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CHAPTER III – MARVELS OF RADIO

“Don’t forget now,” Bob reminded them, as his friends passed out of the gate on the way to their respective homes. “Be over at the house a little before eight, for the concert begins at eight o’clock sharp, and there aren’t many things in it that we want to miss. It’s the best program that I’ve seen for a month past. There’s violin music and band marches and opera selections and a bit of jazz mixed in.”

“Sounds as if it were going to be the cat’s whiskers,” said Jimmy.

“Jimmy, I’m ashamed of you,” said Bob, with mock severity. “When are you going to leave off using that horrible slang?”

“He might at least have said the ‘feline’s hirsute adornments,’” muttered Joe. “That would have been a little more dignified. But dignity and Jimmy parted company a long time ago.”

“I didn’t know they’d ever met,” remarked Herb. “But if they were ‘lovers once they’re strangers now.’”

“I shook it when I found that it wasn’t good to eat,” said the graceless Jimmy, nowise abashed. “But you fellows had better stop picking on me or it’ll be good-bye to any more doughnuts.”

They laughed and parted with another admonition by Bob to be on time. He himself went into the house and solaced himself with the cold bath and change of clothes that he had been promising himself all through that hot afternoon. A brisk rubdown with a rough towel did wonders, and by the time his mother returned he was feeling in as good shape as ever, with the exception of a touch of lameness in the right arm that had been subjected to such an unusual strain that day.

There were grave looks on the faces of both his parents as, at the supper table, he narrated the events of the afternoon. Mingled with their gratitude at his and Joe’s escape from injury, was a feeling of deep indignation against the probable authors of the trick.

“That Buck Looker is one of the worst if not the very worst boy in town!” ejaculated Mr. Layton. “There’s hardly a week goes by without hearing something mean or rowdyish with which he’s mixed up. He’s the kind of boy that criminals are made of after they grow up.”

“One might have overlooked the taking down of the ladder in itself,” commented Mrs. Layton; “but the contemptible part was in running away instead of running to help when he saw that the boys were in danger of being crippled or killed. He and his cronies could have got the ladder up in time, for they knew of the danger before Herb and Jimmy did. But he’d have let the boys be killed rather than take a chance of himself being blamed. That shows the stuff the boy is made of.”

“Pretty poor stuff, I’m afraid,” agreed Bob. “But, after all, Mother, here I am safe and sound, and all’s well that ends well.”

By a quarter to eight that evening the boys began to come, and even the tardy Jimmy was on hand before the time scheduled for the concert to begin. In addition to the pleasure they anticipated from the unusually fine program, they were keenly curious to learn what improvement, if any, had been made by the installation of the umbrella aerial.

They were not long left in doubt. From the very first tuning in there was an increase in the clearness and volume of the sound that surpassed all their expectations. The opening number chanced to be a violin solo, played by a master of the instrument. It represented a dance of the fairies and called for such rapid transitions up and down the scale as to form a veritable cascade of rippling notes, following each other with almost inconceivable swiftness. And yet so clearly was each note reproduced, so distinctly was each delicate shading of the melody indicated, that the player might have been in the next room or even in the same room behind a screen.

The boys and the others were delighted. They listened spellbound, and when in a glorious burst of what might have been angel music the selection ended, the lads clapped their hands in enthusiastic applause.

“That’s what you can call music!” ejaculated Bob.

“That player knows what he’s about,” was Herb’s tribute.

“And how perfectly we heard every note,” cried Joe. “We certainly made a ten strike, Bob, when we rigged up that new aerial. It’s got the other beaten twenty ways.”

“I guess you’re right about that,” said Jimmy. “I don’t grudge a minute of the time you spent this afternoon in putting it up. It was worth all the trouble.”

Bob looked hard at him, but Jimmy was as sober as a judge, and before either Bob or Joe could frame a suitable retort the crashing notes of a military band came to their ears and put from them the thought of anything else. It was a medley that the band played, composed of well-known airs ranging from “Hail Columbia” to “Dixie” and so inspiring was it that the boys’ hands were moving and their feet jigging in time with the music all through the performance.

