Air Wonder Stories, August 1929 — page 77: what you’re looking at

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

THE PLANET'S AIR MASTER 171 page, which was not likely of a man interested in teading, So I purposely talked of the drawings here that I was going to show-you, expecting that he would hear us and follow us here. As an agent of the wizard, he would, no doubt, try to find the location ofthe papers, the one thing the ray hasn’t yet been able. to do. Upon our arrival at. the office, I-found that the ray was on us, and I planned the talk of shipping some valuable papers across the ocean, knowing that he would suspect me of trying to secret the coveted plans across and hide them in America. When we left in the plane, I was glad to see that the ray was not following us. The wizard had- undoubtedly thought that there was little that we would do but plan the trip for to- morrow, so he let us go, probably fearing: possible detection of his headquarters by. too much use of his tay. The agent, though, will probably make an attempt to learn something of the papers and follow us here. If he does my men will get him. I want to get-him out of the way so I’ll be free to act in the next few days.” “Now I'll call my assistant at the central office, so he can have his part of the job ready,” the detective os a going, over to a desk in front of the control oard, “Ts there no danger of your message being. over- heard?” Wallace asked. “Not:in the least, for first my wireless system breaks the message into pieces sending it out on three differ- ent waves, I have a disk that is rotated by a motor mounted on the rear of the control board, This disk, during one rotation, makes contact with three different circuits each radiating waves of a different frequency. Now the message pulsations pass through the disk and are cut up, and only every third pulsation is thrown onto any one circuit. Then it is easy to regulate the speed of the disk so that it will break up the message sufficiently to be unintelligible when received on any one wave, Also, to make the message extra safe, I some- times use coded words which my assistant and I have arranged. Further, we keep the combination settings of the two sets a secret, for, you know, he must set the receiving instrument at the same wave-lengths as ine and must also set the speed of his reassembling tisk motor to correspond with the speed of mine to assemble the messages correctly.” Final Instructions EATING himself at the desk the sleuth lifted his phone and pressed a button. A moment later, a small white light lit up on one of the panels and Riel spoke into the transmitter : “T am returning to New York on a special I. A. L, at ten in the morning in-disguise, and I want you to let the ray see some of the sheets of that duplicate set of L. W. plans. Be sure and have them on board the cruiser when I arrive. I will. ride in the control room with the operator who must be instructed to obey my every order during the trip regardless of what it is. I will speak to no one at the sheds but will have my disc for identification. The ray will no doubt be on you in the morning as usual to look over the papers on your desk and mine,” s he shut off his wireless instrument, two police officers entered the toom with a man in custody. Wallace recognized the prisoner as the man that he had seen on the train, the man that Riel had said was an agent of the wizard. One of the officers carried the lunch bucket in one hand. “Good work,” congratulated the sleuth. “Just take au below for the time being but leave the tin bucket ere.” Placing the lunch container on the table, the two officers left the room with their prisoner, “T_am_glad that we have him out of our way,” Riel remarked as he walked over to the table, “for I be- lieve he is the only agent in London. Now we'll see what is in the bucket.” Carefully he opened -the lid, and at the sight of the contents both men drew closer to it. The box con- tained a sort of radio device neatly packed-in place. “That is what I expected,” Riel mused as he ex- amined the outfit. “But how—oh! here we ate, two wires come up to the handle and connect to a vibrator bar under the handle. You see Wallace,” the continued turning to his guest, “how he was able to overhear conversation that was too low for his ears to detect. This device detects the sound waves, changes them to electrical pulsations, amplifies them up and through the wites to the handle over the vibrator bar. By holdings his fingers against the bar, our eaves- dropper received the vibrations which affected his senses aswell as: sound waves striking his ear drums. No doubt when we take time to examine this device, we will find that it contains a means for adjustment to different frequencies of sound waves, go that the conversation of one person can be picked out from atnong a crowd,” “T-would suggest questioning the prisoner,” Wallace replied. “We-can probably get some important in- formation from him.” “He probably knows nothing,” Riel answered. “I expect he is under the influence of the master crim- inal, and probably does not know that the wizard even exists,’ “Then if our clever foe can press any one into his service, he will soon have another man on the job to take the place of this one.” “He will when he is sure that we have his man. But I intend to give our wizard other things to attract’ his attention to-morrow; and he will likely be too busy to pay much attention to the man, But I think that we should have some lunch and get some sleep for we have work to do in the morning, and yow especially must be fully rested to do your part well.” CHAPTER V Against Their Will T about ten-thirty the next morning, Wallace, disguised as Riel, entered the air sheds of the I. A..L., and showing the doorkeeper his iden- tification disc, was quickly escorted to the special. The pilot. was at-his post all ready to start. “We'll leaye itnmediately,” Wallace instructed the operator, as soon as he saw that the package was on board, “and you will not need to pass through the London station. Just use your manual controls until you reach the upper beam.” The motors were soon humming with a smooth mu- sical note, and as the huge doors of the sheds rolled open, the special started forward and was soon speed- ing down the field. Wallace was climbing into a suit of overalls as the liner took the air. The pilot drew in the landing gear, and, having nothing more to do, sat down beside the operator. The steady climb soon brought them to the upper beam, and as the cruiser righted herself, the battery of motors began to hurl her forward with increasing speed. The sky was we ae (te Oe) yp nae