Curlie Carson Listens In | Page 3

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 held in the greatest admiration. And who would not? Had he
not, when this great big new thing, the radiophone, came leaping right
into the world from nowhere, been able to take a hand from the very
beginning and become at once a valuable servant of his beloved
country? Had he not at times detected meddlers who were endangering
the lives of men upon the high seas? Had he not at one time received
the highest of commendations from the great chief of this secret service
of the air?
To Joe there was something weirdly fascinating about the whole
business. Here they were, two boys in the tower of the highest building
in a great city. Five people knew of their presence. These five were
high up in the radio secret service. No message sent out by them could
ever be traced back to its source. They did not use the air. That would
be dangerous, easily traced. They did not use the telephone alone. That,
too, would be dangerous. But when a radiophone had been connected to
the telephone wire and tuned to a certain wave length, then they talked
and not even the person they talked with would ever know whence
came the message. This was a necessary precaution for, from this very
tower, dangerous bands of criminals, gangs of smugglers, and all other
types of law-breakers would ultimately be brought to justice. And if
these but knew of the presence of this boy in his tower room, some
dark night that tower would be rocked by an exploding bomb and the
boy in his room would be shaken to earth like a young mud-wasp in his
nest.

"I'll tell you," said Curlie, as he rose to answer a tap on the door, "I
believe that affair last night was some big thing; but what it was I can't
even guess."
He opened the door to let in Coles Masters, his relief, then motioning to
Joe he took his cap and left the room. Down the winding stairs which
led to the elevator several stories lower down they made their way in
silence, at last to enter a cage and be silently dropped to the ground
hundreds of feet below.
CHAPTER II
SOMETHING BIG
"You see," Curlie began as he crossed his slim legs beside a small table
in an all-night lunch room, buried somewhere in the deep recesses of
this same skyscraper, "that fellow sent the message about the easterly
breeze that blew west and I located the station at that hotel. This
morning I went over to see how the place looked. It's a wonderful hotel,
that one; palm garden in the middle of it, marble columns, fountain,
painted sheet iron ceiling that'd make you dizzy to look at, and the
finest dressed people you ever saw walking around everywhere.
"Well, I found my way to the sending room of the radiophone and right
away the operator wanted to throw me out; said I was a fresh kid and
all that. But when I showed him my papers, he calmed down a lot and
showed me everything he had.
"I saw right away it wasn't his equipment that had sent that
message--that'd be like sending a Big Bertha bomb into Paris with a
twenty-two caliber rifle. He just naturally didn't have the power, that's
all. So I didn't tell him anything about it; just walked out and went
around back to where I could see the way his wires ran from the
sending room to the antenna.
"I hadn't any more than got there and had one look-up when along
strolls a man who wants to know what I'm looking at. I saw right away
that he wasn't a hotel employee for he didn't wear either a bandmaster's

uniform nor a cutaway coat, so I just smiled and said:
"Got a girl friend up there on the sixteenth floor. She's leaving this
morning and arranged to drop her trunk down to me so's not to have to
tip the porter.
"Well, sir, I hadn't more than said that than a girl did pop her head out
of a sixteenth floor window and stare straight down at me.
"The fellow actually dodged. Guess he thought the trunk was due any
minute.
"Funny part of it was the girl actually seemed interested in me, just as if
she had met me somewhere before. Of course she was too high up for
me to tell what