Just enough presence of mind remained for her to pull the switches—turn the rheostat knob again.
“It will take a few seconds to cool off. But she can’t call it back—the message.”
Slowly those radiant bulbs, the shining vacuum tubes dimmed—became blind eyes, the cherry-red plates fading out.
But the current turned off from them was switched on—for ever—in the eyes of the girl-prisoner, little white filaments glowing in their lamp-like blackness as she shot back to the bunk.
A knife, an old camp-knife, lay on a stool in the way. She whipped that back with her.
“I tell you I’m not going a step further—not going to ride any further—until I stop and ‘listen in!’ This—this lit-tle ring-set,” chokingly, “that’s why I brought it—brought it on the search.”
“But, heavens, dear-oh! I know you’re in torture about her—but it seems like—Jove! like shooting off peas at a battleship ... a time like this.”
The nineteen-year-old boy looked distractedly at the white-faced girl, who flung herself off her horse upon the mountainside—her eyes a “blue day”, flinty—determined.
“But it isn’t: it isn’t just fiddle-faddle—fooling! Your ‘soft-boiled peas at a battleship’!” She stamped her foot.
“I didn’t say anything about ‘soft-boiled’,” contradicted the youth. “And I’m as anxious about her as you are.”
“But, look here! it isn’t wasting time.” She caught at her throat. “Father’s—father’s new crystal, you know—more sensitive than galena!”
“Then—be a dear boy and do this for me,” Pemrose looked up at him, sidelong, coaxingly; “loop this aërial around that tree.”
The boy was accustomed to find those blue eyes “too sweet for music”, as he freakishly put it; before the agony in them and the wild suspense, he found himself weakening.
“But—but we ought to tear right up there.” He pointed along the rough bridle path to a steep summit above. “It—it’s on this mountain, Little Poco, as the farmers call it, that miserable thief-animal, kidnapper—horrible aunt—who stole Una’s picture before she stole her—has her shack—cabin—so-o they say.”
“The farmers, three or four of them, are searching this m-mountain.” Pemrose tried to speak calmly. “Her father has ridden—is riding—up the other trail to the top. And we don’t know—we don’t know that she’s here, at all, or near here. Word—word has gone out to every radio station in this district, describing Una, asking whether any one has seen a girl on a bay horse—so early in the morning we might be able to pick up something, a hint of news; even—even this tiny—receiving—set—”