John S. Carroll

“ I told him about my visitor and the repair job. "What I did was add a modulator-oscillator-power amplifier, and a few feet of wire for an antenna, coiled around inside the case."
"So what does that make it?"
"Simple. It makes it a radio transmitter. Not only will he hear what the horses are saying, but anyone in town with a radio tuned to that frequency will, too."
"And where does that get you?" The sergeant was still puzzled but not bored now. ”

“ Bill snapped off the amplifier switch, motioned me to wait, and started to feed the cat. When he got through serving lunch, he came over to me and said, "Build me another one. Portable, battery-operated, this time. I've got more ideas. Cats can't be the only animals smart enough to talk." ”

“ The cat looked up from his dinner and made a face. Luckily the amplifier was turned off, so I missed his parting shot. I beat it.
Business was slow for the next few weeks. Maybe they're making radios better now, but I didn't have much repair business. And I hadn't heard from Bill since delivering his new battery-operated portable what-is-it.
So I told my kid assistant to mind the shop for the P.M. and I went out to the track. Two bucks of my dough on any horse's nose will raise his wind-resistance to the point where he can't win a race, but what the devil. It keeps me out in the open air. ”

“ Bill must've felt the same way. He was excited by now. "Shrimps and sweet cream for you, Tommy!" he shouted at the cat. Turning to me, he exulted, "Now I've got a real idea! Look, Mike!"
He grabbed a scratch pad and started drawing a new schematic. "See? We'll take the output of the amplifier and run it through a mixer-oscillator stage. That way, we can get a beat between a fixed frequency and the supersonic output of the amplifier. The beat should be in the audible range and we will be able to hear it; we won't need the 'scope. I want to hear what the cat is saying." ”

“ I remarked. "Haven't seen one of those since I was in the Air Force."
"Yeah," said the driver. "Automatic radio compass. Beats the old fashioned loop aerial direction-finder all hollow. All I've gotta do is watch the Left-Right indicator while I drive."
I started to do a bit of figuring. There were three of us in the car—the sergeant, the driver, and myself. Suppose we catch Mariano, then what? He isn't going to be alone, that's sure, and even alone, he's dangerous. And the other gimmick, the one I hadn't mentioned to the sergeant, it didn't seem to be working—yet. ”

“ He thinks 'em up, I build 'em. He busts 'em, I fix 'em. And when he gets into a jam, I'm the guy comes to bail him out. Like, for instance, this last gadget of his. Nothing dangerous about it, but it could have got him sunk in the river with his feet in a block of cement. It all started with an amplifier.
I found the diagram in the mail when I came into the shop one morning. Looked like an ordinary audio amplifier at first sight, and I started laying out a chassis. Picking out parts, I noticed something; even Bill can make a mistake sometimes. ”

“ Take him back to town and jug him. The boys'll get something on him later. We'll ride back in Mariano's car."
The sergeant slipped into the driver's seat, with Bill alongside of him. I got in back with Mariano. Mariano cringed in the far left corner of the seat, which didn't make me mad, either. The more space between us, the better.
I looked at him and the gadget. Bill spoke up from the front seat. "What's eating him?" he said, to nobody in particular. "He started to complain about a sort of peanut whistle, and now he acts like he wants to crawl in a hole and pull the hole in after him." ”

“ Anyway, I prowled around the stables a bit. I know these one-horsepower oat motors are obsolete, but I like 'em. Times I think the world was a better place to live when old Dobbin was vice-president in charge of transportation. ”