A FRESH START
Amazed, the members of the little patrol looked at one another silently.
"How could they send a message on a dollar?" demanded Lew at last. "They'd have to engrave it, and then they'd never dare to use the dollar again. Besides, it would be too dangerous. If the message were on paper, the paper could be burned or chewed up and swallowed, and the evidence of crime destroyed. But they couldn't erase the engraving on a dollar."
"I don't know how they do it," said Willie, "but I'm sure they write their messages on those dollars."
"Willie is doubtless right," said Captain Hardy. "We don't know how they do it, but the evidence leads directly to the conclusion Willie has come to. The spy in the house below us writes his messages on dollars and sends them through this grocer's boy and the motor-car driver to the various secret wireless plants the Germans evidently possess near New York. I think that is plain. And it indicates new lines of action for us. We must not only continue to listen in for messages and watch this spy's nest, but we shall have to follow this motor-car driver and also learn the secret of the dollars."
"Hurrah!" cried Roy, his eyes shining. "Now there'll be something doing." Then he struck a tragic attitude and declaimed, "Little do the treacherous hawks in yonder nest realize that the eagles of the law are about to swoop down on them."
"Some orator, Roy," said Lew. "If we're eagles, we must have wings. Are mine sprouting yet?" And he turned his back to Roy for the latter's examination.
When the laughter ceased, their leader went on, "You boys are to be congratulated for your discovery. You have accomplished a great deal. But what has been done is little compared with what remains to be done. And so far you have worked in safety. The work ahead may be very dangerous. The hidden wireless stations we are after are probably in lonely places. The men operating them are desperate fellows and will not hesitate even to commit murder. If one of you boys should follow this motor driver into a lonesome spot and then be caught, you might never return."
The smiles faded from the faces before him. But the grave looks that succeeded were not expressions of fear. Rather they were looks of determination—the same set marks of grim purpose that Captain Hardy had seen on these same youthful faces when the wireless patrol was stalking the desperate dynamiters at the Elk City reservoir.
Again it was Roy who brought back the smiles. "If we have to follow that automobile driver," he said, "it's a question of 'where do we go from here, boys?'"