Black Treasure / Sandy Steele Adventures #1

SANDY STEELE ADVENTURES
Black Treasure Danger at Mormon Crossing Stormy Voyage Fire at Red Lake Secret Mission to Alaska Troubled Waters
BY ROGER BARLOW
SIMON AND SCHUSTER New York, 1959
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED INCLUDING THE RIGHT OF REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART IN ANY FORM COPYRIGHT © 1959 BY SIMON AND SCHUSTER, INC. PUBLISHED BY SIMON AND SCHUSTER, INC. ROCKEFELLER CENTER, 630 FIFTH AVENUE NEW YORK 20, N. Y.
FIRST PRINTING
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 59-13882 MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY H. WOLFF BOOK MFG. CO., INC., NEW YORK.
High jinks were in order as the Regional Science Fair drew to a close in the big auditorium at Poplar City, California. A board of judges had selected prize-winning exhibits entered by high-school students from Valley View, Poplar City and other nearby communities. Now the winners were blowing off steam while teachers who had supervised the fair sat in quiet corners and fanned themselves wearily.
“Step right up, ladies and gentlemen,” Pepper March whooped like a circus barker as he strutted in front of his First Prize winner, a glittering maze of electronic equipment. “Broadcast your voice over my beam of light. The very newest thing in science. Built through the co-operation of Valley View’s own Cavanaugh Laboratories. Step right up.... Yes, miss?” A girl had approached the exhibit, wide-eyed. “Please speak into this microphone.”
“What do I say?” As she spoke, a quivering pencil of light leaped from a black box in the booth and her words thundered from a loudspeaker in the balcony.
“Oh, recite ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb,’” suggested the big blond boy, and grinned.
“‘Mary,’” boomed the girl’s voice from the rear of the hall as Pepper twiddled a mirror that deflected the light beam to a second loud-speaker, “‘had a little lamb.’” (Those words seemed to come out of the floor.) “‘Its fleece was white as snow.’” (The last phrase blared from a chandelier.)