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The Man Who Ended War

by Hollis Godfrey · English · Gutenberg #49848 · 400,225 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Man Who Ended War

Author: Hollis Godfrey

Illustrator: Charles Grunwald


        
Release date: September 1, 2015 [eBook #49848]
                Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAN WHO ENDED WAR ***

Transcriber’s Notes:

Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).

Additional Transcriber’s Notes are at the end.

       *       *       *       *       *

THE MAN WHO ENDED WAR

       *       *       *       *       *

[Illustration: “THERE’S REGNIER!” I CRIED, POINTING AT THE WINDOW.

  [_Frontispiece. See p. 277._

]

       *       *       *       *       *




THE MAN WHO ENDED WAR


  By
  HOLLIS GODFREY

  Illustrated from drawings by
  CHARLES GRUNWALD

  BOSTON
  LITTLE, BROWN, & COMPANY
  1908

       *       *       *       *       *

  _Copyright, 1908_,
  BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.

  _All rights reserved_

  Published September, 1908

  _COLONIAL PRESS_
  _Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co._
  _Boston, U. S. A._

       *       *       *       *       *

  TO
  My Wife




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


  “THERE’S REGNIER!” I CRIED, POINTING AT
  THE WINDOW                                 _Frontispiece_

  THE OFFICER RAISED HIS LANTERN TWICE            _Page_ 30

  THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF A WARSHIP WAS PLAYING
  CONSTANTLY ON US                                  ”   122

  I FOUND MYSELF COUNTING ALOUD                     ”   247

       *       *       *       *       *




THE MAN WHO ENDED WAR

CHAPTER I


The Secretary of War ended his statement. “That is all there is to
tell, gentlemen, concerning the building of the new transports.”

I had closed my notebook and was rising, as Ordway, the private
secretary, entered.

“May I give the correspondents that freak letter that came this
morning?” he asked. His chief nodded indulgently and left the room. I
opened my notebook expectantly.

“This is a very serious matter, and a great piece of news,” Ordway
remarked in a mock grandiose manner. “It is a declaration of war
against the civilized world in the interests of peace.” He threw
himself into an oratorical posture and began:

  “To the United States of America and to all other nations--Greeting!”

  “Whereas war has too long devastated the earth and the time has now
  come for peace, I, the man destined to stop all war, hereby declare
  unto you that you shall, each and all, disarm; that your troops shall
  be disbanded, your navies sunk or turned to peaceful ends, your
  fortifications dismantled. One year from this date will I allow for
  disarmament and no more. At the end of that time, if no heed has been
  paid to my injunction, I will destroy, in rapid succession, every
  battleship in the world. By the happenings of the next two months you
  shall know that my words are the words of truth.

  “Given under my hand and seal this first of June, 19--

  “Signed--

    “THE MAN WHO WILL STOP ALL WAR.”

Ordway ceased and a laughing clamor rose.

“The biggest crank yet.” “Where was it mailed?” “I thought you said you
had something really good this time.” “Do you suppose he sent it to any
other country than the United States?”

Ordway raised his hand for a hearing and replied to the last question.
“The letter was mailed from London, and was sent to other countries.
I read the missive to one of the English attachés when it came, and
he looked the matter up. This notice has been sent to all the foreign
chancelleries, as well as the departments of war and of the navy. It
has been done in such a wholesale fashion that I thought you could use
it for a column anyway.”

“But is it such a fool idea?” asked Reid, one of the older
correspondents. “Couldn’t a man build a submarine in which he could run
amuck and destroy battleship after battleship, something as old Jules
Verne’s Captain Nemo did?”

“Not to-day,” said Ordway emphatically. “The new armor of the last
years, with its permanent torpedo nets, has stopped all that. The only
way you can destroy a modern battleship is by ramming, or by another
battleship. The day of the torpedo boat and of the submarine ended
almost as it began.”

“Well,” said Reid argumentatively, “why couldn’t a man have a
battleship? Any one of five hundred men living to-day could afford it.”

“No battleship could be built by a private citizen without some nation
knowing it and stopping it,” said Ordway seriously. “It takes months,
reaching into years, to build one. It takes skilled naval constructors,
hundreds of workmen and thousands of tons of material that must be
bought in the markets of the world.”

“Let’s see the paper it’s written on,” I said.

As I held the message, Reid looked over my shoulder and read for a
moment. Then, turning, he cried, “Come over here, boys, and look at
this a little more closely. That’s old parchment, just like that of
some of those papal bulls in the glass cases over in the library.”

As he spoke a sudden remembrance flashed across me. “Anybody got a
microscope around here?” I asked quickly.

“There’s a reading glass,” said Ordway, and opening a drawer he handed
one to me. I took the paper to the sunlit window, and began examining
it closely with the lens. The rest watched me curiously. At last I
shook my head. “No use,” I exclaimed. “I thought I had a clue, but it
didn’t pan out. There’s a good story though, without anything more.
Here, Ordway,” and I handed back the letter.

The other correspondents moved away, seeking fresh fields for copy, but
I lingered a moment as John King, my classmate at Columbia and my good
friend, stepped forward to bid Ordway good-bye. As I watched his deeply
lined, melancholy face and his emaciated form, I wondered if wealth had
not come to him too late.

“Good-bye, Ordway,” said John. “This is the last you’ll see of me. I’m
through with the daily grind at six o’clock to-night.”

“I’m sorry to hear that in one way, King,” said Ordway gravely. “I
felt last year when you went abroad that you were running down hill and
I expected, when I heard you had come into your uncle’s money, that you
would pull out. What are you going to do?”

“Oh! I shall travel again for a bit,” replied John. “There are some
things I want to do before I get through with this old earth, if I am
to get through.”

“You’ll be all right,” answered Ordway. “I only wish I had your chance.
There’s my bell now. You see how it is--tied like a slave to the wheels
of the chariot, etc. But good luck, anyway, and good-bye.”

He gave John a friendly grasp, and as he turned away, threw the massive
folded sheet, which he still held, into the waste basket. “I guess we
won’t file that with the state documents,” he said laughing. “Good-bye,
and good luck once more.”

We parted and John and I started down the corridor. We had gone but
a few steps when exclaiming, “There, I’ve left my stick,” I turned
swiftly back, recovered the letter from its place in the waste basket,
and emerged with my cane. Silently we walked down the broad avenue
until, just before we reached my office, I turned sharply.

“Come in here,” I said, dragging John into a café. We sat down at one
of the small tables. “You used to do the Smithsonian and scientific
stories for your paper, didn’t you?” I asked.

John was sitting staring into vacancy. He paid no attention to my
question and I repeated it twice before he turned nervously with a
shake of the head and asked sharply, “What is it?”

I repeated the question once more.

“Yes,” he said abstractedly.

“Well, who do you know that owns any radium?”

He thought for a moment and said slowly, “Why, the Smithsonian people
have a little, of course, and there’s some in half a dozen places in
the city.”

“But from whom could we get some most easily?” I inquired.

“Oh! I know,” he answered. “Dorothy Haldane has some. She’s here in
Washington working with part of her brother’s radium, and she’s with
her cousin Mrs. Hartnell.”

“Who’s Dorothy Haldane? Any relation to Tom Haldane who was just ahead
of us, the chap who went into the Physical Laboratory at Columbia and
who’s doing private research now?”

“His sister. She is Barnard A. M., and his research assistant.”

“Regular bluestocking,” I remarked with some dislike, for the learned
research woman never appealed to me.

“Oh, no,” said John. “Not at all. She is one of the prettiest, nicest
girls I ever knew.”

“Any feeling about your remarks, John?” I said hopefully.

“Of course not,” he answered with some irritation. “There’ll never be
any more feeling. Since Anna’s death there can’t be. I know you’ll like
Dorothy, though. What do you want her radium for?”

“There’s just a chance that I may have a scoop, and if you’ll take me
up there to-night I’ll let you in.”

“I’ll take you up there,” said John, “but you can have your scoop to
yourself. For the last word of copy I ever write will be in print
before we call.”

That afternoon came an unexpected Cabinet change. For hours I
interviewed, and wrote, telephoned and telegraphed, reaching my room at
half after eight, to find John just ready to leave without me. He had
written the story of the man who was to stop all war, only to see it
killed by more important news. His experience had been that of every
man in the secretary’s office, a common fate in the crowding rush of
newspaper life. I had never seen John more distrait than that night,
and we walked up to the Hartnells’ in utter silence.

I so completely expected, despite John’s assurances, to find a
stooping, bespectacled student type inside the Hartnells’ door, that
the girl who rose as I entered gave me a sudden shock of amazement
and delight. She was the sunniest, daintiest type of American girl you
could meet the country through. Her mobile face was lit with glowing
life and interest in the world around. Her fine firm form showed no
trace of scholastic life. Her laugh was like rippling water. Her eyes
held the fine deep beauty of a summer’s night. With her was a dark and
clear-cut Southerner who was introduced to me as Richard Regnier. The
talk went hither and thither until John broached my search for radium.

“What is your need of radium, Mr. Orrington?” said Miss Haldane.

I hesitated for a moment and John broke in. “Don’t be afraid of
Regnier, Jim. He’s no newspaper man. He’s a reformer like myself. We’re
co-members of the Tuberculosis League and the Civic League and the
Peace Society. Now what’s up? You haven’t told me yet.”

So urged, I told the story of the morning and brought forth the heavy
parchment which I had retrieved from the waste basket. Regnier sat
immobile during the whole tale, though Dorothy broke into it with
pointed questions a dozen times.

“That’s what I want the radium for,” I said in ending.

“But what has radium to do with that letter?” asked John.

“Just this,” I replied. “As you may have seen, I held that letter to
the light under a reading glass, which acted as a burning glass, for
some minutes. I was looking for invisible ink, which could be brought
out by heating. I didn’t find any, but as I turned away, the paper came
for a moment into the shadow and I saw a slight gleam like the glimmer
of phosphorescence on water. Now last year I met an old scientist, Von
Meyren, who happened to mention that he had found that certain inks
which had been used for parchments in olden times held a substance
which becomes phosphorescent when exposed to radium. He got a second
letter in that way once, from beneath a message one of the Popes sent
to a king of France. You see parchment was and is expensive, and hard
to get. They used the same piece over and over again, removing the old
inks by scraping or dissolving. Somehow the radium brought out the
stuff that had been apparently removed. When Reid said ‘Papal Bulls’
it gave me an idea. It is barely possible that the man who wrote the
letter might have written something on that piece of parchment before
and then erased it. I thought I’d try radium on the chance. There may
be nothing in it, but it will do no harm, will it, Miss Haldane?”

“Oh, no,” said Miss Haldane. “I have some of my brother’s radium right
here. I’ll bring it down and we’ll expose the letter to it.”

A moment later she returned, this time with her cousin Mrs. Hartnell.
“Now we will darken the room,” she said, holding out a small lead case
with hinged cover, “and try this wonder worker. But you must not move
from your places. If you get in the way of the rays, you are likely to
be badly burned.”

We were grouped in a semi-circle before a bared table whereon was
placed the open letter in a holder, confronted with the leaden casket.
I was given the place of honor, directly in front, and Miss Haldane
put her chair beside mine. Carefully she opened the hinged door in
the front of the radium holder, stepped to the switch, threw off the
electric light, and came to sit beside me.

We waited in perfect silence, our eyes bent on the blackness before us.
I could hear her regular breathing, I could feel the brush of her skirt
as she leaned forward, and I forgot all else,--the noise of the city
without, the audience within, both disappeared from my consciousness.
There was but a vast rolling ocean of blackness, and she and I, bound
by a swiftly tightening chain, were being dragged closer and closer
together. Old Von Meyren’s pet saying, “Love! Pah! What is it but an
excess of positive electrons in a certain man, urging him towards the
negative electrons in a certain woman?” kept ringing in my ears, the
while I indignantly refuted it. Again and again it persisted, and with
it came the thought that the waves from the radium were the chain
which bound us.

I had forgotten the letter utterly when suddenly I heard a slight
catch in the regular breathing beside me, and a soft warm hand, raised
swiftly, brushed mine for a moment as it was raised. The sharp thrill
shook me into consciousness. I looked before me, and there, glimmering
into light, a single curve came from the darkness, then a straight
line, then appeared a large U. One by one letters filled out, whole
words appeared,--“United States” first, “July” second, and a single
capital “I” next. Word after word appeared. Half lines filled into
sentences. I could hear behind me a quick, almost sobbing breath
that half penetrated my mind, but leaning forward close beside was
Miss Haldane. At last in a clear low voice she began to read, “I,
the man who will stop all war, hereby declare that I will destroy
one battleship of the United States during the first week of July,
19--, one battleship of England during the second week of July, 19--,
one battleship of France during the third week of July, 19--, one
battleship of Germany during the fourth week of July, 19--. I shall
follow that destruction by sinking, in regular order, one battleship of
each of the other great powers. May the Lord have mercy on the souls of
them who suffer for the cause of peace!”

She stopped and we waited, watching the glowing signal for what seemed
hours, for what was minutes. No more appeared, though the brightness
of the words of the second message did not dim. At last Miss Haldane
rose and with a quick movement turned on the lights and shut the cover.
The letter returned to its former appearance. I sat blinking. Regnier
still sat immobile. John held his face in his hands. Mrs. Hartnell sat
with closed eyes.

“Do you believe it?” I asked Miss Haldane quickly.

She nodded gravely. “It’s what he means to do,” she said. “He wrote it
that way first, and then erased it and made it general afterwards.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Mrs. Hartnell, sharply. “It’s impossible.”

“It certainly doesn’t seem probable,” said John, at last raising his
face. Regnier alone did not speak.

For a moment we were silent, each busy with the thoughts the message
had roused within him. At last I rose with an effort. “Good-night, Miss
Haldane,” I said, “I thank you for your help.”

“I am very glad you brought the letter to me,” she said simply, “I am
going back to New York to-morrow so I cannot ask you to call upon me
here, but if you are in New York won’t you come and see me and give me
any news you may have of this threatening peril?”

“I shall be only too glad to do so,” I responded, my heart bounding.
I had reached the door when Miss Haldane called after me. “Oh, Mr.
Orrington, would you be willing to let me have the letter? I should
like to show it to my brother. I’ll send it to you any time you wish.”

“Certainly you may have it,” I replied, and I handed her the parchment.

Regnier left the house with John and me. We walked in silence to the
corner where Regnier turned off. As we parted, he hesitated for a
moment.

“You were strangely right in your surmise, Mr. Orrington,” he said
slowly. “I am very glad to have been present at so curious an event.”

“Queer chap Regnier,” said John musingly, as we watched the retreating
form. “Clever scientist and good fellow, but queer. I hope he’ll never
get Dorothy Haldane. She wouldn’t be happy with him.”

My heart sank like lead. “Do you think there’s much chance that he
will?” I queried anxiously.

