The Radio Detectives

by A. Hyatt Verrill

So filled with his new idea was Tom, that he fairly rushed to tell Frank when the latter arrived, and for the next ten days the two were ceaselessly

at work, drawing plans and diagrams, making and discarding instruments, purchasing countless rolls of wire and knock-down apparatus, as they strove to put into concrete form the vision in Tom’s brain.

But they found innumerable difficulties to be overcome and were almost discouraged when one evening Rawlins called.

He was such an enthusiastic and interesting man that the boys took a huge liking for him and as soon as Tom told him of his idea he at once fell in with the boys’ plans.

“I do believe it can be done!” he declared, when Tom had shown him the plans and had described his ideas fully. “I don’t know much about radio, but if you are right about the matter there’s no reason I can see why you shouldn’t get it to work. I tell you what, Tom, we’ll fit up a workshop and laboratory down at my father’s dock—it’s down near the foot of 28th St. and we don’t use it except for storage. The old gentleman’s gone out of the wrecking business and has sold all his outfit except the things stored there. It’s a fine place to work and experiment. There are tools and a machine lathe and about ten tons of odds and ends that

may come in handy. My father had his office and workshop there—did all his repairing of pumps, diving suits and tugs there, and never threw anything away. I learned to dive there—my father and grandfather were deep-sea divers, too—and there’s a trapdoor where the divers went down to test their suits and pumps. I made my suits and even my under-sea motion picture outfit there and it’s private and no one will disturb us. The only way we can test out this idea of yours is by actual trial under water. If we do get it, it will be a mighty big thing—greatest improvement in sub-sea work ever. I’ll get the place ready and cleaned up a bit to-morrow. I’m just as crazy as you are to try it out.”

Mr. Henderson also was deeply interested in the boys’ new experiments and declared he believed their ideas might be worked out successfully.

“You’ll run across a lot of unexpected and unforeseen difficulties,” he warned them. “One never knows what new laws and phenomena one may run up against in a thing of this sort. During the war our government and the Allies, and no doubt Germany also, carried on a good many experiments

with under-water radio, but as far as I know they never came to much. Radio had not progressed so far then and there were more important things to be done and not enough men to attend to it. We did use vacuum tubes and amplifiers for detecting submarines, however. By the way, I have a few things that may be of help to you boys and I’ll be glad to let you have them. Among them is a remarkable tuning device of German make and I don’t think it has ever been tried out. You’ll need something that is simple and accurate and easy to control and this may do the trick.”

By the end of a week a snug little laboratory had been set up on Rawlins’ dock and the boys and their diver friend spent every available moment of their time there.