Curlie Carson Listens In | Page 7

careful--careful--careful, c-a-r-e-f-u-l-" The whisper trailed off into space, to be lost in thin air.
Wiping the beads of perspiration from his face, Curlie sat up. "Well, now," he whispered softly to himself, "what do you know about that?
"One thing I do know," he told himself. "I'd swear it was a girl's whisper, though how you can tell a girl's whisper is more than I know. Question is: Which one is it--hotel station or the one that moves?"
For a moment his brow wrinkled in thought. Then with an exclamation of disgust he exclaimed:
"That's easy! I've got their location!"
He figured for a few seconds, then put a pencil point on a certain spot on his map.
"There!" he muttered. "It's the hotel, the exact spot."
Suddenly he started. There came the rattle of a key in the door.
"Oh!" he exclaimed as Coles Masters shoved the door open, "it's you. I'm glad you're here. Got something I want to look into. Want to bad. Mind if I take an extra hour?"
"Nope."
"All right. See you later." With a bound he was out of the door and down the stairs.
"That boy," muttered Coles Masters, with a grin, "will either die young or become famous. Only Providence knows which it will be."
Curlie did not leave the elevator at the first floor. Dropping down to the sub-basement, he wound his way in and out through a labyrinth of dimly lighted halls, at last to climb a stair to the first basement. Then, having passed into his accustomed eating place, he paused long enough to purchase a Swiss cheese sandwich, after which, with cap pulled well down over his eyes, he made his way up a second flight of stairs into the outer air.
He shivered as he emerged into the open street. Whether this chill came from the damp cool of the night or from nervous excitement, he could not tell. The memory of the whispered warning bore heavily upon his mind.
Turning his face resolutely in the direction of the hotel, he walked three blocks, then hailed a passing taxi. When the taxi dropped him, a few minutes later, he was still four blocks from the point of his destination. Covering this distance with rapid strides, he came to the rear of the hotel. There, dodging past a line of waiting taxis, he came at length to a dark corner where a stone bench made an angle with the wall of a building directly behind the hotel.
Crouching in this corner, he glanced rapidly from right to left to learn whether or not his arrival had been detected. Satisfied that for the moment he was safe, he cast a glance upward to where the aerials of the radiophone glistened in the moonlight. From that point he allowed his gaze to drop steadily downward until it reached the windows of the sixteenth floor. There it remained fixed for a full moment.
There came from between his teeth a sudden intake of breath.
Had he seen some movement at the window to the right of the wires that led to the aerials? He must see, no matter how great the risk.
Drawing a small pair of binoculars from his pocket, he fixed them on the spot. He then turned a screw at the side of the binocular and suddenly there appeared upon the wall of the building a round spot of brilliant light. The size of a plate, this mysterious spot moved rapidly backward and forward until it at last rested upon the wires by the window.
"Ah!" came in an involuntary whisper from the boy's lips.
A hand, the slender, graceful hand of a girl had been clearly outlined against the wall. Quickly as it had been withdrawn, Curlie had seen that between the thumb and finger of that hand was the end of a wire.
"Been tapping the aerial. A girl!" he muttered incredulously. "And it was she who whispered to me out of the night."
He had been crouching low. Now he rose, stretched himself, pocketed his instrument and was about to make his way out of the yard when, with the suddenness of a tiger, a body launched itself upon his back.
So unexpected was the assault that the boy's body closed up like a jack knife. He fell, face down, completely doubled up, with his face between his knees.
"Now I got yuh!" was snarled into his ear. The weight on his back was crushing. He could scarcely breathe.
"You--you have," he managed to groan.
"You'll come along," said the voice.
Curlie did not speak nor stir. The weight was partly lifted from his back. The man had dropped one foot to the ground.
Now Curlie, had he been properly exercised for it when he was a child, might have turned out a fair contortionist. He was exceedingly slim and limber and had learned many of the tricks of the contortionist. He