“To tell the truth,” answered John slowly, “I don’t know.” We had come
by this time to the door of John’s hotel. “I’m not going to ask you
up to-night, Jim,” he said, “I’m utterly fagged out and exhausted.
Besides, I must get off early in the morning. So good-night and
good-bye both.”

He paused and I could see the muscles of his face twitching and his
hands nervously clasping. He went on with a rush, “Don’t forget me
while I’m gone, old man, will you? Remember our commencement night when
we walked up Riverside, and talked of the great future lying before us?
Of all I cared for then, not one remains except yourself. Of all the
health and vigor I had then, only a shred is left. I shall not see you
for two years anyway. There’s nobody left to write to me. Don’t forget
me. Drop me a line occasionally, care Barings, will you?”

With such an intensity of pleading came the last words that I was
shaken despite myself. “Write you? I guess I will,” I cried. “Don’t you
worry about that.” We grasped hands and parted.




CHAPTER II


“It’s no use, Orrington, there’s nothing in it,” said the managing
editor decisively. “We can’t publish a fairy story like that. We’ve got
to stick to probabilities, at least. What did the Secretary of War say
when you told him?”

“Oh, he said it was simply the insane freak of a crazy man,” I answered
glumly enough, for I had set my whole heart on this scoop, and felt
more and more convinced that it was true, the more I was rebuffed. I
went on with a gleam of hope. “I’d like to have you see radium bring
out the second letter, that was underneath the first.”

“My dear chap,” said the chief, a little impatiently, “I’ll take your
word for that, and you could use that story very well in another way,
but it isn’t news. Whole fleets can’t be sunk by a single man. It’s
nonsense.” He placed his glasses on his nose with a vigorous gesture,
and picked up a fresh bunch of copy.

Without a word, I passed out into the big office where, sitting down
at an empty desk by the window, I lighted my pipe and lost myself in
thought. Not very pleasant thoughts they were, for I had been rebuffed
for my enthusiasm on every side, since I took up the quixotic task of
persuading the United States that one of her battleships was in danger.
My own chief, the Washington correspondent, the War Department, the
President, and now the managing editor of the New York office whither
I had been suddenly called--all laughed at my tale. Dorothy Haldane
alone had believed. Together we had seen the message grow from the
darkness. We were convinced of its truth. From that one meeting had
come the feeling that, when Dorothy agreed, the opinion of the rest of
the world faded to minor account. Over and over again her name threaded
the shuttle of my thoughts. Dorothy was my last thought as I lay down
at night. Dorothy was my first thought with the dawn.

I had an hour to wait before I could reach a man whom I had been told
to interview, and I sat back waiting and dreaming. It was Tuesday
of the fatal week, the first week in July. Suddenly the door of the
chief’s office opened, and I heard my name. “Orrington! Orrington!”
I jumped to my feet and hurried in. The chief was sitting with the
receiver to his ear. “Close that door!” he ordered. “Here’s Orrington
now. Tell him what you told me.”

I took the ’phone at his gesture and listened.

“Orrington?”

“Yes.” (The man on the other end was the head of our Washington office.)

“There may be something in that story of yours. The War Department
has just called me up. The Alaska has disappeared somewhere between
Newport News and Bar Harbor. They talked with her by wireless yesterday
morning, and have been unable to get into communication with her since.
She has two sets of wireless on board, and has not been out of close
communication for three years. They have sent four revenue cutters out
searching the coast, but nothing has been seen. Finally the secretary
thought of you and the message from the man who intended to stop all
war. Have you found out anything?”

“No.”

“Well, take your orders from New York now. They’ve asked for you for
this. I don’t think the other papers have it yet.”

I straightened up with a throb of joy and turned to the chief. He
looked at me keenly. “Better not write anything till you have something
more. The assignment is yours. Go out and find the Alaska or what
happened to her. I give you carte blanche.”

Hardly were the last words out of his mouth before I had jumped for my
hat and was hurrying down the stairs with a generous order for expense
money in my hand. A moment’s stop at the cashier’s, and I was out on
the street. Up and down I looked for cab or automobile. I was bound
for the water front. For once, there was not even a street car going
my way. I started hurriedly on, half running in my speed. As I rushed
along, I heard my name, “Mr. Orrington!” The voice would have called
me miles. It was Dorothy Haldane, seated in a big blue motor. Her
chauffeur drew up beside me, and she threw open the door.

“Let me take you wherever you are going, and tell me if you have heard
more from that letter.”

I needed no second invitation, gave the wharf address to the chauffeur,
and turned to answer Dorothy. As I told her the news, she leaned
forward to the chauffeur.

“Go back to where we left Mr. Haldane’s launch,” she said, and turned
to me. “I’ve just left Tom at his launch, which was to take him out to
the Black Arrow. They were waiting for some provisions at the wharf,
and may be there yet. He’ll be delighted to take you, and the Black
Arrow is one of the swiftest motor yachts in the bay. Will you make
your search on her? If you will, I’ll go with you. I only stayed ashore
to-day to do some shopping that can wait.”

When the gods befriend a man, who is he to say nay? Through the hot and
dirty markets we sped and reached the wharf, just as the Black Arrow’s
launch was leaving the shore. A clear call and a wave of Dorothy’s
parasol brought it back, while a bewildered smile passed over Tom
Haldane’s face as he saw us awaiting him. “Why, Jim!” he began.

“Don’t stop to talk now,” said Dorothy. “Take us to the Black Arrow as
fast as you can.”

In a moment we had cleared the wharves and were passing from the dirt
and smells of the city on to the clear waters of the bay. As we went,
Dorothy explained the situation to Tom, who fell in with the plan
joyously. Once on the slim rakish yacht, he spoke.

“Now, Jim, you’re in command. Where are we going?”

“Right down the coast,” I said, “and we’ll megaphone every fisherman
and yacht. It’s the men on the coasters who will know, if any one does.”

Swift as her name, the Black Arrow ploughed her way through the summer
sea. Pleasantest of all assignments to sit on her deck and watch
Dorothy Haldane as she talked and speculated on the problem before
us. Could one man have sunk so mighty a battleship? Was there any
possibility that a single man could make war on the world? Tom came up
to us in the midst of the discussion, and stood listening.

“Queer this should come up now,” he said. “It was only last winter that
some one was talking about something like this up at our house, one
Sunday night. Who was it, Dorothy?”

A sudden look of alarm flashed across her face. She started to speak
and then broke off. “Oh! I hardly remember.”

Tom persisted. “Let’s see, there was a crowd of the fellows there, and,
queer thing too, John King and Dick Regnier. The same pair that were
with you the other night.”

“Regnier!” That name shot across me like a bullet. The short, quick,
troubled breathing of some one behind me on the night we read the
letter! “Can it be!” I burst forth.

Dorothy made no pretence of misunderstanding me. “No,” she said firmly.
“Dick was up to see me last night. It couldn’t have been he.”

The coast had been rushing by us rapidly as we talked, and now the
summer cottages and bathing beaches were giving way to longer stretches
of bare sand and wooded inlets. I rose and looked forward.

“We may as well commence here,” I said, and we began systematic
inquiry. Catboat and sloop tacking out on pleasure bent, tramp steamer
ploughing heavily up the coast,--one after another, we came alongside
and asked the same questions. “Have you seen a battleship to-day or
yesterday? Have you seen or heard anything unusual?”

The answers came back in every vein. Brusque denials--ironical
inquiries--would-be humorous sallies--courteous rejoinders--one and all
had the same word. No battleship seen. Nothing unusual seen or heard.
The morning had become noon, ere we were fairly on our quest. The
afternoon wore on towards night, as it progressed. As the hours passed,
I protested against my hosts giving up their yacht to my service, but
quite in vain. They were as firmly resolved to pursue the quest to the
end as I was myself.

About five o’clock, when we were some six or seven miles off the coast,
came the first success. We hailed a schooner whose lookout replied
negatively to our questions. As we passed slowly, we heard a sudden
hail, as a gaunt man, the skipper, rushed to the side.

“Lookin’ for anything unusual, be ye?” he shouted. “I’ve seen one
thing,--a catboat takin’ on a crazy man out of a knockabout.”

“Whereabouts?” I shouted.

“’Bout ten miles back, I reckon,” came the answer.

He knew no more than that, and the interchange over, I turned to
Dorothy.

“Shall we run that clue down?” I asked.

She nodded decisively. “By all means,” she said. “It’s the only one we
have. Send the Arrow inshore, will you, Tom, on a long slant?”

Once more the engine took up its racing speed, as the boat bore down on
the shore. As we went in, we changed the questions, and asked the few
boats we met if they had picked up a man. At last we saw a catboat just
sailing out of a little bay, and bore down on it. A man and a boy sat
in the stern. As I shouted my question once more, the man jumped up.

“Yes, we picked one up.”

“Where is he?” I shouted.

“At my house, but he’s crazy,” replied the man.

“Can we get in there with the yacht?”

“No, but I can take you in,” he answered, and it was but a moment’s
work to lower a boat from the davits. As I stepped to the side, Tom and
Dorothy hurried up.

“We’re going, too,” Tom cried.

The launch bore us rapidly across to the catboat, and as we approached,
I studied the faces of the man and the boy. They were simple folk, of
evidently limited intelligence. Hardly had we come alongside, when I
began my questions, and a strange story came in reply. Stripped of its
vernacular and repetitions, this was the tale finally dragged from the
man and boy, as we sailed towards the shore.

They had started out in the early morning and had fished with some
success. In the afternoon, they had seen a knockabout running
free before the wind, with all sorts of strange action. The sail
widespread, she turned and reared, started and checked, swung and
circled. There was no sign of life on board that they could ascertain,
and they made up their minds that the boat had either lost its
occupants or had been driven offshore with its sail hoisted. On
boarding, much to their surprise, they found a man, apparently a
solitary fisherman, lying unconscious in the stern sheets. Throwing
water over him roused him. He sat up and looked around, but with
unseeing eyes. His lips quivered, and in a low whisper he began to
speak. “Disappeared, disappeared, disappeared. Nothing real, nothing
real.” Rising, he started to walk straight ahead, but struck the
side and fell. His murmur now changed to a loud moan. “Disappeared,
disappeared, disappeared. Nothing real, nothing real.” Again he tried
to walk, but this time they caught him, bound him, and carried him to
shore, to their house, where he went quietly enough to bed, with the
unceasing moan. “Disappeared, disappeared, disappeared. Nothing real,
nothing real,” rising and falling like the waves on the shore.

The story had taken all the way in, and as we rowed towards shore,
leaving the catboat and launch at the mooring where the knockabout lay,
the night was swiftly shutting in. A light glimmered in a low house on
the bluff.

“That’s my house,” said the man, as we hastened towards it. A woman
with a kindly face met us at the door.

“Wife, these are some folks that are looking for the crazy man,” said
our friend.

“He’s fast asleep,” was the answer, “but you can go in and see him, if
you want to.”

My heart rose. The second step of my quest was in sight.

“Tom,” I said quietly, “come along with me. Miss Haldane, will you
remain here?”

Dorothy nodded. Tom and I followed the woman as she passed down a
narrow passage. Opening a rude door, she entered. In front of the bed,
she stopped short and threw up her hands. “For the land’s sake,” she
cried. “He’s gone!”

Gone! The word echoed dismally in my brain.

“Wait till I get a lamp,” said the woman, and she pattered nervously
out.

By the fading light, we could see the disordered bed, the open window,
and an overturned chair. A glimmer of light came down the passage,
and the woman hurried back, followed by Dorothy. No more information
could be gleaned. Evidently the lost man had risen, dressed completely,
and left by the low open window. The woman of the house was in great
distress, weeping and rocking. “The poor crazy man, lost in these
woods. He was as harmless as anything. I thought he was all right.”

Dorothy sat down beside her, and, soothing her, began a series of quiet
questions. “How long did you leave him?”

“An hour or more.” She had been doing the supper dishes. Dorothy turned
to the husband.

“What roads are there from here?”

“Only one for a mile. That goes from the front of the house.”

The woman broke in. “If he’d taken that, I’d have seen him. He’d have
gone by my window. He must have gone to the shore or the woods.”

“There’s no use waiting. He’s only getting farther away from us,” cried
Tom. “Let’s look around the house.”

Our fisher friend had two lanterns and a kerosene light. With these, we
began the search. The sand and rock around the house gave no sign of
footprints, and we passed out in widening circles, meeting and calling
without avail. A half hour’s exploration left us just where we started.
We had found nothing. Turning back, we met Dorothy at the door.

“I was afraid you would find nothing,” she said. “I’ve just found
out that he said one thing beside the sentence which he continually
repeated. Once he said, ‘The sea, the sea, the awful sea.’ I believe he
has gone to the shore.”

Together, we went in that direction. Tom and the fisherman took one
way, Dorothy and I the other. As we hastened on, the light of the
lantern threw circles of hazy light on the black water and on the
shore. Dorothy, in the depths of thought, walked on a little in
advance, and, despite myself, my thoughts turned from the man I sought
and the errand for which I sought him, and I gazed wholly at the round
cheek shaded by a flying tress that escaped from the close veil, and at
the erect figure, now stooping to look ahead, now rising and passing
on in deep thought. The same thrill which had held me the first night
came again, that binding call, that tightening chain. I lost myself in
a dreamy exhilaration.

Suddenly, Dorothy stopped. “It’s no use to go farther.”

Obediently I turned, and we retraced our steps. Just below the house,
we met Tom and the fisherman, returned from an equally unavailing
search. We all four stood gazing out to sea where the Black Arrow lay,
her lights the sole gemmed relief of the dark waters, save where her
search-light blazed a widening path of changing silver before her. All
at once I saw Dorothy raise her head with a quick breath.

“If he’s on the shore, I know how we can find him, no matter what start
he has.”




CHAPTER III


We waited anxiously for her next words.

“The search-light of the Arrow will do it. We can run the launch
along the coast twice as fast as a man can walk or run, and play the
search-light of the yacht on the shore as we go.”

Though simplicity itself, it was the only plan that promised success,
and it took but little time to put it into operation. The fisherman
volunteered as pilot, and while Tom went back in the launch to give
instructions to the captain, we waited in the darkness of the little
bay, holding our lights as beacons. The night, without a single star,
but darkly showed the lapping waves and sighing pines which made the
background of our tiny, rocky amphitheatre. Tom had not covered half
the distance to the yacht, when we heard his hail, and the search-light
swung at right angles, limning the launch speeding from the shore in
a lane of light. We watched them till they reached the shadow of the
side. There was a brief interval before we saw the launch returning
down the silvery way, but, as she neared us, to our surprise we saw
Tom was not there. In his stead came the first officer, who touched
his cap, and said, “Mr. Haldane will stay on the yacht and run the
search-light, and has asked me to run the launch.”

