“Handel’s Largo,” she whispered as she stood there enchanted. Of all pipe organ music, she loved Handel’s Largo best. Throughout the rendering of the entire selection, she stood as one enchanted.
“It is enough,” she said when the sound of the last note had died away in the tree tops. “It’s all very mysterious, but any person who can play Handel’s Largo like that is not going to be unkind to two girls who are far from home. I’m going in.”
With unfaltering footsteps she started forward.
CHAPTER XV
AN OLD MAN OF THE NORTH
Having walked resolutely to the black hole in the snow bank, Marian looked within. There was no door; merely an opening here. A dim lamp in the distance sent an uncertain and ghostly light down the corridor. By this light she made out numerous posts and saw that a narrow passage-way ran between them.
There was something so mysterious about the place that she hesitated on the threshold. At that moment a thought flashed through her mind, a startling and disheartening thought.
“Radio,” she murmured, “nothing but radio.”
She was convinced in an instant that her solution of the origin of the wonderful music was correct.
The persons who lived in this strange dwelling, which reminded her of pictures she had seen of the dens and caves of robbers and brigands, had somehow come into possession of a powerful radio receiving set. Somewhere in Nome, or Fairbanks, or perhaps even in Seattle—a noted musician was giving an organ recital. This radio set with its loud speaker had picked up the music and had faithfully reproduced it. That was all there was to the mystery. There was no pipe organ, no skillful musician out here in the forest wilderness. It had been stupid of her to think there might be.
This revelation, for revelation it surely seemed to be, was both disappointing and disturbing. Disappointing, because in her adventure-loving soul she had hoped to discover here in the wilderness a thing that to all appearances could not be—a modern miracle. Disturbing it was, too, for since a mere instrument, a radio-phone, has no soul, the character of the person who operated it might be anything at all. She could not conceive of the person who actually touched the keys and caused that divine music to pour forth as a villain. Any sort of person, however, might snap on the switch that sends such music vibrating from the horn of the loud speaker of a radiophone.