JOE RECEIVES VISITORS.

It was some days later that Joe was sitting alone in the station on Wireless Island, as the boys had come to re-christen their temporary abiding place. Nat was ashore helping Ding-dong construct a wireless plant on his own place, as the Bell boy, whose father was a well-to-do business man, needed his son to help him in stock-taking, an operation which would take some time. Ding-dong didn’t much relish the idea of being cut off from his chums entirely for even that length of time, so it had been decided to put up a light-powered plant at his place, that he might be in touch with Nat and Joe whenever he or they desired.

Nat was not to be back till night-fall when he would bring with him Nate Spencer, the owner of the destroyed Albicore, to help cook and make himself handy around the place. Nate had not yet bought another boat and jumped at the chance of spending a short time on the island.

Joe was reading a book dealing with the wonders of wireless when a quick, sharp step on the gravel outside the hut aroused his attention.

“Now, who in the world can that be?” he exclaimed half aloud.

He rose from his chair to go to the door, but before he reached it two men blocked the entrance. Both were strangers to him and Joe did not much care for their looks.

“Hey, kid, who’s in charge around here?” demanded one of them, a rough, unshaved customer with a red face and shifty eyes. His companion was furtive-faced and had little blinky, red-rimmed eyes like a ferret’s. He suggested a man who was always on the lookout for something.

“Yes, who’s the boss?” came from this second individual.

“I am just at present,” rejoined Joe; “what do you want?”

“We want to send a message,” was the gruff rejoinder, “and dern quick, too.”

“We don’t handle any commercial business,” replied Joe; “this is a private plant.”

“Oh, we know all about that. That’s just the reason we took the trouble to get a boat and come here,” was the reply.

“Yes, our business is private and confidential, and we don’t want no nosy operator at a public station ashore to know nothing about it,” supplemented the ferret-eyed man.

“Where do you want to send the message?” asked Joe, who by no means liked the situation. The men spoke in a dictatorial, bullying sort of way and appeared prepared to enforce their wishes by violence if no other way offered. Joe had no weapon on him, and the only revolver on the island was in Nat’s trunk.

In reply to Joe’s question, the red-faced individual pointed seaward.

“You mean you want to send a message to a ship?”

“Yes, a message in cipher.”

Joe shook his head.

“If it had been some really urgent matter I might have helped you out, but as it is, I’m afraid I can’t do anything. You’d better try one of the stations ashore.”

The red-faced man scowled; but an instant later he assumed what was meant to be an ingratiating manner. He drew out a wallet and tapped it meaningly.

“I’ll make it worth your while,” he said.

“Sorry, but I can’t do it,” was Joe’s rejoinder.

“I’ll make it right with you, kid,” urged the other.

“Nothing doing,” said Joe firmly. “Sorry you’ve had this trip out here for nothing, but you’ll have to go back again if you want to send a cipher message to any ship.”

The ferret-eyed man came close to his companion.

“Bill, you do it yourself,” he whispered, but not so low that Joe didn’t hear him.

“Oh, I’m too rusty. Haven’t tapped a key since I was fired for selling information on that Wall Street pool.”

“Oh, you can do it all right enough,” insisted the other.

“Well, if the kid won’t do it, I guess I’ll have to try,” was the reply, and the two men started out of the shanty and walked toward the wireless hut.

“Hold on there!” cried Joe, springing forward and laying a detaining hand on one man’s arm. “I can’t allow any interference with the apparatus yonder.”

The red-faced man whipped round like a shot.

“Can’t, eh?” he sneered. “I’d like to see you stop me. Ed, grab him!”

The ferret-eyed man seized Joe and pinioned his arms before the boy had a chance to resist.

“There, that’ll be about all from you, my rooster,” grinned the red-faced man. “Bring him along, Ed, we may need him.”

