The Secret Wireless; Or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol

by Lewis E. Theiss

For a moment Henry rode on, almost bewildered. Then he looked rapidly about him. No farmhouse was in sight to which the motorcar might have gone. No light gleamed anywhere. But he could dimly see trees here and there. And he made out a wooden fence lining the left side of the road.

"Lucky I didn't shoot in that direction when I met that team," muttered Henry. "I'd have gone clear through that fence." He dismounted, set his machine up, and took out his pocket torch. Holding it close to the road, he began to examine the highway. "There are the marks of his rear tires," he muttered.

And thankful indeed was the puzzled scout that he had learned so well at Camp Brady to observe carefully. He mounted his wheel and rode a few hundred yards further. Then he examined the road again. He found the tracks he was searching for. He rode on and dismounting, found in two places the telltale marks. But the third time he examined the highway there were no marks of the roadster's tires visible.

"He left the road between this point and the last stop," murmured Henry.

He went back a hundred feet and searched. There were no tire marks. Another hundred feet showed no prints in the dust. But the third hundred revealed the wheel marks. "Ah!" said Henry, "he turned off close by."

He set his wheel against the fence and went forward, following the prints with his light, which he shaded carefully and held close to the road. Within fifty feet the marks turned straight off to the left. The car had passed from the highway through a gap in the fence, into an open field. What the field was like Henry could only conjecture. He dared not flash his light around to see.

He ran back and got his machine, then followed the wheel prints into the field. They did not show readily on the grassy surface, and soon he had lost them altogether. At first a sense of fear clutched at his heart. He recalled his leader's words as to the dangerous nature of this duty. Here he was in exactly the lonely situation his captain had foreseen, by himself, and with no means of defense. The enemy he was trailing had disappeared. He might be a mile distant or he might be waiting for his pursuer, behind the nearest tree. Henry shivered with fear and stood irresolute. But the feeling passed when he realized that he had lost the trail, that his quarry had escaped him, that he had failed his captain. A wave of remorse swept over him. The sense of fear left him entirely, and he bent all his energies to the task of finding the motor-car. He hid his wheel in a thicket that he might work faster, pausing only to snatch from it the metal cane fastened to the frame.

Cautiously he glided forward, crouching as he moved, and taking advantage of every rock and bush he could see to screen himself. He held his breath and listened. Now he crept forward a foot at a time. Now he advanced swiftly for yards. He worked his way to the right and the left. But nowhere could he see what he was searching for, and no betraying sound came out of the thick blackness.

"It's no use," he said to himself bitterly, after he had searched for a quarter of an hour. "I have lost him, and if I am not careful I'll lose his message as well."

Near by he could dimly discern a tall stump. He ran over to it and on it laid his map, a pencil, his electric torch, his knife, the wires that he had been carrying in his pocket, and the giant fountain pen. Grasping the tip of his cane he gave a sharp tug and an inner lining slid outward. From this he drew out a third length, and from that a fourth. His metal cane was in reality an extension rod, not unlike a telescoping fishing-rod. It was fully ten feet long. In its curved handle was a small opening, like a keyhole. Into this Henry jammed the bayonet connection that terminated one of the wires. The other end of the wire he thrust into a like opening in the side of his big fountain pen. Into the opposite side of his pen he fastened one end of his second wire, attaching the other end of this wire to his knife, which he thrust deep into the earth. Then, raising the extended cane aloft with his left hand, he put the point of his fountain pen to his right ear and listened. The mysterious articles that the secret service had supplied constituted a complete wireless receiving set. He could catch any message sent from a point within six or eight miles.