CHAPTER II
The weeks passed during which the boys went their several ways. Day after day of clear weather, not too hot, made the tennis courts all too attractive for Eddie’s peace of mind. Bill went his way to the three Aunts, who petted and pampered him in a fashion that would have utterly spoiled anyone but sweet-tempered Bill.
What Fatty Bascom and Skinny Tweeters did they kept to themselves, partly because no one else was interested and partly because they themselves were too interested to mix with the other boys. Also Fatty felt the hot weather and was kept about home, where he could partake of plenty of cooling drinks. The two were slowly learning the Morse code, and were able to send halting and disconnected messages to each other.
Then came the rain. It rained Monday and Tuesday; it continued on Wednesday, speeded up on Thursday, and seeming to strike its gait on Friday, settled down to a steady drizzle.
Eddie rejoiced at first, and went over to the courts in rubber boots and slicker to gloat over the deepening mud. But by Thursday he pined for Bill, for work, for anything, and his sister Virginia found him hard to live with. When, on Saturday morning, Eddie heard Bill’s loud whistle he upset two chairs and his small brother in a mad attempt to reach the door.
Bill looked well and happy. There was a sort of sleek, prosperous look about him, although he wore the same clothes and necktie that Eddie remembered. It puzzled Eddie. Also Bill treated Virginia almost like an equal and forbore to ask her to run any errands, although she openly hung around.
The sleek look bothered Eddie. Bill was certainly holding something back. Finally Eddie remembered some wood he had to pile in the cellar, and conducted his guest down into a region too damp for the admiring Virginia to follow.
Then he sat down on the edge of a laundry tub.
“Now get it out of your system!” he commanded.
“Get what?” asked Bill innocently.
“Aw, you know what! Whatever it is you are holding back. Come on; I know you have something to tell.”
Bill was unable to resist. “Well,” he said, “reckon you will be mighty well pleased your own self when I tell you. It was like this. Come time for me to come home, my Aunts wanted to make me a present. Something that I could keep to remember my visit with. Usually they get me something but every other time they have selected it to suit themselves and not me at all. But this time they told me I was growing to be a big boy, and they wanted me to have a choice in the matter. Gee, but I was glad, because usually they get me something about five years too young.
“Well, Rowland, I had an awful time trying to decide what to pick out, and by and by I happened to think of that softy, Fat Bascom and his wireless, and I thought what larks you and I could have with an outfit. We could have it so we could talk at any time, and take messages out of the air for miles and miles. The more I thought of it the more I wanted it.”
“Well,” cried Eddie, “don’t waste time telling how you wanted it. What did you do?”
“I told them that there was one thing I wanted awfully, but I hated to tell them because I was afraid they would think it was foolish and besides, it cost a lot of money; at least to get a good one, and they all said, 'What is it?’ real quick, and I hummed and hawed, and said, 'Well, I’m crazy for a wireless outfit,’ and then I stopped because I thought they would think I was an awful grafter but, Rowland, you never can tell about women. They all cried, 'That’s perfectly fine!’ and 'We are so proud of you, my boy!’ and 'Dearie, how did you come to think up anything so sensible?’”
“So they liked it?” inquired Eddie.
“Liked it? Well, I will say they did! And what do you think? They wrote to Frank, and he is to go down town and buy the best outfit they have down there.”
“When is he going?” asked Eddie breathlessly.
“This afternoon,” answered Bill. “He was busy this morning; had to shine his shoes or something. But we are going down right after luncheon.”
“Well, I’m going too. Can’t I go too?” Eddie demanded, standing up and rolling down his sleeves. “Come on upstairs while I dress!”
“I thought you would like to come,” said Bill. “Get fixed and come along to the house for lunch. Gee, it is a pity we live so close to each other. If you lived in the Highlands, now, or out on the River road, or out at West Point, we could have some fun. I tell you what we can do, we can pick up Ernest Beezley at the Aviation Field at Camp Knox. Won’t he be surprised?”
“Aw, Frank will give it away first time they meet,” said Eddie in a disgusted tone. “Frank doesn’t have any sense of the importance of things. But we will get a lot of fun out of it. Wouldn’t it be great if we could overhear some plots against the government or something of the sort, and break them up, and get in all the papers? 'Wonderful detective work done by two of our Louisville boys.’ That sort of thing, you know.”
