location and found it to come from the city's great hotel. "Enough there
to send it round the world. Shouldn't be surprised to get the echo of it
in a few seconds myself. The nerve of the man!"

In strange contrast to this was the whisper which followed within five
minutes. It was sent on 200.

"Hello, Curlie. Did you get that? Terrible, wasn't it?" came the
whisper. "But, Curlie, I don't think you need to bother about him. He's
leaving in a day or two. He's going, far, far away. He's going north;
out of your territory entirely. I know you'd love to catch him, Curlie,
but it would be dangerous, awfully dangerous! So don't you try, for he
is going far, far away."

Coles Masters' fingers had worked rapidly during this whispered message.
Not only had he measured the distance and taken the location, but he had
written down the message word for word.

"Well, I'll be jiggered!" he muttered. "That was a girl, a young girl
and a pretty one too, or I miss my guess. Anyway she has an interesting
whisper. She's at that same hotel and seems to know Curlie. She must
have broken in on my 1200 friend. So he's going north? Can't go any too
soon for me. Mighty queer case. Have to turn it over to Curlie. It's all
Greek to me."

"Hello, there! What--"

He wheeled about to snap a button. A message was being shouted out on
600.

"That's the chap Curlie's after. So he hasn't got him yet? Well, here's
hoping he hurries." His pencil began rapidly writing the message.

Meanwhile Curlie in his woods retreat had moved silently over to the
other side of the driveway.

"Probably will come back the other way," he concluded.

He did not remain behind the fence this time but threw himself into the
shallow depths of a dry ravine. He remained keenly alert. His eyes were
constantly on the road, which lay like a brown ribbon a full mile
straight before him.

He was thinking of his various cases. Equal in interest to the one which
he was now hunting down was that big hotel case. He was thinking of the
girl. Why had she whispered those messages to him? Was she merely a tool
of the man behind the powerful radio machine? Was she simply leading him
on? He could not feel that she was. Somehow her whisper had an accent of
genuine interest in it.

"Wonder what she's like," he asked himself. Then, with a smile playing
about his lips, he tried to guess.

"Small, very active, has dark brown hair and snappy black eyes." After a
moment's thought he ch