The Radio Detectives

by A. Hyatt Verrill

changing into murderous bandits; where formerly a man was knocked down or blackjacked the victims were now shot in cold blood. Murders and homicides were of daily occurrence. Even on crowded thoroughfares within sight of hundreds of passers-by men were killed and the bandits escaped and no one felt that life and property were safe. The police seemed powerless and at a loss. Now and then a bandit was captured. Occasionally one would be shot down, wounded or killed by an officer or by some prospective victim, but still the crimes continued unabated. Indeed, the more the police strove to check the bandits the more they appeared to thrive and increase and the bolder they became. Lawlessness was rampant and, while the public wondered, criticized, clamored for protection, and countless theories were put forth, those in the inner circle, the secret agents of the government and the trusted ones, knew that, back of it all, the underlying cause and the root of the evil was the red propaganda which they were powerless to check.

Many were the secret meetings, the closely guarded conferences held between the untiring officers

detailed to run the menace to earth, to stamp the venomous Bolshevist serpent underfoot, to bring the country to its safe and sane law-abiding state of the past. And prominent in all such closely guarded, mysterious councils were Mr. Pauling and Mr. Henderson.

“There is some one mind directing it all, in my opinion,” declared Mr. Pauling. “Some arch criminal—a Bolshevist emissary—some man with a tremendous brain, marvelous executive ability, immense personal magnetism, but whose mind, heart and soul are warped and twisted. One who is such a criminal as the world has fortunately never known before. If we can lay our hands on him the rest will be easy. Without a leader, without a directive brain, these common criminals will be lost. They are arrant cowards, mere tools and yet, by some almost superhuman power, are controlled, directed, moved like pawns on a chessboard, by an unseen, mysterious being who so far has completely baffled us.”

“I agree with you perfectly,” said Mr. Henderson. “I believe the same man, the same arch fiend, is back of the rum-running; that this is

merely a tryout, a test, to see if we can detect him and that through it all is a deep-laid, dastardly plot to inflame the people and at the same time enrich himself. To my mind, it savors of some one far greater in brain power, in intrigue and in ability than those unshaven, misguided Russians. It looks far more as if it were German work—perhaps some high officer of the Prussian army or navy—who, afraid of his own republican countrymen and filled with a fiendish desire for revenge, is devoting himself to the destruction of law and order in the United States.”

“That is very plausible as a theory,” remarked another man, “but it does not get us anywhere. If this is so, where does this master mind stay? Where are his headquarters? Surely he must have underlings,—lieutenants and trusted emissaries and some place, some headquarters, from which his nefarious schemes are sent forth. Nothing comes in by mail or by passengers we know. Every alien who enters is known. Not a word that tends to bear out your theories had been wrung from the men captured even though they were on the verge of death or were about to go to the

electric chair. No, I do not agree with you. It’s merely the aftermath of the war. Men were taught to handle firearms and to kill their fellow men. They were fed up, encouraged and lived with excitement and constant peril. The war ended; they were out of work, they pined for the thrill of danger and their viewpoint of life, of property and of right and wrong was distorted. Banditry offered an easy way of securing funds; it filled their desire for excitement; it satisfied their grudge against society and their country and, like all crimes which succeed, it became contagious and got a grip on more and more men. It’s all the logical outcome of the war and in my opinion the red propaganda has nothing whatever to do with it.”

Mr. Henderson smiled. “Perhaps I may be able to change your views, Selwin,” he remarked. “I wanted to know your ideas before I came out with it. As you all know, I was on special work during the war—detailed to decode all suspicious messages that came in by radio or cable and to use my vivid imagination to try to find hidden meanings in apparently innocent messages. You all know the result, and there is no need of recalling

specific cases, such as the famous sugar shipment to Garcia and the announcement of a baby’s birth but which, thanks to my ‘hunch’ or imagination or whatever you wish to call it, led to the apprehension of the most dangerous female spy of the time and the confiscation of those incriminating documents which saved the Leviathan from destruction, prevented several thousand of our boys from going to the bottom of the sea, kept Brooklyn bridge from being blown to bits, thus blocking the Navy Yard, and prevented countless women and children from being widows and orphans. But perhaps you do not all know that, back of that stupendous plot, that greatest attempted coup of the enemy to terrorize and cripple the United States, that supreme effort of a dying, beaten nation to turn the tide of war and transform her from the vanquished to the victor, was the work of one man. To him was entrusted this almost superhuman task. The reward, if he succeeded, was to be honors and riches beyond conception. Had he won he would to-day be seated upon the throne of England—the despotic, iron-handed governor of a German colony with his feet upon the neck of the