The Radio Boys at Mountain Pass Part 28

"No, thank you, Mr. Salper," interrupted Bob hastily. "We don't want money for the service we've been to you. It's been exciting and interesting work for us, and I, at least, have been more than paid in the experience I've got through sending."

"Well then I'm going to get you the finest radio set that money can buy," persisted Mr. Salper.

"Not even that, thank you," returned Bob, smiling. "It's awfully good of you, and we appreciate it, but we've learned more of radio by building our own sets than we possibly could have done in any other way. If you want to send a check to the Red Cross or some other society of the kind, it would suit us better than anything else."

"You're a stubborn young rascal," said Mr. Salper, with a smile, "and I suppose I'll have to let you have your way. But just bear in mind that you boys have a friend in me for life, and if I can ever be of service to any of you in business or anything else, let me know and I'll be only too glad to do it."

He bade them good-by and went off briskly toward his bungalow to tell his family of the news that had lifted such a heavy burden from his brain and heart.

The third day after the episode at the radio station the radio boys had gone further afield than usual and came upon a little shack that had evidently been used by workmen as a place for storing their tools.

It was little more than a shed, and the boys, bestowing on it only a casual glance, had come nearly abreast of it when Bob, who was slightly in advance, heard a voice that he recognized as that of Buck Looker.

He stopped dead in his tracks, and his companions did the same as he held up his hand in warning.

"We certainly did put it over on those b.o.o.bs all right," Buck was saying, and the remark was followed by laughs of satisfaction.

"Yes, but we're not yet out of the woods," came the voice of Carl Lutz, with a touch of uneasiness in the tone. "Suppose when they put us on the stand to testify that we found Bob Layton and the other fellows in the cottage the evening before it burned, their lawyer asks us if we were in it too?"

"Well, let them ask," replied Buck. "All we'll have to do is to deny it. We know they were in it. They don't know we were in it. Who knows that we slipped in later and sat there until nearly midnight smoking cigarettes?"

With a bound Bob was at the door of the shack.

"I know it!" he cried. "I didn't know it till just this minute, but now I know it by your own confession."

"We all heard it," echoed Joe, as he, with Herb and Jimmy, followed Bob into the shack.

Consternation and conscious guilt was written on every one of the three faces.

Buck was the first of the cronies to recover some measure of self-possession.

"Think you've put something over, don't you?" he sneered. "Well, you've got another think coming to you. This won't do you a bit of good in court. I'll simply swear that I didn't say anything of the kind and that you've made up the story out of whole cloth. It'll be simply my word against yours, and you'd be interested witnesses trying to help your fathers out by cooking up this story. So what are you going to do about it?"

"I'll show you what we're going to do about it!" cried Joe, starting forward.

But Bob stopped him.

"Wait a minute, Joe," he said. Then he turned to Buck. "Do you mean to say," he demanded, "that you'd take a solemn oath in court to tell the truth, and then go on the stand and swear to a downright lie?"

The contempt in his tone stung Buck into fury.

"You can put it any way you like," he shouted. "I'm simply not going to let you get the best of me. Who cares for the old confession as you call it? You can have as many of those as you like and it won't do you any good. Here's another one now for good measure. We were in the house late that night. We were smoking cigarettes. Probably that's what caused the fire to break out later. I tell you these things just because it won't do you any good. In court I'll deny that I ever said them. You'll say I did. But the court will know that you have as much interest in lying as I have, and it'll just be a standoff. You'd have to have a disinterested witness, and that you haven't got."

"Oh, yes, they have," came a voice from the doorway, and Mr. Salper stepped into the shack.

An exclamation of delight broke from the lips of the radio boys, while Buck and his cronies slunk back in terror and confusion.

"I was out taking a stroll," explained Mr. Salper, "and as I heard loud voices coming from the shack I stepped up to see what was the matter. I was just in time to hear the full confession of this estimable young man"--here he turned a withering glance on Buck--"and while I'm here, I guess I'll take it down."

He drew from his pocket a notebook and a fountain pen and wrote rapidly, while Buck and his companions looked at each other like so many trapped animals.

In a few minutes Mr. Salper had finished. Then he read in a clear voice just what he had written. It was a complete confession similar to that which Buck had made, with date and place affixed. He handed this over to Buck with the fountain pen, with a crisp demand that he sign it.

Buck hesitated as long as he dared, but with those keen eyes used to command fixed upon him from beneath Mr. Salper's beetling brows, he finally signed his name, and Lutz and Mooney shamefacedly followed suit.

"I guess that will settle the law case," Mr. Salper remarked, with a smile, as he handed the precious doc.u.ment to Bob, who folded it carefully and put it in his breast pocket. "Now perhaps we would better go and leave these worthy young gentlemen to their meditations.

I don't think they'll be especially pleasant ones."

The radio boys left the shack, followed by the black looks of the discomfited conspirators.

"You certainly came along in the nick of time, Mr. Salper," said Bob.

"We're very grateful to you."

"I'm glad if I've been able to be of service to you," replied Mr.

Salper. "It's only paying back in small measure what you've done for me. The bulk of the obligation is still on my side."

It was a happy group of radio boys that returned to the Mountain Rest Hotel that afternoon.

"Adventures have surely crowded in on us lately," remarked Bob.

"More than they ever will again," prophesied Joe.

But that he had not foretold the future correctly will be seen by those who read the following volume of this series, ent.i.tled: "The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice; Or, Solving a Wireless Mystery."

That very night they sent the news of the confession to Dr. Atwood with the request that he would communicate the tidings to the fathers of the rest of the boys. The lawsuit, of course, was dropped at once, and Buck and his cronies slunk home in disgrace.

"Radio is lots of work, but it's also lots of fun," remarked Joe that night, as they sat late reviewing the events of the day.

"Radio," repeated Bob. "It's more than fun. It's excitement. It's romance. It's adventure. It's life!"

THE END