Читать книгу Radio Boys in the Flying Service; or, Held For Ransom by Mexican Bandits онлайн

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“Transmitting again, eh?” he said with a smile as he shook hands all around and took the chair that Phil proffered him. “You boys are radio fans of the thirty-third degree.”

“You’re responsible,” laughed Phil. “It was you who set our feet upon this path of crime. When it comes to radio, that’s your middle name. There’s nobody in town that’s such a dyed-in-the-wool enthusiast.”

“Or that knows so much about it,” added Dick.

“Guilty on the first charge, but not sure about the second,” said the professor. “At the rate you fellows are going you’ll soon be able to give me points. But what are you sending out now? Something special?”

“Broadcasting the story of the robbery once more,” answered Phil. “We’ve been doing that for several nights, but nothing has come of it yet and we’re beginning to think it’s a forlorn hope.”

“Not by any means,” replied Mr. Denby. “Radio has a long arm, and it may reach out and clutch its fingers on a rascal’s neck even at the other end of the continent.”

“It used to be possible,” he continued, warming to his subject as he always did when the conversation turned on radio, “that a criminal could jump on a train, ride for a few hours until he came to a remote country place and feel as safe as though he were in the wilds of Labrador. The chances were a hundred to one that the people of a lonely little village or of a sparsely settled farming district would never hear of him or his crime, and he could lie low there in reasonable security until the hue and cry was over. But that time passed with the coming of radio. In the very farmhouse that the criminal may be approaching or past which he may be riding or walking, there may be a radio set at which the farmer or his family may have been sitting a few minutes or hours before and hearing the whole story. A stranger attracts attention anyway, and they might recognize him at once and put the police on his track. Instead of a few sleuths being on the rascal’s track, there are hundreds of thousands.”