitantly. At sight of them one of the men detached himself from the group of his companions and came quickly over to them. The boys did not know his name, but his face was familiar to them.
“A most unfortunate thing has happened,” burst out this man nervously, without even an attempt at a preface. “The operator here has been taken very ill with a fever and we are at a loss to find any one who can take his place in this emergency.”
The modesty of the radio boys was such that at that moment no thought of the possibility of their being able to take the experienced operator’s place entered their heads. They were earnestly sorry for the misfortune which had overtaken their friend, and they told the man so. It seemed to them that the latter was rather disappointed about something, and he listened to their words of sympathy absently. After a moment he left them and rejoined his companions at the other end of the room.
“Say, that’s tough luck,” said Jimmy, his round face comically long. “I knew that fellow would get into trouble if he didn’t take more exercise.”
Bob fumbled with the familiar apparatus on the table, his face troubled.
“If he’s out of his head with fever, he must be pretty sick,” he muttered, as though talking to himself. “And that means that he won’t be able to attend to radio for a good long time to come.”
“And with telegraph and telephone wires all down, that’s pretty much of a calamity,” added Joe, his eyes meeting Bob’s with a look of understanding.
“Say!” cried Herb, suddenly seeing what they were driving at, “that knocks out Mr. Salper’s last chance of getting even with those crooks.”
“Yes,” said Bob, soberly, “I guess the game’s up, as far as he’s concerned.”
“Let’s go over to the hotel and inquire for the sick man,” Joe suggested, adding hopefully, “maybe he isn’t as sick as they make out.”
The operator had a room at the hotel, and the boys had been there once or twice to talk over points on radio with him and so they knew exactly where to go.
However, if they had treasured any hope that Bert Thompson’s sickness had been exaggerated, they were promptly undeceived. No one was allowed to speak to him, the nurse at the hotel told them, adding, in her briskly professional manner, that it would be no use to speak to him anyway, since he was delirious and recognized nobody.
But before they went, softened by their real concern, she said, quite kindly, that as soon as the patient was able to receive visitors at all she would let them know.
They thanked her and went out into the freezing air again. The snow had stopped and the wind had died down completely but in the atmosphere was a deadly chill, a biting cold that seemed to penetrate to their very marrow.
“Suppose we go to the Salpers,” Bob suggested. “Mrs. Salper and the girls may need help, for I imagine Mr. Salper isn’t in a very pleasant mood.”
“I wonder,” said Joe, as with common consent they turned in the direction of the Salper home, “if Mr. Salper has heard yet that even the radio is out of business.”
“Give it up,” said Herb, while Jimmy added, with a grin: “I’d hate to be the one to break the news to him.”
But, as it happened, that was just what they had to do. They saw Mr. Salper coming and tried to pretend that they did not, but he would have none of it.
He made for them directly, with a scowl on his face as fierce as if they had been the cause of all his trouble.
“This is a fine business, isn’t it?” he asked, waving his hand in the direction of the snow-weighted wires. “No telegraph, no telephone—only the radio left. I’m on my way to the station to try to get the message through, though that operator is a stubborn young donkey and has before this refused to send messages for me.”
Herb and Jimmy made frantic motions to Bob to keep quiet, for they saw that he was about to tell the news. And Bob did.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Salper,” he said quietly. “But the operator at the wireless station has become suddenly very ill and there’s no one there to operate the apparatus.”
For a moment Mr. Salper simply glared while the news sank home. Then he gazed wildly about him as though to escape from his own worrisome thoughts. Then the fierce scowl returned to his face and he made an angry motion toward the boys.
“The operator sick!” he muttered. “And not a doctor up here!”
The boys started and looked at him queerly.
“Do you need a doctor?” asked Bob quickly, thinking immediately of Mrs. Salper and the girls. “Is some one sick?”
“Yes,” snapped Mr. Salper. “My wife is sick, very sick. And if I can’t get any sort of word through, even by radio——” He paused and his mouth looked as though he were grinding his teeth.
He turned back toward his house, and the boys accompanied him with some vague idea of at least offering their sympathy, even if they could not do anything to help.
They found Edna and Ruth nearly frantic with fright.
“Mother is dreadfully ill,” said Edna, between sobs. “Her hands and face are burning up and she talks queerly. I’m afraid it’s pneumonia, and if she doesn’t get a doctor pretty quick she’ll d-die!” And with a sob she fled into the room where the sick woman lay.
The boys felt awkward, and, since there was nothing they could do to help, deeply concerned over the trouble of these friends of theirs.
“There’s some good in Mr. Salper, anyway,” said Joe, as they tramped along. “He was so worried over Mrs. Salper that he didn’t mention those Wall Street scoundrels.”
