CHAPTER V.
CHESTER CHADWICK—INVENTOR.
As readers of the preceding volumes of this series, know, Jack Chadwick and Tom Jesson, his cousin, had won the titles of Boy Inventors through their ingenuity and mechanical genius. Jack's father, Chester Chadwick, was an inventor of note, and unlike the majority of inventors, he had turned his devices to such good account that he had accumulated a substantial fortune and was able to maintain a fine estate, already referred to as High Towers where, with splendidly equipped workshops and a miniature lake, he could experiment and work out his ideas.
In the first book of this series it was related how Tom Jesson, Jack's cousin, came to make his home at High Towers. Tom's father, an explorer of international fame, had departed on an expedition to Yucatan and had not been heard from since that time. This volume, which was called the Boy Inventors' Wireless Triumph, told of the boys' exploits in the radio-telegraphic field and the uses to which they were able to turn them. In a flying machine, the invention of Mr. Chadwick, they discovered Tom's father, under remarkable circumstances, a prisoner of a tribe of savages, and also found a fortune in precious stones.
In the succeeding story of their adventures, the boys helped an inventor in trouble. The Boy Inventors' Vanishing Gun, as this volume was entitled, set forth in a graphic way the triumph of the boys over the machinations of a gang of rascals intent on stealing the plans of the wonderful implement of warfare which they had helped bring to successful completion.
We next encountered the lads in the Boy Inventors' Diving Torpedo Boat. Here they were placed in a new environment on the surface and in the depths of the ocean. The way in which the wonderful diving craft aided Uncle Sam in a crisis with enemies of the United States was told, and their ingenuity and bravery played no small part in the affair.
The Boy Inventors' Flying Ship was devoted to a detailed narrative of the boys' long and unexpected cruise to the unexplored regions of the Upper Amazon. The boys were shipwrecked and cast away without an apparent hope of rescue on a yacht belonging to a German scientist, the crew of which had mutinied. The boys' capture by a strange tribe and subsequent escape in their Flying Ship formed thrilling portions of this story, while Dick Donovan's researches in natural history provided the boys with a lot of fun.
The volume immediately preceding this showed the boys coming to the rescue of a poor lad, a waif and orphan, who yet had a fortune in the plans and specifications of a new type of craft invented by his dead father who had lacked the capital to develop it. Enemies strove desperately to secure the papers, and even went to the length of forging a will for the purpose, but partly through the agency of an odd German lad, Heiney Pumpernickel Dill, their schemes were frustrated and the invention was developed and set upon a working basis. This book was called the Boy Inventors' Hydroaëroplane, and dealt with some astonishing adventures and perils all of which the boys encountered with plucky spirits and resourceful minds.
For some weeks preceding the opening of the present book relating of the Boy Inventors, Mr. Chadwick had been closeted in his own private laboratory. The boys had seen him only at rare intervals, and then he had appeared abstracted and preoccupied. This, the boys knew, was a sure sign that he was at work on a new idea.
Sometimes the lights burned in his laboratory far into the night and in the morning he would appear at breakfast pale and silent. The boys had indulged in much speculation as to what the new invention could be, but had arrived at no satisfactory conclusion when, two days after their experience with the eccentric professor, Mr. Chadwick summoned them to his private workshop. The boys, who had been at work on the Wondership, the flying automobile with which they had met such surprising adventures in Brazil, obeyed the summons with alacrity. It was delivered to them by Jupe, the negro factotum of the place.
"Massa Chadwick send me on de bustelbolorium," explained Jupe, who had a vocabulary that was all his own, "for yo' alls to come right away by his laburnumtory."
"All right, Jupe, we'll be right over," said Jack, "just as soon as we've got some of this grease off our hands."
The boys' workshop was equipped with a washbasin and they soon made themselves presentable. Then they hurried to Mr. Chadwick's workshop. They found him standing before a roughly-built table on which were ranged some odd-looking bits of apparatus.
There was a gasoline motor in one corner, geared to a generator—or what appeared to be one—from which feed wires led to a square metal box on the table. Attached to this metal box was a sort of horn-shaped mouthpiece something like the transmitter of a telephone. Hanging from its side was what looked like an enlarged telephone receiver. Jack regarded his father questioningly.
"You sent for us, dad?"
"Yes, Jack," was the reply. "I'm in a quandary. Have you any idea what this apparatus is?"
Both boys shook their heads.
"Looks like some kind of a telephone," ventured Tom.
"It is a telephone," replied Mr. Chadwick.
"But—but—where are the wires?" asked Jack, glancing about him, "or haven't you connected it up yet?"
"It's connected up as much as it will ever be," said Mr. Chadwick with a smile. "Can't you guess what it is?"
"I've got it," cried Jack suddenly. "It's a wireless telephone."
"That's right," admitted his father, and, in response to a flood of questions from the boys, he told them how he had been working day and night to bring the device to perfection.
"Now," he said, as he concluded, "I want you boys to go down to that shed that was put up last week at the northwest corner of the orchard."
"The one that was put up to store gasoline?" asked Tom.
"I said it was for that purpose in order to avoid questions till I had my work completed," said Mr. Chadwick with a smile. "Here is the key to it. Inside you will find an apparatus similar to this one. Start the dynamo and then stand in front of the transmitter and place the receiver to your ear. If you don't hear anything at once use the inductor to tune your aërial earth circuit to the transmitted current from my end just exactly as you would tune up a wireless telegraph instrument to catch certain wave lengths from another instrument"
"Then the principle of the radio telephone is the same as that of the wireless telephone?" asked Tom.
"I'll explain that to you later in as plain language as I can," said the inventor, "but now I am anxious to see how this instrument will transmit sound."
The boys were excited. Anything novel in the way of science attracted their bright, active minds as an electromagnet attracts steel. The idea of a wireless telephone, of the possibility of transmitting actual speech through space, just as the dots and dashes of the wireless telegraph are sped through the ether, quickened their inventive faculties to the highest pitch. Both felt a glow of pride that they had been selected, even before their father's scientific friends, to make the first test of this wonderful new invention.
They hurried across the broad lawn that intervened between the workshops and the orchard where the newly erected shed stood, and which, it had been given out, was to serve for the storage of gasoline. Unlocking the door, they found inside an apparatus resembling in almost every detail the one in Mr. Chadwick's workshop.
Jack's hands fairly trembled as he started up the motor and the generator began to buzz. With shining eyes and throbbing pulses he placed the receiver to his ear as his father had directed. But the next moment a flood of disappointment swept through him.
"Well?" demanded Tom, himself a tiptoe with expectation.
"Nothing doing," replied Jack, shaking his head. "I guess the thing isn't at a practical stage yet."
"Wait a minute, give it a chance," urged Tom. "By the way, how about that tuning device, have you tried that yet?"
"No, good gracious, my head must be turning into solid ivory from the neck up. I guess that's just what the trouble is."
Jack began carefully sliding a small block connected to the instruments up and down the coiled wire which formed the tuning apparatus, and brought the sending and receiving ends into harmony just as if they had been two musical instruments. When the right electric "chord" was struck he should be able to hear, just as in wireless he would be able to catch the message of an instrument whose wave lengths were attuned to his.
Suddenly Tom saw his chum and cousin give a start and then a shout. Over the space between the workshop and the small shed a human voice had been borne on electric waves. Sharp and clear as though he had been listening to a "wire" 'phone, Jack caught and recognized his father's voice:
"Hul-lo!"