"All right, here it is," said Mr. Plummer. "And I suppose the next thing we know you'll be breaking your neck falling off the roof while you're trying to put up aerials, or whatever it is they call the contraptions."

"Leave that to me," said Jimmy. "And I'll bet you'll get lots of fun out of this too, Dad, when we get it going."

"Well, maybe so," said his father. "But I don't take much stock in the whole business. Some wonderful things happen these days, though, and you may be able to change my mind."

"I'm sure I will," said Jimmy, with conviction. "And if you had heard what I did at Doctor Dale's house, I'll bet you'd want a radio outfit as much as I do."

"Well, go ahead and see what you can do, Son. If you can really get the thing working, so much the better."

The next day Jimmy lost no time in hunting up his friends and telling them of his good fortune. He found that the others had not been far behind him in procuring the necessary cash. That afternoon they all descended on the hardware store, whose proprietor had laid in a stock of the materials that would be likely to be needed in the construction of simple radio outfits. The hardware merchant was glad to see them, but somewhat surprised also.

"Gosh!" he exclaimed, when he learned what the boys had come for.

"When that salesman from New York talked me into stocking up with all that stuff, I never thought I'd get a sale for it in the next ten years. And now here's all you youngsters coming in here after it with money in your fists."

"Yes, and you'd better lay in a whole lot more of it, Dave," said Bob Layton. "It won't be long before everybody in this town will be wanting a wireless radio outfit."

"Well, I guess I've got enough in the store now to start you fellows on your way," said Dave Sloc.u.m, the proprietor. "Now, what all do you need?"

There followed a time of much consultation and anxious questioning before all the enthusiastic young experimenters were satisfied that they were getting the most useful things their limited amount of capital would buy. Dave Sloc.u.m sold more feet of copper wire in that one afternoon than he had in the previous five years, not to mention insulators, resistance wire, detectors, head sets, and all the other paraphernalia necessary to the beginner. At last all the various purchases were tied into neat bundles, and the excited boys swarmed out into the street.

"Let's go to my house and get started right away," proposed Bob.

"It will be quite a job to get the aerial strung, and the sooner we do it the better it will suit me."

The others were of the same mind, and they made the distance to the Layton home "on the jump" with Jimmy puffing valiantly in the rear in a desperate endeavor to keep up with his more active comrades.

"Gee!" he exclaimed, staggering up the steps to the cool veranda, "you fellows must think I'm a candidate for Marathon runner at the next Olympic games, the way you hit it up coming here."

"I don't know about the Marathon race," said Joe, "but I do think we could enter you in the long distance pie-eating contest, without having any doubts of your winning away out in front of the field."

"Well, I don't want to boast, but I think I could do myself proud,"

admitted Jimmy. "I don't think I ever really got enough pie to satisfy me yet."

"Never mind about pies now," said Herb. "The question before the house is to get an aerial strung from Bob's house to the barn. What's the best way to get up on the roof, Bob?"

"There's a trap door in the roof not far from the chimney," replied Bob. "I was thinking that we could make a mast and lash it to the chimney. That would give us one secure anchorage for the aerial, and the other we can fasten to the roof of the barn easily enough."

"What are we going to make the mast out of?" inquired Joe.

"There's a nice piece of four by four lumber out in the barn," replied Bob. "I was thinking that we could leave it square at the bottom and plane it off round at the top, so as to look better. I don't see why that won't fill the bill all right."

"Sounds all right," said Herb, and, with Bob leading, all four boys piled out to the big barn back of the house. Bob produced his scantling and hunted up a big plane. Then the boys set to with a will, and in a short time had the rough timber nicely smoothed off, with a slight taper toward the top. Then they screwed in a large hook, bought for the purpose, and after providing themselves with a generous length of rope, repaired to the roof of the house.

As Bob had told them, there was a large scuttle leading from the attic onto the roof, and one after another they clambered out through this. The roof sloped gently at this point, and while they found it necessary to be careful, they had little difficulty in reaching the chimney. Before erecting the mast they fastened one end of the aerial over the hook in it. The aerial consisted of a single, number fourteen, hard drawn copper wire, insulated at each end by an earthenware insulator having two hooks embedded in it. One of these hooks went over the hook in the mast, while the other had the end of the wire attached to it. A similar insulator was provided at the other end of the wire, thus preventing its becoming grounded to the house or barn.