“I reckon it’s worrying him just the same,” said Jimmy.
“If only there was something we could do——” began Bob, then stopped short, a great idea leaping to his eyes. “Say, fellows, what’s the matter with our sending that message?”
The boys stared at him for a moment as though he had gone suddenly crazy. Then the light of adventure dawned in their eyes, and they grinned joyously.
“Say, old boy,” said Joe in an awed voice, “that sure is some swell idea. But do you think we could swing it? We know a lot about receiving, but when it comes to sending——”
“We’re a bunch of nuts,” finished Jimmy, decidedly.
“Maybe,” retorted Bob. “But at this time, even a bunch of nuts might be better than nothing.”
“We’ve been studying the code,” said Joe thoughtfully. “We might be able to handle it all right. It isn’t the first time, if we’re not experts. Of course we can do it.”
“But not for old Salper,” said Herb. “He’s so impatient he’d make us forget in five minutes everything we ever knew.”
“Maybe,” said Bob again, adding, stoutly: “But I’m game to make a try at it anyway. There’s no one else to do it, and Mr. Salper stands to lose his wife and a lot of money besides if some one doesn’t help him out.”
“Well, let’s make him the proposition,” suggested Joe, pausing and looking back at the Salper house. “I’m with Bob in this thing.”
“So say we all of us,” sang Herb cheerily, as they turned back.
“So long as Bob’s the goat,” finished Jimmy.
They found Mr. Salper in the living room of the bungalow, savagely smoking a cigar. He scarcely looked at the boys when the girls let them in, and Bob was forced to speak his name before he gave them his attention.
“Well, what is it?” he said gruffly, his tone adding plainly: “What are you doing here anyway? I wish you’d get out.”
The tone made Bob mad, as it did the other boys, and when he spoke his own tone was not as pleasant as usual.
“We’ve decided to try to help you out, if we can, Mr. Salper,” he said, and the man looked at him with a mixture of surprise and incredulity.
“In what way?” he asked, in the same curt tone.
“We know something about sending and receiving messages by radio,” Bob went on, getting madder and madder. “And we thought maybe we might get a message through for you to a doctor and to your brokers, as well. Of course,” he added, modestly, “we haven’t had very much experience——”
Bob was too modest to say anything about how he had once sent messages to some ships at sea, (as related in detail in “The Radio Boys at Ocean Point,”) and how he had tried to send on other occasions.
“Experience be hanged!” cried Mr. Salper, so suddenly that the boys jumped. “You mean to tell me you can operate that radio contraption?”
“I think so,” said Bob, still modestly. “We haven’t done much along that end of it——”
“You’ll do,” cried Mr. Salper, while Edna and Ruth stared at him with tear-reddened eyes. “Are you ready to go with me right away to the station?”
The boys nodded and the older man shrugged into his great coat, reaching quickly for his cap.
“Take care of your mother,” he said to the girls. “I’ll stop on my way over to the hotel and send a nurse over for her. I hear there are two of them there. Don’t see why the physician there didn’t send some one to take his place if he had to leave.”
In a moment the radio boys found themselves once more in the freezing air of the out-of-doors, being hurried along by the erratic Mr. Salper.
Poor Jimmy suffered on that forced march. Although he uttered no word of protest, his face was purple and his breath came in little puffing gasps before they had reached the hotel.
Once there, they had a little respite, however, while Mr. Salper went to arrange about having a nurse sent over to his wife. Jimmy waited in the hotel lobby in a state nearing collapse while the other boys went up to inquire once more about their friend, the operator.
They found him no better—worse, if anything—and their faces were very solemn when they rejoined Jimmy in the lobby.
“Guess it will be nip and tuck if he gets through at all,” said Bob, anxiously. “I don’t see why such hard luck had to pick him out for the victim.”
“I suppose they’ll appoint another operator right away,” suggested Herb.
“I suppose so,” agreed Jimmy. “But it will be hard to get any one for a week or more on account of the heavy weather.”
“And in a week’s time without communication with the outside world a lot of Mr. Salper’s money will probably have gone up in smoke,” said Joe.
“Yes, it’s us on the job all right,” said Bob, looking a bit worried. “I only hope we can live up to what’s expected of us.”
“All right, boys,” said Mr. Salper, on returning, in his eyes the preoccupied look of the man of affairs. “If you can help me out of this fix, I will surely be deeply in your debt.”
These genial words—almost the first that they had heard from the self-absorbed man—warmed the boys’ hearts and they resolved to do the best they could for him, and, through him, for his daughters.
When they reached the station they found it deserted save for one man who sat at a desk, humped over in a dispirited fashion, reading a magazine.
