The Brown Fox Mystery (9 page)

“My golly, I can’t
help
it,” said Djuna miserably.

Tommy, either because he saw how distressing the subject was to Djuna, or because he was curious about something else, changed the subject.

“What,” he said, “did she say they were playing with?”

“A he—hel-io-graph,” Djuna said with a little difficulty.

“What’s that?”

“I’m not just sure,” said Djuna. “I’ve never seen one. But it’s something you signal with by using a mirror and the sun.”

“Jeepers!” Tommy said as he screwed his face up into a puzzled frown. “That ought to be fun.”

“It’s pretty hard, I guess,” said Djuna, “because you have to know the Morse code.”

“What’s that?” Tommy said again.

“Oh, everybody knows what
that
is,” Djuna said as he groped for words to explain the Morse code.

“
I
don’t,” Tommy said, very frankly.

“You’ve been in the telegraph office in Clinton, haven’t you?” asked Djuna.

“Oh, sure.”

“Well, do you remember the little ticks you heard on the telegraph things they had there?” Djuna asked.

“Oh, sure,” Tommy said again.

“Well, that’s Morse code, or something just like it,” Djuna explained. “All those little ticks mean something. They call ’em dots and dashes and arrange ’em with spaces between them. When you hear those ticks in the telegraph office it means that somebody in another telegraph office, someplace far away, is sending a message with the ticks you hear.”

“Oh,” said Tommy. “But how in the world does
anybody
know what the ticks mean?”

“They’re dots and dashes with spaces between them, I told you,” said Djuna. “Socker Furlong, the newspaper man, showed me a telegraph thing—key, that’s what they call it—a telegraph key in his office. He showed me how to make the whole alphabet with dots and dashes, but I only remember A and N because they’re so much alike—only they’re different.”

“Jeepers!” said Tommy. “How can anything be alike if it’s different? You mean that when they listen to those dots and dashes they make letters that they make into words?”

“Sure, that’s what I said,” said Djuna, and then he frowned and added, “or didn’t I? Anyway, that’s what I meant. You see, the dots and dashes and spaces are made by the length of time the person who is sending the message holds down the key on the telegraph thing. For instance to make A he goes, ‘di,’ that’s a dot, and then ‘d-a-h,’ which is a dash. He holds the key open, say, for just one second to make a dot, and then three times as long, or three seconds to make a dash. When you put the dot and dash together, with a space between them, they make an A.”

“Oh, I think I see,” said Tommy. “Then how do you make an N?”

“Just the same way, only the other way around,” Djuna said. “Instead of a dot and dash, you make a dash and a dot, and that makes N.”

“It must be
awful
hard to learn,” said Tommy. “Can’t you remember any more?”

“Well,” said Djuna doubtfully. “I
think
B is a dash and then three dots, like ‘d-a-h,’ then a space which is equal to a dot, and then three quick dots. ‘D-a-h, di, di, di.” Like that!”

“I guess a real tele—tele—a man who really knows how to work one of those things could explain it better than you can,” said Tommy, who still looked a little mystified.

“Oh, sure,” Djuna agreed. “
I
don’t know much about it.”

When they came out of the woods at the top of the hill and saw Andy McKelvey sighting through some kind of an instrument that was mounted on a thing with three legs like a photographer’s tripod, they both began to run across the clearing toward him.

“Hi yah!” Andy said, and waved a hand when he heard them and turned around.

“Hi!” Djuna and Tommy said.

“What you doing?” asked Tommy.

“Just practicing,” said Andy. “I’m going to send a message to Don.”

“Where is he?” asked Djuna as they both peered in all directions.

“Down in the valley, across the railroad track, there,” Andy said, pointing. “See! He’s signaling with semaphore flags.”

Both of the boys turned, and following the direction Andy was pointing, they saw Don’s small figure about a third of a mile away, in a field beyond the railroad tracks. He had a pair of semaphore flags in his hands and as they looked he put his right hand straight out at right angles to his body, and his left hand at a 45-degree angle from his head. In an instant he shifted the flags to another position, and another, and another, until he dropped the flags and held them in a crossed position in front of his knees.

“What did he say?” asked Tommy.

“He said, ‘Hurry up,’” Andy said, laughing.

