“And where did he go?”
“Drove off in his car. It was about the middle of the morning. I haven’t seen him about since then.”
Winifred seemed quite reassured by the few words with Kennedy, and with a parting assurance of protection Kennedy and I excused ourselves.
We rejoined Burke and Steel in the lobby, where Burke was nervously pacing up and down, for precious minutes were being wasted, he felt. And yet I could not see that he was able to make a move without the aid of Kennedy.
Like Burke, I, too, was eager to know what it was that Kennedy was planning to accomplish by the elaborate and secret preparations he was making. Accordingly, I was not sorry when he decided to go immediately up to our rooms.
Naturally I was keenly interested in what Kennedy was doing in establishing his own little wireless plant, but the operator, Steel, looked at it in increasing wonder as Craig laid out the apparatus in the room.
“It’s not exactly like anything that I’ve ever seen before,” Steel remarked, finally. “What do you expect to do with it, sir?”
Kennedy smiled. “I don’t believe you ever did see one of these sets, although you may have heard of them,” he explained, not pausing in his work of installing it. “It is an apparatus only lately devised for use by the United States Government to detect illegalities in the air in wireless, whether they are committed by amateurs or not.”
As we watched in silence, Kennedy went on explaining. “You know that wireless apparatus is divided into three parts—the source of power, whether battery or dynamo; the making and sending of wireless waves, including the key, spark condenser, and tuning coil; and the receiving apparatus, head telephones, antennæ, ground and detector.”
Kennedy was talking to us rather than the operator, but now he turned to him and remarked, “It’s a very compact system, with facilities for a quick change from one wave-length to another. I suppose you’ve noticed it—spark gap, quenched type—break system relay, and all the rest. You understand, I can hear any interference while I’m transmitting. Take the transformation—by a single throw of this six-point switch. It tunes the oscillating and open circuits to resonance. It’s very clever and, best of all, efficient.”