At the entrance of Mr. Salper and the boys he looked up, then got up and came over to them as though he were glad of their companionship.
“How do you do, Mr. Salper?” he said, addressing the older man with marked respect. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Nothing, unless you can work this contrivance,” returned Mr. Salper, with a comprehensive wave of his hand toward the cluttered radio table.
“I’m sorry,” said the other, a frown of anxiety lining his forehead. “The operator is sick, and because of the heavy weather it is doubtful if we shall be able to secure another one within the week.”
“A week!” cried Mr. Salper. “That amount of time, my friend, may very easily spell ruin for me. It is necessary that I communicate with New York immediately. Are you ready, boys?”
The man looked with surprise, first at the radio boys and then back to Mr. Salper.
“Am I to understand——” he began, when Mr. Salper cut him short with an imperative wave of the hand.
“These boys,” he said, “know something of radio. How much they know I am about to find out.
“Are you ready?” he asked, sharply, as the boys still hesitated. “A delay of even a few minutes would be regrettable.”
The boys looked at each other, and since no one else made a move to approach the apparatus, Bob saw that it was up to him. And right there he realized the great difference that there is between theory and practice. Of course they had had some practice in sending and they were fairly familiar with the code, but never before had they been called upon to make use of their knowledge in such a matter as this.
Then too, Mr. Salper was not the kind of person to inspire self-confidence. He was a driver, and it is hard to do good thinking when one is being driven.
However, having gone so far, there was no possibility of backing out and with a show of confidence, Bob approached the apparatus. The man who had addressed Mr. Salper regarded him with not a little distrust. He had heard of the radio boys, as who at Mountain Pass had not, but he certainly did not think them competent to send a message of any importance.
And at that moment, neither did Bob.
“Will you send your message phone or code?” he asked, looking up at Mr. Salper inquiringly. “We can do either here.”
Mr. Salper hesitated for a moment, then with a significant glance at the other man, who was hovering curiously near, he snapped out, “Code.”
“Do you know the letters of the station to be called?” asked Bob.
The broker consulted a notebook which he took from his pocket.
“Call HRSA,” he returned. “That is our Stock Exchange station,” he explained. “They ought to be on the job while the Exchange is open. They will relay a message to my brokers.”
Joe was standing beside Bob and saw that his chum’s hand trembled somewhat as he took hold of the ticker.
“Don’t get rattled, Bob,” he whispered. “Take your time and don’t let him scare you. Remember, it’s you that’s doing the favor.”
Bob grinned, and then began sending out the call. Across the ether traveled the letters HRSA and the call was presently caught up in New York and then another message was relayed to the office of a well-known brokerage firm.
“Hey, Bill,” called a well-dressed young man seated at a desk in the far end of the office. “Here’s WBZA calling us. These are the letters of the station at Mountain Pass——”
“Where the Honorable Mr. Gilbert Salper is taking his rest cure,” finished another man, flinging away his cigarette and coming to stand beside his partner. “Do you suppose it’s the old boy himself calling?”
“We’ll soon find out,” returned the other, and without delay sent in a message to the New York sending station. In a few seconds they were being radioed into the ether.
Bob’s face beamed as he transcribed the dots and dashes into words. The message read thus:
“WBZA heard from. HRSA awaiting message.”
Mr. Salper, who had been striding up and down, hurried to Bob’s side in answer to the lad’s hail. The other boys were peering eagerly over Bob’s shoulder.
“I’ve reached HRSA and through them H. & D.,” explained the young operator proudly. “H. & D. are waiting for your message.”
“Fine! Fine!” cried Mr. Salper, and his face showed great enthusiasm. “Those are my brokers, Hanson and Debbs. Got ’em right off the reel, didn’t you, boy? Great work! Can you get my message through at once?”
“I don’t know of anything to stop me,” answered Bob. It seemed too good to be true that he had picked up the right station so quickly.
“Send this, then,” Mr. Salper directed. And in a firm hand he wrote down the following message:
“Mohun is a crook and plots to ruin me. Find out his scheme and check him.Gilbert Salper.”
“Mohun is a crook and plots to ruin me. Find out his scheme and check him.
Gilbert Salper.”
Skillfully Bob tapped out the message and in an inconceivably small space of time it had been received by the station HRSA and relayed to H. & D. The boys would have been interested if they could have known the sensation caused by the few words.
“Oh, boy!” cried Hanson, of the firm of Hanson and Debbs. “I’ve suspected this slick fellow Mohun for a long time. Now with Salper’s authority we can go in and clean him out.”
“Salper wouldn’t make an accusation of that sort,” said Debbs thoughtfully, “if there wasn’t something in it. He’s had some sort of inside tip all right.”