For fully two hours they sat entranced through a varied program that included things so dissimilar as famous grand opera selections, the plaintive melodies of Hawaiian guitars, and some jazz, and when at last the list was ended the boys sat back with a sigh of satisfaction, their faces flushed and their eyes shining.

“Ever hear anything like it?” asked Bob, as he relaxed into his chair and took off his ear pieces.

“It’s the best ever!” declared Joe. “And to think that we can have something like it almost any night we choose, and all of that without going out of this room!”

“That’s the beauty of it,” Bob assented. “To hear a concert that included such fine talent as that we’d have to go to New York. That would mean all the time and trouble of dressing up, the long ride on the railroad train, the getting back home at two or three o’clock in the morning, to say nothing of the ten dollars apiece or thereabouts that we’d have to pay for train fare and tickets for the concert. For us four that would mean about forty dollars. Now we haven’t paid forty cents, not even one cent, we haven’t had to dress, we’ve sat around here lazy and comfy, we can go to bed whenever we like, and we’ve had the concert just the same. And what we did to-night we can do any night. I tell you, fellows, we haven’t begun yet to realize what a wonderful thing this radio is. It’s simply a miracle.”

“Right you are,” agreed Joe. “And just remember that what’s true of us four is true of four thousand or perhaps four hundred thousand. Take the biggest concert hall in the United States and perhaps it will hold five thousand. When it’s full, everybody else has to stay away. But there’s no staying away with radio. And every one has as good a seat as any one else. Think where that concert’s been heard to-night. People out as far as Chicago and Detroit have heard it. They’ve listened to it on board of ships out at sea. In lonely farmhouses people have enjoyed it. Men sitting around campfires up in the Adirondacks have had receivers at their ears. Sick people and cripples lying on their beds have been cheered by it. Lonely people in hotel rooms far away from home have found pleasure in it. There’s absolutely no limit to what the radio can do. It seems to me that it throws in the shade everything else that’s ever been invented.”

“You haven’t put it a bit too strong,” chimed in Herb. “But talking about a lot of people hearing it makes me think that perhaps we fellows have been a bit selfish.”

“What do you mean?” asked Jimmy in some surprise. “It isn’t so long ago that we got the old folks and sick folks together and gave them a concert at Doctor Dale’s house – Joel Banks and Aunty Bixby and the rest of them.”

“I don’t mean that,” explained Herb. “That was all right as far as it went, and I hope we’ll do it soon again. But what I have in mind are our own folks and our friends. Our fathers and mothers haven’t heard much of this concert to-night, and there are some of the fellows that we might have invited in.”

“But we have only four sets of ear pieces,” objected Jimmy. “I suppose of course we could attach a few more – ”

“I get Herb’s idea,” interrupted Bob, “and it’s a good one. He thinks that we ought to have a loud-speaker – a horn that would fill the room with sound and do away with the ear pieces altogether.”

“You hit the bull’s-eye the first time,” Herb conceded. “In other words, instead of having a concert for four have it for fourteen or forty.”

CHAPTER IV – FACING THE BULLY

The radio boys ruminated over Herb’s suggestion for a little while.

“The idea itself is all right,” pronounced Joe slowly, “but the trouble is that we couldn’t do it very well with this set, which is the best we’ve been able to make so far. We can hear the sound that comes over the wire well with these earpieces glued to our ears, but the sound would be lost if it were spread all over the room.”

“Wouldn’t the horn help out on that?” asked Herb.

“Not by itself, it wouldn’t,” answered Bob. “It’s a mistake to think that the horn itself makes the sound or increases its loudness. The only use of the horn is to act as a relay for the diaphragm of the receiver and connect it with the air in the room. But the sound itself must first be in the receiver. And with a crystal detector, such as we’re using in this set, I’m afraid that we couldn’t get volume of sound enough. It would be spread out over the room so thinly that no one would be able to hear anything. We’ll have to amplify the sound, and to do that there’s nothing better than a vacuum tube. That’s the best thing that the world has discovered so far.”

“I guess it is,” remarked Jimmy. “Doctor Dale has one in his set.”

“Yes,” chimed in Joe. “He even has more than one. The more there are the louder and clearer the sound.”

“I don’t suppose we could make one,” Herb remarked.