“How do you work that heliograph?” asked Djuna, with fitting respect for anyone who could read a semaphore message the way Andy had just read Don’s.

“Well,” Andy said, “first, you’ve got to have the sun. It’s easier if you have it in front of you. That’s why we come up here in the morning when the sun is in the east. But you can work it just as well with the sun behind you if you have two mirrors.”

Djuna and Tommy both nodded, but they didn’t try to say anything.

“It’s just a round, adjustable mirror set in a frame, and the frame is attached to a sort of telegraph key,” Andy went on. “You see this little hole in the center of the mirror, and this little upright rod in front of the mirror with a V at the top?” Again they nodded without saying anything.

“It’s not really a hole in the mirror,” Andy explained. “It’s just a spot where I scraped the silver off. When I look through that hole in the center and press down this telegrapher’s key I adjust the angle of the mirror until I can see Don through the V of the sighting rod in front.”

“Do you mind if I look?” asked Djuna.

“Sure, go ahead. That’s the best way to understand it,” said Andy.

Djuna carefully looked through the hole in the center of the mirror and lined up Don in the V of the sighting rod in front, while he held down the key, and Tommy did the same thing right after him.

“You see,” said Andy after they had both taken a look and were waiting impatiently for him to go on, “when Don is lined up that way the mirror is in the exact position to throw the reflection of the sun’s rays onto the mirror so that Don can see it best, so I tighten this little screw to keep the mirror right there.

“The mirror itself is turned just a little bit up, but when I press down on the key the ray of light coming from the sun is at just the same angle as Don is from the mirror. When I let the key up the angle of the mirror is altered so that the reflected ray no longer passes through the V, and Don can’t see it.”

“Then Don can only see the ray when you press the key?” asked Djuna.

“That’s right,” said Andy.

“Do you use Morse code?” Djuna asked. Andy nodded.

“Yeah, and Continental sometimes,” said Andy. “Mostly Morse.”

“Just how do you use the key?” Tommy asked.

“For a dash I send him a long flash; and for a dot I make a short one,” said Andy.

“If you send him a long flash and then a short one it would make an N, wouldn’t it?” asked Djuna.

“Yeah,” said Andy. “Do you know the Morse code?”

“No,” Djuna said ruefully. “I only know A and N.”

“Do you want to learn it?” asked Andy. “I’ll teach you if you want me to.”

“Golly, yes,” said Djuna.

“Will you teach me, too?” asked Tommy eagerly.

“Sure,” said Andy.

“Did you make that heliograph yourself?” Djuna asked.

“Gosh, no,” said Andy. “My father made it, but I helped him. It’s just clamped to this tripod. It comes right off, so that you can just set it on the edge of a window, or any place, if you just loosen the clamps.”

“Your father must be awful smart,” Djuna said.

“Oh, he is,” said Andy very seriously. “Look, I’ll just run through the alphabet for you, so you’ll have a better idea, before I send a message to Don.”

“Swell!” said Djuna and Tommy.

They both watched him very carefully as he called out each letter and then told them what combination of long and short flashes were necessary to make the letter, and showed them just how long to hold the key for a short flash or a long flash, or a space in between. After he had gone through the whole alphabet and numerals up to ten Andy said, “Now I’ll send a sentence that has every letter in the alphabet in it.”

“What is it?” Tommy asked eagerly.

“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog,” said Andy.

“Jeepers!” Tommy said. “Does that have
every
letter in it?”

“Every one,” Andy assured him. “Get ready and see if you can call the right kind of short and long flashes before I send each letter.”

“Wait a minute,” said Djuna. “Do you have a piece of paper and a pencil, so I can write down that sentence?”

“Sure,” Andy said, and he dug into a small kit that he had strapped to his waist and handed a piece of paper and a pencil to Djuna. “We both carry a pad of paper and a pencil to take down messages,” he explained as Djuna wrote down the sentence.

“Okay,” said Djuna. “The first letter, T, is one long flash.”

“Right,” said Andy, and he held down the key for a long flash.

While he was doing it Tommy said, excitedly, “Four short flashes for H.” Andy nodded his head.

“And one short flash for E,” said Djuna quickly.