It was but the work of a moment to embark, and the boat headed out
of the cove towards the north, the side agreed upon with Tom. Up in
the prow stood the officer at the wheel, the fisherman pilot beside
him. The engineer bent over his small engine in the centre, and in
the stern sat Dorothy and I, peering into the space of light on the
shore, where played the search-light. Bravely the little launch found
her way forward, with the slight chug-chug of her engine the only
sound. I could not rid myself of a feeling of unreality. Constantly
we moved in light, while all else was in shadow. Before us was the
shore, lighted as by a ghostly radiance, on either side was darkness,
such darkness that we could barely distinguish the sky line of bluff
and tree against the sky. We neither spoke nor moved, and the sailors
forward scarce broke by a movement the silence, with its single sound
rising above the monotony of the waves. Dark green of pine and cedar,
lighter green of scrub oak, yellow gray of sand dune, soft brown warmth
of massive boulder, curling white where splashing waves broke on the
glistening pebbles of the shore, ragged stump and lofty maple--all
were etherealized by the silver, shifting light. It was a night of
enchantment, wherein I, taken up by a genie from my dusty tasks, had
been placed beside a fairy queen to behold the wonders of Eastern
magic. Mile after mile rolled by with no result. Once we flashed our
light on a startled fisherman lifting his lobster pots from his boat.
Now and again we cast it on veranda of summer cottage, or on kitchen
steps of farmhouse. Where we found men, we inquired for the object of
our search, but it was all in vain, and at last I looked questioningly
at Dorothy.

“He could not have come so far as this.”

She shook her head. “No,” she said regretfully. “We may as well turn.
But we’ll find him on the other shore. I feel certain he went to the
sea.” She gave a low order to the officer at the wheel. He raised a
lantern thrice, and the search-light paused and reversed its way.

Back over the ground we passed, more swiftly this time than on our way
up. Back to the cove where we started, we went, and from there we took
our course southward along the shore. We had gone perhaps three miles,
when the fisherman turned suddenly. “There’s some one ahead there on
the bluff.”

On swept the search-light, and outlined on a little knoll scarcely
fifty yards from us stood a man, his hands stretched to heaven, and an
expression of awful doubt and agony on his face. His lips moved, and a
moaning cry came from them. Quickly the engineer threw the lever, and
the sound of the engine ceased. Out of the stillness, made yet more
manifest by the stopping of the single accustomed sound, came the moan.
“Disappeared, disappeared, disappeared. Nothing real, nothing real!”
The man paid no attention to the light or to our boat. He looked beyond
us, at the ocean, with an unseeing gaze.

“Hold the search-light there!” I called, in a low tone.

The officer raised his lantern twice, and the search-light stopped with
the man in the centre of its field.

[Illustration: THE OFFICER RAISED HIS LANTERN TWICE. [_Page 30._ ]

“Go on,” I said, and the launch passed slowly on into the darkness. In
hurried tones, I told Dorothy my plans. The fisherman and I would go
ashore at the first point possible, come up from behind, and take him.
It was quickly and easily done. The launch was brought close in shore,
where the fisherman and I could wade in, and, as we stole quietly up
behind the man, we could see that he had not moved. His hands were
still raised on high. His lips still uttered the same moan. To my
surprise, he offered no resistance, and came quietly and peaceably on
board the launch and the yacht, where they put him to bed. Through the
whole he never ceased his plaint. We looked for sign or letter that
might show his identity, but there was nothing. However, we had won the
second step. Next came the question, “Did he know anything of the
Alaska?” That was the last thing we discussed before turning in, but it
was not the last thing in my thoughts as I fell asleep.

I woke up next morning among the familiar sounds of New York harbor,
and came on deck to find Tom and Dorothy already there. Our visitor was
safe. He was still in a heavy sleep.

The newspapers had come on board, and we found that the disappearance
of the battleship was now known, but that there was as yet no news. In
the excitement, the story of the message from the man had been wholly
forgotten. Every newspaper was searching, but none had any clue. The
Navy Department could give no information, though besieged by hundreds
of the relatives and friends of the men on board. There was no clue as
to the identity of the insane man. No paper reported any man as lost. I
thought the matter over as we breakfasted. Finally Tom spoke.

“What’s the next move, Jim?”

“To open the mouth of this man here,” I answered. “I believe that he
knows something; that a sudden shock drove him crazy, and our next move
is to get him sane again.”

“How will you do that?” queried Dorothy.

“I don’t quite know,” I answered hesitatingly. “But I think I had
better try some physician. I want a bright, resourceful specialist.”

“I know just the man,” said Tom. “Forrester; he’s making a name fast.
You know him, Dorothy?”

Dorothy nodded. “I don’t think you can get a better man,” she said, and
so the next move was decided.

Our man awoke with no change from the night before, and with the same
cry ever issuing from his lips. Tom went ashore, ’phoned Dr. Forrester,
and arranged for attendants to remove the unfortunate to a private
hospital. We preceded the carriage which was sent for him, in Tom’s
motor car.

We had waited perhaps five minutes in Dr. Forrester’s office, when
he entered. Clear-cut, with clean shaven mouth and searching eyes,
he seemed the very man to solve our problem, if it could be solved.
Briefly I told him the condition. Here was an unknown man, with
absolutely no clue to his identity, who, we believed, possessed
certain information which we needed, information of the utmost public
importance. Our desire was to bring him back to a normal sanity and to
learn his story. My tale done, Forrester looked questioningly at Tom.

“It’s all right, Doctor, every bit of it,” said Tom decisively. “I’m
right behind this thing, and it’s all perfectly straight. My sister and
I were with Mr. Orrington when he found the man.”

Forrester rose as Tom spoke the last words. “That’s all that is
necessary. I shall be very glad to do what I can. If you’ll excuse me
now, I think that the patient has arrived. If you care to wait, I’ll
make a preliminary examination and let you know something of the result
immediately.”

For half an hour we waited anxiously for the verdict. Could Dr.
Forrester find the missing spring which would roll the curtain from
that brain, and enable it to give forth the information which might
mean so much to me? Finally the door opened and he entered. We sprang
up. He shook his head.

“A most trying and puzzling case. There seems to have been absolutely
no injury to the brain, that can be recognized. None of the ordinary
causes seem to have any share in the causation of this. I can do
nothing for you to-day. I will try every means known to us in
succession, and report to you day by day.”

I felt baffled and seriously puzzled. It was most essential that I
should get the story the moment the man recovered, if he did recover.
It was equally essential that I should be free to hunt for new clues.
Dorothy saw my anxiety.

“What is it, Mr. Orrington?” she questioned.

“Simply wondering how I could be in two places at the same time--here
waiting and on the coast searching,” I answered.

“I can settle that,” said she. “I am going to take a week of observing
in Tom’s research laboratory, and I’ll be right in reach of a telephone
every minute.”

I objected in vain. Dorothy settled matters as she had settled them
before. Tom and I were to go down the coast in the Black Arrow,
returning every night to New York. She was to remain in the city.

I reported my findings to the paper, and still the chief said, “Wait!
Don’t write anything till you have more. Keep at it till you have
something.”

Morning after morning we telephoned the hospital and found no change.
Day after day we spent in the Black Arrow, searching the coast, or in
the motor car, skirting the shores. Evening after evening we spent in
the library at the Haldanes’, in endless discussion and consultation.
The country was daily growing more and more alarmed. Rumors of war, of
foreign fleets coming to attack our shores, filled the papers. Stories
that the Alaska had been sent to the Pacific and had been seen in South
American ports, that she had been seen in European waters, that she
had struck a derelict and, badly disabled, was coming slowly in, were
current. Every story run to earth proved a fake, and every day had a
new story. The Government knew no more than any one else, and had been
driven to a sphinx-like silence in self-defence. They had employed,
as had the newspapers, every known means of getting some news of the
battleship, but all in vain.

The Alaska had disappeared on Monday or Tuesday of the first week
in July. On Tuesday, we had found the man who was still gazing with
unseeing eyes at the bare wall of the hospital room, still moaning the
same cry. In six days he had never varied it but twice, and both those
times he repeated his words in the cottage, “The sea, the awful sea.”

Experiment after experiment had been tried without avail. Two
consultations with the best alienists of the city had given Dr.
Forrester no more light. Six days of searching the coast gave us not
a single clue. On Monday night we reached the wharf about six, to
find Dorothy waiting for us in the automobile. As we rode up town she
rapidly explained the plan for the evening.

“They tried a high frequency current on the patient to-day,” said
Dorothy, “and it seemed to have the first effect. He stopped his
plaint, went off to sleep, and woke silent for the first time. He did
not drop back into his old condition until three hours later. They are
going to try it again, as soon as we get there.”

In one of Dr. Forrester’s offices stood the high frequency apparatus.
Before it sat the man, his eyes staring before him, his lips moving
with his moaning cry. The doctor moved the cup-shaped terminal above
his head, adjusted the negatives, then nodded to the nurse at the
switch. Slowly increasing in sound and speed went the motor. Hissing
low and sibilantly shot the vibrant discharge. Five minutes passed
as we gazed intently on the man in the chair, five more, and yet
five more. His words came slowly, drowsily now. The harsh, clashing
syllables became a low hum. He dropped off into sleep, breathing
regularly, and the nurse threw off the switch.

“That regular sleep is a great gain,” said Forrester. “He’ll probably
wake soon.”

Silently we sat waiting. The clock ticked loudly. I fell at once to my
constant occupation, watching Dorothy. She sat beside Tom, her eager
face bent intently on the man, so intently that it would seem as if
she must obtain the secret from his sleeping form. I had watched her
expressive face for perhaps half an hour, Forrester had been out and
returned, when the man stirred drowsily, put up his hand to his eyes,
rubbed them, yawned and looked up.

“Where--where am I?” he said stumblingly. “Where’s the boat?” he went
on.

Forrester soothed him. “You’re all right,” he said. “You had an
accident, but you’re all right again.”

The man sank back resignedly. “Well--” he began, and then a wave of
remembrance flashed across his face, a look of horror. We bent forward
instinctively, hanging on his words.

“Where’s the ship?” he cried. “What’s happened to the Alaska? I saw
her disappear. For God’s sake tell me I didn’t--” The red flush in his
face grew deeper, his breath grew labored, and the watching physician,
stepping beside his bared arm, brought something concealed in his hand
against it once, twice. “Oh!” said the man shrinking. “What--” and then
without another word he became unconscious.

I jumped up in excitement. “Couldn’t you have,--” I began, but
Forrester stopped me.

“I let him say all that was safe. Wait three hours, and he will
probably be all right.” He smiled somewhat exultantly. “The high
frequency did it. Somehow it seems to rearrange the disordered parts by
the electric flow.”

“Why do you think the high frequency current did the work when all
other methods failed?” asked Tom, as we descended the stairs.

Forrester pulled at his chin with an air of abstraction. “I don’t
really know,” he answered frankly. “The action is almost as if some
electrical matter in the patient had been jarred by an electrical
shock, and when the high frequency got control, it put things back into
shape. Readjusted the parts, as it were. I don’t believe at all that
the shock of seeing the battleship go down did the whole mischief.
There was something else, something decidedly out of the common, mixed
up in the case.”

As we waited, I telephoned the office, and found the chief still there.

“Victory is in sight,” I said. “Save as many columns as you can.”

“You can have all you want,” came back over the wire.

I asked for a desk, and began to write. I sketched the scene in the
War Department, quoted the entire message from the man who was trying
to stop all war, reviewed briefly what was known of the ship and of
her disappearance, and told of our search down the coast, and of the
finding of the man upstairs. Hour after hour went by as I wrote, and no
call came. Dorothy and Tom sat reading. At last I brought my story down
to the point where I wished to introduce the story of the man. There I
stopped, and with idle pen sat and watched the beautiful head below the
shaded light. If a man could only sit and see that “Picture of a woman
reading” every night! I found myself figuring costs of living more
zealously than ever before. A knock broke in on my thoughts.

“The patient has roused,” said the nurse, “and the doctor would like to
have you come.”

Silently we passed through the bare corridors and up the wide stairs.
As we entered, the doctor sat beside the man on the narrow iron
bed. I looked with eager inquiry at the face. It shone with normal
intelligence. We had conquered again.

“I have just been telling Mr. Joslinn of your finding him, and of his
being here,” said Forrester. “Now he is ready to talk.”

Dorothy greeted him and began the talk, while I wrote feverishly as
Joslinn spoke in a low steady tone. Yes, he had gone out fishing.
He had left a little shooting box, whither he had run down alone on
Monday, and taken the knockabout out. The reason no one had known of
his disappearance was that there was no one to care. He had no family
and had retired from business, made little trips now and then, so his
landlady and friends simply thought of him as away. I chafed at the
time that he took in coming to the point. If he only reached it, his
long description of his acts was all a part of the story. Then came the
crisis:

“I was out ten or twelve miles from shore, just about sunset,” said
Joslinn, “when I saw a battleship coming up the coast. She was the only
ship in sight, and she passed within a short distance of me, so near
that I felt the last of her wake. I never saw a finer spectacle than
that boat as she swept on.” He paused.

“Go on, go on,” I said anxiously.

“I knew it was the Alaska,” he resumed, “because I had seen her lying
for weeks below my apartment house in Riverside Drive. I watched her as
she went on triumphant. It was the time of evening colors. Out across
the water came the bugle call, which I had heard so often as I hung
over the parapet of the Drive at nightfall. The marine guard and the
crew stood mustered and facing aft. The flag fell a fluttering inch,
and at the moment of its fall the band crashed into the full strain of
the Star Spangled Banner. I stood with bared head, and my eyes filled
as the great ship bore proudly on. Just as the last note of ‘Oh long
may it wave’ came to me, like a bursting soap bubble, like a light
cloud scattered by the wind, she disappeared without a sound! Not so
much as the splash of a pebble in the water could I hear.”

“Do you mean to say,” cried Tom, in utter amazement, “that all those
thousands of tons of armored steel, those great guns in their huge
turrets, that terrific mass of metal, disappeared without a sound?”

“Absolutely without a sound,” answered Joslinn gravely. “The Alaska
disappeared with less commotion than a ring of tobacco smoke in the
air. It utterly destroyed one’s belief in the reality of anything in
this world!”

Bewilderment, complete bewilderment, is the only word which can express
the appearance of our little group, as we stood in the bare room. Even
Forrester temporarily forgot his professional attitude in the absorbing
interest of the tale. But a sigh from Joslinn recalled him.

“That’s quite enough, Mr. Joslinn,” he said hurriedly, and, at his nod
of dismissal, we turned and went down the stairs.

“Nothing real, with a vengeance,” remarked Tom, as we descended. “I
can’t imagine a more unearthly spectacle than that noiseless fading
away. I’d have said mirage, if he hadn’t heard the music, and if the
ship hadn’t actually disappeared. Hold on--if this is the work of man,
is it possible that he has discovered some new substance which, placed
in armored steel, causes it to disintegrate? If he got hold of such
stuff, he might get it into armored steel, while it was making, and
then after a certain time the whole thing might crumble away.”

