you can be sure of in this strange old world. You can always
be sure that you never can tell. Thing that looks like one thing always
turns out to be something else.

"Point is," he continued after a moment's deep thought, "somebody's
getting past our guard. Slamming us right in the nose and we're not
doing a thing about it. Don't look like we could. I've got a theory but
you can't go searching the estate of the richest man in your city just
on theory; you've got to have facts to back you up, and mighty definite
facts, too."

"Yes, that's right," agreed Coles. "But what do you make out of all that
babble about airplane, map, ship and much gold? Do you suppose it's some
smuggling scheme, some plan to get a lot of Russian or Austrian jewels
into the country without paying duty or something like that?"

"I don't make anything out of that," said Curlie rather sharply, "and
for the time, I don't jolly much care. The thing I'm interested in is
the fact that we're being beaten; that the air about us is being torn to
shreds every night by some careless or criminal person; that we're
getting a black eye and a reprimand from the department; that sea
traffic is being interrupted; that lives are being imperiled and we
can't seem to do anything about it. That's what's turning my liver dark
black!" He pounded the desk before him until instruments rattled and
wires sang.

"But how you are going to catch a fellow when he goes tearing all over
the map," said Curlie, more calmly, "is exactly what I don't know. You
go down and get a bite of chow. No, go on home and go to bed. I'll take
the rest of the shift. I want to think. I think best when I'm alone;
when the wires sing me a song; when the air whispers to me out of the
night; when the ghosts of dead radio-men, ghosts of operators who joked
with death when the sea was reaching up mighty arms to drag them down,
come back to talk to me. That's when I think best. These whispering
ghosts tell me things. When I sit here all, asleep but my ears, things
seem to come to me."

"Bah!" said Coles Masters, shivering, "you give me the creeps."

Drawing on his coat, he slipped out of the door, leaving Curlie slumped
down in his chair already all asleep but his wonderful ears.

For a full hour he sat lumped up there. Seeming scarcely to breathe,
stirring now and then as in sleep, he continued to listen and to dream.

Then suddenly he sat up with a start to exclaim out loud:

"Yes! That's it.