Wonderful ears had Curlie Carson, perhaps the most wonderful ears in the world. In catching the fine shadings of diminishing sounds which came to him through the radio compass, there was not a man who could excel him.
So Curlie sat there surrounded by wire-wrapped frames, coils, keys, buttons, switches, motors, dry-cells, storage batteries and all the odds and ends which made up the equipment of the most perfect listening-in station in the world.
As he sat there with Joe Marion, his pal, by his side, his brow was wrinkled in thought. He was reviewing the events of the previous night. At 1:00 a.m., the witching hour when the crooked ones, the mean ones, come creeping forth like ghosts to carry on doubtful conversations by radio, a strange thing had happened. A message had gone crashing out through space. Wave lengths 1200 meters long sped it on its way. There was power enough behind it to carry it from pole to pole, but all it had said was:
"A slight breeze from the west."
Three times the message had been repeated, then had come silence. There had been no answer though Curlie had listened long for it on 1200 meter wave lengths and five other lengths as well.
Sudden as had come the message, fleet as had been its passing, it had not been too fleet for Curlie. He had compassed its direction; measured its distance. On a map of the city which lay before him he had made a pencil cross and said:
"It came from there." And he was right for, strange as it may seem, an expert such as Curlie can sit in a hidden tower room such as his was and detect the exact location of a station whose message has set his ear drums aquiver.
The location had puzzled him. There was not a station in the city licensed to send 1200 meter wave lengths. The spot he had marked was the location of the city's most magnificent apartment hotel. The hotel possessed a radiophone set. Its antenn[ae], hung high upon the building's roof, were capable of carrying that 1200 meter message with all that power behind it, but the radio equipment of the hotel had no such power.
"Something crooked about that," he had mumbled to himself.
His first impulse had been to call the police. He did not act upon it. They might blunder. The thing might get out. This law-breaker might escape. Not five people in all the world knew of Curlie's detecting station. He would work out this problem alone.