“I’m sure the idea will work,” Tom said to himself, “if I can just transmit and receive the carrier signal properly.”
The morning passed quickly as Tom worked feverishly at his bench. He took time out to have final blueprints of his new radio made and filed away. For lunch he munched a ham sandwich while struggling with a set of circuit analysis equations. Hour after hour went by.
The telephone rang. As Tom picked up the
PHANTOM THIEF 107
receiver, he glanced at the clock. It was almost seven-thirty!
“Tom, dear, don’t you think you’d better come home and have dinner?” his mother asked.
“Oh, I’m sorry I didn’t phone,” Tom apologized. “Chow has some stew cooking for me and it smells pretty good. I’ll sleep here at the lab apartment tonight.”
“All right, son. Do get to bed before morning, though!”
Tom ate a lonely meal and went back to work. It was almost midnight when he finally went to undress in the small apartment adjoining his laboratory. He fell asleep immediately but was awakened by a faint noise.
“It’s coming from the lab,” he thought, and instantly was on the alert.
He arose silently, took the electronic key from his slacks, and beamed open a small peephole placed in the wall. Tom had had this built so that he could observe his dangerous experiments without entering the lab.
“For Pete’s sake!” Tom thought.
A masked man with a flashlight was removing drawings from a file drawer in the laboratory I
CHAPTER XIII
BEHIND THE MASK
“THE thief who has been rifling my lab!” Tom thought angrily. “Looks as though Bud was right about my helium-machine plans being pirated.”
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