Sliding the tuning handle downward, Belding listened for commercial wave-lengths. Something—something new and unutterably harsh—stuttered in his ear.
He jerked back from the instrument and glanced suspiciously at Sparks.
“Do you hear it?” the latter demanded.
“I hear something,” said the young fellow grimly. “It—beats—me——”
Were these the sounds that had been disturbing the radio men, off and on, for a week or more? Laboriously, falteringly, the rasping sounds grated against Belding’s eardrums. It was actually torturing!
The atrocious sending began, in Belding’s ear, to be broken into clumsy dots and dashes. The wave-lengths were not exactly commercial; nor did the sending seem to be in the Continental code.
He listened and listened; he turned the tuner handle up and down. He got the soundwaves short and got them long; high and low as well. But one fact he was sure of: they were the same sounds—the same series of clumsy dots and dashes—repeated over and over again!
George Belding swung at last from the instrument and tore off the receiving harness. Sparks was grinning broadly upon him.
“Ugh!” ejaculated the youth. “Is it a joke? I am almost deafened by the old thing.”
“What do you make out the ghost talk to be, George?”