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Updated: May 6, 2025
Joe Marion was at the wheel. Curlie sat beside him. On the back of the car was a miscellaneous pile of instruments all securely clamped down. Above there hung suspended between two vertical bars a square frame from which there gleamed the copper wires of a coil. To catch a radiophone on wheels, Curlie had reasoned, one must mount his radio compass on wheels and pursue the offender.
"You git your ground by hanging a wire seventy-five er a hundred feet down from the plane, then you get ground just the same as if the wire was dragging through the sea, don't matter whether you're up a hundred miles or five thousand. Strange stuff, this radio." "Yes," said Curlie, "it is. By the way," he exclaimed suddenly, "do you know about this new Packard-Prentiss equipment?"
Only the rustle of leaves and the startled tweet-tweet of some bird surprised in his sleep disturbed the utter silence of the woods. "Ghostly," whispered Joe, then he lapsed into silence. With his slim legs stretched out before him, Curlie was soon asleep, all but his ears. Joe insisted that those ears never slept. A half hour, an hour, an hour and a half dragged by.
The flap of ropes, the creak of yard-arms, the rush of waves which were already washing the deck, the chug-chug-chug of the prow of the brave little craft as she leaped from wave-crest to wave-crest; all this made such music as an orchestra might, had every man musician of them gone mad. And this was the "silence" Curlie did not for a long time break.
The skipper stared at Curlie for a full moment as if attempting to determine whether he were insane, then turned in silence to his wheel. The wind blew the door shut and Curlie resumed his long-legged, short-legged march. He had done three turns around the deck when his eyes caught a small figure crumpled up on the pile of ropes forward. "Hello," he cried, "you out here?"
"We 'it somethin'," shouted the skipper, "an' she's sinkin' by the larboard bow. Gotta' git off 'er quick. Boats are gone! Everythin's gone." "No," said Curlie calmly, "the raft forward is safely lashed on." The engineer appeared from below. The engine had already ceased its throbbing. "She's fillin' fast," he commented in a slow drawl. "You two get the raft loose," said Curlie.
"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.
That'll be part of our rotten luck." "Most ghosts, I'm told," chuckled Joe, "prefer to walk when there's someone about, for what's the good of a ghost-walk when there's no one to see. So our radio ghost may show up after all." Curlie lapsed into silence. He was reviewing the events which led up to this thrilling moment.
Stammeringly Curlie proceeded to explain the idea which had come to him, the notion that Vincent Ardmore and some pal of his had been planning a secret trip of some sort. "That is entirely possible," said Ardmore. "Vincent is daring, even rash at times. If some wild fancy leaped into his head, he would attempt anything. Now that you speak of it, I do think there might be something in your theory.
If necessity demands, do not hesitate risking her destruction, but you will not, of course, endanger your own life." "All right; then I guess everything is settled. You will wire instructions to the captain of the yacht. I must hurry to my train." Curlie hastened from the room. Joe was awaiting Curlie at the depot.
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