CHAPTER I

STRANGE PLACES

A hurricane had swept through the West Indies leaving death and destruction in its path and wrecking scores of vessels, uprooting trees, stripping the tops from palms, destroying crops and blowing down the flimsy native houses.

Now that it was over and there was no danger of its return those ships that had escaped the storm within snug harbors began to creep forth to resume their interrupted voyages. Some were uninjured. Others had rigging or deck fittings carried away, while some were so badly crippled that they limped as rapidly as possible towards the nearest dry dock for repairs.

Among them was a lean gray destroyer which slipped out of Coral Bay at St. John and headed her sharp prow southward. That she had borne the brunt of the terrific gale was evident, for of her four funnels only two were standing, her decks had been swept bare, fathoms of her railings had been carried away and from half way up her military mast she was white with encrusted salt. But she had received no vital injury. From her two remaining funnels dense volumes of smoke were pouring, a busy crowd of bluejackets labored like ants at repairing the damages to superstructure and fittings and, despite the buffeting she had received and the fact that half her boilers were out of commission until the funnels could be replaced, she slid through the oily seas at a twenty-knot clip.

To those who have followed the Radio Detectives through their previous adventures the group upon the crippled destroyer’s decks will need no introduction. There was the trim, spick-and-span Commander Disbrow, the deep-sea diver, Rawlins, Mr. Pauling and his friend Mr. Henderson and the two boys, Tom Pauling and his chum Frank.

But for the benefit of those who now meet the Radio Detectives for the first time a few words of explanation will be needed.

Months before the story opens, Tom Pauling and Frank had discovered a most astounding plot by means of their radio telephones and thereby enabled Tom’s father and his associate, Mr. Henderson, who were federal officers in the Secret Service, to make prisoners of a number of members of an international gang of scoundrels whose activities included the distribution of Bolshevist literature, the destruction of property, smuggling contraband liquor into the United States and conducting a widespread series of holdups, robberies and other crimes. Through confessions and other evidence Mr. Pauling and Mr. Henderson had learned that the arch criminal or master mind of the plot was hiding in a secret lair in the West Indies which--after a series of thrilling adventures on the part of the two boys and their companions, including Rawlins and Sam, a Bahaman negro--had been located, only to find that the leader of the criminals had slipped through the net set for him.

Then, influenced by a “hunch” on Rawlins’ part, Mr. Pauling and his companions had followed a tramp steamer, of which they were suspicious, to St. Thomas. Although there was no evidence conclusive enough to warrant holding the tramp, suspicion pointed to the fact that the leader of the gang of criminals was somewhere in the vicinity. Owing to mysterious radio messages, the party chartered a schooner and went to the neighboring island of St. John.

Here they met a Dutch naturalist named Van Brunt who was dealing with the “reds.” Rawlins, spying on him, wa