Curlie Carson Listens In | Page 2

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 antennae, 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.
Now, as he sat thinking of it, he decided to confide this new secret to his pal, Joe Marion.
"Yes," he told himself, "I'll tell him about it at chow."
At this moment his mind was recalled to other matters. New trouble was brewing.
"A slight breeze from the west," his mind went over the message automatically, "and the wind was due east. Don't mean much as it stands, but I suspect means a lot more than it seems to."
Just above Curlie's head there hung a receiver. To the right and left of him were two loud-speakers. Before him ranged three others. Each one of these was tuned to a certain wave length, 200, 350, 500, 600, 1200 meters. Each was modulated down until sounds came to Curlie's delicately tuned ear drums as little more than whispers. A concert was being broadcast on 350. The booming tones of a baritone had been coming in as softly and sweetly as a mother's lullaby. But now Curlie's ear detected interference.
Instantly he was all alert. The receiver was clamped down over his ears, a half dozen switches were sent, snap, snap, snap. There followed a dead silence. Then in a shrill boyish voice, together with the baritone's renewal of his song, there came:
"I want the world to know that I am a wireless operator, op-er-a-a-tor. Hoop-la! Tra-la!"
Curlie smiled in spite of his vexation. He acted quickly and with precision. His slender fingers guided a coil-wound frame from right to left. Backward and forward it glided, and as it moved the boyish "Hoop-la" rose and fell. Almost instantly it came to a standstill.
"There! That's it!" he breathed.
Then to Joe Marion, "It's a shame about those kids. They won't learn to play the game square. Don't know the rules and don't care. Think we can't catch 'em, I guess."
His hand went out for a telephone.
"Superior 2231," he purred.
"That you, 2231? Just a moment."
He touched a key here, another there. He twisted a knob there, then: "That you, Mulligan?" he half whispered. "Good! There's a kid on your beat got a wireless running wild. Yes. Broke in on the concert. Don't be hard on him. No license? Yes, guess that's right. Take away his sending set. Give him another chance? Let him listen in. What's that? Location? Clarendon Street, near Orton Place; about second door, I'd say. That's all right. Thanks, yourself."
Dropping the receiver on its hook he tossed off his headpiece, snapped at five buttons, then settled back in his chair.
"These kids'll be the death of me yet," he grumbled. "Always breaking in, not meaning any harm but doing harm all the same. I don't feel so very sore about them though. It's the fellows that go in for long wave lengths and high power, that break in on 500, 1200 and 1800, that do the real damage. Had a queer case last night. Looks crooked, too." He was silent for a moment then he said reflectively:
"Guess that's about all till midnight. It's after midnight that the queer birds come creeping out. I'm going to tell you about that one last night, over the ham sandwich, dill pickle and coffee. No use to try now--we'd sure get broken in on."
Joe Marion, who had been taken on as an understudy by Curlie, was at the present time working without pay. At times when trouble developed on two different wave lengths at once, he took a hand and helped out. For the most part he merely looked, listened and learned.
His pal he