Read Ebook: Radio Boys Loyalty; Or Bill Brown Listens In by Aaron S F Samuel Francis Whipple Wayne

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Ebook has 148 lines and 10148 words, and 3 pages

y, not so loud! Do you think we would come this far and then go back on you? I must get away now--right off. Lie low."

Gus felt an almost irresistible desire to break open the window or the door at once and get his friend out. Then, if need be, fight their way to safety, but common sense told him that the certain noise of doing such a thing would be heard and perhaps his effort defeated, with great danger to himself, and Tony, too. If there had been but one guard or even two--but three were too great odds.

Back he went to his position, and there he watched for the rest of the day, elated with his discovery of Tony, saddened by the delay, grinning at the thought of the Malatesta and their confederate compelled to watch, almost motionless, for the supposed prowlers.

At last darkness threatened. Those small banditti, the mosquitoes, as bloody-minded as the Malatesta, began to sing and to stab. The assassin owls made mournful cadences in keeping with the scene and its half-tragic human purposes, while the whippoorwills voiced the one element of brightness and hope.

The young fellow in the narrow, dark, log-walled cabin, with its barred window and padlocked oaken door, had been long disconsolate. But now, for the first time in many days, hope came to him as he walked back and forth, fighting pests, still tortured in mind, fearing failure, wondering, praying, yet proud and never beseeching, waiting for another and perhaps a brighter day.

For three months he had been a prisoner, waking from a fevered sleep after a long illness, his splendid constitution alone serving to doctor him, he had found himself mysteriously at sea, in the locked cabin of a tossing yacht that knew no harbor of rest. He had been denied even the chance to talk to, or to know his jailers. He had managed to keep alive on the rough, often unpalatable food poked under his door. There was no response to his callings, hammerings or threats. A less balanced, hopeful, kindly, gentle fellow would have gone insane.

Then, gagged and bound, he had been dumped about almost like a sack of wheat and landed in this horrible place alongside of which his prison room in the yacht was a palace. Now here for the first time had come a friendly voice, that of more than a friend, indeed, and he had again seized upon hope.

Yes, he would lie low, be patient, hope on and wait.

STRATEGY

"Bill, Bill, we've found Tony! Saw him a little in the dark and talked to him. We're going to get him out, Bill!" And Gus, after bursting in with this good news, told his chum and old Dan all about it. Then they held a council of war.

It was pretty certain that the Malatesta had no means of radio communication, as they could not have burdened themselves with the apparatus, nor could they have confined their communications to one person. That they were seeking ransom money was also pretty certain, and they were in a position to get it, too.

Bill, Gus and old Dan laid some plans, carefully considered from every angle, and with the impetus of youth to be acted upon at once. Having put their transmitting station in operation, Bill got busy on the wires, and on a wave length of 360 meters, began broadcasting notifications to Mr. Sabaste and to the police relative to Tony's whereabouts.

"Mr. Angelo Sabaste, do not send ransom money. Mr. Angelo Sabaste, do not send ransom money. Please convey this message to Mr. Angelo Sabaste, banker, of New York City, do not send ransom money. Police departments and coast patrol, send swift vessels all along the coast to Lower Point Gifford, and the lower inlet to head off any foray from the sea on the part of those who may have caught this; also to prevent escape of kidnapers from the inlet.

"Send men to surround the point and cut off escape by land along the peninsula north of the inlet; also to watch the lower thoroughfare. Some men meet the senders of this at Oysterman Dan's, in neck of woods above Lower Point Gifford, to raid kidnapers' roost from there, and effect rescue of young Anthony Sabaste.

"Station men and vessels to-night. Watch all landing places around Lower Point. Be prepared for trouble. Kidnapers armed and will shoot. Anthony Sabaste in small cabin in pine woods about one mile north of inlet. Hard place to find. Guarded by three men.

"This is William Brown speaking, at Oysterman Dan's cottage--for Augustus Grier, also. Have situation well in hand. Please radio reply at once."

