Argosy All-Story Weekly, July 7, 1928 — page 38: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

178 turn over to you my secret formula for the televisor.” “But what about this fiend Red- fern’s crazy gang of bombers?’ More- house asked. “ Was Redfern telling the truth when he said he had TNT planted in all our buildings ready to blow them up? Ward’s face clouded. “That’s the big peril hanging over us. I’m afraid the fellow was telling the truth. That’s the one job I have left to clean up. I’ve taken the police in on that. Inspector Curley has been asked to put a big corps of his best op- eratives on the case and get cooperation of the police force in other cities where our plants are located. I’m hoping we'll strike before Redfern realizes that he has been checkmated in his other schemes and blows up the plants out of revenge. ‘'o-night I hope to direct per- sonally a raid on 1 the little cottage where they have their local headquarters and catch all the ringleaders of the gang, including Redfern himself.”’ “T pray God you'll be successful,” the old chairman breathed fervently. ATI. THE rest of the day Edison Ward spent picking up the threads of his work at the office and keeping in hourly touch with the police inspector who was searching for the deadly explosives with which Redfern had threatened the destruction of the International Radio Corporation. He worked with the sense of being over a volcano that might mo- mentarily erupt. He was strongly moved to close down the plants and send all the em- ployees home till the danger was over. But he dared not do that for fear Red- fern’s spies would report the first move in that direction and, realizing that it meant their plot was discovered, the fiend wotld be likely to touch the fatal button which he boasted would send all the buildings to destruction at once. ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. Toward mid afternoon Ward got his first confirmation of this phase of the plot and at the same time positive hope of nipping it in a wholesale way. In the basement of the very office building in which Ward’s offices were located, the police found buried enough TNT to blow the entire building to fragments. And attached to it was a delicate apparatus evidently so de- signed that the explosive could be fired by a certain radio impulse from a dis- tance. That gave Edison Ward a hopeful theory, just a theory that might not work, but worth trying as a possible sateguard. Of course, “Redfern might have several radio sending sets from any one of which he might broadcast the death-dealing impulse. But the chances were that he had such a set in the little Moran cottage headquarters and would plan to detonate his charges from there. A premature raid on the cottage would, of course, be useless and danger- ous. If the arch conspirator were not caught, he might promptly fire the charge from another point. But what Ward could do was to start the powerful set he had installed in his own house and make Redfern’s set use- less by interference waves. He hurried home and put this plan into execution at once. Then he spent the rest of the after- noon in his laboratory, conferring with the police by phone and keeping watch of the little Moran cottage living-room over his televisor whose mirror still hung in the back of the fireplace un- discovered by the conspirators. But at no time during the day did he see anything of Redfern or his fel- low-conspirators. Before evening TINT was unearthed in three other widely scattered plants of the International Radio Corporation. That much of the concern’s prop- erty was therefore made secure, but the great bulk of it, together with thou- sands of lives, should the fiend strike in GO JOO AMC <S (F@)