THE RADIO DETECTIVES UNDER THE SEA

CHAPTER I—IN THE BAHAMAS

“Oh, look, Tom! There’s land!” cried Frank Putney as, coming on deck one beautiful morning, he glanced across the shimmering sea and saw a low cloud-like speck upon the horizon ahead.

“Hurrah! it must be the Bahamas,” exclaimed Tom Pauling, as he saw the first bit of land they had sighted since leaving New York three days previously. “Say, isn’t it bully to see land again? And isn’t this water wonderful?”

To the two boys, the short sea trip had been a constant source of interest, for while they had both been on ocean-going steamships before and Frank had crossed the Atlantic, yet neither had ever visited the tropics. The glistening flying fish which had skittered like miniature sea-planes from under the plunging bows of the ship had filled them with delight; they had fished up bits of the floating yellow sargassum or Gulf Weed and had examined with fascination the innumerable strange crabs, fishes and other creatures that made it their home; they had watched porpoises as they played about the ship and they had even caught a brief glimpse of a sperm whale.

The wonderfully rich indigo-blue water of the Gulf Stream was a revelation to them and now that they were rapidly approaching the outlying cays of the Bahamas, with the surrounding water malachite and turquoise, emerald and sapphire with patches of dazzling purple and streaks of azure they could scarcely believe it real.

“It doesn’t look like water at all,” declared Tom, as his father joined them.

“It looks like—well, like one of those futurist paintings or as if some one had spilled a lot of the brightest blue and green paint he could find and had slapped on a lot of purple for good measure:”

Mr. Pauling laughed. “That’s accurate if not poetical,” he replied, “and you’ll find, when you go ashore, that the imaginary man with the paint pot did not stop at the water. The land is just as gaudy and incredibly bright as the sea.”

“Is that Nassau ahead?” asked Tom.

“No, that’s a small cay,” replied one of the officers who had drawn near the little group, “Egg Cay they call it. We’ll raise Rose Cay next and should sight New Providence and Nassau about two o’clock. Pretty, isn’t it?”

So intensely interested and excited were the two boys that they could scarcely wait to eat their breakfast before they again rushed on deck to find the little islet close to the ship, its cream-colored beaches and purplish-gray coral rocks clear and distinct above the marvelously tinted water edged by a thread of surf and with a few straggling palm trees nodding above the low, dull-green bush which covered the cay.

But to the boys, there were more reasons for being interested and excited than the mere fact that they were gazing for the first time at a tropical island or were about to visit a strange land. They were on an exciting and strange trip, a remarkable mission for two boys and one which promised an abundance of adventure.

Like so many boys, they had become interested in radio and during their experiments with various sets had heard peculiar messages from some unidentified speaker. With their curiosity aroused, they had tried, merely for the fun of the thing, to locate the sending station by means of loop aerials or radio compasses.

Having decided that the voice came from a certain block on the East Side of New York, they had reported their discovery to Mr. Henderson, a federal employee and an associate of Tom’s father, for their boyish imaginations had been fired with the idea that the speaker was a lawbreaker associated with a gang of rum smugglers whom Mr. Pauling was endeavoring to run down. But when a search of the block by Mr. Henderson’s men failed to reveal any trace of a radio outfit the boys had lost interest in the matter.

Then, when Mr. Pauling had returned from a mission to the Bahamas and Cuba, he had told the boys of a young man named Rawlins who had devised a remarkable type of diving suit which required no life line or air hose, the oxygen for the diver to breathe being produced by means of certain chemicals. Mr. Pauling had mentioned that the inventor of the suit had stated that its one fault was that the user could not communicate with those on a ship or on shore and Tom; his mind ever on his favorite hobby, had suggested that radio might be used. Later, when Rawlins met the boys in New York and Tom told him his ideas, the diver fell in with the scheme and declared that he believed it would be feasible to make a radio telephone apparatus which could be used under water.

Fitting up his father’s dock on the East River front as a workshop and laboratory, Rawlins and the boys worked diligently at Tom’s invention and at last succeeded in devising a radio set with which the diver could talk freely and easily with people on shore or with others under the sea.

While trying out the device Tom and Rawlins discovered two other divers whose actions were suspicious, and watching them, were amazed to see the men enter an old disused sewer. Following them into the sewer Tom and his companion were startled at hearing a conversation in some foreign tongue and Rawlins insisted it came from the other divers and that they too possessed undersea radio telephones. Hiding in the shadows the two saw the strangers standing under a trap-door into which they disappeared, taking with them a mysterious, cigar-shaped, metal object like a torpedo.

A little later, as Tom and Rawlins were about to return to their own dock, they again saw the men and following them were thunderstruck to discover that they were about to enter a submarine lying at the bottom of the river. Curious to find out more about the undersea craft, Rawlins approached it and was suddenly attacked by the two men. Tom unconsciously screamed and at the sound Frank, who was anxiously waiting at the receiver on shore, asked what was wrong. Suddenly, realizing that he was in touch with his friends, Tom called for help asking Frank to send for the police. At his cries the submarine quickly got under way, deserting the two strange divers who, seeing their craft had left, surrendered to Rawlins.

In his excitement one of the men had been careless and as a result the chemicals in his suit had flamed up at the touch of water and the man had been seriously injured. With the captured diver, Tom and Rawlins had made their way to the dock, carrying the wounded man and had arrived just as Mr. Pauling with Mr. Henderson and the police arrived. Tom had fainted from strain and excitement and when he recovered consciousness found that the captive had been recognized as a dangerous escaped criminal, a Russian “red” and that the other man was at the point of death.

Mr. Pauling, having heard Rawlins’ tale, suspected a connection between the deserted sewer, the strange divers, the submarine and the mysterious messages the boys had heard and at once sent the police to surround the block and search the buildings. As a result of the raid, a garage had been found with a secret passage connecting with the sewer and in which were stored vast quantities of liquor, contraband goods, Bolshevist propaganda and loot taken from hold-ups and robberies in New York.

Feeling that they had stumbled upon the key to a wave of crime and “red” literature which had been sweeping the country, Mr. Henderson questioned the captive, Smernoff, who confirmed the suspicions and confessed that the submarine had been used for smuggling liquor and other contraband into the united States and taking the ill-gotten loot out and that the contraband had been picked up by the sub-sea boat in mid ocean at spots where it had been dumped overboard from sailing vessels by previous arrangements.

He insisted, however, that he knew nothing of the headquarters of the gang or of their leader whom Henderson and his associates believed was a master criminal, an