Bob was no more successful than the pastor had been, and after a few minutes he looked at Doctor Dale with a puzzled frown between his eyes.
“That’s one of the queerest things I ever knew to happen to a radio set,” he said. “I guess we’d better go over the connections, and make sure that everything is tight.”
This they did, but everything seemed to be in perfect order. All the connections were neatly soldered in place, and it was easy to see that the trouble did not lie here.
“Well,” said Bob, at last, “it seems plain enough that the set itself is all right, unless one of the transformers has burned out. That’s so unlikely, though, that I think we’d better take a look at the antenna. Perhaps the trouble is in that or in the leading-in wire.”
“That’s easy to find out,” remarked Joe, and they all went outdoors and around to the back of the house. Doctor Dale had a powerful little electric flashlight, and by the aid of this they could see that the antenna wire was all right. Having made sure of this, Doctor Dale turned the brilliant little shaft of light on the house, and followed the course of the leading-in wire down the wall. This wire entered the house through one of the dining-room window frames, and as the light neared this point, the doctor uttered an exclamation.
“There’s our trouble!” he cried. “The wire is broken just outside the window. I wonder what made it do that.”
“It does seem rather queer,” said Bob. “It looks to be a pretty heavy wire, and there’s no strain on it at that point.”
“Yes, but it’s always the unexpected thing that happens, especially in radio,” remarked Joe. “Probably a couple of us could hang on that wire and it wouldn’t break, and yet it snaps with nothing but its own weight to hold up. Let’s splice it and give the set another try-out.”
They were about to follow Joe’s advice, when suddenly Bob’s keen ears caught the sound of a suppressed laugh coming from the direction of Doctor Dale’s garage. Not only that, but he thought he recognized the voice, and suddenly the cause of the wire’s mysterious failure flashed over him. He had recognized the sound of Carl Lutz’s voice in the laugh, and a wave of hot anger surged up in him. His first impulse was to make a dash for the garage, but suddenly he thought of a better plan, and by an effort pretended that he had heard nothing.
“Come on into the house and get some tools,” he said, in his usual tone of voice. “It won’t take a minute to twist the ends together and put a drop or two of solder over the splice. We’ll have it fixed up for you, Doctor Dale, inside of five minutes.”