When at last everything was there the boys had a veritable treasure trove of materials, for Frank had not been stinted in the amount he could spend on good tools, supplies and instruments and, while he did not possess the mechanical or inventive ability of Tom, yet he was a very careful and painstaking worker and everything he had was of the best.
Tom, on the other hand, preferred to make everything himself and, although his father was willing to let him have any sum within reason to
carry on his radio work, he spent most of the money for tools and supplies and had built a number of special instruments which even Frank admitted were big improvements over ready-made devices. In addition, he had a very complete library of radio books as well as scrapbooks filled with clippings from the radio columns of the various newspapers and periodicals. Hence the two boys made most excellent partners for carrying on their experiments and building their sets. Fortunately, too, they were not the type of boys who soon become tired of a subject and take up one fad after another and, while they were both strong, red-blooded, out-of-door boys, always ready for the most strenuous games, long hikes or hunting and fishing, they found radio so much more fascinating than football, baseball or other sports that practically everything else had been abandoned.
[CHAPTER II—MYSTERIOUS MESSAGES]
For the next few days the boys were very busy perfecting their instruments and, when Mr. Pauling bade Tom and his mother good-by and sailed southward, Tom assured him that he would be able to pick up any messages he sent.
“Maybe I’ll surprise you by sending a message,” he declared. “I’m going to apply for a license next week and make a sending set. Of course it won’t be able to send clear to Cuba or Nassau, but freak messages do go long distances sometimes and anyway, I can get in touch with your ship before you reach port coming back.”
“Great!” exclaimed his father heartily. “And don’t forget about stray messages—you may help us out yet. I spoke to Henderson about your idea that the bootleggers were using radio and he says he should not be a bit surprised. They’re right up to date in their methods, you know.”
That evening, Tom and Frank hurried to their sets promptly at 7:30 accompanied by Mrs. Pauling who seemed as interested as the boys in the result of their first attempt to pick up a message intended for them. She was rather disappointed, however, when Tom clamped on his phones and told her she wouldn’t be able to hear anything.
“You see,” he explained, “if the message comes in, it will be just code signal—dots and dashes in International Morse—and wouldn’t mean anything to you and I might miss it if I used the loud speaker.”
Slowly the minutes slipped by. From out of the silent air came various sounds to the boys’ impatient ears—little buzzing dots and dashes from local stations; the faint sounds of a phonograph from some amateur’s radiophone; fragments of speech from a broadcasting station. Carefully the two waiting, expectant boys tuned their instruments, for they had taken the precaution of asking the wireless operator on the ship what wave length he used and with their sets tuned as nearly to this as possible they cut out the amateur senders with their short wave lengths and the broadcasting