Argosy All-Story Weekly, July 7, 1928 — page 43: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

“YOU'VE KILLED PRIVACY!” ‘“There’s the answer,” he told Has- kins, pointing at the pile of rubbish. “It’s surprising that | didn’t think of it before. This thing this young fel- low brought in to-day and the thing he hid in my room before were the same kind of outfit in each case, a portable radio set with a bomb attach- ment connected with a little device that would touch off the bomb when a key word was spoken over the radio. ‘There you have the answer to the mystery. “ All our friend Redfern had to do was to send this message of his around with the outfit; then he could sit back, and at the right moment speak the key word over the radio and explode the bomb. That explains how this bomber could apparently be talking to me, right in the room where I was broadcasting, and yet not be there at all. They prob- ably balled up our phones for the pur- pose each time by impulses from their sending set.” Haskins was looking at him still a little puzzled. “ But you yourself were not there at all, sir,” the butler made bold to demur, “although, according to the radio, you also seemed to be talking from there.” “Ah, that’s another story, which perhaps we'll explain later,’ Edison Ward laughed. ‘I may want to do that stunt again, and I’ve found it isn’t safe to talk around here,’ he added with a glance in the direction of Whit- ley, who was looking on curiously, with an effort not to appear too in- terested. Ward had forborne to have Whitley arrested as an accomplice of Codding- ton, and had had Coddington’s arrest kept secret so far, for fear of warning off the man Redfern, who was still at large somewhere and active as the little pile of fragments of this infernal machine eloquently testified. XV. Tar report of this last explosion in the Ward home got into the radio and 183 the newspapers almost immediately that morning, and public excitement reached a fever pitch by noon. Edison Ward followed the council of discre- tion and stayed on the premises, about which Inspector Curley maintained a heavy and vigilant guard. There were reports and rumors of rioting and disorder connected with anti-publicity demonstrations in va- rious parts of the country throughout the day, and several times bomb out- rages were reported in various sec- tions. All day long Edison Ward again waited breathlessly for reports of ex- plosions in some of the company’s plants, and the same state of suspense continued through the following night. But when a second day dawned and nothing further had happened, - began to breathe a little more eas- ily. Meantime TNT mines in two more plants, with radio firing attachments, had been found and removed, and on the third day the last of the corpora- tion’s plants were freed from that menace. Meantime, Inspector Curley had continued his vigilance about the Ward home. Plainclothes men stayed in the little Moran cottage night and day for several days, but found never a sign of any attempt on the part of Red- fern or any member of his gang to return, Gradually it began to look as though the arch conspirator, having made one more attempt and failed, and having been warned by discovering the po- tency of the secret devices by which Edison Ward was able to watch his movements, had abandoned his crusade for good. The young telephone man, after leaving his murderous package, had quietly faded from sight and had not been seen again. Whitley, the valet, was unostentatiously arrested on the charge of conspiring with Coddington, and placed in jail, after vigilant EOPMIC OOO KS (E@)