Curlie Carson Listens In.

by Roy J. Snell.

CHAPTER I

A STRANGE MESSAGE

Behind locked and barred doors, surrounded by numberless mysterious-looking instruments, sat Curlie Carson. To the right of him was a narrow window. Through that window, a dizzy depth below, lay the city. Its square, flat roofs formed a mammoth checker-board. Between the squares criss-crossed the narrow black streets. Like a white chalk-line, drawn by a careless child, the river wound its crooked way across this checker-board.

To the left of him was a second narrow window. Through this he caught the dark gleam of the broad waters of Lake Michigan. Here and there across the surface twinkled the lamps of a vessel, or flashed the warning beacon of a lighthouse.

A boy in his late teens was Curlie. Slender, dark, with coal-black eyes, with curls of the same hue clinging tightly to his well-shaped head, he had the strong profile and the smooth tapering fingers that might belong to an artist, a pickpocket or a detective.

An artist Curlie was, an artist in his line--radio. Although still a boy, he was already an operator of the "commercial, extra first-cla.s.s"

type. So far as license and t.i.tle were concerned, he could go no higher.

A pickpocket he was not, but a detective he might be thought to be; a strange type of detective, however, a detective of the air; the kind that sits in a small room hundreds of feet in air and listens; listens to the schemes, the plots, the counterplots of men and to the wild babble of fools. His task was that of aiding in the capture of knaves and the silencing of foolish folks who used the newly-discovered radiophone as their mouthpiece.

"Foolish people," Major Whittaker, Curlie's superior, who had called him to the service, had said, "do quite as much damage to the radio service as crooks. Fools and knaves must alike be punished and your task will be to help catch them."

Wonderful ears had Curlie Carson, perhaps the most wonderful ears in the world. In catching the fine shadings of diminishing sounds which came to him through the radio compa.s.s, there was not a man who could excel him.

So Curlie sat there surrounded by wire-wrapped frames, coils, keys, b.u.t.tons, switches, motors, dry-cells, storage batteries and all the odds and ends which made up the equipment of the most perfect listening-in station in the world.

As he sat there with Joe Marion, his pal, by his side, his brow was wrinkled in thought. He was reviewing the events of the previous night.

At 1:00 a.m., the witching hour when the crooked ones, the mean ones, come creeping forth like ghosts to carry on doubtful conversations by radio, a strange thing had happened. A message had gone crashing out through s.p.a.ce. Wave lengths 1200 meters long sped it on its way. There was power enough behind it to carry it from pole to pole, but all it had said was:

"A slight breeze from the west."

Three times the message had been repeated, then had come silence. There had been no answer though Curlie had listened long for it on 1200 meter wave lengths and five other lengths as well.

Sudden as had come the message, fleet as had been its pa.s.sing, it had not been too fleet for Curlie. He had compa.s.sed its direction; measured its distance. On a map of the city which lay before him he had made a pencil cross and said:

"It came from there." And he was right for, strange as it may seem, an expert such as Curlie can sit in a hidden tower room such as his was and detect the exact location of a station whose message has set his ear drums aquiver.

The location had puzzled him. There was not a station in the city licensed to send 1200 meter wave lengths. The spot he had marked was the location of the city's most magnificent apartment hotel. The hotel possessed a radiophone set. Its antennae, hung high upon the building's roof, were capable of carrying that 1200 meter message with all that power behind it, but the radio equipment of the hotel had no such power.

"Something crooked about that," he had mumbled to himself.

His first impulse had been to call the police. He did not act upon it.

They might blunder. The thing might get out. This law-breaker might escape. Not five people in all the world knew of Curlie's detecting station. He would work out this problem alone.

Now, as he sat thinking of it, he decided to confide this new secret to his pal, Joe Marion.

"Yes," he told himself, "I'll tell him about it at chow."

At this moment his mind was recalled to other matters. New trouble was brewing.

"A slight breeze from the west," his mind went over the message automatically, "and the wind was due east. Don't mean much as it stands, but I suspect means a lot more than it seems to."