“It will more likely be 'Arrest of two of our Louisville boys who have been balling things up with their wireless plant,’” said Bill. “All I want out of this thing is some fun.”
“Of course!” said Eddie hastily. “That’s all. Well, let’s get out of this.” He went up the stairs two steps at a time, brushed his hair, hastily gave his countenance what he called a wash, threw his slicker over his shoulders, and was ready.
Luncheon at the Wolfes’ was a technical affair. Frank, who knew a lot about a great many things, was asked countless questions about wireless and patiently explained all he knew.
The trip down town was all too long. Frank’s little flivver coughed and sputtered and had as many symptoms as it knew, just to be contrary, Bill declared.
But at last they were there, and a little later they were on their way home with everything needed to install a first-class medium-radius wireless. They had everything.
In the rear of Bill’s house was a shed, so-called. It was a two-story affair that had evidently been built for servants’ quarters. There was a second floor, and there, Frank decided, was the place for their receivers.
The two boys went to cleaning with a will. Eddie, with a weather-eye on the clouds, hoped fervently for more rain as he scrubbed and sloshed water over the floor, while Bill cleaned windows. Frank, promising to help them whenever they were ready, went into the house.
As they worked, an idea suddenly occurred to Bill.
“Say, Eddie,” he said, “wouldn’t this be a dandy room for a club room?”
“I should say yes!” he cried. “Oh, man, what a room! No one to be bothered if we made a noise. Gee! Wish we could have a Wireless Club.”
“Why couldn’t we?” asked Bill. “I could be the president.”
“Presidents are elected,” said Eddie with scorn. “They don’t just elect themselves.”
“That’s all right too,” said Bill, laughing. “But it is my shed and my wireless, and if I wasn’t president some other fellow would have the say-so, and play the dickens with everything perhaps.”
“Well,” said Eddie, “all right; you be president and I will be vice-president.”
“That’s fair enough,” agreed Bill, rubbing away on the window. “But I say we keep it small.”
“Oh, yes; let’s only have five or six fellows in it. That’s the sort of a club to have especially when it is something as unusual as this. Whom will we ask? Shall we have Fat and Skinny? They have a sort of wireless of their own.”
“That’s all right,” said Bill. “That’s dandy! We could use them for practice. I say we have Fat and Skinny, and you and me; that’s four, and Ned Harper is five, and who is nice enough for number six?”
“How about the new fellow down at the corner, in the Cleveland house?” asked Eddie.
“The new folks who bought the Cleveland house?” asked Bill.
“Yes, that’s the one,” said Eddie. “I don’t know him so very well, but he lives right here, and he seems to be a dandy fellow. Plays good tennis and talks like a nice clean boy. His father is blind, I guess. He wears black glasses with little wings-like at the side, so the light won’t get in or so you won’t see his eyes, and he always takes somebody’s arm when he walks around the park. Marion De Lorme is the boy’s name.”
“Marion! That’s a girl’s name,” objected Bill.
“Not when it is spelled with an O,” explained Eddie. “I don’t guess he likes it so very well himself. He asked me to call him Dee.”
“Well, let’s ask him,” said Bill. “Anyhow, let’s see what I think about him.”
“You will like him,” said Eddie with conviction. “Why don’t we get Ernest Beezley to show us how to run the thing? What do we care if he does know about it?”
“Good idea!” said Bill. “Great idea! Let’s go tell Frank.”
They hurried over to the house and told Frank their plan.
“Good plan!” said that young man, nodding. “I thought it was what you would want, so I just telephoned for him. He is on a three days’ leave from camp. His sister is going to be married, or some foolishness like that. He will be along in half an hour or so. What you fellows been doing? You have been long enough to clean a whole house.”
“It was awful dirty,” explained Bill, “and now it is clean as wax. I wish mamma would let us have some of those old chairs up in the garret and a table, so it would look like a real club room.”
“How will these do?” asked Frank, strolling to the foot of the attic stairs.
