“Why, this fellow,” chuckled Bob, stretching himself out on his own cot and staring up at the ceiling, “thought up the wonderful idea of using his springs for an aerial.”
“Now I know you’re fooling,” Herb told him, incredulously.
“Fooling, nothing!” replied Bob. “I never was more serious in my life.”
“You’ve got to prove it to us,” said Joe, as he carefully extracted a fish hook that was on the point of entering his thumb. “Sounds kind of phony to me, Bob.”
“Not at all,” said Bob, still seeming very much amused about something. “It’s really the simplest thing in the world when you’ve once thought of it.
“This fellow doesn’t even use an antenna—not the towering, outside kind, that is. He merely attaches the antenna lead to the springs of his iron bed——”
“How does he make his ground connection then?” asked Joe, still incredulous, while Herb and Jimmy regarded Bob with interest. “Tell me that, then.”
“Easiest thing in the world,” retorted Bob. “He makes the ground connection by means of a water pipe and a radiator in his own quarters.”
“Pretty slick—that,” he said admiringly. “Has music to sing him to sleep and everything.”
“But what kind of an outfit has he?” asked Joe, always anxious for technical information.
“It’s a single circuit, regenerative design,” explained Bob. “It has two variometers, a detector tube, two condensers and one-stage of audio-amplification from two ‘B’ batteries. Very simple apparatus when you know about it.”
“Well, that boy was surely original!” exclaimed Herb. “I wouldn’t mind having a set like that myself.”
“It would be easy enough to make,” said Joe, his mind already busy with circuits and condensers and variometers. “And when it was finished you’d have something that not everybody else has, anyway.”
“I’m for it, strong,” said Jimmy, turning over in an effort to find the softest spot in the bed. “And not only for the sake of the music, either. Just think how nice it would be to go to sleep on some real springs. I love music—but oh, you comfort!”
“Oh, go to sleep before I put you there!” commanded Herb, raising a shoe threateningly.
“Say, have you fellows heard about that new vacuum tube?” asked Joe, as the boys were tinkering with their set a day or so after the incident of the wildcat.