The Radio Detectives

by A. Hyatt Verrill

Tom and Frank were as interested in seeing Rawlins go down in his odd suit as he was in their radio work, and the first time he put it on to demonstrate it to the boys they became tremendously excited. Rawlins carefully explained all about it, pointing out its various parts and showing them how the oxygen generator worked.

“You have to be careful about this,” he said, “if a drop of water gets into it, it blazes or flames up and may kill a fellow. That’s the only danger about it. If a man forgets and takes the mouthpiece from his lips to speak without shutting it off and water gets in, he’ll have a red hot flame inside his helmet. It’s easy to get accustomed to it though—comes as natural as breathing, after a bit of practice.”

But even now that it had been explained to them it seemed a most remarkable feat for Rawlins to don the shirtlike suit and helmet and, with only these over his ordinary garments and with no rubber trousers covering his legs, descend the ladder and disappear in the water without lines, pipes or ropes trailing after him. Both Tom and Frank were crazy to go down, but Rawlins refused to permit it until he had made the suits “fool proof” as he put it. Even then, the boys’ parents objected until they had visited the workshop and Rawlins had proved to their satisfaction that the boys were perfectly safe in shallow water when he accompanied them.

“We’ll have to go down to test out the radio,”

argued Tom, “so we might as well learn right away.”

At last the fathers gave in and Tom went down first with Rawlins. For a week afterwards he could think or talk of nothing else and never tired relating his sensations and experiences to his parents and his boy friends, and Frank did the same. But after the first few times the novelty wore off and the boys soon became quite accustomed to going to the bottom of the river. Rawlins, however, never allowed them to stay down more than a few minutes at a time and after the first few descents the boys found little fun in it. They had expected to find a smooth, hard bottom and to see fishes swimming about and to be able to look up and see passing boats overhead. To their surprise, they found they could not walk upright, but leaned far forward and had a peculiar dreamy sensation when they attempted to walk, their feet seeming to half-drag, half-float behind them and that, despite the fact that the bottom of the river was soft and muddy, they did not sink into the bottom to any extent. As Tom put it, it was like trying to hurry in a dream when one’s feet seem

tied to something and one can’t possibly run. Moreover, they found the water dark and so filled with sediment that they could see but a few feet and even near-by objects, such as the spiles and abutments of the dock, the ladder down which they descended and the figure of their companion were scarcely visible a yard distant and took on strange, hazy, indistinct and distorted forms. Indeed, Rawlins always held their hands when they went down, explaining that should they stray a few yards away they might be lost or might be swept off in some current.

But they were glad of the experience and realized that in order to carry on their experiments with any hopes of success they must learn to use the suits, for Rawlins had not yet mastered the details of radio.

In the meantime, however, they worked at the radio devices and at last Tom announced that he had a set which he believed might work.

“It’s only an experimental set,” he explained to Rawlins. “And it won’t stand up long under water, but if the idea’s all right and we get any