“Well,” returned the other briskly, “we’ll let the old man know we’re on the job, and then get busy.”
Accordingly, a few minutes later Bob received and transcribed this message:
“Right. We’ll have him inside of twenty-four hours.”
At the confidence contained in the message Mr. Salper straightened his shoulders as if a great load had been lifted from them and held out a friendly hand to Bob.
“I can’t tell you what you have done for me,” he said, cordially. “Of course I’m not safe yet from the crooked work of these men, but at least Hanson and Debbs have been warned to look out. And that’s two-thirds of the battle.”
“I’m mighty glad we’ve been able to help,” said Bob, adding earnestly: “If there’s anything else we can do please call on us. Mrs. Salper——”
He paused, for at mention of his wife’s name the relief disappeared from Mr. Salper’s face and in its place was the old worried frown.
“Yes—my wife,” he muttered, and, without another word to the boys, turned and stalked out of the room. The man, who had all this time lingered near them, turned and went out after Mr. Salper and the boys were left alone.
“Say, you sure did turn the trick that time,” said Herb admiringly. “If they succeed in getting those crooks, Mr. Salper will love you all the rest of his life.”
“It was more luck than anything else,” Bob repeated. “Imagine getting that station first throw out of the box.”
“Never mind,” said Joe, adding truthfully: “No one else about this place would have been able to do as much.”
They lingered for a while, talking over the exciting events of the day and tinkering with the complicated apparatus.
“Did you hear the latest prediction of Marconi?” asked Joe. “He says that he has positive proof that in the near future a radio set will be perfected which will send messages entirely around the world.”
“Yes,” said Bob eagerly. “He even declares that we’ll be able to put a sending and receiving set side by side on the same table and receive the messages that a moment before we’ve sent out.”
“It only takes a second of time too,” said Herb. “Imagine sending messages completely around the world at such speed. If Marconi didn’t say it could be done, I sure wouldn’t believe it.”
“We’ll be talking with Venus or Mars pretty soon,” said Bob. “Marconi says he has already received messages that don’t come from anywhere on the earth.”
Although they said little about it, the boys were elated at Bob’s success with the code, and it was surely a pleasant thought that they had helped Mr. Salper, if only that they might make Mrs. Salper and the girls happy. They had even, despite his usual gruffness, begun to feel a sort of liking for Mr. Salper himself.
During the long snow-bound afternoon they thought often of Mrs. Salper and wondered if she were better. They wanted to inquire, but they were afraid of making themselves a nuisance.
Toward evening they strolled over to the hotel to ask after the operator and found to their delight that he was better. The nurse, who had become very friendly toward them, said she thought the trouble had been checked in time and that the sick man’s recovery, though it might be slow, was sure.
With hearts lightened on that score they went home. After dinner at the hotel they spent some time tinkering with their set. One time they noticed that in a vacuum tube was a pale blue glow, and Joe was at a loss to know how to account for it.
“We’ve got too high a voltage on the B battery,” said Bob, after a moment of study.
“But how would that affect it?” asked Herb, interested.
“Why,” answered Bob, thoughtfully, “the high voltage causes a sort of electrical breakdown of the gas in the tube and it’s apt to affect the receiving.”
“Say, Bob’s getting to be a regular blue stocking,” commented Jimmy admiringly. “We’ll have to get a move on to catch up with him.”
“You betyouwill,” said Herb, with insulting emphasis on the pronoun. However, Jimmy was too interested to notice.
“Let’s reduce the voltage, Bob,” Joe was saying eagerly. “We’ll test out the theory.”
“It isn’t a theory,” replied Bob, as he reduced the voltage and the blue glow disappeared as though by magic. “You can see for yourself that it’s a fact.”
This discussion led to others, and they sat for some time eagerly experimenting with their set. It was just as well that they did for they had just gone over to their cottage and thus were able to answer quickly the imperative summons that came to them a few minutes later.
In response to a knock on the door they found Mr. Salper standing outside in the bitter night air looking so white and shaken that they were startled.
He came just inside the door and spoke in quick, jerky sentences like a man talking in his sleep.
“My wife is dangerously ill,” he said. “She seems so much worse tonight that there is imperative need of a doctor. There is no doctor up here, and in this weather it would take too long to summon one. The trained nurse who is with her suggests that we try to get in touch with a doctor by radio and ask his advice. The idea is far-fetched, but it seems about our only hope. If that fails——” he paused and Joe broke in eagerly.
“My father’s a doctor, Mr. Salper,” he said, and there was pride in his voice.
“A doctor, eh?” returned the broker quickly. “Oh, if only he were here!”
“I don’t see how you are going to get hold of your father,” broke in Herb. “He’s in Clintonia. Even if he got our message, through Doctor Dale or somebody else with a receiving set, he couldn’t send any message here.”