Bill switched off his batteries and clamped the 'phones of the receiver to his ears. He had to listen in for but a few moments.

"Police Department, City. West Rural Section speaking. We are in direct communication with East State Mounted Force and contingents and will relay, acting in unison. Also in communication with coast patrol who also have your radio, no doubt, and will act independently. We are sending men and will make raid in morning, closing in north of Lower Point. Men sent to Oysterman Dan's house to-night. Coast patrol will also go out to-night. Will advise you personally in the morning. Have Dan send boat for men across thoroughfare to Stone Landing. If men not there by three A.M., go to Possum Beach and wait."

Bill still listened and the message was repeated, almost verbatim; then silence. He communicated the information to Gus and old Dan, and the oysterman went off to tidy up his boat for the trip. Bill and Gus decided to snatch a little sleep. Old Dan, who had napped in the afternoon as usual, agreed to wake them before he left at about two o'clock, which he did.

"Bill, I've got a hunch we are going at this thing a little too fast," said Gus.

"How too fast? We can't delay at all, can we?"

"The iron gets too hot, eh? I guess you are right, Gus."

"Look, Bill, here's a scheme. What if we work it this way?" Gus proceeded to outline a plan with every detail of which Bill agreed; and it called for action.

Taking the revolver and some extra cartridges, Bill hobbled along by Gus, who gave him a lift, now and then, piggy-back. The boys made their way south for more than a mile along the thoroughfare swamp edge. Then they turned sharply on a path across the wooded peninsula to the beach, and went another half mile among the dunes. A very tall pine tree against the sky-line gave Gus his bearings. A little below that they stopped, and Bill found a comfortable hiding-place among scrub pines, with the boom of the breakers in his ears and the sea breeze keeping off the mosquitoes.

Gus cast about silently for the path that led in to the kidnapers' cabin. Finding it with some difficulty in the darkness, he noted certain landmarks and went back to Bill. Agreeing on signals in whispers, Gus went back to the path and struck a match, whereupon Bill fired a shot, and immediately afterward, another. Then Gus swiftly made his way directly toward the cabin, and when near it, called softly:

"Hello, hello, you fellers! It's me, Sam."

There was a very profound silence for a few minutes. Gus called again:

"Hello! It's me, Sam. Don't shoot!"

And very much with his heart in his mouth, but still determined, he advanced, crouching low so that a bullet would most likely pass high over him. Suddenly a figure appeared directly in front of him and a flashlight was thrown in his face for an instant. Gus knew that he had been identified.

"Lay low," he whispered, not forgetting to keep up the dialect. "They're out there, somebody--sneakin' along in the open. I seen 'em an' let fly at 'em an' they shot back, but I run on down the woodses. Git yer gang an' come along so's we kin head 'em off if they start in here."

"How we do that? We stay here an' fight 'em, eh?"

"An' that'll give 'em the lay o' this place. We want t' draw 'em up the beach. Chase along up through the woodses an' come out 'bout a mile above and shoot oncet er twicet. Two of us kin do that an' two kin lay out yan at the end o' the path an' watch fer any of 'em startin' in this away, an' then you kin lead 'em off. See? That's the way the smugglin' fellers do it."

The plan must have looked good to the fellow still in the darkness; Gus did not know to whom he was talking, but he heard the man walk away rapidly. He waited, as though on pins, and in a moment three figures loomed before him, one voice questioning him again. The boy tactfully repeated his suggestions--then turned back with them as they started forward, evidently agreeing.

One fellow, Gus could see, was rubbing his eyes. All carried guns.

Two men kept to the path that led toward the beach edge of the woods. Another and Gus went straight on. Presently Gus suggested that they stop and rest awhile; then move on farther up, stop, scatter a little, and listen. He would sneak out into the open, he said, and look around. There was no danger of his being seen. It would be best to remain thus for an hour or more--perhaps till morning, mosquitoes or no mosquitoes. A grunt signified agreement.