Having hooked up one end of their aerial, the boys erected the mast against the chimney, and lashed it firmly in position with the rope they had brought up.

"There!" exclaimed Bob, when everything was fixed to his liking, "that mast looks as though it might stay put a while. Now let's rig up one on the barn, and we'll have the first part of our job done, anyway."

Clambering back to the scuttle, the boys dropped through to the attic floor and hurried downstairs. It was beginning to get dark, and as they wanted to get the aerial up while daylight lasted, everything went with a rush. Poor Jimmy thought more than once of his father's prophecy that he would lose weight in such strenuous activities, but he was as anxious to receive the first radio signals as any of the others, so he followed the headlong pace the others set without a murmur.

Of course there was no convenient chimney on the barn to act as a support for the mast, but they finally rigged up a mast at one end of the barn, nailing it securely to the siding boards. Then they drew the copper wire through the hook in the insulator until there was just a little slack, cut off the wire, and wound it securely. Then they all gazed with pride at their handiwork, and had the comfortable feeling that comes of work well done.

"Hooray!" shouted Jimmy. "That's what I call a good job, and it didn't take us such a long time, either."

"Yes, but that's only the beginning," said Joe. "I only wish we had more time to-night. I feel as though I'd like to keep right on now and not stop until we're actually receiving."

"You'd be pretty hungry if you tried to do it," remarked Jimmy. "To hear you talk, you'd think making a receiving set was about as hard as taking a run around the block."

"It isn't much harder than for you to take a run around the block,"

laughed Herb. "You were puffing like a steam engine while we were coming up from the store this afternoon. If you don't cut down on the eats, Doughnuts, you'll have to get around in a wheel chair.

You won't even be able to walk, let alone run."

"There you go," complained Jimmy, in an aggrieved tone. "Just because I'm not as skinny as you fellows, you think that I eat more than you do. n.o.body could eat more than you do, Herb, and live to tell the story."

"I don't have to tell any stories along that line," retorted Herb, with a laugh. "My friends do that for me."

"I'll bet they do," grumbled Jimmy. "I get some result out of what I eat, anyway, and that's more than you can say."

"Oh, I can say it, all right, but probably n.o.body would believe me,"

admitted Herb.

"Right you are, Herb, old boy!"

"When you two fellows are all through arguing, maybe we can go up and hook on our leading-in wire to the aerial," said Joe, impatiently.

"We ought to get that much done before dark, anyway."

"I don't know about that, Joe," objected Bob. "It's almost dark now, and we could do it better and easier in the daylight. What do you say if you all come around after supper and we'll dope out a wiring diagram and maybe make a start on building the tuning coil."

Joe reluctantly consented to this, and the four companions separated for the time being, after promising to return to Bob's house that evening. And true to their promise, the boys had all returned to the Layton home by eight o'clock that evening, full of enthusiasm for the task that lay before them. Mr. Layton was mildly interested in the radiophone project, but after a few questions he retired to the library with the evening paper, leaving the boys to their own devices.

CHAPTER IX

WORK AND FUN

"Well, fellows," said Bob, "here we are, all set for a busy evening.

What shall we do first?"

"What I'd suggest," said Jimmy, "would be for everybody to have a little milk chocolate, just to start things off right," and he produced a huge bar of that toothsome confection and pa.s.sed it around, with an earnest invitation to everybody to "help himself."

"It isn't such a bad idea, at that," admitted Bob, breaking off a chunk that made Jimmy gasp. The others imitated his example, and by the time the bar of chocolate got back to Jimmy it had shrunken so greatly that the last named individual gazed at it mournfully.

"Gee whillikins!" he exclaimed, "you fellows certainly do like chocolate, though, don't you?"

"I do, anyway," said Herb, laughing at the rueful expression on his friend's face. "Have you got any more when that's gone, Doughnuts?"