“There’s a man down there who also has been experimenting on radio,” Jack said, “but along different lines. He is trying to find out the laws controlling radio waves for the transmission of vision. Well, maybe, I didn’t put that just right. But this is what he’s after: He’s trying to evolve a radio device for the broadcasting of scenes. Thus, for instance, there would be a broadcasting equipment when the President takes his oath of office, when Babe Ruth plays ball, when the Belmont Stakes or the Kentucky Derby are run, when Bill Tilden and Suzanne Lenglen take on the world at tennis, when a new play is given its premiere; and the fellow sitting out in the mountains, far from everywhere, or over in our house or yours, Bob, with special equipment, why, he’d see it all, just as if he were present. And he’d hear, too. What do you think of that?”
Various expressions of disbelief rose from the group, except that Bob and Frank sat silent, nodding their heads.
“It’s bound to come,” said Frank, when the others had in a measure subsided.
And Bob added with conviction: “It’ll come if Jack helps out this old professor.”
And after a moment he added gloomily:
“But Frank and I won’t be in on it. We’ll be down in the shipping room stencilling exports.”
A merry laugh, which Bob somehow felt was a bit unfeeling, greeted this reference to the fact that at the end of the Summer vacation he and Frank were scheduled to enter the export house which their respective fathers had built up as partners, and which Mr. Temple had conducted alone since the death of his associate and lifelong friend, Frank’s father, years before.
“Cheer up, Bob,” said Jack. “You expressed somewhat the same sentiments, if I remember aright, down in Laredo not so long ago. Nothing exciting was ever going to happen to you again, you said. Yet look at all the fun you had the very next minute.”
And so, with this little prevision of the future, let us bid a temporary farewell to the Radio Boys, feeling fairly well assured that when we next encounter them Jack, and not Bob, will prove to have been the better prophet.
The End.