Tom had finished speaking as he stood in the door of the doctor’s
pleasant library.

Dorothy nodded as he closed. “That’s not a bad idea, Tom. If anything
could be found that would make steel crumble into dust, as a puff ball
crumbles, it might of course be timed. But the whole thing dazes me. I
want plenty of time to think it over.”

“And I must get to work on my story,” I said, trying to shake myself
back into the world of reality again, and I rushed back to my desk.

Word for word I wrote the story, drew Joslinn’s life history briefly,
ran rapidly through the whole, and as Dorothy entered, “I know how I’ll
end,” I exclaimed. “I’ll prophesy the sinking of a British battleship
this week.”

She clapped her hands. “Good! good!” she cried. “You couldn’t do
better.”

The last words of my story were the prophecy, and I hurried to the
telephone. It was 1 a. m., but the chief himself answered. “I’ll be
there with the whole story in half an hour,” I cried exultantly.

“Did he see her go down?” asked the chief eagerly.

“He did,” I answered, and a long whistle came over the wires.

Through dark streets and light, through the roar of upper Broadway and
the sombre silence of lower Broadway the motor ran, and I tried to
calm my hurrying brain. The excitement which had possessed me every
day of the week was still over me. The awful wonder of Joslinn’s tale
possessed me, until my longed-for beat seemed but a minor accident in
the great happenings of the world. Up the elevator and through the door
at a bound I passed, to the chief’s office. He reached eagerly from
his chair for my copy. Page by page he read silently, as I sat handing
them to him, and passing them from his hands to the boys running back
and forth to the tubes. I could hear the crash of the presses, and I
thought, strangely enough, of Pendennis and Warrington standing in
Fleet Street and talking of the mightiest engine in the world,--the
press. And after all, it was my story that was enlightening the world
through those great presses below. I had solved the mystery that filled
the newspapers from the Atlantic to the Pacific, nay more, that was
discussed in the clubs of London and of Tokio, and my story would go
through them all. I had won. Twice only I stopped in giving the copy to
the chief, once to light my pipe, and once to look up Joslinn. I found
him easily in the directory and in Bradstreet’s. He was evidently a man
of complete reliability.

The last page had gone down the tube, and the chief leaned back and
meditatively took up his pipe.

“That’s the best stuff for some years, Orrington,” he said. “I guess
you’d better take this as a permanent assignment. The prophecy was a
long chance, but I guess we’ll take it. Now go to bed.”

I slept till ten, but once up, I read my story with huge approval in
my early paper, and saw everybody else reading it, as I went down
town. My ears were filled with excited comment, and I examined with
much glee the pained comments or total silence of our contemporaries.
Especially did they condemn my prophecy. Reaching the office, I stopped
on the first floor to get a late edition, among a general stare which
I endeavored to bear modestly. At the elevator door, I paused. “Should
I walk or ride? Walk it is,” I decided. I wanted to stop in the hall
outside the big office to look over my story again. As I sat in the
hall window, I looked down. I could see a multitude before our bulletin
board. None of the other papers had any crowd at all. As I looked, the
throng went wild. A great roar rose, and the mass seethed and swayed as
they gazed at the bulletin below me, but out of my sight. “Something’s
up,” I said to myself, and bolted for the office. The reporters and
editors were all clustered in one corner. As they saw me, a shout went
up.

“Orrington, the British battleship Dreadnought, Number 8, has
disappeared!”




CHAPTER IV


The disappearance of His Britannic Majesty’s battleship Dreadnought
Number 8 sent the world wild. Two great nations had suffered severe
blows, and lay in quivering expectation of the future. The chief of my
paper smiled at me more amicably than ever before, as I entered the
office the third day after the British battleship disappeared utterly
in the channel.

“You’d better run that prophecy of yours about the French battleship
to-day,” he said, “and then keep out of the office. I don’t want you to
be in evidence. We’ve got too good a thing to take any chances. Work as
hard as you want to on the assignment, but don’t appear publicly.”

I nodded acquiescence.

“By the way,” he went on, “just how many people outside our own staff
know of the second letter?”

“Seven,” I answered. “The President, the Secretary of War, the two
Haldanes and their cousin Mrs. Hartnell, Richard Regnier and John King.
The former Secretary of the Navy did know, but he’s dead. They are all
pledged to secrecy, and all have kept the story wholly to themselves.”

“That’s all,” said the chief, and I left.

That night I sent in a prediction that a French battleship would
sink within a week, and then spent the next few days going over the
naval registers of the nations, and in correlating the mass of data
concerning the navies of the world, which had been collected at the
office by my request. I wanted to get all the information concerning
the subject in hand that I could possibly obtain.

Immersed in masses of data, struggling with theory after theory that
arose only to be rejected, I passed the week. Weary from my labors, one
afternoon I left my work to go to the Haldanes to report progress. Tom
and Dorothy were both immersed in a research Tom was carrying on, but
they always had time to discuss the great question.

“I had a letter from Dick Regnier yesterday,” said Dorothy, the first
words over. “He says he is doing some work he has long wanted to do. He
speaks of seeing John King at Cowes. John had his new yacht down there.”

I followed every word intently. “Nothing at all about the loss of the
Alaska or the Dreadnought Number 8?” I asked significantly.

“No,” answered Dorothy.

“When was the letter mailed?” I asked.

“Two days after the British ship went down,” she answered. “But--” She
stopped as Tom came in. I continued the conversation no farther.

As I left, Tom called after me. “I’ve been fooling with some
phosphorescent paint,” he said, “and I’ve run down a few interesting
results. Don’t you want to come up to the laboratory to-morrow morning
about three o’clock? We’re going to run some tests between twelve
midnight, and five in the morning, so as to have the least current and
vibration that the city can give.”

“I’ll be glad to come,” I answered instantly. No chance to be near
Dorothy was ever to be refused.

The last revellers were just passing from the great white way, as I
rode up town in a late surface car, which held, beside myself, only a
few dull and sleepy workers. I was ahead of time and, as I came up near
Riverside Drive, I jumped off the car and walked down towards the Drive
and up by the river. Below me, in the full moonlight, lay an American
fleet. The white sides and lofty turrets of the ships stood sharply
outlined against the other bank. They seemed to personify the might
of the nation resting there in huge impassive stolidity, fearful of
nothing, ready for all. Yet as I remembered Joslinn’s words, “vanished
like a breaking soap bubble,” spoken of the Alaska, I shuddered at the
helplessness of those floating forts, massive as they were. I looked
at my watch in the moonlight. Quarter of three. I turned and made my
way to the gray stone building on the height, which held the research
laboratory.

I found Tom and Dorothy bending over a series of instruments under a
big incandescent light. I watched them for a moment silently, then, as
they rose from their task, I greeted them. Never had Dorothy looked
more charming than in this setting of bare walls and severe tables,
hooded instruments and wires, glass cases and shelves. Most girls whom
I had seen at three o’clock in the morning, as they left a ballroom,
were sorry spectacles, worn and dishevelled. Dorothy, in her trim
working clothes, was as fresh as a summer’s morn. Her first greeting
over, she turned to her work again, adjusting a micrometer levelling
screw.

“What are you doing?” I asked idly.

“Adjusting a reflectoscope to detect the presence of radio-active
waves. Tom is just going to have his assistant test the radium he is
to use to-night, and has half a dozen reflectoscopes here,” and she
waved her hand at the bench before her, where half a dozen similar
instruments were placed.

“They are a good deal like the old electroscopes, only infinitely more
sensitive. You see that gold leaf,” she pointed to two tiny ribbons
of gold that hung limply together, “when a wave from a radio-active
source, such as radium, comes along, those ribbons fly apart. All our
reflectoscopes are discharged now, but they’ll be charged later.”

As we spoke, Tom joined us. “I’ve sent Jones down-stairs for the radium
in the safe, Dorothy,” he said, and we three stood looking silently
at the instruments before us. Through the open windows a fresh breeze
fluttered in, and the soft night gave back but the slightest hum, a
minimum of that sound that never ceases in the quietest hours of the
great city. A church tower rang out--One, Two, Three, Four. Tom glanced
at the chronometer. “Just right,” he said, and looked back. A strange
hush filled the air. Again a terrific force seemed to be pulling me
towards Dorothy, but my eyes never turned from the reflectoscopes.
Suddenly, as I gazed, the golden ribbons sprang to life, parted and
stood stiffly separate.

“Good heavens!” cried Tom. “What did that? They were perfectly
insulated. What did that, Dorothy? It must be Jones bringing the
radium.”

Dorothy’s eyes glowed with excited interest. “I don’t think it was
Jones,” she said eagerly. “I believe I know what it was, but anyway,
let’s go first and see where Jones is. There’s absolutely nothing else
in the laboratory that could have charged them, insulated as they were.”

Down the stairs, flight after flight, four in all, we trooped, and
found Jones in an office on the first floor, seated in a chair before
the safe, and looking disconsolately at its closed door. At Tom’s
voice, he rose.

“Professor, I’ve forgotten the combination again. I was sitting here
trying to bring it to mind.”

“Then you haven’t taken the radium from the safe at all?” shouted Tom,
in wild excitement.

“No,” answered Jones, staring in amazement.

“Then how in blazes did those reflectoscopes get charged?”

Jones showed a sudden interest, “Have they got charged again?”

“Yes, have they been charged before?”

“Twice before, and I meant to speak to you about it, but it slipped my
mind.”

“When did it happen?” Dorothy broke in.

“I’ve got full particulars noted down, up-stairs,” said Jones. “But how
about the combination?”

“Never mind that,” cried Tom. “Let me see your data.”

Rapidly we ascended, the slower Jones following some way behind. In the
laboratory the assistant turned to a littered desk and fumbled among a
mass of papers. I could see that Dorothy was burning with impatience
which I could not understand. Jones fumbled on, picking up paper after
paper, peering at them blindly through his black-rimmed spectacles.
Tom seized my arm and walked me down the room impatiently.

“That man will drive me mad some day,” he exclaimed. “He’s the most
accurate investigator and observer we ever had, but he keeps his desk
in an unspeakable mess. He’s got that data somewhere, and when he
finds it, it will be correct, but he’ll take perhaps an hour to find
it. There, thank the Lord!” he remarked, as we turned back, “Dorothy’s
taking a hand.”

Then came order from chaos, regularity from irregularity. Paper by
paper was read, rejected and placed in its appropriate place, while
Jones looked on, by no means displeased. Scarcely five minutes had
passed, and the desk had assumed an order foreign to its nature. Ten
minutes passed, and Dorothy turned. “It isn’t here, Mr. Jones. Now
think, where did you put it?”

Jones seized the knotty problem, bent his mind to it, struggled with
it, emerged victorious. “I know,” he said. “It’s in the middle of that
black, leather note-book in the third right-hand drawer.”

Before he had finished, the note-book was in Dorothy’s hand, was open,
and a paper fluttered out into her lap. She picked it up and read,
“July 3d, 19--. Reflectoscopes charged without apparent cause at
3.45-30 P. M.; July 11th, 19--. Reflectoscopes charged without apparent
cause between 9.35 and 10.10 P. M.”

“I thought so, I thought so,” said Dorothy, jumping from her chair.
“Tom, it’s as straight as a die. Oh, Jim, it’s a big step.”

Tom looked as bewildered as poor Jones had seemed before the safe, or
as he did now. I was thoroughly puzzled. The only thing that struck me
forcibly was that Dorothy had called me by my first name. That was a
big step surely, but evidently it was not the step she meant. Dorothy
saw our bewilderment, and went on emphatically.

“You are stupid. I’d like to know how far you men would get in this
world without women to find things out for you. What happened on July
3d in the afternoon, and what occurred sometime in the evening, our
time, on July 11th?”

Tom and I stood still, looking at each other in bewilderment. Suddenly
I saw a great light.

“Why, those were the times the Alaska and the Dreadnought Number 8
disappeared!” I shouted, in wildest excitement, “and just now.”

“A French battleship went down,” said Dorothy gravely. “And,--” she
broke her sentence with a brief sob, “the poor wives and children.”

We had turned instinctively to watch the golden ribbons that told of
the sinking of the proud battleship, and of the death of hundreds, and
I bowed my head as when the death angel comes close beside us in his
flight. A moment’s silence, and Tom turned to Jones.

“If you don’t mind, Jones, I wish you would say nothing of this, no
matter what you see or hear. We shall do no more to-night; you may go
home.”

With Jones’ departure, we began another council. Tom drew out his pipe.
“Dorothy, I know Jim and I need to smoke over this, do you mind?” and
at her word we filled our pipes and invoked the help of that great aid
to philosophers, tobacco. Dorothy was at the desk, her brow knotted in
deep thought. Tom and I sat on a side bench against the wall, facing
her. The dawn was coming in through the wide windows, and the city
stirred as we talked.

“Your theory about the disintegrating steel of the battleships was
evidently wrong, Tom,” said Dorothy. “The wave that charged the
reflectoscopes was a wave definitely projected from some definite
place.”

“Yes,” said Tom musingly. “I was wrong. The man who is trying to stop
all war must have some radio-active generator, some means of wave
disturbance greater than anything we have yet attained. As a man starts
a dynamo, and uses the electricity it furnishes to do work, so this man
starts this unknown engine of destruction, and its waves destroy the
ship.”

“But how could he possibly cause a ship to vanish without a sound?” I
asked.

“Of course, I’m not perfectly sure,” answered Dorothy. “But the moment
the reflectoscopes were charged, I thought of a possible theory.
His force, so powerful that it affects our reflectoscopes thousands
of miles away, may be able to resolve the metal which makes up a
battleship into its electrons, which would disappear as intangible gas.”

“What are electrons?” I persisted. “I’ve heard of them, of course, but
I’m not quite sure what they are.”

“They’re the very smallest division of matter, the infinitely small
particles that make up the atom. If a man could find a way to break
matter down to them, it’s entirely possible that they would then go
off as a gas. The waves the man sends out must be terrifically strong,
anyway. One thing I don’t see, though, is how he could break down
organic matter. He could break down everything metallic, perhaps, but
I don’t see how he could break down wood--or human beings,” she ended,
with a shudder.

“Part of that’s easy,” said Tom, with a long whiff at his pipe.
“Absolutely no wood for the last two years on any battleship. All
nations have taken out what wood they had on their new ships and put
in metal of some sort. I don’t know about the action on man; it’s not
essential to settle that now.”

The excitement of the moment had been so great, standing in the midst
of history making had been so poignant, that for the nonce my newspaper
instinct had been lost in the stronger thrill. Now it suddenly awoke.

“Great Scott!” I cried. “I must get this to the paper instantly.
Where’s the telephone?”

