And Dick, looking out of the window on his side, gave a
stifled exclamation.
"Look there, Harry!" he said. "Do you see the sun flashing on something on
the roof of that house over there? What do you suppose that is?"
"Whew!" Harry whistled. "You ought to know that, Dick! A heliograph--field
telegraph. Morse code--or some code--made by flashes. The sun catches a
mirror or some sort of reflector, and it's just like a telegraph
instrument, with dots and dashes, except that you work by sight instead of
by sound. That _is_ queer! Try to mark just where the house is, and so will
I."
The cab turned, while they were still looking, and removed the house where
the signalling was being done from their line of vision. But in a few
moments there was a loud report that startled both scouts until they
realized that a front tire had blown out. The driver stopped at once, and
descended, seemingly much perturbed. And Harry and Dick, piling out to
inspect the damage, started when they saw that they had stopped just
outside the mysterious house.
"I'll fix that in a jiffy," said the driver, and began jacking up the
wheel. But, quickly as he stripped off the deflated tire, he was not so
quick that Harry failed to see that the blow-out had been caused by a
straight cut--not at all the sort of tear produced by a jagged stone or a
piece of broken glass.
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