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Three times, over five thousand miles of air, this great voice bellowed its message. The silence which followed was ghostly. Cold perspiration stood out on Curlie's brow. It was not necessary for him to calculate the location from which this message was sent. He knew that it had come from the hotel. And it had.

It's worth a thousand dollars, but such maps are not safe outside a library. Tell 'em to put it on ice," he laughed. Scarcely had Joe departed than a keen-eyed, gray-haired man entered the tower room. He was Colonel Edward Marshall, Curlie's superior. "Curlie," he wrinkled his brow, as he took a seat, "there's somebody raising hob with the radio service in Alaska." Curlie nodded his head.

He almost got you." The whisper ceased. Adjusting the campus coil Curlie sat at strained attention. "I wish I knew you were listening," came again. "It's hard to be whispering into the night and not knowing you're being heard." Curlie's fingers moved nervously over a tuner knob. He was sorely tempted to tune in and flash an answering "O.K.," if nothing more.

I am part of the United States government, the government which has made it possible for you to gain your wealth. Her laws must be obeyed. You could not crush me and, what is still more important, you have no notion of doing so." "What?" The magnate's face became a study, then it broke into a smile. "I like your spirit," he said seizing Curlie's hand in a viselike grip.

When she saw him open his eyes she uttered a little cry, then toppled over in a dead faint. "Wha what happened?" Curlie's lips framed the words. "Lightning," shouted Joe. "Protectors must have got damp. Short-circuited. Raised hob. Burned out about everything, I guess." "Can't be as bad as that. Tend to the girl," Curlie nodded toward the corner.

"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.

He shifted uneasily in his chair, then held his ear close to the loud speaker tuned to 200. A message came floating in to him across the air, a mysterious whispered message. "Hello, Curlie," it said. "You don't know me, but you have seen me " Automatically Curlie's fingers moved the radio-compass backward and forward while his mind gauged the distance.

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.

As Curlie's feet carried him forward on the deck of the Kittlewake, his eyes beheld the ghost which rose from the hatch taking on a familiar form. A white middy blouse, short white skirt and a white tarn, worn by a slender girl, moved forward to meet him. As the form came into the square of light cast by a cabin window, his lips framed her name: "Gladys Ardmore!"

His task was that of aiding in the capture of knaves and the silencing of foolish folks who used the newly-discovered radiophone as their mouthpiece. "Foolish people," Major Whittaker, Curlie's superior, who had called him to the service, had said, "do quite as much damage to the radio service as crooks. Fools and knaves must alike be punished and your task will be to help catch them."