“No; that’s one thing that costs real money,” replied Bob. “But don’t let that bother you. I’ve got quite a lot left of that hundred dollars of the Ferberton prize, and there’s nothing I’d rather spend it for than to improve the radio set.”

“Count me in on that, too,” said Joe. “I’ve scarcely touched my fifty.”

“How about the horn?” queried Jimmy. “Will that have to be bought, too?”

“No,” replied Bob. “That’s something you can make. That is, if you’re not too tired from the work you did on setting up the aerial this afternoon.”

“But,” objected Jimmy, ignoring the gibe, “I don’t know anything about working in tin or steel. I haven’t any tools for that.”

“The horn doesn’t have to be made of metal,” answered Bob. “In fact, it’s better if it’s not. Some horns are even made of concrete – ”

“Use your head for that, Jimmy,” broke in Herb irreverently.

“But best of all,” Bob continued, while Jimmy favored the interrupter with a glare, “is to make the horn of wood. Take some good hard wood, like mahogany or maple, polish the inside with sandpaper after you’ve hollowed it out, give it a coat of varnish or shellac, and you’ll have a horn that can’t be beaten. It’s very simple.”

“Sure!” said Jimmy sarcastically. “Very simple! Just like that! Simple when you say it quick. Simple as the fellow that tells me how to do it.”

“Just imagine you’re hollowing out a doughnut,” put in Joe, grinning. “You’re an expert at that.”

“I’ll tell the world he is,” agreed Herb, with enthusiasm.

“That reminds me,” said Bob, “that there’s some pie in the pantry and sarsaparilla in the ice-box that mother told me to pass around among you fellows. That is, of course, if you care for it,” he added, as he paused in seeming doubt.

“If we care for it!” cried Jimmy, the creases of perplexity in his brow disappearing as if by magic. “Lead me to that pie. I’ll fall on its neck like a long-lost brother.”

“It’ll fall into your neck, you mean,” chuckled Herb, and in less than two minutes saw his prophecy verified.

“And now,” said Bob, after the last crumb and drop had disappeared, “I don’t want to tie the can to you fellows, but I hear dad moving around and locking up, and that’s a sign to skiddoo. We’ll think over that idea of Herb’s and get a tip from Doctor Dale as to the best way to go about it.”

There was a chorus of hearty good-nights and the radio boys separated.

Two days later, as Bob and Joe were coming home from school, the latter, looking behind him, gave vent to an exclamation that drew Bob’s attention.

“What’s up?” he asked, turning his head in the same direction.

“It’s Buck Looker and his bunch!” exclaimed Joe, a flush mounting to his brow and his eyes beginning to flame. “He’s been careful to keep out of my way so far. Let’s wait here until he catches up to us.”

“You’ll wait a long time then, I guess,” replied Bob, “for he’s seen us, too, and he’s slowing up already. He doesn’t seem a bit anxious to overtake us.”

“Then we’ll have to go back and meet him,” said Joe grimly. “I’m going to have it out with him right here and now. He needn’t think he’s going to get away scot free after the trick he played on me.”

“What’s the use, Joe?” counseled Bob. “You can’t prove it on him and he’ll only lie out of it. It’s bad policy to kick a skunk.”

But Joe had already turned and was striding rapidly back toward Buck and his companions, and Bob went along with him.

There was a hurried confabulation between Buck and his cronies as they saw Bob and Joe advancing toward them, and a hasty looking from side to side, as though to seek some means of escape. But there was no street handy to turn into, and as it would have been too rank a confession of cowardice to turn their backs and run, the trio assumed a defiant attitude and waited the approach of the swiftly moving couple.

Joe stopped directly in front of the bully, while Bob ranged alongside, keeping a sharp watch on the movements of Lutz and Mooney.

“Why did you take down that ladder the other afternoon, Buck Looker?” asked Joe, looking his opponent straight in the eye.

Buck’s look shifted before Joe’s gaze, but he affected ignorance.

“What ladder and what afternoon?” he countered, sparring for time. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, and for that matter I guess you don’t either.”

