MARVELS OF WIRELESS
“That’s fighting talk,” blustered Buck, as he made a pretense of getting ready to throw off his coat.
“That’s precisely what I want it to be,” declared Joe, as he tore off his coat and threw it to the ground.
By this time most of the boys in the school yard had sensed the tenseness of the situation and had gathered around Joe and Buck, forming a ring many lines deep.
“A fight!” was the cry.
“Go in, Joe!”
“Soak him, Buck!”
Before Joe’s determined attitude and flashing eyes, Buck wavered. He fingered his coat uncertainly and glanced toward the school windows.
“There’s one of the teachers looking out,” he declared. “And it’s against the rules to fight on the school grounds. If it wasn’t for that I’d beat you up.”
There was a general snicker from the boys at Buck Looker’s sudden regard for the rules of the school.
“Any other place you can think of where you’d like to beat me up?” said Joe sarcastically. “How about this afternoon after school down by the river?”
“I——I’ve got to go out of town this afternoon,” Buck stammered. “But don’t you worry. I’ll give you all the fight you’re looking for the first chance I get.”
Murmurs of derision arose from the crowd, and the flush on the bully’s sour face grew much deeper.
“You’re just a yellow dog, Buck!” exclaimed Joe, in disgust. “Have I got to pull your nose to make you stand up to me?”
He advanced toward him, and Buck retreated. What would have happened next will never be known, for just at that moment one of the teachers emerged from the school and came toward the ring. Hostilities at the moment were out of the question, and the boys began to scatter. Buck heaved a sigh of evident relief, and now that he felt himself safe, all his old bluster came back to him.
“It’s mighty lucky for you that Bixby came out just then,” he declared. “I was just getting ready to thrash you within an inch of your life.”
Joe laughed sarcastically.
“The trouble with you, Buck, is that you spend so much time getting ready that you never have any time for real fighting,” he remarked. “It took you an awfully long time to get your coat unbuttoned.”
“They laugh best who laugh last,” growled Buck. “And don’t forget that you fellows have got to pay for that glass you broke.”
“You’ve got another guess coming,” replied Joe. “You or one of your gang broke that glass and we can prove it.”
“I wasn’t downtown that night at all,” said Buck glibly.
“Don’t add any more lies to your score,” said Joe scornfully. “We’ve got you! You and your gang are the only fellows in town who would put stones in snowballs, anyway.”
“If that’s all the evidence you’ve got, it wouldn’t go far in a court of law,” sneered Buck. “Any judge would see that you were trying to back out of it by putting it up to somebody else.”
“Perhaps you don’t know that Mr. Talley bumped into you while you were running away,” remarked Joe.
This shot told, for Buck had banked on the darkness and had forgotten all about his encounter with Mr. Talley. He had been nursing the comfortable assurance that all he had to do was to deny. Now his house of cards had come tumbling about his ears. Mr. Talley was a respected citizen, and his word would be accepted by everybody.
Joe saw the effect of his remark and smiled drily.
“Want to revise that statement of yours that you weren’t downtown at all last night?” he asked, with affected politeness.
“He—he was mistaken,” stammered Buck weakly, as he walked away, followed by his discomfited cronies.
“I guess that will hold him for a while,” chuckled Jimmy, as the radio boys watched his retreating figure.
Two or three days passed without special developments. The broken pane of glass had been restored and the parents of the boys had been formally notified by the insurance company that they would be held responsible jointly for the damages. A similar notice had been sent to the fathers of Buck and his mates.
Mr. Looker replied, denying that his son was at all implicated in the matter and refusing to pay. Mr. Layton admitted that his son had been throwing snowballs in front of the store on the night in question, but he stated that he had not thrown the ball with a stone in it that broke the window. He added that any further communication regarding the matter could be sent to his lawyer.
Of the others involved, some had taken similar positions and others had ignored the matter altogether, leaving it to the insurance company to make the next move. And there for the time the matter rested.
The radio boys had missed Larry’s performance on the night that he had opened with his new repertoire, but they were bound not to be cheated of the second, which took place only a few nights later.
They crowded eagerly about the radio set when their friend’s turn was announced, and listened with a breathless interest, that was intensified by their warm personal regard for the performer, to the rendition of the cries of various animals with which Larry regaled them.
The imitations were so lifelike that the boys might well have imagined they were in a zoölogical garden. Lions, tigers, bears, elephants, snakes, moose, and other specimens of the animal and the reptile tribes were imitated with a fidelity that was amazing. In addition, the renditions were interspersed with droll and lively comments by Larry that added immensely to the humor of the performance. When at last it was over, the boys broke out into enthusiastic hand-clapping that would have warmed Larry’s heart, had he been able to hear it.