A pile of furniture was there, and the boys gave a yell of joy. It did not take long, with three pairs of willing hands and feet, to take their club furniture and place it in the now clean and shining room. Then Eddie raced off home, returning after a half hour with a large, worn but not unattractive rug and a couple of pictures. The pictures, it is true, did not seem to have any direct bearing on the club, one being an old woodcut of the Infant Samuel, and the other a brightly colored lithograph of Masonic emblems with a rather accusing eye staring out of the center, but Eddie had found them in the attic, and both were in gold frames and certainly did brighten up the walls.
With a calendar and a large card of the Morse alphabet, the boys felt that the room could not be more complete.
“We will have just one expense, and we will have to make everybody chip in for that,” said Eddie. “We must have shades at the windows. We wouldn’t want any spies to see what we were doing.”
“Better get that spy stuff out of your head, Eddie,” said Frank. “There is no war on hand now, and spying has gone out of business.”
“How about the Bolsheviks and the Reds and all those?” demanded Bill.
“I don’t think they will bother you if there are any left,” said Frank. “Better use your wireless for commercial purposes, or for news items.”
“Well, we will take whatever comes along,” said Eddie.
“That’s the stuff!” said a new voice at the door. It was Ernest. “Take whatever comes. Like a fellow I knew. Heard something he thought was a coon in the brush, and set his hound after it. Said he’d take whatever came along, but he didn’t. He turned and ran; and even then he was sort of sorry he couldn’t run faster. And the dog, my, that dog was perfectly despised for months by everyone who knew him. It’s a queer world! Did you know that your friend, the plump one who eats peanuts, is sitting on the front porch, and the thin one too?”
“How did they come there?” demanded Bill in surprise.
“Oh, I forgot to tell you I telephoned for them when I went home for the rug,” explained Eddie.
Bill went after the two boys and they were as greatly impressed by the club room as anyone could wish.
“I will install your wireless for you if you think you can manage to live until tomorrow,” said Ernest.
“That is simply fine of you,” said Bill heartily. “Perhaps we will be able to wait.”
“It will be a long time,” replied Eddie, “but we can study the code.”
“We don’t need to,” said Fatty Bascom, “but mamma told me to tell you to come down to our house tonight, and she will make us some molasses candy.”
“Does your mother look good in black?” asked Ernest suddenly.
“Black? What sort of black?” asked Fatty.
“Why, black; just black; veil and bonnet, and those things, you know.”
“I dunno,” said Fatty suspiciously. “Never saw her in them.”
“I don’t suppose you will,” said Ernest. “See you tomorrow—some of you, anyway,” he added, looking strangely at Fatty; and followed by Frank, he went away.
“I think he’s nutty,” said Fat, taking a cake of sweet chocolate out of his pocket and breaking it in two. He laid half of it on the table. “Have a piece,” he offered and rapidly ate the remaining half.
Alone with Frank, Ernest’s manner changed.
“Have you seen the noon edition of the paper?” he demanded. “The postal authorities have held up three more packages of bombs, and they think they are being sent either from this city or Cincinnati. The Mayor of Boston, who received the infernal machine yesterday, may possibly live and his wife is out of danger. Nice state of affairs, isn’t it? Do you know what? If I wasn’t under government contract as instructor out there at Knox, I would be a detective. I bet I could run some of these snakes to cover!”
“It is awful, all right,” agreed Frank, “but what did you mean by telling those boys to take whatever came along?”
“I don’t know. Honest, I don’t,” said Ernest, “but I had the queerest feeling when I saw that dinky club room. Something sort of came over me. I don’t know what.”
“Mercy, mercy!” said Frank. “You are getting malaria out there at Knox; that’s what ails you. Come on in. I’ll ask mother for the quinine.”
“All right, let’s have the quinine. I hope it is malaria that ails me, because I feel just as though something was going to happen. I don’t know what.”
“I reckon you don’t,” said Frank, laughing. “Of all the chronic glooms, you are the gloomiest! For goodness’ sake, let the kids fool with their wireless in peace. All they will scoop in will be somebody’s love letter to somebody else. Everything is all right.”
Ernest laughed. “I am silly,” he acknowledged. “Perhaps it was the sad sight of that innocent child Bascom committing slow suicide.”