“I know perfectly well what I’m talking about, and so do you,” replied Joe, coming so near to him that Buck gave ground. “You and your gang took away the ladder from the side of Bob’s barn, and in trying to get down I nearly broke my neck.”

“Pity you didn’t,” blustered Buck. “If your ladder fell down and you didn’t have sense enough to wait for some one to come along and put it up for you, that wasn’t any fault of mine. I wasn’t anywhere near Layton’s barn that whole afternoon.”

“We know better,” said Joe. “Bob and I saw you going along the street a little while before we missed the ladder, and Herb Fennington and Jimmy Plummer saw you and your crowd running away like mad while I was hanging to the pipe alongside the barn.”

“You shut up!” yelled Buck, in a burst of rage.

“Take off your coat, Buck Looker,” cried Joe, dropping his books to the ground, “and I’ll give you the same kind of a trimming that Bob gave you the night you tried to wreck his aerial.”

For answer Buck tightened his grip on the strap that held his books.

“You stand back, Joe Atwood,” he cried, with a quaver in his voice, “or I’ll soak you with these books!”

Joe laughed his disdain.

“You coward!” he exclaimed, and was springing forward when a warning exclamation came from Bob.

“Stop, Joe,” he commanded. “Here comes Mr. Preston.”

A look of vexation came into Joe’s eyes and a look of relief into Buck’s as they looked and saw the principal of the high school walking rapidly toward them.

CHAPTER V – A BIG ADVANCE

With the coming of the school principal and the certainty that the threatened row was over, for the present at least, all Buck Looker’s usual truculence returned.

“It’s lucky for you that Preston happened to turn up just now,” he snarled. “I was just getting ready to give you the licking of your life.”

“I noticed that,” said Joe dryly, as he picked up his books. “Only instead of doing it with your fists, you were going to do it with your books, like the coward that you are. You gave yourself away that time, Buck. It isn’t necessary for any one to show you up. You can be depended on to do that job yourself.”

By this time the principal was only a few yards away, and Buck and his friends walked away rapidly, while Bob and Joe followed more slowly, so that Mr. Preston soon caught up with them.

“Good afternoon, boys,” he said, as he came abreast of them. “You seemed to be a little excited about something.”

“Yes, we were having a little argument,” admitted Joe.

The principal looked at them sharply and waited as though he expected to hear more. But as nothing further was said, he did not press the matter. If the trouble had taken place in the school or on the school premises, he would have felt it his duty to go to the bottom of the affair. But he had no jurisdiction here, and he was too wise a man to mix in things that did not directly concern him or his work.

“Well, how goes radio?” he asked, changing the subject. “Are you boys just as enthusiastic over it as you were the night you won the Ferberton prizes?”

“More so than ever,” replied Bob, and Joe confirmed this with a nod of the head. “It’s getting so that almost every minute we have out of school we’re either tinkering with our set or listening in. We’ve just finished putting up a new umbrella aerial, and it’s a dandy.”

“I use that kind myself,” said Mr. Preston. “I get better results with it than I do with anything else.”

“Why, are you a radio enthusiast, too?” asked Bob, in some surprise. “I didn’t have any idea you were interested in it.”

“Oh, yes,” affirmed the principal, with a smile. “I’m one of the great and constantly increasing army of radio fans. I understand there are more than a million of them in the United States now, and their ranks are being swelled by thousands with every day that passes. I use it for my own personal pleasure and for that of my family, but I also have an interest in it because of my profession.”

“I understand it’s becoming quite a feature in education,” remarked Joe.

“It certainly is,” replied Mr. Preston. “Many colleges and high schools now have radio classes as a regular part of their course. College professors give lectures that go by radio to thousands where formerly they were heard by scores. I’ve been thinking of a plan that might be of help in the geography classes, for instance. Suppose some great lecturer or traveler who has been in faraway lands should give a travel talk from some broadcasting station. Then while he was describing China, for instance, we might have moving pictures thrown on a screen in the classroom showing Chinese cities and customs and types. Both the eye and the ear would be taught at the same time, and in a most interesting way, it seems to me. What do you think of the idea?”

“Fine,” said Bob.

“Dandy,” agreed Joe. “There wouldn’t be any lack of interest in those classes. The boys would be eager to have the time for them come.”

