18
The Wireless Operator
waste the few remaining dollars he possessed. What should he do? The roar of the traffic disturbed him. He could not think connectedly. He wanted to compose himself, so he made his way down the water-front to Battery Park, where he might be undisturbed while he thought out his problem.
But the familiar scenes in Battery Park set a new train of thought in motion in his head, and utterly defeated, for the time, his plan to think out his course of action, for in front of him, as he sat on a park bench, was the old, familiar harbor, with its seething waters and its throbbing life. And straight across the rolling waves was Staten Island, where he had spent those memorable days in that never-to-be-forgotten hunt for the secret wireless of the Germans, during the war, when the Secret Service had accepted the proffered help of the Wireless Patrol in the search for the treacherous spies that were betraying the movements of American transports. How clearly all the incidents of that search for the secret wireless now stood out in Henry’s mind. He could recall, as though it had been but yesterday, the departure of the selected unit of the patrol—Roy Mercer and Lew Heinsling and Willie Brown and himself—from Central City, and their meeting with their leader, Captain Hardy, and the tedious watch for the Ger-