Andy waited a moment after he had completed the word, and when neither of them could think of the signal for Q, he said, “It’s easier if you think of them as dots and dashes, instead of flashes, just like regular telegraphers do. Q is two dots, a dash, and a dot.”

“U is two dots and a dash!” said Djuna.

“I is two dots,” Tommy said, and his face was red and gleaming with perspiration from trying to think so hard and so fast.

“C,” said Andy as he flashed it after a short wait, “is two dots, a space, and another dot.”

“D-a-h, di, d-a-h,” Andy said after another short wait as he flashed K.

“Dash, dot, dash. That’s K,” said Djuna and added hastily, “Dash, and three dots for B!”

Andy then sent R, O and W in quick succession because neither of the boys could think of them, but Djuna said, “A dash and a dot for N,” when he thought it was time.

Djuna and Tommy could only remember the right number of dots and dashes for about a third of the alphabet the first time, but the second time they got more of them, and after the third time Andy suggested that they go down in the valley with Don to receive.

“I’m not going to send that same sentence any more because you know it now,” he said as they started down the hill. “I’ll make up some stuff and send it, and if you don’t know what the letters are Don will tell you.”

“Gee, what’s the matter with him?” Don wanted to know when they joined him. “Does he think I don’t know the alphabet?”

“He’s teaching us,” Djuna explained. “He sent us down here to get you to teach us how to receive messages.”

“Oh,” said Don, and he laughed, showing a space where he had lost two teeth playing football. “It’s easy.”

They practiced receiving until the sun was so high that they could no longer use the heliograph without the aid of another mirror. And the height of the sun reminded Djuna and Tommy that unless they ran they were going to be late for lunch.

“Say,” said Djuna before they hurried away, “I almost forgot what we came over to see you about. Do you want to go fishing with us this afternoon?”

“Gee, I can’t,” said Andy. “We promised to row my mother and Betsy over to Lakeville, and we’ll prob’ly be there most of the afternoon. But why don’t you both come over tomorrow morning again, and I’ll show you how to handle the key on the heliograph.”

“Oh boy, oh boy!” Tommy said. “We’ll be here.”

“Thanks a lot for the lesson this morning,” said Djuna as they departed.

For the next few days Tommy and Djuna spent their mornings on the hill with Andy and Don learning to send and receive messages on their heliograph. Afternoons they went fishing or went around the lake with Miss Annie, in Captain Ben’s motorboat, while Miss Annie distributed her freshly baked cookies.

Every child around the lake had grown very fond of Miss Annie and her delicious hot cookies, and their mothers quite often said to them, if they were reluctant to do something, “If you don’t do what I say,
right this minute
, you can’t have any of Miss Annie’s cookies this afternoon.”

Needless to say, the mothers had never before succeeded in getting such prompt obedience from their children.

It was during the latter part of their second week at Silver Lake that Djuna and Tommy, and Miss Annie, too, had the first warning of the awful things that were to come.

The boys had gone to bed at their regular bedtime and were so tired and sleepy from a day outdoors in the sun that they fell asleep immediately.

Djuna never did know what woke him up at three o’clock in the morning, unless it was the dim voices of people shouting along the water front at the Lakeville landing.

When he opened his eyes he was almost fully awake but he didn’t do anything at first. He lay quite still listening to the faraway shouts. And then, as they rose in volume and became more distinct in the clear night air he hopped out of bed and scrambled over to the window in the dark.

When he saw that the whole sky over Lakeville seemed ablaze with light he shouted,
“Tommy! Tommy!”
and rushed out on the front porch to see that something was blazing fiercely right near the edge of the lake.

“Chattering chimps!”
said Tommy as he pattered out on the porch with bare feet and stood frozen staring at the leaping flames. “What is it, do you suppose?”

“I think it’s Scatterly’s store!” Djuna said, and he scampered back into the living room, saying over his shoulder, “I’m going to tell Miss Annie and see if we can’t go.”

“Miss Annie! Miss Annie!” he called as he pounded on her door. “Something’s on fire in Lakeville! It looks as though the whole town is burning up! Can we go?”

“Great glories of Golconda!” said Miss Annie, and then she groaned, “Just a minute until I find a robe!” A moment later her door opened and she said, “What’s the matter, what’s the matter?”