“Well,” smiled Mr. Preston, “it’s only an idea as yet, but it’s perfectly feasible and I shouldn’t be surprised to see it in general use in a year or two.”

He turned into a side street just then with a pleasant good-bye, and the boys went on their way together, picking up Jimmy, who was just emerging from a store.

“What was Mr. Preston talking to you about?” asked Jimmy, with some curiosity, for he had witnessed the parting. “Hauling you over the coals, was he, for something you’ve done or haven’t done?”

“Nothing like that,” replied Joe. “We just found out that he is a radio fan like the rest of us.”

“Funny, isn’t it, how that thing is spreading?” murmured Jimmy musingly. “You couldn’t throw a stone now without hitting somebody who is interested in radio.”

“All the same, I wish he hadn’t caught up to us when he did,” grumbled Joe. “I was just going to mix it with Buck Looker when he came along.”

“Buck has lots of luck,” commented Jimmy. “Tell me all about it.”

They told him all the details of the meeting, and became so engrossed in it that they almost ran into Dr. Dale, who was just coming up from the railroad station.

He greeted them with great cordiality, which met with quite as hearty a response on their part, for the minister was a prime favorite with them and they always felt at their ease with him. There was nothing prim or professional about him, and his influence among the young people was unbounded.

He chatted with them for a few minutes until they reached Bob’s gate.

“Won’t you come up on the porch for a few minutes, Doctor?” asked Bob. “There are some things we’d like to ask you about radio.”

“Certainly I will,” replied the doctor, with a smile. “There’s not much that I’d rather talk about. In fact, I was just about to tell you of an interesting experience that I had this very afternoon.”

He went with the boys up the steps and dropped into the chair that Bob drew up for him.

“Tell us about that first, Doctor,” urged Bob. “Our questions can come afterward.”

“I just had the luck to get on a train coming home that had a car attached to it where they were trying out a new radio system,” replied the minister. “I heard about it from the conductor, whom I know very well, and he arranged it so that I could go into the car where they were making the experiments. They had a radio set in there with a horn, and the set was connected with an aerial on the roof of the car. They sent out signals to various stations while the train was going along at the rate of forty miles an hour, and got replies that we could hear as plainly as though one of the people in the car were talking to the others. The whole thing was a complete success, and one of the officials of the road who happened to be in the party told me that the express trains on the road were going to be equipped with it.

“Of course, if one road does that, it will not be any time before all the others will, too. It’ll not be long before we can be sitting in a car traveling, let us say from New York to Albany, and chat with a friend who may be on another train traveling between Chicago and Denver. Or if a business man has started from New York to Chicago and happens to remember something important in his office he can call up his manager and give him directions just the same as though he pressed a buzzer and called him in from the next room.”

“It sounds like magic,” remarked Bob, drawing a long breath.

“If we’d even talked about such things a few hundred years ago we’d have been burned at the stake as wizards,” laughed the doctor.

“The most important thing about this railroad development,” he went on, “is not the convenience it may be in social and business life, but in the prevention of accidents. As it is now, after a train leaves a station it can’t get any orders or information until it gets to the next station. A train may be coming toward it head on, or another train ahead of it and going in the same direction may be stalled. Often in the first case orders have come to the station agent to hold a train until another one has passed. But the station agent gets the message just a minute too late, and the train has already left the station and is rushing on to its fate. Then all the agent can do is to shudder and wait for news of the crash. With the radio equipment he can call up the train, tell of the danger, and direct it to come back.

“Or take the second case where a train is stopped by some accident and knows that another train is coming behind it on the same track and is due in a few minutes. All they can do now is to send back a man with a red flag to stop the second train. But it may be foggy or dark, and the engineer of the second train doesn’t see the flags and comes plunging on into the first train. With the radio, the instant a train is halted for any reason, it can send a message to the second train telling just where it is and warning of the danger. Hundreds have been killed and millions of dollars in property have been lost in the past just because of the old conditions. With the radio installed on trains, that sort of thing will be made almost impossible in the future.

“But there,” he said, with a smile, “I came up here to answer your questions, and I’ve been doing all the talking. Now just what is it you wanted to ask me about radio?”