CHAPTER V
The following Monday all the men working on the city street car lines walked out. Not a car was taken from the barns, and a strange quiet filled the city streets. Comparatively few persons walked as far as the shopping district, and by late afternoon a footsore and weary procession wended their way homeward.
The weather was much cooler and the boys, braced up by the breezes, spent hours over the wireless.
During the preceding week some peculiar messages had been picked up. The boys pored over them but could make nothing of them. On every porch after dinner everybody talked of the dynamiting that was taking place.
“It looks just like when a package of firecrackers commence to go off in the grass,” said Eddie, who had been reading and listening to the after-dinner discussions. “Dad says no one knows who is accountable for the outrages. Gosh, I would hate to be a mayor, or ’most anything except a boy! But one day pop! off will go a bomb in front of some big building in San Francisco, and next it will be in New York, and next in Dallas. Pop, pop, pop! all over, and not a single man arrested.”
“It is funny,” Bill agreed. “My dad says somewhere a master chemist is making oodles of bombs and infernal machines, and there must be a storehouse somewhere. But he don’t see how they communicate with each other. He says he don’t believe a letter is ever written.”
“Dad says he don’t believe they ever use anything but word of mouth.”
“Not quick enough,” answered Eddie.
Dee suddenly leaned close to the two boys and whispered a single word.
“Wireless!” he said. Then as the two turned and stared, their thoughts whirling,—“Wireless, and we have been getting some of their messages! They are right here in the city, I will be bound!”