“Manhattan Transfer!” shouted that individual. “Change cars for lower New York. This car goes to the Pennsylvania Station at Thirty-third Street.”
The train came to a grinding stop. Immediately there was great hustle and bustle. Passengers poured out of the coaches and crossed the narrow platform to the waiting cars on the farther track. Others stood on the platform ready to swarm into the newly arrived train. Roy’s destination was lower Manhattan, but he made no move to change cars. His orders did not require him to report for duty until the next day. He was in no hurry. He had come a day ahead of time in order to familiarize himself with his instruments and his new quarters, and make the acquaintance of his future associates. Just now he wanted to see something of the city. So he sat quietly in his seat, watching the hurrying throng on the platform.
Presently there was a slight shock that jarred the great steel coaches, and Roy knew that the big steam locomotive that had hauled the train from Central City had been replaced by an electric locomotive that was to pull the train through the tunnel under the Hudson River. A few seconds later the conductor cried out his warning, and the train glided smoothly away from the long platform. Soon it was flying across the stretches of meadow that lay between the junction point they had just left and the landward side of the Palisades, where it would plunge under ground.
The very last leg of Roy’s journey had begun. The very last step in that long stairway of years that led from the cradle to man’s estate was under foot. For though Roy lacked two years of his majority, he was henceforth to take a man’s place among men. Roy thrilled at the thought that inside of twenty-four hours he would no longer be plain Roy Mercer, the Central City High School lad, but Mr. Mercer of the Marconi service, with his own quarters aboard a fine ship, a place at the officers’ table, and a smart uniform. Perhaps the idea of the uniform appealed to Roy quite as much as did the knowledge that he was about to take his place among the ship’s officers. His heart beat fast, and his whole being thrilled with pride at the thought that he was the youngest operator in the Marconi service. Roy fairly hugged himself as he thought of his good luck in securing such a desirable berth.
Then the thought came to him that perhaps it wasn’t all luck after all. Certainly, he thought, he must have deserved at least a part of his good fortune. There was nothing conceited about Roy. But he knew, as no one else could know, how hard he had worked to perfect himself in wireless telegraphy, and how faithful he had been in the performance of his duty as a member of the wireless patrol. For it was the reputation that he had made during the wireless patrol’s search for the secret wireless that had won him his present position as wireless man on the Lycoming.
Straightway he fell to musing over the events of the years that had passed since his first summer in camp at Fort Brady. Vividly he recalled how he and Henry Harper had slowly and laboriously constructed their first wireless outfits after some blueprint patterns sent to Henry by the latter’s uncle; how every member of the Camp Brady group had made a similar instrument; how the little band had become the wireless patrol when war threatened, and how they had run down the German dynamiters at Elk City. With pride he thought of his recent services in New York, when he and three other members of the wireless patrol had been selected to help the United States Secret Service uncover the secret wireless of the Germans. Roy was not the sort of boy to flatter himself, but he knew well enough that never in the world would he have been accepted in the Marconi service at his age or been made wireless man on the Lycoming had it not been for the efficient work done in days past.
“It’s a mighty encouraging thing to know,” said Roy to himself, “that my getting the job wasn’t all kick. If I earned this place, I can earn a still better one. But it means hard work. It means that I’ve got to be absolutely faithful in everything I do, always on the job, always on the lookout to help the company, always courteous to passengers, always helpful to my captain. Gee whiz! It’s some job ahead of me. I can see that all right. And I can see that above everything else I’ve got to make good with my captain. What he says about my work will determine whether or not I ever get ahead. But I’ll make good. I’ve just got to. I’ve done it before and I can again. But it means work, work, work.”
Roy’s heart beat high with courage. His jaws tightened and a look of determination came into his face. Then succeeded a glow of pride as Roy thought of the times he had already been tried and had made good. He smiled with satisfaction as he recalled that it was he who caught the message of the German spies at Elk City.
How well he recalled his vigil that night. How long the hours were. How dark and still it was there in the forest, with his comrades of the wireless patrol all asleep and he alone left to guard them and to keep watch for forbidden radio messages. He recalled how sleepy he was, how he had fought off his weariness and listened in, hour after hour, for suspicious voices in the air. Even now his heart beat faster as he lived over the final triumph of that night. He could almost hear again that faint little buzz in his ear that proved to be the secret message they were watching for.
Suppose he had been asleep at that instant. Suppose he had been unfaithful in his watch. Suppose he had relaxed his vigilance for even a few seconds. The message would never have been intercepted. The dynamiters would never have been caught. The people of Elk City would have paid for his faithlessness with their lives. Roy shuddered at the thought of the awful wall of water that might have overwhelmed the unfortunate dwellers in that city had the reservoir been dynamited.