“You boys have been of such tremendous assistance so far,” said Inspector Burton, “that the least I can do in return is to let you know what the inventor has discovered. He ought to be here shortly.”
Presently from their windows overlooking the park-like grounds of the hotel, they saw a huge, dust-covered automobile roll up to the _porte cochere_, and recognized Inventor Bender beside the chauffeur.
“He made good time down from the mountains,” said Inspector Burton, glancing at his watch.
A few moments later the inventor was shown to the sitting room, and entered with an air of triumph and suppressed excitement.
“Well,” he cried, without even waiting to exchange greetings, “we have got them.”
“So there you are, Inspector. That’s what the Bender sound detector discovered. Human ingenuity could do no more.”
Inspector Burton with difficulty repressed a smile at the inventor’s childlike vanity. Mr. Temple experienced similar difficulty. Ensign Warwick grew red in the face, and the boys made occasion to bow their heads. In reality, however, nobody need have attempted to hide his feelings, for the inventor was so constituted that he paid his auditors no attention. He was like many geniuses—a supreme egotist.
Those mentioned were seated in Mr. Temple’s suite. Doctor Marley alone of the party was not present, having been left aboard the Sub Chaser.
The inventor had spent a considerable space of time relating what had been learned through the medium of the sound detector. From San Francisco he had gone directly to Ventura and, after placing a sound detector in the government radio station at that point, had turned back to the station on top of the Santa Ynez mountain range behind Santa Barbara. For two days he had been listening vainly in the attempt to catch code messages which might be interpreted as coming from the secret radio station of the smugglers.
Success had come that morning, just after the storm. The heavy fog at sea had not reached to the mountains. It had been sunshiny and bright, and he had taken his listening post at an early hour.
Then, as he tuned his sound detector to varying wave lengths, had come a message in code—a code unlike any of the commercial codes registered with the government and of which he had obtained copies at San Francisco through the offices of Inspector Burton.