A PUZZLING MYSTERY
For the second time that evening the radio boys thought they must be dreaming.
Cassey! Cassey the swindler, whom they had compelled to make restitution to the victim he had wronged. Cassey the thug, whom they had captured in that wild chase after he had looted the safe and nearly killed the operator in the sending station. Cassey the convict, who, to their certain knowledge, had been sentenced to a long term in prison.
What was Cassey doing over the radio? That it was that scoundrel they had no doubt. The stuttering, the tones of the voice, the occasional whistle which he indulged in in order to go on—all these things they recognized perfectly. It was the wildest kind of improbability that he had a double anywhere who could reproduce him so perfectly.
Gone now was any thought of the aria from Lucia. Bob motioned frantically to Jimmy to hand him a pencil and a sheet of paper. Then he jotted down the words, as after great efforts they fell one by one from the stutterer’s lips. As Bob did this he bent over the paper in frowning perplexity. The words themselves were intelligible, but they did not seem to make sense, nor was there anywhere a connected sentence.
Finally the stammering voice ceased, and after they had waited several minutes longer to make sure that it would not resume, the boys took off their headphones and gazed at each other in utter bewilderment.
“Well, I’ll be blessed!” exclaimed Joe. “That villain Cassey, of all men on the face of the earth! What do you make of it, Bob?”
“I don’t know what to make of it,” confessed Bob. “It has simply knocked me endways. I never thought to hear of that rascal again for the rest of my life. Yet here he is, less than a year after he’s been sentenced, talking over the radio.”
“Perhaps he’s received a pardon,” hazarded Jimmy.
“Not at all likely,” answered Bob. “It isn’t as though he were a first offender. He’s old in crime. You remember the raking over the judge gave him when he sentenced him. Told him if he had it in his power he’d give him more than he actually did. No, I think we can dismiss that idea.”