It did not take the radio man long to prepare a simple but nourishing meal, all the cooking being done on an electric stove he had rigged up himself. While they ate they talked, and Brandon Harvey told them something about himself. It seemed that he had formerly been an accountant, having taken up radio as a hobby at first, but then, finding himself deeply interested in it, had resolved to make it his life work.
“I still do a little at my old trade, though,” Harvey told them. “I’m treasurer of the Ocean Point Building and Loan Association, and that sometimes keeps me pretty busy in the evenings after I’m off duty here.”
“I should think it would,” commented Bob. “What do you have to do, anyway?”
“Oh, I keep the books straightened out, and occasionally I make collections of cash,” answered Harvey. “I’ll probably get knocked on the head sometime when I’m carrying the money around with me. I always feel rather uneasy when I have any large sum about, there seem to be so many holdups these days.”
“Have you a good safe place here to keep the money?” asked Joe.
“Yes, fairly safe,” responded Harvey. “I put it in the Company’s safe here, and I don’t suppose anybody would bother about it. But just the same, I don’t leave it here unless I simply haven’t had time to deposit it in the bank.”
The talk drifted into other channels, and the boys thought little more of what he had told them at that time. After lunch they practiced sending with the buzzer set, and got so that they could recognize some of the letters when they were sent very slowly.
“Huh,” said Jimmy, elated at his success in making out two letters in succession, “I’ll be sending and receiving thirty words a minute in a little while.”
“How little?” grinned Bob.
“Just about a hundred years or so,” put in Herb, before Jimmy could answer.