“What does this mean?” he demanded. “Sykes!—why Sykes was the astronomer who was captured with McGuire!”
“Listen! Listen!” The colonel’s voice was almost shrill with excitement.
The night was whispering faintly the merest echo of a signal from a station far away, but it resolved itself into broken fragments of sound that were long and short in duration, and the fragments joined to form letters in the Morse code.
“See Winslow,” it told them, and repeated the message: “See Winslow at Sierra....” Some distant storm crashed and rattled for breathless minutes. “Blake see Winslow. This is McGuire, Blake. Winslow can help—”
The message ended abruptly. One long, wailing note; then again the night was voiceless ... and in the radio room at Maricopa Flying Field two men stood speechless, unbreathing, to stare at each other with incredulous eyes, as might men who had seen a phantom—a ghost that spoke to them and called them by name.
“McGuire—is—alive!” stammered Blake. “They’ve taken him—there!”
Colonel Boynton was considering, weighing all the possibilities, and his voice, when he answered, had the ring of conviction.
“That was no hoax,” he agreed; “that quavering tone could never be faked. That message was sent from the same station we heard before. Yes, McGuire is alive—or was up to the end of that sending.... But, who the devil is Winslow?”
Blake shook his head despairingly. “I don’t know,” he said. “And it seems as if I should—”