“But he isn’t in Clintonia!” shouted Joe, eagerly. “He went to Newark, New Jersey, to attend some sort of medical convention and see if he couldn’t find out more about the epidemic that hit Clintonia.”
“Newark!” came simultaneously from Joe’s chums.
“Why, the big radio sending station is there!” exclaimed Bob.
“Why can’t you send a message to that station and ask them to get hold of your father?” broke in Jimmy.
“Maybe I could do it,” announced Joe. And then he looked at Bob. “Perhaps you had better do the sending. You’ll probably have to call them in code.”
Bob was willing, but first he went up to tell his mother and father where he and his chums were going and beg them not to worry if they did not come back soon.
On the way to the radio station they stopped at the Salper bungalow, where the calm-faced nurse was waiting for them. She had left the Salper girls in charge of their mother, giving them minute instructions as to what to do, and was going with Mr. Salper in the hope that they might possibly secure medical advice by radio.
The station was finally reached. It looked deserted and gloomy at that hour of the night, and as Bob sent a call for help vibrating through the ether he felt a creepy sensation, as though he were, in some way, dealing with ghosts.
There was just the slightest chance in the world that they would reach Doctor Atwood. Just a chance, but if they did not take that chance Mrs. Salper would die.
For a long time they tried while the nurse sat quietly in the shadows and Mr. Salper strode up and down, up and down, his face drawn and white, his usually elastic step heavy and dragging.
Again and again went out the call for the Newark station. Minute after minute passed, and still Mr. Salper walked up and down uneasily.
“I guess you’ll have to give it up——” Herb was beginning when suddenly Bob motioned for silence. The radio was speaking, and he was taking down the message as well as he was able.
“I’ve got Newark!” the young operator cried excitedly. “Now I’ll put in a call for your father, Joe. Where is he staying?”
“At the Robert Treat Hotel.”
Once more Bob went to work rather excitedly and even a little clumsily, yet his message went through. In reply he received another, stating that Dr. Atwood had been called by telephone and would be at the sending station inside of fifteen minutes.
“And the best of it is, he is to radiophone,” added Bob to Joe. “So you can talk to him direct.”
After that the minutes passed slowly, both for Mr. Salper and the boys. They thought the end of the wait would never come. But at last the words so eagerly awaited reached them.
There was no mistaking it, even though static interfered and the tuning was not good—Dr. Atwood’s voice, cheery, reassuring, helpful. In his joy at the sound of it, Joe shouted aloud.
“Hello, WBZA,” came the voice. “If this is Joe talking, give me the high sign, my boy.”
During the message Bob had tuned in the right frequency and, with static eliminated one might have thought the speaker was in the same room.
Then there followed a battle with death that the boys would remember as long as they lived. As soon as Doctor Atwood was made to understand the nature of the service asked of him, he became immediately his brisk, professional self.
The nurse, instantly alert herself, gave him a description of the case and it was wonderful as soon as the connection was switched off to hear his kindly voice responding, giving full directions for the care of the patient. He declared that he would be on call all during the night and requested that some one call him every hour—oftener, if it became necessary—to report the progress of the patient.
The nurse hurried off, accompanied by Mr. Salper, and for the rest of the night the boys kept busy, marking a trail between the Salper cottage and the radio station, taking reports from the nurse and carrying directions from Doctor Atwood.
It seemed strange and weird, yet wonderful and soul-stirring, this tending of a patient by a doctor many miles away. Once, during the night, hope almost failed. Mrs. Salper scarcely breathed and lay so still that Edna and Ruth were sure the end had come. They clung to each other sobbing, while Mr. Salper strode up and down, up and down the room as though if he stopped he would die too.
Then came another message from Doctor Atwood. The nurse followed his directions and once more hope came back to the Salper home. The patient rallied, stirred, and for that time at least, the danger was past.
So dawn came at last and Joe and the two younger boys went back to their cottage to try to catch a few hours of sleep. Bob remained at the station, declaring that he felt not at all tired and as soon as the other boys had rested they could come to his relief.
A hard vigil that for Bob. In spite of all he could do, his head would nod and his heavy eyelids close, to be jerked open next moment by the arrival of some one from the Salper home or a message from Doctor Atwood.
News of the struggle had spread all over Mountain Pass, and people watched with admiration and interest the brave fight that was being made for a woman’s life. And sometimes it seemed that, despite all their efforts, the struggle must end in failure.
All that day the battle waged and the next night—the boys taking turns at the radio board, untiring in their determination not to lose. And Doctor Atwood was as determined as they.
And then, on the morning of the second day came news that the patient had passed the much-dreaded crisis and, with the most careful nursing, was sure to recover.