Without a word, Tom pointed to the desk ’phone on his own desk, and I
rushed over to it. Again and again I rang, with no response. “I can’t
get Central,” I said.

Tom looked at the clock. “It’s a branch exchange, but there’s usually
some one on our exchange board by now. I’ll try.”

Five more precious minutes were lost in his attempt to gain the board.
At last he looked up. “No use, Jim.”

I waited for no more, but grabbed my hat and ran down the long flights.
Out across the square I sped and down the street. A blue bell showed
on the corner in a small store. I ran to it--locked. Another block,
and I had the same experience. At the third, a corner drug store, I
met success. A yawning boy, sweeping out the store, gazed with open
mouth as, hot and perspiring from my run, I hurried in and rushed to
the booth. In a moment I had the office and the night editor’s desk,
had told him who I was, and began to dictate. “At one minute past four
by our time (see what time Paris time is for that, and put it in) a
French battleship was sunk by the man who is to stop all war. Probably
no one on board escaped.” That last was a guess based on the experience
of the past. The night editor’s voice came back.

“Feel sure of this, Orrington?”

“Very sure,” I said.

“I hate to run a thing like this on a chance.”

“The chief said to run anything I sent, didn’t he?”

“Yes,” said the night editor.

“Well, rush it in then, before word comes.”

“All right, if you insist,” came back, and I hung up the ’phone, paid
my fee, and departed.

I slept like a log until eleven, then rose to gather in the file of
morning papers outside my door. My statement was in big headlines in my
own paper. No other morning paper had a single word of it. I paused at
the news-stand, as I went down to breakfast. Staring from every paper
was the headline, “La Patrie Number 3 disappeared. French battleship
follows the Alaska and the Dreadnought Number 8.”

They had the news from France five hours after we had published it.
Leisurely I ate my breakfast, the while I read the late news of my
rivals, turning with especial interest to an editorial of my own paper,
commenting on my work and reviewing the situation. “This should mean
another big jump in circulation,” I thought to myself, “and another
jump in salary, too.” My salary was really getting up to a point where
marriage was the only sensible thing for a man to do. I was to meet
the Haldanes at three. I wondered how long an acquaintance should last
before one could propose.

As I sipped my last cup of coffee, I saw two men in the dining-room
door speaking to a waiter, who nodded, and led them my way. They were
not the type of men who usually breakfasted in the restaurant. Just
before me they stopped.

“Mr. Orrington?” said one inquiringly.

“I am James Orrington,” I answered. The waiter had gone back to the
kitchen. We were left alone in the rear of the dining-room. The man who
had spoken opened his coat and showed a silver shield.

“We are secret service officials. You are under arrest.”




CHAPTER V


“This is an outrage,” I exclaimed indignantly. “Why should I be put
under arrest?”

“On complaint of the French government as being concerned in the
sinking of the French battleship La Patrie Number 3 off Brest this
morning,” replied the officer coolly. “As it is an international
complaint, it came under the Federal courts, and we were empowered to
make the arrest.”

As he spoke, the whole thing flashed across me. My predictions of the
destruction of the Dreadnought Number 8 and of La Patrie Number 3 had
come true. I had told of the sinking at the very moment it occurred. My
story had been spread over the world by cable and by wireless, and my
arrest as an accomplice in the act was the result. I immediately felt
more cheerful.

“The charge is too absurd to stand for a moment,” I said. “I am
entirely ready to go with you.”

Back up-stairs with my two companions I went for my hat, and then I
accompanied them to the Federal building. The inquiry was sharp and
searching. I admitted unhesitatingly that I had written the original
account of the sinking of the Alaska and had prophesied the loss of
the Dreadnought Number 8 and of La Patrie Number 3, also that I had
given information of the sinking of the ship an hour or two before it
had been known in France. On being questioned as to the source of my
knowledge, I gave the account already published of the discovery of
the man who saw the Alaska disappear, and spoke of the original letter
sent by the man who intended to stop all war. Of the two essential
factors, the discovery of the hidden letter and the charging of the
reflectoscopes, I did not speak. These were valuable assets to me, as
long as they were not made public. I could not throw them away. They
meant higher salary, greater reputation, and these things meant a
third, far more essential than either.

My story done, the judge sat for some moments without moving. Finally
he spoke. “Frankly, Mr. Orrington, I cannot see that you have explained
that inside information which enabled you to make your predictions, or
tell of the loss of the La Patrie Number 3. You are the only person
who seems to know anything of this. You offer no explanation of your
knowledge. I do not see that I can do otherwise than commit you without
bail.”

Commit me without bail, keep me from following out my assignment,
keep me from seeing Dorothy! I thought rapidly. Of course there was a
solution. I addressed the judge.

“Your honor, I gave this information in advance to the President and
to the Secretary of War. If you will get either one of them on the
telephone, they will corroborate my words.”

The judge’s attitude changed. “If that proves correct, I shall have no
reason to detain you,” he said, and, turning to a court officer, he
ordered him to call up Washington, state the case to the President’s
private secretary, and ask the President for a statement.

“If you cannot get the President, get the Secretary of War,” I broke
in, and the judge said, “Very well.”

I did not want to bring the office into this at all if I could help it.
I was out playing a lone hand, with the whole responsibility resting
on me, and I did not wish to ask for aid if I could possibly avoid it.
I thought of the Haldanes, but decided to save them for a last resort.
I could not bear to think of Dorothy in the courtroom. For a long half
hour I waited, reading the morning papers, till the return of the
messenger. He entered and walked before the bench.

“Your honor, the President has gone shooting in Virginia. He will
not return for three days, and can only be seen on urgent official
business. The Secretary of War is dangerously ill and cannot be
disturbed.”

I remembered with a shock that I had seen the second fact in the
newspapers. Of the first I had no knowledge. As he heard the news,
the judge again shook his head. “I cannot release you on that mere
statement, Mr. Orrington. Is there anything else you would like to have
done?”

I gave way with an inward sigh. “Yes, telephone, if you will, to
Professor Thomas Haldane at his laboratory, saying that I am under
arrest here, and ask him to come and bring a lawyer.”

Another weary period of waiting in the stifling heat passed before the
door opened and Tom entered, accompanied by another man.

“Hello, old man. This is a shame,” ejaculated Tom, as he came towards
me. As his lawyer went up to the bench for an interview with the judge,
he went on in a lower tone. “It is a shame, Jim, but I expected it.”

“What?” I said in amazement.

“I expected it,” repeated Tom. “It was the only logical outcome of your
prophecies. You had too much inside information. People couldn’t help
suspecting you knew more than you had told. You were the only person on
whom they could lay their hands. It’s really not surprising at all that
you are here. The only thing is, we’ve got to get you out of this right
off.”

He turned to the lawyer. “Can’t you get the judge to take my word
that I know all the circumstances, and can swear to Mr. Orrington’s
innocence?”

The lawyer went up to the bench and had a brief conversation with
the judge. In a few moments he returned. “I hope I’ve solved the
difficulty,” said he. “The judge will accept your statement and Mr.
Orrington’s together. If you will explain the whole thing to him, he
will see that it goes to no one save the Attorney General.”

“You’d better do it,” said Tom briefly.

“I suppose I’ll have to,” I replied. We adjourned to the judge’s
private office and told the whole story.

“I can understand,” said the judge, as I finished, “that the story of
the disappearance of the French battleship might be a lucky guess, once
given the letter of which you speak, but the narrative as told by you
seems almost too incredible to be admitted as evidence. Is this letter
containing the second message still in your possession?”

“No,” I said, and hesitated.

Tom broke in. “It’s in my sister’s hands, judge. She has had it ever
since that first night. If you will wait I will get some radium from my
laboratory and show the hidden message to you.”

“It could not, then, disappear in the time which has elapsed?” queried
the judge.

“No,” answered Tom, decisively. “I have been experimenting with inks of
that kind since I knew of this, and I should say unhesitatingly that it
would still be there, although I’ve never happened to see it myself.
I’ll bring the things back at once. My motor is at the door.”

By that time I had exhausted the news possibilities of the newspapers
and was left to the real estate columns. “Which was better for a young
couple, a small apartment in the city or a suburban home?” That was
a question which made even the flamboyant advertisements of farthest
Suburbia a matter of deep and abiding interest to me. I was half
through the columns when, to my joy and surprise, the door opened,
and Dorothy entered, followed by Tom and the lawyer. At her coming,
the nodding court officer roused and became a model of soldierly
deportment, the secret service men straightened in their chairs, the
judge felt of his tie and rose hastily to offer a seat beside him with
a courtly bow. Gracious and stately, Dorothy bowed to him, but she came
to me.

“Oh, Jim,” she said, in a low voice, “what a shame. I am so glad I was
here to help.”

I passed the gap from Miss Haldane to Dorothy at a bound. “Dorothy,” I
answered, “I’m so glad you were.”

After that how little mattered the long weary afternoon. It took
but a few minutes to arrange a closet off the judge’s room for the
exhibition of the evidence. As Dorothy brought forth the letter which
had been the forerunner of three mighty tragedies, the judge asked to
see it, and read it curiously.

“And there is a second letter below this, Miss Haldane?” he queried.

“Yes,” answered Dorothy, “I have seen it.”

“Have you had this in your possession ever since the night’s meeting of
which your brother and Mr. Orrington spoke?” he asked again.

“It has been in my personal possession, or in a locked drawer of my
own, in a locked safe in my own house,” replied Dorothy. “I asked Mr.
Orrington for it, as I intended to make some tests with my brother on
the ink. We have, however, not used it as yet.”

“You are ready to swear that this is the original letter?”

“I am,” said Dorothy calmly.

“Very well, then, let us go on with the test.”

The letter was placed open as before, with the radium in its leaden
case before it. Tom threw back the cover, as we sat in front of the
table, and turned off the lights. I waited as before, beside Dorothy.
If I had felt a tightening bond before, I felt one a thousand times
stronger now. I had seen the dear girl beside me day in and day out
since our first meeting, and never had she failed to show the same
fire of brilliant imagination, the same power of achievement. She had
blazed my path to success in the weeks past. She had come to help me in
my distress to-day. To gain her had become the whole end of my life. I
looked into the darkness towards the letter, expecting each moment to
see the curves and lines springing out luminous. Minute after minute
passed. I could hear the ticking of the great clock, two rooms away,
and the stifled roar of the summer afternoon in the great city, but the
darkness held no light. No line appeared. Finally Tom spoke.

“How long an exposure did you give it last time, Dorothy?”

“Two or three minutes,” said she. He rose, turned on the lights and
looked at his watch.

“Twelve minutes and no results. It’s the same lot of radium, too. Look
this over with me, will you, Dorothy?”

They examined the apparatus carefully, turned off the light and tried
again. No result. Tom went back into the other room and brought another
sample of radium and used that. Still no result. At last he turned on
the lights and spoke. “I can’t understand, judge, but I cannot bring
out the second letter.”

The judge rose blinking. “According to your own statements,” he said,
“the letter has not been out of Miss Haldane’s possession at all, and
the message once on there could not disappear. I fear I shall have to
hold Mr. Orrington after all, till we can hear from the President.”

My heart sank. Tom turned to me.

“Never you mind, Jim, we’ll find the President for you, and have you
out inside two days.”

I smiled somewhat wearily. “You mustn’t leave your work to do that,
Tom.”

Dorothy broke in. “We can’t work alone. It needs all three of us to get
anywhere, doesn’t it, Tom?”

“Sure thing,” said Tom sturdily, and they left me, but not before
Dorothy had given me a word of comfort that was a stay in time of
trouble.

I had often watched the gloomy walls of the prison as I passed, and
wondered at the sensations of the prisoners when the gates closed
behind them. My sensations as I drove into the courtyard and passed
up the stairs, into the cell whose iron gate clanged shut behind me,
were all poignant enough, but I could not be wholly downhearted.
The whole thing seemed utterly absurd, yet as night came on, a deep
gloom gradually settled over me. I could not see my way out. “Suppose
the President and Secretary of War should both die, as had the last
Secretary of the Navy!” I had no proof but the letter and the witnesses
who saw the second message shine forth, and with that thought of
witnesses came back the puzzling question, “Why did not the second
message appear?” It had been there. I had seen it with my own eyes.
Dorothy, Mrs. Hartnell, John King, Regnier,--each and all had seen
it and read it. Tom had declared it impossible for the writing to
disappear. What could be the explanation? One thought kept coming,
returning to my mind again and again, as I sat on the edge of my narrow
cot, watching the barred moonlight streaming through the great window
opposite my tier. The letter must have been changed. The letter which
we examined in the judge’s room could not be the same as that which had
shown us the second message. Somewhere, somehow, an exchange must have
been effected. It could have been no easy matter, either. Parchment of
the kind used in all the letters was no easy thing to come by. It could
by no means be bought in every stationer’s store, nor could so complete
a copy of the message be produced without much trouble and labor. Only
one man would be likely to have such a copy ready at hand, without the
second message, the man who was trying to stop all war. He might have
an extra copy. But how could he know the letter was in Dorothy’s hands?
How could he get a chance to change the papers? Hour after hour, the
long night through, I struggled with the question, and with the morning
some crystallization came from the dull haze of my thoughts. There
was one time and place where a man might easily make an exchange. At
Mrs. Hartnell’s house in Washington, in the time which elapsed between
the closing of the radium case and the turning on of the lights. It
might be improbable, but it was the only solution I could find. Towards
early morning I dropped off into a troubled sleep, and dreamed I was
in court, where Regnier, as judge, was trying me, with John King as
prosecuting attorney. I had just been condemned to disappear as had the
Alaska, when Dorothy sailed through the courtroom in the Black Arrow’s
launch, with Tom at the wheel. She reached out her hand to me. I leaped
in and escaped.

The late morning brought me a weary and exhausted waking. I had
breakfast brought in from outside, sent word to the office that I would
not be in for a few days, a by no means uncommon thing for me to do
since I went on this assignment, and then I settled down to wait. I got
enough waiting before eight o’clock that evening to last me the rest of
my natural life, but at that hour came a warder with a short request to
follow him to the office. There was Tom, good fellow, rushing towards
me as I entered.

“You’re a free man, Jim; I have the order for your release,” he cried.
“The President came to your rescue, like the trump he is. Hurry up now,
and come to our house for a late dinner.”

The clang of the gates behind me was as much music to my ears as it had
been discord on my entrance. I had endured all the prison life that I
wanted. I was willing to leave any writing up of such experiences to
the yellow newspaper reporter.

Fifth Avenue never seemed so gay. New York never seemed so full of
the wine of life as on that drive. It needed only Dorothy to make
it complete, and I was speeding towards her as rapidly as the speed
regulations would allow. As we went on, Tom told me the story of his
search for the President. How he had found him off shooting in Virginia
and how gladly he had given the word for my release.

