“I do wish Daddy was coming home to-day. But he isn’t. Not until dinner time, anyway. I do believe, Amy Drew, that poor Bertha is hidden away somewhere at that farm.”
“But—but––how could she get at any sending station to tell her troubles to—to the air?” and Amy suddenly giggled.
“Don’t laugh. It is a very serious matter, I feel sure. If the poor girl actually isn’t being abused, those women are hiding her away so that they can cheat Daddy’s clients out of a lot of money.”
“Again I ask,” repeated Amy, more earnestly, 159 “how could that girl, whoever she is, get to a sending station? We did not see the first sign of an aerial anywhere near that house and barn, or above the tower, either.”
“I don’t know what it means. It is a mystery,” confessed Jessie. “But I just feel that what we heard over the radio had to do with that missing girl—that it was Bertha Blair calling for help, and that in some way she is connected with that red barn and the silo and the two fallen trees. We traced the place from her description.”
“So we did!”
“And unless it is all a big hoax, somewhere near that place Bertha is held a prisoner. If that Martha Poole is in with some crooked people who break the state gambling law by radio, sending news of the races to city gambling rooms, she would commit other things against the law.”
“Oh!” cried Amy. “Both she and that Mrs. Bothwell look like hard characters. But there were no aerials in sight!”
Jessie thought for a moment. Then she flashed at her chum:
“Well, that might be, too. Some people string their aerials indoors. I don’t know if that can be done at a sending station. But it may be. They are inventing new things about radio all the time. You know that, dear.”