“She’ll be all right now,” came Doctor Atwood’s cheery voice. “It’s been a hard pull, but she’s past the danger point now. Keep in touch with me, boys, so that, in case of a relapse, I can tell you what to do.”
Joe turned to the boys with the light of pride and affection in his eyes.
“That’s some dad I’ve got!” he said.
Later, when the boys walked over to the Salper home to offer congratulations, the girls received them with literally open arms.
“You’ve saved mother’s life!” cried Ruth, with a catch in her voice.
“And we love you for it!” added Edna gratefully. “You just wait till mother knows!”
“So far, so good,” breathed Bob happily, as the boys were discussing the news that Mrs. Salper had passed the crisis and was now probably on the road to recovery. “That’s one thing we can set down to the credit of radio.”
“And it’s not the only thing of the same sort,” put in Joe. “Do you remember what Mr. Brandon told us of that ship with thirty men and no doctor on board, where twenty-four of the men were down with a mysterious disease? The captain got a message by wireless to shore telling of his plight, and one of the best doctors in New York City went to the radio station there and got in touch with the captain. He talked to him by radio for hours, had him describe just the symptoms, and then told the captain just what to do. A couple of days later the captain wirelessed in that he had followed directions and that all of the men had recovered and were fit for duty.”
“Yes,” said Herb, “and about that other case, too, where a man had an infected hand and they were afraid he was going to have lockjaw. A doctor on land told the captain how to treat it and the man got along all right.”
“Trust radio, and you won’t go wrong,” summed up Bob. “On land and sea it’s right on the job.”
“I only hope it will be as effective in saving Mr. Salper’s money,” observed Joe.
“I think very likely it will,” replied Bob. “He’s about as keen as they make them, and now that he knows what those rascals are plotting against him it’s dollars to doughnuts that he’ll get the best of them. Their only chance was in taking him by surprise and putting over that deal while his back was turned. And now that he’s got in touch with his brokers I guess the game is up.”
“I wonder how long it will be before we know how it turned out,” conjectured Herb.
“Oh, probably not more than two or three days,” replied Bob. “Things move pretty fast in Wall Street when a fight is on for control.”
“I hope he comes out on top,” observed Joe. “He’s a good deal of a crab, and I was mighty sore at him when he landed on us the way he did the day we were coming up here. Acted as though he thought we ought to be shot at sunrise. But since that time I’ve seen a good deal about him to like and I’ve come to the conclusion that he’s a regular fellow after all.”
“You can tell by the fondness that the girls have for him that he can’t be so bad,” said Bob. “That’s a pretty good sign to go by. They know him better than any one else except his wife, and she seems to think, too, that the sun rises and sets in him.”
“I want him to come out ahead not only for his own sake but because I want to see that fellow Mohun downed,” put in Jimmy. “I’m sore at him right down to the ground. I don’t like his eyes, I don’t like his voice, I don’t like his teeth, I don’t like his character——”
“Outside of that, though, I suppose he’s all right,” suggested Joe, grinning. “He seems to be just about as popular with you as a rattlesnake.”
“That’s what he reminds me of, anyway,” admitted Jimmy.
“Talking of rattlesnakes,” put in Herb, “here come three of them now,” and he indicated Buck Looker, who, with Lutz and Mooney, was coming along the road. For some time now the Looker crowd had kept out of the radio boys’ way.
“I wonder what trick they’re up to now,” said Bob, as he saw that the bunch had their heads together in earnest conversation.
“No knowing,” answered Joe; “but it’s a safe bet that it’s something cheap and low down. Buck would think the day was wasted if he didn’t have something of the kind on hand.”
The groups passed each other without speaking, though Buck darted a look at Bob in passing that had in it the usual malignance, mingled with a touch of triumph.
“Did you see that look?” queried Herb, with interest. “Seemed as if he had something up his sleeve.”
“I know what it meant well enough,” answered Bob, with a shade of soberness. “My dad was telling me that he’d been notified that a suit had been started against him and the fathers of you other fellows by Mr. Looker to recover the value of the cottage that he said we set on fire.”
“That’s all bunk!” cried Herb indignantly. “He couldn’t prove it in a hundred years. A lawsuit, eh? Huh!”
“Dad doesn’t think Looker has much of a case,” replied Bob. “Still, he says that you can never tell what a man like Looker and the kind of lawyer he would hire may do. Of course we can’t get away from the fact that we were in the house the day before it burned, and that looks bad. We know we didn’t set it on fire, but nobody else knows we didn’t. At any rate, even if Looker loses his case, our folks will have to hire lawyers and lose a lot of time in attending court, so that all in all it makes a pretty bad mess.”