Once in the hall of the Haldanes’ house, Dorothy appeared at the head
of the stairs. “Oh, Jim!” she cried. Thank Heaven she had forgotten all
about Mr. Orrington now. “Oh, Jim, I’m so glad. It’s all right now,
isn’t it?”

“It is,” I said emphatically.

She hurried down, waving a blue foreign-looking sheet. “Oh, boys, I’ve
got the best thing yet. We can tell just where ‘the man’ is now. I’ve
just found out the way.”




CHAPTER VI


“What’s the new find, Dorothy?” asked Tom, smiling at her eagerness.

“A letter from Carl Denckel,” she replied.

“Impossible!” cried Tom. “The dear old boy died nine months ago.”

“But this was written nearly a year ago,” she rejoined. “Look at this
envelope.”

The big blue square inscribed in crabbed German script was filled with
addresses. “See,” said Dorothy. “He thought you were still at Columbia,
so he addressed it to Columbia, America, forgetting New York. His ‘u’
was so much like an ‘o’ that they sent it to Colombia, South America.
It travelled half over South America, and then they sent it up here.
It went to three or four Columbias and Columbus’s in different States.
Finally some bright man sent it to the University, and they sent it
over to you. It’s for you all right.”

“Read it, Dorothy. What does he say?”

“An Herrn Doktor Thomas Haldane.

“Lieber Professor:--Es geht mir an den tod--” She had gone thus far in
the German, when she glanced up and saw my uncomprehending face. “The
German too much for you?” she asked. “I’ll translate.” She went on
rapidly in English.

  “To Doctor Thomas Haldane.

  “Dear Professor:

  “I am about to die. My physician tells me that I have less than
  a month left to work. I have just completed the apparatus which
  had engaged my attention exclusively for the last six years,--my
  wave-measuring machine. By means of this machine, any wave of a given
  intensity may be registered as regards its velocity and power.”

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to break in right there,” I interrupted.

“Go on,” said Tom.

“What kind of waves is he talking about? Is this some sort of a machine
for measuring the tides down on the beach, or what is it?”

Tom laughed. “Not exactly,” he said. “Denckel’s machine is to measure
waves like those of electrical energy. You know, don’t you, that we
believe wireless messages go from one station to another by means of
ether waves, as they call them?”

I nodded.

“Well, Denckel means to measure waves of that kind, and waves that
would come from an arc lamp or a dynamo or a piece of radium or
anything like that. It’s to measure the same sort of wave that charged
the reflectoscopes, in short--See?”

“I do,” I answered. “But--”

“Hold on till we finish the letter, Jim, and we’ll go over it.” I
subsided and Dorothy went on.

  “More than that, the distance from the point of generation of
  the wave, and the exact direction from which it comes, can be
  ascertained. It is, as you may see, the unique discovery of the past
  five years. In computing and making it, I have used some discoveries
  made by my late colleague, Professor Mingern. At his death, six years
  ago, he passed his work on to me. Now that my death approaches, I
  pass my work on to you. I have had many pupils in my long life, but
  none so worthy, none so able to carry on the work, as you, my dear
  friend and pupil. Farewell.

    “CARL DENCKEL.”

“He was as fine an old chap as ever I knew,” said Tom, with deep
feeling. “To think of his sending that to me. But what can have
happened to it?”

Dorothy stood with a second sheet in her hand. “Here’s something about
it,” she said. “Manuscripts sent under cover to same address, apparatus
sent to New York via Hamburg-American line.”

“Then the first thing to do is to find the apparatus,” said Tom. “We
can send a trailer after the manuscript, but we can’t bank on getting
it. I’ll go down to the custom-house to-morrow morning. What a blow
to science, if the whole thing were lost.” “But,” he went on suddenly,
“isn’t it extraordinary that this should come along just now? It helps
us a whole lot.”

“That is so,” remarked Dorothy reflectively. “We ought to be able to
tell just where ‘the man’ is every time.”

“Once more I humbly confess my ignorance,” I remarked, “but will you
kindly enlighten me as to the way in which this is to help us in the
search for the man?”

“Certainly,” said Dorothy smiling. “We know that the reflectoscopes
were charged by a wave which ‘the man’ sent out from some definite
spot. Theoretically, that place might be anywhere in the world.
Practically, it’s probably somewhere not many miles from the ship he
is destroying. But it is somewhere. His waves start from some definite
point. There is some single point of generation. Now, with this
machine, I ought to be able to find out just where the place is from
which the wave starts, and not only within a hundred miles, but within
a very brief space. Say, for instance, we had the machine in London, I
could tell that ‘the man’ started his waves from Sandy Hook, and not
from Hell Gate. That power of fixing the exact position of ‘the man’
gives us a tremendous step.”

“Absolutely tremendous,” I cried, and Tom chimed in, his eyes blazing
with enthusiasm. “Here’s to the successful working out of the new clue.”

The announcement of dinner made rather an anti-climax to our discovery.

Tom laughed--“Well, we’ve got to eat, anyway. Come on.”

No feast could equal a dinner with Dorothy as hostess. Never did her
sweet face look more charming than when she presided at her own board.
The talk soon became confined to technicalities, as Dorothy and Tom
discussed the possibilities of the new apparatus, and I sat watching
Dorothy’s expressive face, as she talked of velocities and lengths,
methods of generation and of control. But her absorption in her subject
lasted but a brief time. Dinner over she turned to the piano. Then for
two hours her music wafted me through many a lofty old Iberian turret.

As I walked to my rooms from the Haldanes’, I revelled in every breath
of the city air. The very noises of the street exhilarated me, as
I strolled along, one of the crowd, and a free man. The unexpected
setback of my arrest now safely over, I could attack the new clue
with eagerness, and the early morning found all three of us at the
Hamburg-American pier. No trace of any such invoice as Carl Denckel had
described was to be found in any of the office records. Book after
book was searched for some account of the shipment, but in vain. As a
last resort, we went out to the huge warehouses and searched them, up
and down, back and forth. The morning passed in unavailing work. We
swung up town to lunch, and then turned again to our task. The most
unruly of warehouse men turned into an obedient slave at Dorothy’s
behest, and from one long bare shed to another we passed, escorted by a
retinue of willing workers. We paused at length at the end of the pier,
where the big doors looked out on the water, glowing beneath the sun.
The burly Irishman who had been our escort from the first took off his
cap and wiped his wet brow.

“I’m feared it’s no use, mum,” he said apologetically. “Shure and I’d
go on fer hours huntin’ fer you, if ’twas anny use, but it’s niver a
bit. We’ve been iverywhere that a machine loike thot could be.”

With regret we gave up our futile search and retraced our steps
towards the waiting car. We had seated ourselves and were watching
the chauffeur, as he bent to crank the machine, when we heard a cry
behind us. We turned and saw our guide running at full speed, his arms
waving wildly. As he came near he shouted, “There’s just wan chance. I
remembered meself that a while ago, there was a lot of old unclaimed
and seized stuff sint to the appraiser’s stores to be auctioned off.
They’ve been havin’ the sale the day and to-morrer at three. You might
find it there.”

“We’ll try,” said Tom, and we quickly ran across to the auction. As
we stepped inside the room, we saw a motley assembly before us,--junk
dealers, Jew peddlers, old clothes men, clerks, buyers of hardware
houses, and a few reporters. A lot of fancy door bolts were being sold,
and competition was running high. Foremost among the bidders was a
woman who was evidently an old acquaintance of the auctioneer’s. She
was a queer compromise between the old and the new. On the tight brown
wig of the conservative old Jewish matron was set askew a gay lacy hat,
such as adorns the head of an East Side belle on a Tammany picnic.
Her costume was in harmony with her head gear, consisting of a black
skirt, and a flaming red waist trimmed with gorgeous gold embroidery.
Her keen eyes twinkled at the badinage of the auctioneer, and her face
showed an acumen hard to overcome. One by one the bidders withdrew,
till only this woman and another Jew, an old man, were left. The price
was mounting by cents, till the last limit of the woman’s purse seemed
reached, and she stopped bidding. In vain the auctioneer tried to rouse
her to another bid. “Twenty-six, twenty-six. Absolutely thrown away at
twenty-six. Come, Mrs. Rosnosky, give me thirty. You can sell the lot
for fifty. It’s the chance of your life.” Mrs. Rosnosky was not to be
moved.

Again the auctioneer appealed in vain and, glancing around him, he
reached down beside him and brought up a dusty broken mixture of wires
and metals, of cones and cylinders. “Here, Mrs. Rosnosky! Make it
thirty, and I’ll throw this in.”

As the eyes of my companions lighted on the mass, they started forward.
Tom opened his mouth to bid, but, before the words could come from his
lips, Mrs. Rosnosky had nodded decisively. Her competitor behind her
had shaken his head, and the cry of “Sold to Mrs. Rosnosky at thirty”
came through the air. Tom looked at Dorothy expressively, and she
nodded back and whispered. “It looks as if it might be the machine.
We’ll get it from her.”

Clearly Mrs. Rosnosky had obtained all she desired. Motioning to a
boy in the rear, she stepped to the clerk’s desk, paid her money,
and started to remove her goods by the aid of her helper, paying
no attention to the cries and movement about her. We followed the
machine as it left the building, and stood on the opposite side of the
street, as the boy and the woman filled an old express cart with their
purchases.

Last of all they put in the medley of apparatus on its wooden stand.
As they placed it on the wagon, I lounged across the street. “Want to
sell that?” I asked, pointing to the apparatus.

“Not for anything you want to pay, young man,” came back the answer, to
my surprise.

“I’ll give you five dollars for it,” I said.

Mrs. Rosnosky vouchsafed no reply to my offer, and mounted the seat.

Tom, who had heard the conversation, came hurrying across. “What do you
want for it?” he asked.

“Five thousand dollars,” replied Mrs. Rosnosky, clucking to her horse.
Tom seized the bridle.

“Nonsense, woman. You got that for nothing, and you ask five thousand
dollars. We’re willing to give you a fair price, but that’s robbery.”

Mrs. Rosnosky looked at us keenly. “If you really want to talk
business,” she said, “say so. That’s worth five thousand dollars.” She
seized a cylinder, with a sudden gesture, ripping it from its place.
She pointed to a band of silvery metal round it. “That’s platinum,” she
said. “There’s five thousand dollars in that stuff for me. If you want
it, you take it now or not at all. I know what platinum is worth.”

Dorothy, who had crossed the street and stood beside us, broke in.
“Take it, Tom,” and Tom obeyed, with a nod.

He turned to the woman. “I haven’t five thousand or five hundred
dollars with me, but if you’ll come up town, I’ll get five thousand for
you.”

Mrs. Rosnosky would not part with the apparatus. Tom would not let it
out of his sight. Either Tom had to mount the express wagon, or Mrs.
Rosnosky had to come in the motor car. The latter was her choice, and
Mrs. Rosnosky had the joy of sitting enthroned in a big blue motor,
while we sped up town. The bank had long since been closed, and for
swiftness and surety we decided to run up to Tom’s club. There he was
able to cash a check. Mrs. Rosnosky bore the gaze of the few men who
lingered around the big club windows with a perfect and patronizing
equanimity, and, her money in hand, finally descended from the car and
returned to her East Side abode, a richer woman.

Tom heaved a sigh of relief as we started off again. “Thank heaven that
red and gold nightmare with the wig is gone. She was a clever one,
though. Who’d have thought of her recognizing platinum at a glance. I
didn’t, I confess, under all that dust. Poor old Denckel, his heart
would break if he could see the machine now.”

“Never mind, Tom,” said Dorothy, as he gazed ruefully at the wreck
before him. “I think we can get that together again. But how I wish we
had the data in the manuscript!”




CHAPTER VII


The wreck of the wave-measuring machine once installed in the
laboratory, every energy was bent towards putting it into perfect
working condition. A maddening task it was. Thrown hither and thither
in the corners of warehouses, the missing parts and waving broken wires
of the apparatus, as it first stood on the laboratory table, gave but
little promise of final renovation. But the possibilities which it
held entranced both Dorothy and Tom. Each day I came up to find them
working. Each night they came back to the laboratory for a few more
hours’ work. The minds of all of us were turning more and more to our
one fixed purpose, the discovery of the man who was trying to stop all
war. The stir and tremor of the tumultuous world around, eager for news
of the dread tragedies, seemed to be but an outside interest, compared
with the tremendous possibilities of running down the individual at the
bottom of this gigantic undertaking.

Gradually the chaos began to take on form. Cylinders of shining metal
rose above the polish of the base. Revolving hemispheres and cones
resumed their original forms or were replaced by reproductions. Broken
wires, replaced by new wire, found their connections. Jones was
indefatigable. He was forever polishing, adjusting, scraping, and his
mild blue eyes behind his big spectacles glowed with enthusiasm, as
he sat gazing at the wave-measuring machine and working on one of its
parts.

On the evening of the fourth day I came up to the laboratory about ten
o’clock, and found Tom making some last adjustments, while Dorothy and
Jones looked on.

“We think we have it,” said Dorothy, as she greeted me. “This is the
last connection.”

“Now that you have it all set up, tell me how it works,” I said.
“You’ve been so tied up in the thing, that I’ve hardly heard a word
from you in a week.”

“Too bad,” answered Dorothy, laughing. “We’ll tell you enough about it
to show you what to expect.”

I leaned over curiously to examine the wave-measuring machine. It stood
on a round table ten or twelve feet in diameter looking not unlike
some fortressed town, such as rises on the banks of many a river in
southern Europe. A belt of broad, shining metal a foot high encircled
it as the gray walls of stone surround the town. Within the belt stood
polished cones and hemispheres, which rose for a height of some two
feet, bringing to mind round towers of fortalice and dwelling within
battlemented walls. Wires, ranged with mathematical preciseness,
completed the comparison by their similarity to streets surmounted
by telegraph wires. The surrounding belt seemed solid, but, as Jones
threw the reflector of a powerful incandescent on it, I could see it
was lined with millions of tiny seams. Tom threw a switch and, to my
surprise, the belt began slowly to revolve about the central portion.

“What’s that belt for?” I asked.

“That’s where the wave of electrical energy enters. It goes into the
interior of the machine through one of those tiny slits which you see.
Once inside, the wave strikes a magnetic coil about a mirror, which
swings when the energy acts upon it, and throws a beam of light down
that scale.” He pointed to the opposite wall.

There, extending from one side to the other of the room, some fifty
feet in all, stretched a scale like a foot rule suddenly grown
gigantic. Its space was covered with divisions, a big zero in the
middle and numbers running up from zero into the hundreds of thousands
and millions on either side. Just at the zero point rested a long
narrow beam of light.