“The old boy is all there!” chortled Bob enthusiastically.
“He’s a wonder!” ejaculated Joe. “No question there of a square peg in a round hole. He’s found exactly the work in life he’s specially fitted for.”
“And think of the audience he has,” put in Jimmy. “At this very minute there are probably hundreds of thousands of people who have been tickled to death at his performance. Just suppose those people all clapped their hands at once just as we have done and we could hear it. Why, it would be like a young earthquake.”
At this moment the doorbell rang, and Dr. Dale was announced. He spent a few minutes with Mr. and Mrs. Layton, and then came up to have a little chat with the boys. This was one thing he never overlooked. His interest in and sympathy with the young were unbounded, and accounted largely for the influence that he exerted in the community.
The radio boys greeted the minister warmly and gladly made room for him around the table. His coming was never felt by them to be an interruption. They regarded him almost as one of themselves. Apart, too, from the thorough liking they had for him as a man, they were exceedingly grateful to him for the help he had been to them in radio matters. He was their mentor, guide and friend.
“I knew I’d find you busy with the radio,” he said, with a genial smile.
“We can’t be torn away from it,” replied Bob. “We think it’s just the greatest thing that ever happened. Just now we’ve been listening to Larry Bartlett give his imitations of animals. You remember Larry?”
“I certainly do,” replied Dr. Dale. “And I remember how you boys helped him get his present position. It was one of the best things you ever did. He’s certainly a finished artist. I heard him on his opening night, and I’ve laughed thinking of it many times since. He’s a most amusing entertainer.”
It was the first opportunity the boys had had to tell the doctor of the night when Bob found that he was a human aerial, and he listened to the many details of the experiment with absorbed interest.
“It’s something new to me,” he said. “You boys have reason to be gratified at having had a novel experience. That’s the beauty of radio. Something new is always cropping up. Many of the other sciences have been more or less fully explored, and while none of them will ever be exhausted, their limits have been to some extent indicated. But in radio we’re standing just on the threshold of a science whose infinite possibilities have not even been guessed. One discovery crowds so closely on the heels of another that we have all we can do to keep track of them.
“I’ve just got back from a little trip up in New York State,” he went on, as he settled himself more comfortably in his chair, “and I stopped off at Schenectady to look over the big radio station there. By great good luck, Marconi happened to be there on the same day——”
“Marconi!” breathed Bob. “The father of wireless!”
“Yes,” smiled Dr. Dale. “Or if you want to put it in another way, the Christopher Columbus who discovered the New World of radio. I counted it a special privilege to get a glimpse of him. But what attracted my special attention in the little while I could spend there was a small tube about eighteen inches long and two inches in diameter which many radio experts think will completely revolutionize long distance radio communication.”
“You mean the Langmuir tube,” said Joe. “I was reading of it the other day, and it seems to be a dandy.”
“It’s a wonderful thing,” replied the doctor. “Likely enough it will take the place of the great transatlantic plants which require so much room and such enormous machinery. It’s practically noiseless. Direct current is sent into the wire through a complicated wire system and generates a high frequency current of tremendous power. I saw it working when it was connected with an apparatus carrying about fifteen thousand volts of electricity in a direct current. A small blue flame shot through the tube with scarcely a particle of noise. The broken impulse from the electrical generators behind the tube was sent through the tube to be flung off from the antenna into space in the dots and dashes of the international code. That little tube was not much bigger than a stick of dynamite, but was infinitely more powerful. I was so fascinated by it and all that it meant that it was hard work to tear myself away from it. It marks a great step forward in the field of radio.”
“It must have been wonderfully interesting,” remarked Bob. “And yet I suppose that in a year or two something new will be invented that will put even that out of date.”
“It’s practically certain that there will be,” assented the doctor. “The miracles of to-day become the commonplaces of to-morrow. That fifty-kilowatt tube that develops twelve horsepower within its narrow walls of glass, wonderful as it is, is bound to be superseded by something better, and the inventor himself would be the first one to admit it. Some of the finest scientific brains in the country are working on the problem, and he would be a bold prophet and probably a false prophet that would set any bounds to its possibilities.
“Radio is yet in its infancy,” the doctor concluded, as he rose to go. “But one thing is certain. In the lifetime of those who witnessed its birth it will become a giant—but a benevolent giant who, instead of destroying will re-create our civilization.”