Struggling in the man’s grasp, Joe was dragged to the wireless hut. In one corner of the structure was a closet with a stout oak door in which some of the valuable parts of the plant were locked up when the island was left for any considerable period. The door had a strong padlock and, having thrust Joe inside, the men banged the door and snapped the padlock. The door had a small slit in it, which was lucky, or Joe might have suffocated in the stuffy place. Through this slit he wrathfully watched the men as they went up to the table on which the apparatus was adjusted.

The red-faced man inspected it a bit dubiously.

“I’m all right pounding brass on the regular key and I know a bit of wireless, although I hadn’t learned very much when I was canned for that deal you know about.”

“Oh, you can work it all right,” his companion assured him.

He drew out a paper and handed it to the ex-operator.

“Here’s the cipher code and the message. Now get busy and tap it out and then we can vamoose.”

Joe was entirely powerless to aid himself. The door was thick and strong and there was no possibility of his being able to open it; and, even had he been able to, it wouldn’t have done any good. His captors were burly, strong men and looked vicious to a degree, and had he managed to get out they would assuredly have given him rough treatment. No; there was nothing for it but to remain quiet and be keenly alert to what was going forward in the room outside.

The red-faced man sat down to the key and at first fiddled clumsily with it. But he soon acquired confidence and then began to flash out his message. By listening Joe readily learned that he was trying to raise the steamer Vesta from San Diego for Vancouver, Canada. After a long interval Joe saw a grin of satisfaction come over the man’s face.

“He’s raised her,” thought Joe, and he was correct in his conjecture. Flash-crackle-bang! went the spark, and Joe by close listening heard the man instruct the operator on the Vesta to deliver a message to a man named Albert Carter. Then followed a jumble of code words utterly meaningless to Joe.

The sender repeated his message and then rose from the table.

“Well, I’ve done the best I can,” he said, “and I guess it’s all right.”

“Sure it is. Anyhow, he can’t kick. You’ve done what you could to help out a pal.”

“Let’s be getting along, then. I’ve no fancy for sticking around here.”

“What about him?”

The ferret-eyed man nodded his head in the direction of the closet where Joe was confined.

“Leave him where he is. We want a start, don’t we? Some one will be along and let him out, I guess.”

“Well, so long, sonny,” cried the ferret-eyed man with a chuckling laugh that made Joe’s blood boil, “much obliged for the accommodation.”

“You’ll get in trouble over this,” roared out Joe furiously, “you see if you don’t.”

“Oh, I guess not,” said the man who had sent the message, with a coarse laugh. “Well, shake a day-day, kid. You might have made some money and have saved me the bother of showing you that I could work your wireless without your aid.”

Joe knew it would be useless to reply, so he bottled up the vials of his wrath and remained silent. The men left the hut and no doubt made their way back to their boat in which they had come from the mainland.

“Well, of all the nerve,” sputtered Joe in his prison. “If that isn’t the limit! There’s something mighty crooked about all this,” he went on to himself. “They got word to some one on board that ship bound for Canada, and the trouble they took to do it shows that there is something mighty suspicious about the whole affair.”

He went on thinking—there was nothing else to do,—and racked his brain to recollect what he could of the message. But this wasn’t much, for of course the code words were as meaningless as Greek to him.

“I do wish I could figure out what it was,” he said to himself, “if only I could and get word to that ship about the manner in which the message was sent, I might be the means of preventing some grave wrong being done to somebody; for I am sure those men are no good. You could tell that by their faces, let alone their actions. Hello!”

Joe stared through the slit in the door at the entrance to the wireless hut. It had been suddenly darkened by the figure of a man.

“Anybody around here?” came a voice.

“Yes, I’m here,” cried Joe eagerly, for he knew by the voice that it was neither of the men who had treated him so roughly.

“Where the dickens are you?” came the natural inquiry.

“Here in the closet.”

“Well, what in Sam Hill!——”

The figure came forward and Joe almost dropped with surprise right there and then. He had good reason.

The newcomer was Hank Harley, old Israel’s nephew. It certainly was an afternoon of surprises for Joe.