“So that’s what Buck was looking so tickled about!” exclaimed Joe. “I’d like to wipe that look off his face.”
“It might be a little satisfaction,” laughed Bob. “But it wouldn’t help us win the lawsuit.”
By this time their walk had taken them near the vicinity of the radio station; and as they approached it they caught sight of Mr. Salper pacing back and forth in a state of impatience.
“Seems to be stirred up about something,” remarked Joe.
“Did you ever see him when he wasn’t?” laughed Jimmy.
At this moment Mr. Salper caught sight of the boys and came hastily toward them.
“I want some messages sent and taken,” he said, in his usual abrupt way, though there was none of the sharpness in his voice that had usually been in evidence when he spoke to them. “I wonder if you could do this for me,” and his eyes rested inquiringly upon Bob.
“I’ll do my best, Mr. Salper,” replied the latter, and the whole group went into the wireless room.
“I suppose you have permission to use this plant?” came from Joe.
“Oh, yes. If it hadn’t been for that I couldn’t have used it as I did those other times,” answered the broker.
Bob seated himself at the sending key and, following the financier’s directions, got in touch with the Wall Street house that had figured in the previous communications.
For an hour or more there was an interchange of messages that were mostly nonunderstandable to Bob and his friends who listened with the keenest interest. There was talk of stocks and bonds and of consolidations and controls and proxies and a host of other things that bore on financial deals.
At the beginning, Mr. Salper sat with furrowed brows and an air of intense concentration. But as the answers came in to his various inquiries, his brow gradually cleared and he relaxed somewhat in his chair.
Finally there came an answer that stirred him mightily. He jumped to his feet and slapped his thigh.
“I’ve got him!” he cried jubilantly. “By Jove, I’ve got him!”
Just whom Mr. Salper had got the radio boys could not tell with certainty, but they had a shrewd suspicion that Mohun was the hapless individual.
The financier walked happily and springily about the office, chuckling to himself, and Jimmy declared afterward that if they had not been there he would have danced a jig.
At last, when he had given sufficient vent to his elation, Mr. Salper turned to Bob.
“I’m sure I can’t tell you how I thank you,” he declared, with a cordiality and heartiness that they had never yet seen in him. “This matter was one of the most important that has come to me in the whole course of my life. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were involved in it, and I’d surely have lost out if I hadn’t had your services in this extremity. And now I’m going to prove my gratitude. A check—”
“No, thank you, Mr. Salper,” interrupted Bob hastily. “We don’t want money for the service we’ve been to you. It’s been exciting and interesting work for us, and I, at least, have been more than paid in the experience I’ve got through sending.”
“Well then I’m going to get you the finest radio set that money can buy,” persisted Mr. Salper.
“Not even that, thank you,” returned Bob, smiling. “It’s awfully good of you, and we appreciate it, but we’ve learned more of radio by building our own sets than we possibly could have done in any other way. If you want to send a check to the Red Cross or some other society of the kind, it would suit us better than anything else.”
“You’re a stubborn young rascal,” said Mr. Salper, with a smile, “and I suppose I’ll have to let you have your way. But just bear in mind that you boys have a friend in me for life, and if I can ever be of service to any of you in business or anything else, let me know and I’ll be only too glad to do it.”
He bade them good-by and went off briskly toward his bungalow to tell his family of the news that had lifted such a heavy burden from his brain and heart.
The third day after the episode at the radio station the radio boys had gone further afield than usual and came upon a little shack that had evidently been used by workmen as a place for storing their tools. It was little more than a shed, and the boys, bestowing on it only a casual glance, had come nearly abreast of it when Bob, who was slightly in advance, heard a voice that he recognized as that of Buck Looker.
He stopped dead in his tracks, and his companions did the same as he held up his hand in warning.
“We certainly did put it over on those boobs all right,” Buck was saying, and the remark was followed by laughs of satisfaction.
“Yes, but we’re not yet out of the woods,” came the voice of Carl Lutz, with a touch of uneasiness in the tone. “Suppose when they put us on the stand to testify that we found Bob Layton and the other fellows in the cottage the evening before it burned, their lawyer asks us if we were in it too?”
“Well, let them ask,” replied Buck. “All we’ll have to do is to deny it. We know they were in it. They don’t know we were in it. Who knows that we slipped in later and sat there until nearly midnight smoking cigarettes?”
With a bound Bob was at the door of the shack.
“I know it!” he cried. “I didn’t know it till just this minute, but now I know it by your own confession.”
“We all heard it,” echoed Joe, as he, with Herb and Jimmy, followed Bob into the shack.
Consternation and conscious guilt was written on every one of the three faces.
Buck was the first of the cronies to recover some measure of self-possession.
