sts to carry on doubtful conversations by
radio, a strange thing had happened. A message had gone crashing out
through space. Wave lengths 1200 meters long sped it on its way. There
was power enough behind it to carry it from pole to pole, but all it had
said was:

"A slight breeze from the west."

Three times the message had been repeated, then had come silence. There
had been no answer though Curlie had listened long for it on 1200 meter
wave lengths and five other lengths as well.

Sudden as had come the message, fleet as had been its passing, it had
not been too fleet for Curlie. He had compassed its direction; measured
its distance. On a map of the city which lay before him he had made a
pencil cross and said:

"It came from there." And he was right for, strange as it may seem, an
expert such as Curlie can sit in a hidden tower room such as his was and
detect the exact location of a station whose message has set his ear
drums aquiver.

The location had puzzled him. There was not a station in the city
licensed to send 1200 meter wave lengths. The spot he had marked was the
location of the city's most magnificent apartment hotel. The hotel
possessed a radiophone set. Its antennae, hung high upon the building's
roof, were capable of carrying that 1200 meter message with all that
power behind it, but the radio equipment of the hotel had no such power.

"Something crooked about that," he had mumbled to himself.

His first impulse had been to call the police. He did not act upon it.
They might blunder. The thing might get out. This law-breaker might
escape. Not five people in all the world knew of Curlie's detecting
station. He would work out this problem alone.

Now, as he sat thinking of it, he decided to confide this new secret to
his pal, Joe Marion.

"Yes," he told himself, "I'll tell him about it at chow."

At this moment his mind was recalled to other matters. New trouble was
brewing.

"A slight breeze from the west," his mind went over the message
automatically, "and the wind was due east. Don't mean much as it stands,
but I suspect means a lot more than it seems to."

Just above Curlie's head there hung a receiver. To the right and left of
him were two loud-speakers. Before him ranged three others. Each one of
these was tuned to a certain wave length, 200, 350, 500, 600, 1200
meters. Each was modulated down until sounds came to Curlie's delicately
tuned ear drums as little more than whispers. A co