The boy crept out toward the dunes and on, until he felt sure he could not be heard. Then, with the smooth, hard sand for a track he ran, softly on tiptoe, until once again he came below the tall pine. A low hiss thrice repeated was answered, and he found Bill in the same spot.

"They're all stuck along in the woods yonder," Gus whispered. "If you hear them moving off toward the cabin again, shoot. If they go on, shoot twice. If they come your way, lie low. Here goes for Tony, old scout!"

Gus had some difficulty getting to the cabin from the south side. He missed it once, got too far into the woods, turned, regained the dunes, struck in again and this time started to pass within a few yards of it, but by merest chance saw the gable end against the sky.

A CALL FOR HELP

Again Gus approached the cabin, feeling sure now of the outcome of the plan. He reached the clump of thick pines below the tall one and turned to make the bee-line in, not a hundred yards from the building, when the alarm notes of a ruffed grouse reached his ears. It was just ahead, the angry, quick, threatening call of a mother bird, disturbed with her young, quick to fight and to warn them of danger. Might not this be a weasel, fox or mink that had sneaked upon her? But if so, it would be the note of warning only, to scatter the little ones into hiding-places while the hen sought a safe shelter just out of the reach of the marauder and after she had, pretending a hurt, led it to a distance from the brood.

But this was different. The grouse had played her usual trick of decoy, no doubt, and failing in this had returned to attack something regarded as a larger enemy. She would know better than to include deer, or the wandering, half-wild cattle of the peninsula as such. There were no puma and few bear in these woods, and surely none here. What then could the disturber be but a man? Gus well knew the ways of these knowing birds.

The boy's advance now became so cautious as to make no audible sound even to himself, such being possible over the pine needles. Slowly he gained a vantage point where again the roof gable was visible against the sky. No sound ahead, except the mother grouse making the sweetest music imaginable in calling her young ones together during a half minute. The coast must be clear,--but just as the boy was about to go boldly forward, a flash of light shone about him and his staring eyes discerned, not thirty feet away, the three watchers standing together. They had returned, probably by pre-arrangement and had met in the roadway. Now they were silently listening for the fourth fellow--himself. One chap, thinking that they were not observed, had struck a match to see the time, or to light a cigarette. Had they been looking in Gus's direction they might have seen him. Presently, mumbling some words, they all went on again toward the cabin, and Gus, sick at heart because seeing now no chance for a renewal of his effort, turned back after an hour to where Bill waited.

"Why, Gus, they came out here, all of them together and went part way over to the beach, then returned almost right away. I could hear only their voices at first, but when they came back they passed close enough for me to hear a little of what they said, I think it was the Malatesta that we know. He was declaring that 'he,' and I guess he meant you, must be the same. Do you think he knows you, Gus?"

"I don't know. They must be suspicious of my story, or my purpose, anyway, or they would have stayed out and watched. Perhaps one of them followed far enough to hear me head out this way. Anyway, they think the cabin is the safest place. We can't do anything now, so let's go back and hit the hay."

They went back, Gus to throw himself on old Dan's couch and sleep like a dead man and Bill to take up the receiver phones, nodding over the table, to be sure, but remaining generally awake. For two hours he kept catching odd bits of no importance through long intervals. Then suddenly he sat up and, reaching over, poked Gus with his crutch. After two or three hard pokes Gus opened his eyes.

"Say, somebody's calling for help! I can't get it right, I reckon they've taken Tony away and out to sea again. Can't tell who it's from; it's all jumbled, anyway. Done now, I guess."

"But what was it?" asked Gus, now very wide awake.

"It came like this, in code," said Bill. "The 'S.O.S.' several times. Then: 'Aground. Rounding inlet, east channel, headed out. Hurry.' There was a lot of stuff in between, but not intelligible."

"Can it be Tony?"

"Who else?"

"But would they let him broadcast anything?"

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