CHAPTER I
THE WHISPER FROM AFAR
Curlie Carson sat before an alcohol stove. Above and on all sides of him were the white walls of a tent. The constant bulging and sagging of these walls, the creak and snap of ropes, told that outside a gale was blowing. Beneath Curlie was a roll of deerskin and beneath that was ice; a glacier, the Valdez Glacier. They were a half day’s journey from the city of Valdez. Straight up the frowning blue-black wall of ice they had made their way until darkness had closed in upon them and a steep cliff of ice had appeared before them.
In a corner of the tent, sprawled upon a deerskin sleeping-bag, lay Joe Marion, Curlie’s pal in other adventures.
“Lucky we’ve got these sleeping-bags,” Joe drawled. “Even then I don’t see how a fellow’s going to keep warm, sleeping right out here on the ice with the wind singing around under the tent.” He shivered as he drew his mackinaw more closely about him.
Curlie said nothing. If you have read the other book telling of Curlie’s adventures, “Curlie Carson Listens In,” you scarcely need be told that Curlie Carson is a boy employed by the United States Bureau of Secret Service of the Air, a boy who has the most perfect pair of radio ears of any person known to the service.
In that other adventure which had taken him on a wild chase over the ocean in a pleasure yacht, he had had many narrow escapes, but this new bit of service which had been entrusted to him promised to be even more exciting and hazardous.
He had been sent in search of a man who apparently was bent on destroying the usefulness of the radiophone in Alaska; his particular desire seeming to be to imperil the life of Munson, a great Arctic explorer, by interrupting his radiophone messages. This man was known to be possessed of abundant resources, to be powerful and dangerous. He had a perfect knowledge of all matters pertaining to the radiophone and was possessed of a splendidly equipped sending and receiving set. By moving this set about from place to place, he had succeeded in eluding every government operator sent out to silence him. Already he had done incalculable damage by breaking in upon government messages and upon private ones as well.
Just at this moment, Curlie sat cross-legged upon his sleeping-bag. With head and shoulders drooping far forward, as if weighed down by the radiophone receiver which was clamped upon his ears, he appeared half asleep. Yet every now and again his slim, tapered fingers shot out to give the coil aerial which hung suspended from the ridge pole of the tent a slight turn.
“I don’t see how we are going to get the rest of the way over this glacier!” grumbled Joe. “That wall looks straight up; slick as glass, too. How y’ ever goin’ to get three sleds and eight hundred pounds of junk up there? Ought to have taken the lower trail. What if it is three times as far? Good trail anyway.”
“Leave that to Jennings,” murmured Curlie.