The Secret Wireless; Or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol

E-text prepared by Al Haines


Henry Harper was sitting in the doorway of the workshop in his father's back yard, where the Camp Brady Wireless Club made their headquarters. He was reading the morning newspaper. Suddenly he sprang to his feet. His face grew black. His free hand clenched.
That's terrible! he exclaimed. Terrible!
He walked across the shop, spread the newspaper on the bench and began to read aloud the big head-lines that had so aroused him.
LEAK IN NAVY DEPARTMENT
Germans Knew of Departure of Transport Fleet First Contingent of Pershing's Men Attacked, by Waiting Submarines
It's terrible, terrible! repeated Henry. Their spies are everywhere. They stop at nothing. Who could have been villain enough to give them the information? It is terrible!
In his agitation Henry began to pace up and down the floor of the shop. His face grew blacker and blacker as he brooded over the story of treachery. Though Henry was not yet eighteen, he was affected far more deeply by the story than most boys of his age would have been. For when the Camp Brady Wireless Club, of which Henry was president, had been practising the previous summer, Henry had been called upon to replace one of Uncle Sam's radio men who was suddenly stricken with appendicitis, and Henry had taken the operator's oath of fidelity to his government. So to him treachery appeared doubly black.
For some moments he paced up and down the shop. Suddenly he stopped short. A new idea had come to him.
How did they get the news to Germany? he asked aloud. Both the cables and the mails are censored—and besides the mails would be too slow. It must have been the wireless. Can there be traitors in the wireless service, too?