Just above Curlie's head there hung a receiver. To the right and left of him were two loud-speakers. Before him ranged three others. Each one of these was tuned to a certain wave length, 200, 350, 500, 600, 1200 meters. Each was modulated down until sounds came to Curlie's delicately tuned ear drums as little more than whispers. A concert was being broadcast on 350. The booming tones of a baritone had been coming in as softly and sweetly as a mother's lullaby. But now Curlie's ear detected interference.

Instantly he was all alert. The receiver was clamped down over his ears, a half dozen switches were sent, snap, snap, snap. There followed a dead silence. Then in a shrill boyish voice, together with the baritone's renewal of his song, there came:

"I want the world to know that I am a wireless operator, op-er-a-a-tor.

Hoop-la! Tra-la!"

Curlie smiled in spite of his vexation. He acted quickly and with precision. His slender fingers guided a coil-wound frame from right to left. Backward and forward it glided, and as it moved the boyish "Hoop-la" rose and fell. Almost instantly it came to a standstill.

"There! That's it!" he breathed.

Then to Joe Marion, "It's a shame about those kids. They won't learn to play the game square. Don't know the rules and don't care. Think we can't catch 'em, I guess."

His hand went out for a telephone.

"Superior 2231," he purred.

"That you, 2231? Just a moment."

He touched a key here, another there. He twisted a k.n.o.b there, then: "That you, Mulligan?" he half whispered. "Good! There's a kid on your beat got a wireless running wild. Yes. Broke in on the concert. Don't be hard on him. No license? Yes, guess that's right. Take away his sending set. Give him another chance? Let him listen in. What's that? Location?

Clarendon Street, near Orton Place; about second door, I'd say. That's all right. Thanks, yourself."

Dropping the receiver on its hook he tossed off his headpiece, snapped at five b.u.t.tons, then settled back in his chair.

"These kids'll be the death of me yet," he grumbled. "Always breaking in, not meaning any harm but doing harm all the same. I don't feel so very sore about them though. It's the fellows that go in for long wave lengths and high power, that break in on 500, 1200 and 1800, that do the real damage. Had a queer case last night. Looks crooked, too." He was silent for a moment then he said reflectively:

"Guess that's about all till midnight. It's after midnight that the queer birds come creeping out. I'm going to tell you about that one last night, over the ham sandwich, dill pickle and coffee. No use to try now--we'd sure get broken in on."

Joe Marion, who had been taken on as an understudy by Curlie, was at the present time working without pay. At times when trouble developed on two different wave lengths at once, he took a hand and helped out. For the most part he merely looked, listened and learned.

His pal he held in the greatest admiration. And who would not? Had he not, when this great big new thing, the radiophone, came leaping right into the world from nowhere, been able to take a hand from the very beginning and become at once a valuable servant of his beloved country?

Had he not at times detected meddlers who were endangering the lives of men upon the high seas? Had he not at one time received the highest of commendations from the great chief of this secret service of the air?

To Joe there was something weirdly fascinating about the whole business.

Here they were, two boys in the tower of the highest building in a great city. Five people knew of their presence. These five were high up in the radio secret service. No message sent out by them could ever be traced back to its source. They did not use the air. That would be dangerous, easily traced. They did not use the telephone alone. That, too, would be dangerous. But when a radiophone had been connected to the telephone wire and tuned to a certain wave length, then they talked and not even the person they talked with would ever know whence came the message.

This was a necessary precaution for, from this very tower, dangerous bands of criminals, gangs of smugglers, and all other types of law-breakers would ultimately be brought to justice. And if these but knew of the presence of this boy in his tower room, some dark night that tower would be rocked by an exploding bomb and the boy in his room would be shaken to earth like a young mud-wasp in his nest.

"I'll tell you," said Curlie, as he rose to answer a tap on the door, "I believe that affair last night was some big thing; but what it was I can't even guess."

He opened the door to let in Coles Masters, his relief, then motioning to Joe he took his cap and left the room. Down the winding stairs which led to the elevator several stories lower down they made their way in silence, at last to enter a cage and be silently dropped to the ground hundreds of feet below.

CHAPTER II

SOMETHING BIG