“You see that beam,” Tom went on. “When the waves come into the
machine, they go through as I explained, the machine stops, and the
light goes up or down the scale. The distance that it goes shows how
far away the wave started. The slit through which the wave comes shows
the exact direction from which it comes, and we can get that easily
because the machine stops as the wave goes through. Then, by means
of a certain amount of mathematics, we hope to be able to find just
where a wave comes from. We can adjust the machine so that it will
register anything from a wireless telegraph message through a radium
discharge to the enormously powerful waves which ‘the man’ uses. We
have it adjusted now for the waves which ‘the man’ uses in destroying
battleships. We know something of them from the way in which they
charged the reflectoscopes. That’s the whole thing.”

“One thing more,” I said inquiringly. “If ‘the man’ destroys a
battleship, does the machine stop and the beam of light run down the
scale.”

“Yes,” answered Tom. “That’s just what it does.”

“All right,” I said.

“Now, we’ll start up,” remarked Tom. “Turn off the lights, throw off
the inner insulation,” he commanded, turning to Jones, who obediently
threw a couple of switches.

We were left in partial darkness. On the long scale, on the opposite
side of the room, the single line of light rested at the centre,
illuminating the zero. There was a shaded incandescent in one corner,
which threw no light on the black wall where stood the scale, but gave
a dim radiance sufficient to reveal the belt of polished metal as it
swiftly revolved about the mass within. Dorothy sat near the apparatus.
Jones was puttering with something at one end of the scale, and Tom and
I sat side by side, watching the whole scale. Suddenly the beam swept
swiftly far up the scale, fluttered for a moment and rested on a point.
The moving belt stopped with a slight click.

“That’s it. There’s another battleship gone,” cried Tom, as we all
hurried over to the scale. “Now we can tell just where he is doing his
deadly work. 2, 340, 624. 1401” he read, scrutinizing with a microscope
the scale at the point where the beam rested. “Here, Jones, turn on
the lights. Bring me the logarithm tables, our table of constants, and
Denckel’s table of constants that we found under the middle cylinder.”

Jones ran excitedly across the laboratory, returning with the needed
things. Tom, Dorothy and Jones each sat down to figure while I watched
Dorothy’s nimble fingers, as they flew over the paper, filling sheet
after sheet with computations. What different powers lay in those
little hands. Abstruse calculations vied with bread making, careful
manipulations of delicate instruments with the steering wheel of her
motor car. Last week we had eaten a dinner prepared wholly by her. This
week she was working out one of the great triumphs of modern science.
It seemed almost a shame to confine those talents in a single home--but
yet--and the old train of thought started on its ever recurring cycle.

Suddenly Tom threw down his pen. “Beat you that time, old girl!” he
said. Dorothy gave no heed, but figured on for a minute more. Then she,
too, dropped her pen.

“Want my figures, Tom?” she asked.

“Not yet,” answered Tom. “Wait for Jones. I’ll go and get the maps, and
we’ll work the second step as soon as we have checked these figures.”

Jones worked laboriously on, and Tom had gone and returned, bearing two
huge portfolios, before his task was ended.

“Read off,” said Tom, and a whole series of numerals came from
Dorothy’s lips, at each of which Jones nodded his head. As she ended
she looked inquiringly at Tom.

“Right,” said he. “Now reverse the beam to find the slit.”

Jones brought a small scale, with lights mounted with flexible cords.
He placed it across the beam, sighted through it as Tom threw off the
lights, and, after a brief manipulation, threw a switch. All turned
to gaze at the belt. Through a single slit an almost geometric line of
light shone forth.

“Beautiful! beautiful!” cried Tom; and Dorothy cried, “Oh, Jim! oh,
Tom! we’ve got it.”

My name came first to her hour of triumph. I had time to notice that,
before the lights went on once more. Tom took a dozen hasty readings,
and rapidly read them off. Another period of rapid computation
followed, then one by one, Dorothy leading, they made a swift survey of
maps. More and more anxious grew the trio as they went on. Map followed
map, till Dorothy came to a final one, made her last measurement, and
sat back in apparently complete bewilderment. Tom, by a different
route, reached the same map and drew it from her, shaking his head
vehemently, and Jones, laboring heavily along in the rear, finally
stretched his hand for the same sheet.

“What have you got, Jones?” said Tom sharply.

“Tokio, Japan,” said Jones. “What do you get?”

“Tokio, confound it!” said Tom.

Dorothy sat back in her chair and began to laugh at his disgusted tone.
“Tom, you get excited too easily. How do you know that he may not be
there!”

“I don’t,” growled Tom. “But I don’t believe he’s gone from Brest to
Tokio in ten days, especially when he is to sink a German warship next.”

“But there may be a German warship there,” answered Dorothy.

“There isn’t a first-class German battleship in Asiatic waters to-day,”
I broke in. “I’m following every one, and they’ve all been called in
to home stations within a month, on some excuse of trial mobilization.
They’ve all passed Suez.”

Tom gave a long whistle. “We set the machine for those terrific waves
that ‘the man’ uses. Of course somebody in Tokio might have them, but
it’s improbable. Let’s start her up again.”

Once more the lights were lowered, once more the belt resumed its
revolution, as we watched. Scarcely a minute passed, and the machine
stopped as before, with a click. The beam fluttered for a moment, and
stopped apparently in the same place where it started.

“Well, I’ll be hanged!” said Tom, as he hurried over to examine it.
“.0001,” he read off.

“Why, that’s not outside New York. Don’t figure it,” said Dorothy.
“Reverse the beam.”

No sooner said than done, and a slit on the left sprang into light. Tom
stood blankly, his hands deep in his pockets, as he gazed.

“Telephone Carrener in the Physical Laboratory up at U. C. N. Y.” said
Dorothy excitedly. “Ask him what he’s doing now.”

Tom jumped for the telephone, and a rapid-fire volley of calls and
questions followed. As he hung up the receiver, he turned to us
despairingly. “It was Carrener. He’s just been making some radio-active
experiments. The blamed machine registers every strong radio-active
wave that’s sent out anywhere in the world.”

“Then all you’ve got to do is to adjust the apparatus till you get a
new adjustment which will register ‘the man’s’ wave, isn’t it?” I asked.

“Yes,” snapped Tom, “and it took Denckel three years to get that
adjustment, and there’s no data on how he did it. The rest was easy
compared to this. If we only had that lost manuscript.”

Jones sat huddled in a dejected heap. Dorothy’s cheery face was
downcast. “I must confess,” she sighed, “that I’m afraid the apparatus
isn’t going to be of any immediate use to us without the manuscript.”

“Any immediate use!” sputtered Tom. “The old thing isn’t worth a rap.
It’ll be registering every trolley car that goes by next. We’ve done
every thing we know how to fix it, and it may be ten years before we
find out what’s the trouble. If we only had the Denckel manuscript.”

“Yes, if we only had Denckel’s work,” said Dorothy wearily. “But we
haven’t. There’s no use doing anything more to-night. We’ll go at it
again in the morning.”

The next two days brought no result. The wave-measuring machine would
tell where the waves came from, but it would do nothing towards
separating them. Day after day the reflectoscopes were watched for
the expected sinking of the German ship, but without avail. Change
after change was made in the Denckel apparatus, in the hope that the
next alteration might be the right one, and that it might come in
time to place the man, before the next battleship went down. Saturday
afternoon, the last day of the week in which the man was to sink
the German battleship, we sat as usual in the laboratory. The last
adjustment had been as unsuccessful as the rest, and Tom and Dorothy
sat in deep thought, while Jones was scraping the insulation from some
wire at one side.

“If we only had that manuscript,” said Tom, for the thousandth time,
“but failing it, let’s have another try. Jones, will you bring me that
manuscript? I mean the old table of wave constants we made up last
winter.”

“That’s it,” remarked Dorothy. “His mind is so intent on the manuscript
that he ordered it instead of soup the other day.”

To that maelstrom of papers, his desk, Jones turned to find the needed
table of constants, and, after watching his efforts for a few minutes,
Tom turned to Dorothy.

“Find it, will you, Dorothy? I imagine it’s there.”

Dorothy took command, as Tom and I sat in silence. Suddenly Dorothy’s
clear voice rang out. “Look, look!” and she came rushing across the
room to us, holding aloft a big brown paper package, followed by Jones.
“It’s here, it’s here! Mr. Jones had it in his desk, and forgot to give
it to you.”

Tom cast one look of scorn on the apologetic Jones, as he came slowly
forward.

“You immortal id--” he began, but Dorothy put her hand over his mouth.

“Never mind, dear, it’s here. Don’t waste time. Open it, and see what
it says.”

Scarcely five minutes passed, when Tom cried, “Here it is,” and read
rapidly in German to his assistants. “We can have it in shape in an
hour. There’s just that one missing part that threw us completely off,”
he ended. He looked at his watch. “Five o’clock by London time, and
sometime before twelve, if the man does as he said he would, the German
battleship will be destroyed, if it’s not gone already. We’ve got to
hustle.”

They had worked before eagerly. They worked feverishly now. Even my
unskilled labor was called in, and I held and scraped, polished and
hammered to the best of my limited ability. Six o’clock, seven, eight,
nine, one by one they passed. Tom’s hour had grown to four, and reached
almost to five, ere the last connection was made. He stood back and
threw the switch that set the belt in motion. As the belt revolved, he
glanced at the reflectoscope beside him. “No result there as yet,” he
said reflectively. “I guess we are safe.” Ten had passed, eleven come
and gone, still we waited. Tom had set his laboratory clock to London
time, and as the first stroke of twelve struck he rose, stretching
his arms. “First time he’s mis--” As he spoke, the beam flashed from
the zero well down the board, fluttered as before, and stood still
while the belt stopped. We glanced at the reflectoscopes. Their golden
ribbons had sprung apart and stood stiffly separate. Everything was
at hand this time. Not a word was spoken, but the three bent to
their task, figuring with intense rapidity. Tom and Dorothy finished
together. Jones, just behind, ran his computing rule faster than he had
ever done anything before in my presence. As they ended, Tom spoke.
“The harbor--”

“Of Portsmouth, England,” finished Dorothy, and the other two nodded
gravely. I sat beside the telephone. We had made sure that an operator
who knew that a call was coming sat at the branch exchange, and
without a second’s delay I had the office and had told the news. I held
the wire till the word came back. “O. K. Nobody has heard of it yet. If
it is true, it is another big beat.”

The real gravity of the situation did not come to me with full force,
until I read the accounts in the morning papers. The first news
that appeared of the sinking of His Germanic Majesty’s first-class
battleship, Kaiser Charlemagne, had come from me. The moment my story
was received in the office, they had cabled their London correspondent
in cipher. As soon as the other papers saw the story in our special
edition, they had likewise rushed cables and wireless messages across.
In consequence, a horde of correspondents had descended on Portsmouth
before morning dawned. The night before there had lain in the harbor
three German battleships, the Kaiser Charlemagne, the flagship,
standing farthest out. In the morning there were but two. At first,
half incredulous but yet fearful from the past, the officers of the
German and of the English fleets refused to believe the story, but
the watch on three ships had seen the lights of the German flagship
disappear, and hasty search had proved the fact of her disappearance.
By early morning they were forced to the conviction that the Kaiser
Charlemagne had followed the Alaska, the Dreadnought Number 8 and La
Patrie Number 3.

The cumulative effect of this last blow was tremendous. Before this
the world had been hoping against hope, but now sudden, unreasoning
panic took control. Up to this time the stock markets of the world had
been buoyed up by the support of the great capitalists, and by the
aid of the governments. But they had been growing steadily weaker and
weaker, and the opening of the Exchange in London and of the Bourses
on the continent saw stocks tumbling as never before. All America knew
of the ruin abroad when our stock markets opened here, and a panic day
unparalleled in our financial history began. After a sleepless night
one operator remarked to another, as they walked up Wall Street, “The
sinking of battleships is bad enough, but how much worse if he should
begin to sink merchant vessels.” The market quivered. The next man
passed it on. “How terrible if ‘the man’ should sink the transatlantic
liners carrying gold.” The market trembled. A brokerage house gave
forth the tip. “The man who is stopping all war has declared that he
will sink every transatlantic liner carrying gold, as he considers
gold the sinews of war.” The market shook to its very foundations.
The papers heard the lying news, and published it in scare heads.
The market broke utterly and went plunging to utter destruction.
Industrials and railroads dropped sixty to two hundred points in an
hour. It was one wild scramble, which ended only when no one would buy
at any price whatsoever. The day ended with meetings of ruined men
sending delegates to the various governments, in a first general appeal
for disarmament.

The morning of the second day after the sinking of the Kaiser
Charlemagne showed practically but three things in the papers; the
account of the panic the day before; futile discussions as to the
identity and plans of the man who was trying to stop all war; and
stories of deputations entreating the governments of the various
powers to disarm. Apparently the last months had raised the numbers
of the peace advocates by millions. The papers which had given a few
columns a year to such propaganda now gave pages daily. Other factional
differences became forgotten. The real need for protecting the lives
and property of the nation, the fancied need of protecting commerce,
was the theme of every orator at every meeting.

In one place only were these deputations received with no
consideration. The German Kaiser, the War Lord, bearded by a single
man, stripped of one of his proudest battleships, received all words
regarding peace with utter contumely. All papers agreed in considering
him the chief stumbling block in the way of a universal peace.

I was running over the morning papers when a card was brought to me.
It was that of Ordway, my old Washington friend, who, as private
secretary to the Secretary of War, gave me the message!

“Hullo, Malachi, you old prophet of evil!” he remarked, with a cheerful
grin, as he entered. “Give me an inside tip on the end of the world,
will you? I’ll use it to bear the market.”

“My prophecy shop is closed to-day,” I replied, in his own vein. “What
brings you from Washington?”

“I came wholly to see you,” he said seriously. “The President made me
a special agent to get a line on what you were doing. The report that
came to him from the Attorney General, the time they put you in jail,
whetted his curiosity, so he sent me up here to see things for myself.
Will you let me see Haldane’s machine?”

“Gladly,” I answered, and we started for the laboratory.

“Between ourselves,” remarked Ordway, as we walked from the car, “and
strictly not for publication, there’s the deuce to pay with the Kaiser.
He’s mad as hops about his ship’s going down in Portsmouth Harbor. He
thinks it’s an invidious distinction to have the Kaiser Charlemagne go
down in a foreign port, when the other boats have gone down on their
own shores. He’d declare war on England for sixpence. Things were
strained enough with the commercial rivalry of the last few years, but
they’re at breaking point now. It would take a mighty small straw to
break that uneasy camel’s back.”

Tom and Dorothy were both in the laboratory, and they greeted Ordway
cordially. The especial interest centred in the wave-measuring
apparatus. The polished belt was revolving with regular precision, and
the beam stood fixed at zero.

“I wish you could have been here and seen it work, when the Kaiser
Charlemagne went down,” said Dorothy.

“I wish I might,” answered Ordway.

Scarcely were the words out of his mouth, when the click and the
springing beam sent my heart into my mouth. Dorothy and Tom sprang for
paper and their data. Ordway looked on in amazement.

