IN THE DARK
As the clock in a distant college tower struck the hour of eleven the following night, a flat looking car with a powerful engine stole out into the road that ran by the Forest Preserve. It was the Humming Bird. Joe Marion was at the wheel. Curlie sat beside him.
On the back of the car was a miscellaneous pile of instruments all securely clamped down. Above there hung suspended between two vertical bars a square frame from which there gleamed the copper wires of a coil.
To catch a radiophone on wheels, Curlie had reasoned, one must mount his radio compass on wheels and pursue the offender. How well it would work, he could not even guess, but anything was better than sitting there helpless in the secret tower room listening to this person tearing up the air in a manner both unwise and unlawful.
So here they were, prepared to make the test.
"Of course," Curlie grumbled, "now we've got the trap set, the ghost may decide not to walk on this particular night. That'll be part of our rotten luck."
"Most ghosts, I'm told," chuckled Joe, "prefer to walk when there's someone about, for what's the good of a ghost-walk when there's no one to see. So our radio ghost may show up after all."
Curlie lapsed into silence. He was reviewing the events which led up to this thrilling moment. When the message on 600 came banging to his ears with great power on that first night, he had carefully platted the various locations of the person who had sent the messages. There had been some criss-crosses shown but, in the main, a line drawn through these points had formed an oblong which on the actual surface of the ground must have been some ten miles in length by six in width. One interesting point was that the first and last messages of that night had been sent at points not a quarter of a mile apart.
"Which goes to show," he reasoned, "that this fellow started from a certain point and made his way back to that point, just as a rabbit will do when chased by a hound. And those two points, the start and the finish, are close to the driveway into the million dollar estate. But of course that doesn't prove that the car came from there. Any person could drive to that point, begin operations, race over the square and return to the point."
Coles Masters had platted the points for the second night. A line drawn through these points made a figure quite irregular in form, which was, however, composed of rectangles.
"Which proves," he told himself, "that our friend, the lawless radio fan, drives an auto and not an airplane. An auto follows roads, which for the most part in this section form squares. He passed along two or three sides of these squares and this makes up the figure.
"There's only one thing in common in the two night journeys," he continued. "The start and finish are at almost exactly the same spot, near the entrance of that great estate."
He tried not to allow these facts to cause him to hold undue suspicion against the inhabitants of that mansion, but in this he experienced some difficulty.
"The thing for us to do," he had said to Joe, "is to run out there and back our car into an unfrequented, wooded road running into the forest preserve. We don't dare go too near the original starting place. If we're seen with this load of junk it will give us dead away. Thing is to be ready to move quickly when he lets loose with his message. Ought not to be more than a mile away, I'd say. He's got a powerful car. You can tell that by the fact that he sent a message at this corner, then raced over here, four miles distant, and got another message off in eleven minutes, which is quick action."
They backed into the grass-grown road of the Forest Preserve, then settled down in their places to wait.
The night was dark. There was no moon. Clouds were scurrying overhead. Only the rustle of leaves and the startled tweet-tweet of some bird surprised in his sleep disturbed the utter silence of the woods.
"Ghostly," whispered Joe, then he lapsed into silence.
With his slim legs stretched out before him, Curlie was soon asleep, all but his ears. Joe insisted that those ears never slept.
A half hour, an hour, an hour and a half dragged by. Joe had gone quite to sleep when Curlie suddenly dug him in the ribs and uttered the shrilly whispered warning:
"Hist! There she blows!"
A flashlight was snapped on. Curlie's fingers flew from instrument to instrument. The voice of the mysterious operator could be heard. Now rising, now falling, it filled the woods with echoes, yet the speaker was more than a mile away, as near as the boys could guess.
The words spoken by him were now of no importance. Location was everything.
"Same place," exclaimed Curlie, "exactly the same! You know where! Drive like mad!"
Instantly the car lurched forward. Coming out of the bush on two wheels, she sent a shower of gravel flying as she rushed madly down the road.
Quick as they were, the quarry had been quicker. As they rounded a corner, they caught the red gleam of a tail-light disappearing at the next turn.
"Heck!" said Curlie, then, "Let her out! Show him some speed."
The motor of the Humming Bird sang joyously. Fairly eating up the road, she took the corner with a wide swing. But when they looked down the long stretch of highway there was no red tail-light to be seen.
"Heck!" said Curlie again, "he's reached the next crossroad and turned the corner. Can't tell which way he went. It's a hard, dry gravel roadbed—won't tell a thing. Best we can do is to rattle along up there, then sit it out for another listen-in."
Disappointed but not disheartened, Curlie adjusted his instruments, then sat in breathless expectation.
He did not have long to wait, for again the voice in the loud speaker boomed out into the night.
"Huh," he grumbled a few seconds later, "he's got three miles lead on us. To the right. Quick, give her the gas."
Again they were off. For two miles and a half straight ahead they raced. The Humming Bird quivered like a leaf, instruments jingling in spite of their lashings.
"Make it all the way," said Curlie, as Joe slowed up. "He's not there. Given us the slip again."
Six times this program was gone through with. Not once in all that time did they catch sight of that tail-light.
"Some car he's got!" said Curlie when the farce was ended. "Bet he never even guessed he was being chased. But you wait; we'll get him yet."
When they were once more in the secret tower room Curlie plotted the route of the mysterious operator.
"Only significant thing about that," he commented, when he had finished, "is that he starts and finishes within a quarter of a mile of the same place as on the other two nights."
"And that place—" suggested Joe.
"Is near old J. Anson's driveway."
"Looks mighty suspicious to me," said Joe.
"Does to me, too; but, as I have said before, you can't raid a man's private castle on any such flimsy proof as that. You've got to have the goods.
"Tell you what," he said after a moment's silence, "sometimes our natural ears and eyes are better than all these instruments and wires. I'm going out there to-morrow night alone and on foot."
"Might work," said Joe thoughtfully, "but whatever you do, you must be careful."
"Careful?" said Curlie scornfully. "There are times when a fellow can't afford to be careful. This thing's getting serious." He glanced over a second message from the head office of his bureau. It was couched in no gentle terms. He was told that this intruder must be caught and that at once if he, Curlie Carson, wished to hold his position as chief of the secret tower room station.