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قراءة كتاب The Radio Boys on Secret Service Duty
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registered. I remember your faces well, for instance. I am quite sure I would have noted such a man as you describe if he had been among the number.”
Disappointed, Frank turned away.
“So much for that,” he said to his friends. “But, do you know? I wonder if that fellow happened to be in the breakfast room by accident, or whether he was watching us?”
“Watching us?” said Bob. “Oh, you’ve got this plot stuff on the brain, old thing. Why would he be watching us?”
“To see whether we went to the authorities,” said Frank. “If he saw us go to the authorities, he would be pretty certain we had overheard enough of his conversation out on the observation platform last night to make us suspicious, at least.”
Mr. Temple was struck with the force of Frank’s reasoning.
“Look here,” he said, to the three chums. “Frank is right. If there is a big plot afoot, and this fellow suspects us of having gained some knowledge of it, he probably would do just as Frank says.”
“Suppose you called up the Secret Service men, Mr. Temple,” suggested Jack, “and asked one of
them to call on you here at the hotel? Wouldn’t that be better than to go to them?”
“Very good, Jack,” approved the older man. “A government agent could make his way direct to our suite without arousing suspicion if he takes precautions, while, if Frank is correct and we are being shadowed, we could not stir out of the hotel without being followed. Do you boys stay here and keep your eyes open, while I go to our rooms and telephone. If you see any more of this fellow, call me. If not, come up in half an hour. By then probably a government man will have arrived.”
The half-hour passed quickly for the boys who sat in the lobby, intensely interested in the life of the big hotel going on around them, and especially in the Oriental men-servants in their gorgeous native costumes flitting in and out on noiseless soft-soled slippers. They saw no sign of the man Frank believed was shadowing them and, at the end of the allotted period of time, took the elevator to their third-floor suite overlooking Market Street.
Barely had they entered the sitting room than there came a low knock on the door, repeated three times, and Mr. Temple sprang to open it.
“There’s the government agent,” he said. “That’s the signal he said he would give.”
As he opened the door, an alert, slim man of 30
stepped inside and closed the door quickly behind him.
“Pardon my abruptness,” he said, in a low voice. “Are you Mr. Temple?”
“I am.”
“And I am Inspector Burton,” said the other, flipping back the right lapel of his coat and displaying a small gold shield. “You wanted to see me?”
“I did,” said Mr. Temple. “Won’t you sit down?”
Inspector Burton took off his hat and accepted the proffered chair. He looked inquiringly at the boys. Mr. Temple introduced them.
“Now,” said Mr. Temple, “you probably were somewhat mystified by my message. I did not want to say anything over the telephone about the nature of the business on which we wanted to see you. Yet I did want you to come here without being seen. That was why I asked you to take precautions.”
The other nodded.
“In our business,” he said, “we receive many strange calls. So I was not much surprised. I may as well tell you, however, that the clerk, who can be trusted, knows that I am here.”
He shot a searching glance at his hosts.
Mr. Temple nodded.
“I see,” he said. “We might have been enemies
trying to lure you into a trap. That was a wise precaution on your part. But,” he added, leaning forward, “we are not enemies; merely good citizens who have come into possession of certain information which we believe you ought to have.”
“Wait a minute,” said Inspector Burton, in a low voice, and leaping to his feet, he gained the door in two strides, threw it open, peered out, then disappeared.
CHAPTER IV—ENTER INSPECTOR BURTON
While the others still sat where he had left them, regarding each other in speechless surprise, Inspector Burton returned, closed and locked the door, and resumed his chair as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.
“Thought I heard someone listening outside the door,” he explained. “When I opened it there was nobody in sight. Your room is only two doors from an angle in the hall. So I ran to the turning and looked along the corridor, but it was empty.”
“Now, what is it?” he asked.
Mr. Temple explained, and when he had concluded, Frank once more rehearsed the scraps of conversation which he had overheard the two low-voiced men drop on the observation platform of their train the previous night.
Inspector Burton’s eyes blazed with satisfaction. He pounded one clenched hand into the palm of the other, repeating the gesture several times.
“Good,” said he. “Good.”
Turning to Frank he commanded:
“Describe these men for me.”
Frank complied. At the description of the man who had scrutinized Frank on the train and whom Frank believed he had seen again at breakfast, Inspector Burton uttered an exclamation.
“Do you know him?” asked Frank, eagerly.
“Indeed I do,” said Inspector Burton. “I believe I saw him in the lobby downstairs, although he did not see me as far as I could tell. He was lurking behind a pillar.”
“Who is he?”
“He’s a man of many aliases. Folwell will do as well as any other. ‘Black George’ is his name in the underworld, because of his swarthy complexion and raven black hair. He’s the leader of a powerful gang of underworld characters, a gang with ramifications in many cities not only here but on the China Coast, too. He’s been responsible for many deviltries on the Pacific Coast for years, but we have never been able to lay anything definite at his door. It’ll be a feather in the cap of any man who can get the goods on ‘Black George’.”
Frank was excited, and showed it. His chums were, too. Mr. Temple could not restrain an exclamation.
“Then what this young man overheard will be of some value to you?” he demanded.
“Value?” repeated Inspector Burton. “It will, indeed. Lately the smuggling of Chinese coolies into the country has enormously increased. We know they are coming in but we cannot stop them. We suspected, of course, that there was a leak somewhere in our forces. We have managed to stop the smuggling across the border on land pretty well. But all our efforts to put a stop to bringing in of Chinese by water have been unavailing. We have a fleet of fast revenue cutters and sub chasers operating off the coast of Southern California, but somehow the coolie smugglers coming up from Mexico manage to elude us in the night and land their human cargo in some unlocated cove whence, undoubtedly, they are whisked inland by waiting motor cars and hidden.”
“I should think you could patrol the whole coast, if necessary, and locate the rendezvous,” said Jack.
Inspector Burton shook his head with a wry smile.
“My young friend,” said he, “if you knew more about the ways of government, you would think differently. We have to do a tremendous amount of work on small appropriations and with a limited force. Ours is not a spectacular branch of the service, and the gentlemen in Congress see no occasion to spend money on us. They prefer to spend it
where it will show. Moreover, now that the World War has increased the national debt, they are shouting for economy. Instead of giving us more men and money, the men who hold the purse strings are cutting us down.”
Mr.