“Think you’ve put something over, don’t you?” he sneered. “Well, you’ve got another think coming to you. This won’t do you a bit of good in court. I’ll simply swear that I didn’t say anything of the kind and that you’ve made up the story out of whole cloth. It’ll be simply my word against yours, and you’d be interested witnesses trying to help your fathers out by cooking up this story. So what are you going to do about it?”
“I’ll show you what we’re going to do about it!” cried Joe, starting forward.
But Bob stopped him.
“Wait a minute, Joe,” he said. Then he turned to Buck. “Do you mean to say,” he demanded, “that you’d take a solemn oath in court to tell the truth, and then go on the stand and swear to a downright lie?”
The contempt in his tone stung Buck into fury.
“You can put it any way you like,” he shouted. “I’m simply not going to let you get the best of me. Who cares for the old confession as you call it? You can have as many of those as you like and it won’t do you any good. Here’s another one now for good measure. We were in the house late that night. We were smoking cigarettes. Probably that’s what caused the fire to break out later. I tell you these things just because it won’t do you any good. In court I’ll deny that I ever said them. You’ll say I did. But the court will know that you have as much interest in lying as I have, and it’ll just be a standoff. You’d have to have a disinterested witness, and that you haven’t got.”
“Oh, yes, they have,” came a voice from the doorway, and Mr. Salper stepped into the shack.
An exclamation of delight broke from the lips of the radio boys, while Buck and his cronies slunk back in terror and confusion.
“I was out taking a stroll,” explained Mr. Salper, “and as I heard loud voices coming from the shack I stepped up to see what was the matter. I was just in time to hear the full confession of this estimable young man”—here he turned a withering glance on Buck—“and while I’m here, I guess I’ll take it down.”
He drew from his pocket a notebook and a fountain pen and wrote rapidly, while Buck and his companions looked at each other like so many trapped animals.
In a few minutes Mr. Salper had finished. Then he read in a clear voice just what he had written. It was a complete confession similar to that which Buck had made, with date and place affixed. He handed this over to Buck with the fountain pen, with a crisp demand that he sign it.
Buck hesitated as long as he dared, but with those keen eyes used to command fixed upon him from beneath Mr. Salper’s beetling brows, he finally signed his name, and Lutz and Mooney shamefacedly followed suit.
“I guess that will settle the law case,” Mr. Salper remarked, with a smile, as he handed the precious document to Bob, who folded it carefully and put it in his breast pocket. “Now perhaps we would better go and leave these worthy young gentlemen to their meditations. I don’t think they’ll be especially pleasant ones.”
The radio boys left the shack, followed by the black looks of the discomfited conspirators.
“You certainly came along in the nick of time, Mr. Salper,” said Bob. “We’re very grateful to you.”
“I’m glad if I’ve been able to be of service to you,” replied Mr. Salper. “It’s only paying back in small measure what you’ve done for me. The bulk of the obligation is still on my side.”
It was a happy group of radio boys that returned to the Mountain Rest Hotel that afternoon.
“Adventures have surely crowded in on us lately,” remarked Bob.
“More than they ever will again,” prophesied Joe.
But that he had not foretold the future correctly will be seen by those who read the following volume of this series, entitled: “The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice; Or, Solving a Wireless Mystery.”
That very night they sent the news of the confession to Dr. Atwood with the request that he would communicate the tidings to the fathers of the rest of the boys. The lawsuit, of course, was dropped at once, and Buck and his cronies slunk home in disgrace.
“Radio is lots of work, but it’s also lots of fun,” remarked Joe that night, as they sat late reviewing the events of the day.
“Radio,” repeated Bob. “It’s more than fun. It’s excitement. It’s romance. It’s adventure. It’s life!”
THE END
This Isn’t All!
Would you like to know what became of the good friends you have made in this book?
Would you like to read other stories continuing their adventures and experiences, or other books quite as entertaining by the same author?
On thereverse sideof the wrapper which comes with this book, you will find a wonderful list of stories which you can buy at the same store where you got this book.
Don’t throw away the Wrapper
Use it as a handy catalog of the books you want some day to have. But in case you do mislay it, write to the Publishers for a complete catalog.
THE RADIO BOYS SERIES
(Trademark Registered)
By ALLEN CHAPMAN
Author of the “Railroad Series,” Etc.
Individual Colored Wrappers. Illustrated.
Every Volume Complete in Itself.
A new series for boys giving full details of radio work, both in sending and receiving—telling how small and large amateur sets can be made and operated, and how some boys got a lot of fun and adventure out of what they did. Each volume from first to last is so thoroughly fascinating, so strictly up-to-date and accurate, we feel sure all lads will peruse them with great delight.