“Well, go on and call up Fleming,” said Frank. “Tell him to come over here.”
“He’s on the way now,” Henry announced when he returned to the room. “Are you fellows going to let him in on the bootlegger stuff?”
“Better not,” advised Tom. “If he’s heard the fellow talking we can tell him we’re just anxious to locate him. We can make a mystery out of not hearing the person that was talking back, you know.”
“It’s a mystery all right enough,” put in Frank. “If that other chap can hear him, why can’t we? There’s something mighty queer about it.”
“Search me,” replied Tom laconically. “Maybe he talks on a different wave length.”
“I never thought of that,” admitted Frank. “Say, next time they’re talking one of us will listen while the other tunes to try and pick up the other man.”
“And perhaps he’s in a different direction,” suggested Henry. “If he is of course we wouldn’t hear him with our loops pointed towards this fellow.”
“Of course!” agreed Tom. “We have been boobs. Just as like as not the one we didn’t hear is over to the west or the north and we were all listening to the southeast. Say, you’ve got sense, old man. Next time we hear this chap we’ll nab the other one, I bet. Hello! There’s the bell.”
Henry hurried from the room and returned presently, accompanied by another boy whom he introduced as Jim Fleming. Jim was undersized and round-shouldered with damp, reddish hair and big blue eyes behind horn-rimmed glasses. He had a most disconcerting manner of staring at one and constantly blinking and gulping—like a dying fish Frank declared later—and his hands and wrists
seemed far too long for his sleeves. He was such a queer, gawky-looking chap that the boys could scarcely resist laughing, but before they had talked with him five minutes they had taken a great fancy to him and found he knew a lot about radio.