[CHAPTER I—FRANK “LISTENS IN”]
“Excuse me for butting in, stranger,” said a pleasant voice at the door of the Pullman stateroom, “but I heard you talkin’ to these boys about the old mining camps in these California mountains. It’s kind of tiresome with nobody to talk to, ridin’ all day. Mind if I come in? Mebbe I can tell you some things interesting to easterners. I’m an old-timer here.”
“Come right in,” said Mr. Temple, rising and extending his hand. “My name’s Temple, George Temple. And this is my son, Bob, and his chums, Jack Hampton and Frank Merrick.”
“My name’s Harlan, Ed Harlan,” said the other, advancing. “I was born and raised in the mountains. My dad was a forty-niner from Tennessee.”
He was a slim middle-aged man in black, with a black sombrero worn at a rakish angle.
Those who have read The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border are familiar with Mr. Temple and
the three chums. Living in country homes on the far end of Long Island, they had been drawn by a web of circumstances into international intrigue on the Mexican Border. Jack’s father, representative of a syndicate of independent oil operators, had been kidnapped by Mexican rebels seeking to embroil the government with that of the United States. The boys had gone into Mexico and rescued him. Now Mr. Temple, a New York importer, was making a business trip to San Francisco and taking them with him.
Radio had played no unimportant part in their adventures. In fact, it had been instrumental in bringing them to a successful conclusion. It was Mr. Hampton, a scientific man enthusiastic over the development of radio telephony long before the craze swept the country, who had introduced the boys to it. He was licensed by the government to build a transmission station on his Long Island estate and use an 1,800-metre wave length for trans-oceanic experiment. When he went to the Southwestern oil fields, he also erected a station there, using the same wave length previously assigned him.
These two stations not only provided exceptional opportunities for the boys to learn the intricacies of radio telephony but also provided a method of helping defeat the ends sought by the Mexican rebels. In