The Secret Wireless Part 17

Everybody laughed.

"It doesn't follow that he's a spy, just because he has three silver dollars. He may be a smuggler, all right enough. But I believe the smuggling is just a blind. If he were a genuine smuggler, he'd bring more than three dollars' worth of stuff across."

"What have they done with his dollars now?" asked Roy eagerly.

"I don't know, Roy. The Chief got into instant touch with his men at El Paso as soon as I showed him the dollar Henry got. But I left before I knew what the outcome was. However, I have no doubt they will find that the dollars are what we suspect them to be."

"Gee!" said Willie. "To think that the wireless patrol found out about those dollars!"

"I guess the secret service knows by this time that boys are worth something," smiled Roy. "Before we get through, they may think so even more."

"You're certainly not increasing in modesty," laughed their leader.

"Well, I don't care," said Roy hotly. "It makes me tired. Everybody says, 'Oh! They're only boys.' Of course we're only boys, but look at what we've done. Why, the wireless patrol has got the best set of fellows----"

But Roy's protest was smothered in a burst of laughter from his fellows.

"Well, I'm glad you feel so good over what we've been fortunate enough to accomplish," said Captain Hardy, "for I fear there will be no more excitement for you. The Chief says his men now have the spy business well in hand, and that all he wants of us from now on is merely to stay here and catch their messages until he is ready to make his raid."

"Just what I was saying," burst out Roy indignantly. "They won't let us in on their raid because 'we're only boys.' But who was it caught the dynamiters, if it wasn't 'just boys'? The men couldn't do it.

They tried twice and failed. Gee! It makes me tired."

"Never mind, Roy," said Captain Hardy smiling. "Even if we don't have any further taste of excitement, we can always remember that we had a big part in catching these spies--for they're going to be caught, sure.

And you mustn't forget that if we stay here and do well the part a.s.signed to us, we are helping just as much as the men who actually round up the spies. You know Milton says 'They also serve who only stand and wait.' If there aren't any reserves to stand and wait behind the lines, the men on the firing-line do not dare to push ahead. And besides, Roy, it is seldom that four boys play so important a part in great deeds as you four boys already have played."

"Four boys and a man," corrected Henry. "Without you we could never have gotten anywhere," and Henry looked affectionately at his captain.

"Oh! Yes, I had a part in it," agreed the captain, "but it was only a part."

"But you read the ciphers," protested Henry. "If you hadn't done that, we could not have made any headway at all."

"And who caught the messages for me to decipher? The reason we have gotten along so well is because we work together so perfectly. I want to thank you boys for being so faithful. I've given you many hard tasks to do."

"After our experiences at Camp Brady," said Lew, "we couldn't do anything else than be faithful. We know by experience what happens when we don't do our duty."

"Then you are going to listen in during the remainder of the spy hunt,"

said Captain Hardy, with an affectionate smile, "just as faithfully as though your work weren't already done and the spice gone out of it. I know it will be dull and uninteresting, boys, but you've made such a fine record that I don't want you to fall down now. So be very careful--if only for my sake."

"They've never talked once," said Henry ruefully, "excepting after the transports sail. I don't suppose they ever will except when the s.h.i.+ps go out. We'll have to listen to nothing for twenty-four hours a day.

But we're going to do it just the same."

He rose and walked toward the wireless room. "It's back to the mines for me," he added. And he disappeared through the doorway of the wireless room.

But hardly had he sat down and clamped the receiver to his ears before he cried out. His fellows came flocking into the room. Henry was swiftly writing a string of letters on a sheet of paper.

"Something of moment must be afoot," said Captain Hardy, in a low voice, "for them to be talking at this time. It must be important, indeed."

"It's a long message," whispered Willie, as Henry continued to fas.h.i.+on letter after letter.

"Something tells me it is important," repeated Captain Hardy. "What can it be? You don't suppose the secret service men have alarmed them, do you?"

Henry finished his writing and laid down his pencil. His chief picked up the sheet of paper and scanned the long line of letters Henry had made, like this:

EEANNRDBOEUNRYWSEUTTERONSNNFEEIAYWMNVTTASANXJULEIGOKWSNVATYIZLETK

"Sixty-five," he said aloud, after counting the letters carefully.

A frown came over his face as he stood looking at the paper in his hand. "Sixty-five," he repeated. "All their other cipher messages have made four even lines. You can't divide sixty-five evenly by four.

Boys, I believe--but we'll make sure first."

He sank into a chair, laid the paper on the desk, and arranged the letters according to the old plan, thus:

EEANNRDBOEUNRYW SEUTTERONSNNFEE IAYWMNVTTASANXJ ULEIGOKWSNVATYI

"I don't know what to do with the five letters left over," he said, as he laid down his pencil. Then as he ran his eye down column after column and across each line, he continued, "But I guess it makes no difference. It is just as I thought. I feel more certain than ever that something of great importance is afoot. They've switched to another cipher."

CHAPTER XVII

A CHANGE IN CIPHERS

For some moments there was a complete silence in the room. The members of the wireless patrol looked at one another in astonishment, questioning with their eyes the meaning of this new turn of events.

Captain Hardy sat staring at the message before him, his brow wrinkled, his eyelids drawn close together, trying to find some new clue to the puzzle before him. And until he spoke, the lads of the little patrol forbore to utter a sound. So for some time the room remained as silent as a tunnel.

At last the captain glanced up from his paper and noted the intent looks bent upon him, and the deep silence. He shook off his abstraction.

"It looks as though we were up against it," he said. "Every minute I feel more certain that something serious has happened. Why should they be sending radio messages at this hour, when they have never sent them before excepting after the transports sailed? And why should they now use a new cipher? Their plan evidently was to use radio communication as little as possible, lest they be detected. So they sent nothing by wireless but the most important news--the news of s.h.i.+p movements, which had to be got to Germany at once. All other messages they conveyed in some slower but safer way. We know they used the telephone, and sent messages by a boy, and wrote on dollars, and carried messages by motor-car, and probably sent code letters through the mails. For all ordinary correspondence they used these slower, safer methods. Only when they absolutely had to, did they employ the wireless. So we must a.s.sume that they had to now."

He paused and glanced from face to face. "But why the change of cipher?" he continued. "It must be because they fear that the old cipher will be understood."

Again the captain fell silent. "What can have happened?" he inquired soberly, "that makes the use of wireless so imperative? What can it be? Only something new and unforeseen. And what could there be new and unforeseen except the detection of their plot? More and more I am convinced that these plotters have been alarmed."

He fell into a brown study for a moment. "This message can mean nothing else," he said after a little. "It is imperative that we learn what it is at the earliest possible moment. Make four copies of the message you took, Henry."

Captain Hardy's first lieutenant took the paper from his leader's hand and on four sheets of paper copied the string of letters he had picked from the air.

"Now, boys," said the leader of the patrol, when the copies were complete, "put your thinking caps on. Each of you take one of these copies and see what you can make of it. You know how we deciphered the other cipher."

In another moment four boys were wrinkling their foreheads as they bent over the cryptic strings of letters. And over the room came a hush deep as midnight's.

For a few moments n.o.body broke the silence. Each boy was busy with his own thoughts.

Henry was scowling at his paper. Willie was studying the letters before him, as in earlier days he had studied the landscapes about Camp Brady and the Elk City reservoir. Lew already had a hopeless look on his face. At threading the forest he was second to none in skill; but at untangling mental puzzles, he had small ability. The nimble-witted Roy was already setting about his task with that keenness so characteristic of him.