our Morse code
learned you might be quite some good to us now."

"I wish I had whooped up on it faster," bewailed Dick, with engaging
candor. "I'm an awful rotter--plain lazy, I guess."

"Well, I don't know but we'd better let Bob go, all things
considered," observed Mr. Crowninshield, who had been quietly thinking
the matter over.

"I say Bob goes, too," reiterated Dick. "It is worth something to put
such fellows as those dog thieves behind the bars."

"You can connect with the Fall River boat or one passing through the
Canal and be in New York in the morning, Bob," the elder man asserted.
"Lyman will meet you, hustle things along, and send you home on the
noon train. With Dick's racing car to pick you up somewhere along the
line there is no reason why we should not have you back here before
another morning. You've no time to spare, though, for lingering and
discussing wireless and its wonders. Trot along and pack up your duds
and get some luncheon. I'll call up Wheeler and have him ready to
carry you to the train. Do not bother your head about connections; I
will look up everything and tell you exactly what to do."

In a flurry of anticipation off hastened Bob.

"Gee! Isn't it the limit that we haven't brains enough to get
O'Connel?" murmured Dick to Walter in a disgusted whisper. "I ought to
have duffed in harder on the blamed code. But I thought there was no
hurry. We seemed to have all summer to learn it."

"Maybe he won't call," His Highness suggested hopefully.

"I hope to blazes he doesn't," was the retort. "I'd feel cheap as dirt
to have that ticker go clicking out a message and I not be able to get
a word of it."

CHAPTER XIX

WALTER STEPS INTO THE BREACH

With Bob gone and radio lessons suspended the following morning seemed
to both Dick and Walter an unwontedly quiet one. Moreover with a
scorching sun high in the heaven, no breeze, and a dead low tide most
of the activities to which the boys might have resorted were out of
the question.

"Think of the sailing breeze we've seen blowing lots of mornings when
we couldn't go out," grumbled Dick. "Isn't it infernal luck?"

"Why don't you take your car and go for a spin," Nancy suggested.

"Wheeler has it, silly. He's meeting Bob."

"I couldn't go motoring anyway," put in Walter. "I've got the dogs to
chase round."

"You're not going out with them now," objected Dick.

"Not quite yet. I had them out before breakfast."

"What do you