The following Monday morning the new boy started to school, entering our grade. And in the days that immediately followed I came to like Tom Ricks a lot. For he was the right sort. And soon we were visiting back and forth, playing in my yard one night and in his the next.
Scoop, of course, shared in our games, as did Red Meyers and Peg Shaw, my other chums. For I never would throw down an old friend for a new one. And it was during one of our trips to the old Matson place that we learned about the talking frog.
For Mr. Ricks, an inventor as Scoop had surmised, was working on a very wonderful radio toy. Tom called it an electro-mechanical frog.
We had promised our new chum that we wouldn’t breathe a word about the talking frog to any one else. For a Chicago radio company had spies searching for Mr. Ricks. These people [[9]]knew that the inventor was working on a radio toy, and it was their evil intention to steal the invention, the same as they had stolen a simplified radio transmitter that Mr. Ricks had designed and built in his little Chicago workshop. It was to save the new invention from being stolen from him that he was now hiding in our inland town, where he could work undisturbed.
“A Milwaukee company is interested in Pa’s invention,” Tom told us, “and if he can make the frog say, ‘Hello!’ or make it repeat any other single word, they’ll pay him twenty-five thousand dollars for the idea and develop it in their laboratories.”
Grinning, he added:
“So you can see what I had in my mind that day in the tree. I frequently get frogs for Pa, to guide him in tuning the tone bars. For the toy, of course, must sound like a real frog or it won’t be a complete success.”
“And you say the mechanical frog actually talks?” said Scoop, who had been eagerly taking in each word.
“Sometimes it does,” said Tom. “But you can’t depend on it. You see it isn’t perfected.” There was a short pause. “I tell you what: Come out to-night after supper and I’ll try and [[10]]coax Pa to let you see it. I’ll explain to him that he can trust you to keep his secret.”
“Hot dog!” cried Peg Shaw, thinking of the fun we were going to have listening to the talking frog.