“What’s up, Orrington?” he asked. “What did the thing stop for?”

“Another ship has gone down,” I answered; “but of what nation I know no
more than you.”

We waited silently till the computation was ended. Dorothy looked up
with knotted brow. “I make it Portsmouth again. Do you, Tom?”

“So do I,” said Tom. “There must be some mistake. Let’s go over the
figures again.”

Again they obtained the same result, and an hour passed before they
gave up searching for possible errors.

“What are you going to do about it, Orrington?” asked Ordway finally.

“I’m not going to do anything. It must be a mistake.”

“Why not telephone your office and see if they’ve heard anything?”

“I did so. They heard nothing, but promised to telephone me as soon as
they did.”

We had sat for a couple of hours talking when the bell rang, and I
answered. It was the office.

“You slipped up this time, Orrington,” said the man at the other end.
“A German battleship, the Kaiserin Luisa, has just disappeared off
Portsmouth.”

I passed the word to the eager trio.

“That means war between England and Germany,” cried Ordway.

“I believe it does,” I exclaimed, “and I’m going to take the first boat
for London. Here’s just the chance to run him down. He’ll be sure to
stay in one place now. His work will be in the British Channel.”

“We’ll come too,” cried Dorothy, her eyes lighting at the prospect of
the chase. “We’ll bring along the wave-measuring machine, and run him
down at close quarters, won’t we, Tom?”

Tom nodded vigorously. “I’m with you. This man has simply obsessed me.
I can’t do any decent work till I’ve found him.”




CHAPTER VIII


A fierce and sudden gust, which swelled to greater fury the flood of
a howling gale, slammed the smoking-room door in my face, at the very
moment that a quivering, throbbing heave from the great screw shook
the mighty liner from stem to stern. Beaten back from the wall, as the
ship rolled heavily, I pitched headlong, and went sliding and tumbling
across the deck, clutching wildly at its edge for the netting of the
rail. There, huddled against the side, I gasped until breath came, and
then painfully traversed the wet and slippery deck on hands and knees.
With a sudden effort I caught at the big brass handle, turned it and
sprang within, accompanied by a drenching spray.

No contrast could have been greater than the sudden change from the
wild drift of bitter wind and rain without to the bright warmth and
quiet comfort of the smoking-room within. The habitués who commonly
filled the alcoves and the centre were mainly absent, chained to
their berths, for the gale which had lasted a full two days had swept
from the room all but two quartettes of bridge players, a placid
Britisher in full dress in the centre, who was solacing himself with
his invariable evening’s occupation of Scotch and soda, and Tom, alone,
in a corner alcove, his back against the wall, his feet sprawling along
the cushions, and his pipe firmly clenched between his teeth. As I
pushed my way by the square centre table of the alcove and sank down on
the opposite cushions, he looked up, a thoughtful frown wrinkling his
forehead.

“I’ve been thinking about our next move,” he began, only to break off
abruptly. “What on earth is the matter with you? You look as if you had
been shipwrecked.”

“This is merely the result,” I answered, “of a perilous trip outside
the smoking-room door for the purpose of taking a weather observation.
As a matter of fact, you’re responsible for it; I was driven to the
act by your loquacity. We came up here at half past seven and you have
spoken exactly three times since, each time to give an order. I really
had to do something desperate to attract your attention.”

“You did it,” said Tom decisively. “Hurt in any way?”

“Oh, no,” I answered. “Slight bruises, really nothing of any
consequence at all.”

Turned by the incident from his preoccupation, Tom rose, stretched
himself thoroughly, and bent to peer out of the rain-swept porthole.
“This certainly is a nasty night,” he said, as he resumed his original
position. “She is rolling and pitching at a great rate. If it does not
quit soon, this gale will send many a good ship to the bottom. We’re
safe enough here, but this weather must be pretty hard on the small
boats.”

As Tom refilled his pipe, I sat musing on the images his words had
roused of the strange and sudden plunge of a mighty ship down, down to
the very depths of the sea, of that wonderful world that lies below the
waves, upon whose sandy floor lie many navies whose gallant ships rest
in their last anchorage, whose thousands of rugged sailors are buried
in their last sleep, whose burdened, hoarded wealth is kept forever
idle by that great miser, the deep. As I mused, I spoke unconsciously.
“I wonder how this storm would seem on the bottom of the sea.”

“Quiet enough there, I presume,” answered Tom, following, to my
surprise, my spoken thought. “You know men who sought for sunken
treasure ships have found things quite unmoved, after centuries have
rolled away. Save for the covering of sand or silt, the boat which
reaches the bottom may leave its bones for centuries unchanged.”

My mind travelled a step farther, from normal shipwrecks to abnormal
ones, and then turned swiftly to those catastrophes which were never
far from my mind, the beginning and in one sense the end of our
mission, the battleships which disappeared. “If Dorothy’s belief is
correct, and the engines of destruction used by ‘the man’ affect metal
only, then I suppose the crews of the Alaska and the rest went to the
bottom.”

“Undoubtedly,” answered Tom laconically.

One by one, as in a naval review, the Alaska, the Dreadnought Number
8, La Patrie Number 3, the Kaiserin Luisa and the Kaiser Charlemagne
imaged themselves upon the tablets of my brain, and with the last
appeared a film of Portsmouth Harbor where the great engine of war
anchored for the last time. I straightened up suddenly and leaned
across to Tom, who now sat gazing peacefully at space.

“Tom,” I exclaimed quietly, but earnestly, “I can tell you the next
move. We’ll send down to the bottom of the sea, and find out what
record remains there of the work done by ‘the man.’”

Quick as a flash Tom was all attention. “By George,” he ejaculated,
lowering his voice an instant later, as he saw that his exclamation had
startled the bridge players opposite. “I believe that is the scheme. It
ought not to take us very long, and we might get a bully clue from it.
How shall we go about it?”

Swiftly I unfolded my plan, the ideas rushing in upon me as I
proceeded. “We land at Southampton, anyway, and it’s only an hour’s run
down Southampton Water to Portsmouth. We won’t go up to London at all;
we’ll go straight to Portsmouth and put up there. Then we’ll find out
just where the Kaiser Charlemagne or the Kaiserin Luisa stood, and get
some divers to go down and report.”

“That’s a great idea,” said Tom reflectively. “It resolves itself
really into two parts,--finding out just exactly where one of the
German ships stood, and getting down to the bottom there. It ought not
to be so very difficult. I wonder nobody has thought of it. But if
they had, I imagine, we should have heard of it, because the wireless
newspaper on board is giving news of that kind pretty well in full.
I’ll tell you one thing though,” he went on, “I wish Dorothy could
have been with us instead of having to wait over a couple of boats to
straighten out that Boy’s Club business of hers. I’d like mighty well
to get her opinion.”

“Same here,” I remarked forcefully.

Two days later saw us safely through the English Customs and rolling
along over the little line which runs past old Clausentrum, relic
of the days when Rome with bloody hand made peace in Britain, to
Portsmouth and its harbor, with the Isle of Wight forming the
foreground to the broad blue reaches of the Channel.

No greater hum of business could have been found all Britain over than
in this seaport town. Jackies hurried to and fro with orders. Marines
marched in companies to the wharves. Officers in service dress scurried
by in motor cars. Tommies for once moved swiftly, without even a
sidelong glance at the red-cheeked nurses in the Park. Everything gave
the impression of activity, of preparation pushed to the last degree of
haste. Whatever the prospects of war might be, Portsmouth was as busy
as if war were on.

Though we reached Portsmouth at noon, it was more than two o’clock
before we could secure rooms. Every hotel was crowded. Scarcely could
we get a word from the busy clerks, and at last we were driven to
lodgings. Throwing ourselves on the mercy of a cabman we wandered up
and down, thoroughly thankful when we obtained some clean, decent rooms
in a little house in the Portsea region.

Somewhat to our surprise, our quest proved difficult. We drove to the
dockyard. “No admittance without special orders from the admiralty,”
stared us in the face,--an order made yet more effective by the gruff
silence of the sentinels. We tried the harbor authorities and the Town
Hall. Both had been turned into governmental bureaus, and both refused
admittance on any terms. Vainly I pleaded my connection with the
press. That move only increased the suspicious reserve which surrounded
us. Vainly we tried the soothing effect of the golden sovereign. We
were rebuffed at every turn, till forced to temporary inaction, we
gloomily turned back towards our lodgings.

“There’s nothing doing so far as the authorities are concerned,”
remarked Tom, as we walked along. “We’ve got to try some other tack.
If we could only find somebody here in town who wasn’t an official,
and yet who would know where either of those ships stood. None of the
dealers in ships’ stores would know, because the German boats would
have received their stores at the wharf. By Jove, though, here’s an
idea.” He brightened up. “If, by any lucky chance, they took on fuel
here, we might get some light on the place from the coal man. Here’s a
chemist’s shop, let’s look up a directory.”

We entered, and ran rapidly over the names of dealers in the business
directory that was handed us. Dealer after dealer, whose name appeared
therein, sold goods that belong with the sea. Ship chandlery, plumbing
for yachts and vessels, calkers, sailmakers. Ah, here it was! Fuel
supplied to vessels. There were some fifteen names on the list. I
copied them off, and turned to the young man behind the counter. “Which
of this list,” I asked, “would be entirely capable of coaling a large
merchantman immediately?” The clerk ran his eye down the list. “This,
and this, and this firm,” he answered briefly, pointing at three.

The office before which we finally stopped looked peculiarly
businesslike as we reconnoitred through its broad window. “Looks just
like home,” murmured Tom, as we gazed at the smart young man in dapper
tweeds dictating to a stenographer whose pompadour, though like a
single tree in a forest had it been on lower Broadway, yet seemed a
rare exotic in this English seaport town. The Remington machine at one
side, the brightness of the office furniture, the whole atmosphere, in
short, was a stage picture, a sudden revival of the world we had left
less than a week ago.

“He is,” exclaimed Tom, without the slightest apparent connection. “See
that life insurance calendar on the wall!”

A flaming, big-lettered, American calendar appeared at the end of his
pointing finger.

“May as well play it boldly, anyway,” murmured Tom, pushing open the
door. “Pardon me,” he said, as he entered. “We’re Americans, and want
to know something about coal.”

Our dapper friend from behind the desk was on his feet in a moment,
stepping towards me with outstretched hand. “Mr. Orrington, I’m
proud to see you here.” I looked at him in complete surprise, while
Tom looked on in equal amaze. The stenographer sitting behind her
keys raised one hand to pat her hair, and stared in undisguised and
interested wonder.

“I’m afraid you have the advantage of me,” I remarked.

“That’s not surprising,” answered the young man with a smile. “You
never saw me before, but look here.”

I followed blindly around his desk, and waited while he pulled open a
drawer at the side. “Exhibit Number one,” he remarked as he took out an
American illustrated weekly bearing an imprint of my features. It had
appeared just after my second signed story came out.

“Oh,” I remarked briefly and lucidly.

“Exhibit Number two,” our friend went on, bringing to my astonished
gaze a file of my own paper, whereupon my own stories showed their
large familiar headlines at the top.

“That’s what it is to be famous,” said a laughing voice over my
shoulder. “Now, I could travel the world over and never find anybody to
recognize me.”

“Then it’s up to me to bring you into the limelight,” I said,
recovering. “This is Prof. Haldane, Mr.--?”

“Thompson, at your service,” supplied the manager. “From New York,
sent over here to take charge of this end two years ago, likewise a
sincere admirer of your work. Now, what can I do for you?”

I glanced at the stenographer meaningly.

“Say anything you please; it will go no farther, gentlemen. Let me
introduce Mrs. Thompson.”

We rose and bowed.

“We were both in the same office there,” explained the manager, “and
when they gave me this berth we decided to come together.”

“I am over here on business,” I began.

“Still after the man who is trying to stop all war?” interrupted
Thompson.

“Yes,” I answered. “What we want now is to find out just where the
Kaiser Charlemagne or the Kaiserin Luisa went down. If we can find
that, we shall get divers and go down to the bottom. As we could get no
news at any of the government offices, we thought we would try to find
some dealer here who might have supplied either of the boats with coal.”

“Hit it first time trying,” said Thompson, with a smile. “The Kaiser
Charlemagne took on no liquid here, but the Kaiserin Luisa took a
thousand barrels the day before she sunk.” Tom let out a long whistle.
“That’s one reason why the Kaiserin Luisa, the Alaska, and the rest
went down without a sound. Extraordinary that I never thought of
that before. They all burn hydrocarbons instead of coal, and the new
hydrocarbon fuels would disappear in the water.

“Not a modern warship left to-day which doesn’t burn liquid fuel, and
most of it’s ours,” said Thompson enthusiastically. “They had to come
to it, especially when we put out our new boiler attachment by which
they could change their furnaces over to use liquids without changing
any other part of the machinery.”

Tom nodded appreciatively. “I see,” he said. “Now as to the main
question. How can we find out just where the Kaiserin Luisa went down?”

Thompson turned to his wife. “Lulu, will you telephone down and see if
Cap’n McPherson is at the wharf. If he is, have them send him here at
once.”

A moment’s low conversation in the telephone booth, and Mrs. Thompson
returned. “He’ll come right up,” she said, and, turning to her machine,
was soon pounding away at the keys with a practised hand.

“Remarkable woman, my wife,” said Thompson, swelling with intense pride
behind the shelter of his rolltop desk. “Took a medal for speed in
an open competition. Smart as they make ’em in any deal. Never lets
family relationships stand in the way of business. B. F. T. S. I call
her, ‘business from the start.’” He would have gone on, but the door
opened, and a huge grizzled sailor with an officer’s cap in his hand
lumped in. His massive bulk loomed above us for a moment, as Thompson
motioned him to a chair.

“You put the liquid on board the Kaiserin Luisa the day before she
disappeared, didn’t you?” asked Thompson.

“Aye, sir,” came the deep answer from the depths of the Captain’s chest.

“Can you tell us just where she lay?” the manager went on.

Captain McPherson stirred uneasily as he looked at us. “I’ve heer’d
said we were to say naught of that unfort’nit ship,” he rumbled,
turning half round to regard us with a fixed stare.

“That’s all right, Cap’n,” said Thompson. “These gentlemen have been
sent here to investigate the matter, and you are to tell them all you
know.”

The Captain evidently felt misgivings, but the habit of obeying the
orders of his superiors was not lightly to be broken. “If ye go
straight out from the carstle till the Ry’al Jarge buoy’s in line with
three chimneys t’gether on the shore, ye’ll have the spot where she lay
when we were ’longside.”

“Thank you, Cap’n, that’s all,” said Thompson.

Whereupon Captain McPherson rose and lumbered off as heavily as he had
come.

“I’ve seen the castle,” I remarked, “but how on earth can I find the
Royal George buoy, and what is it?”

“Queer thing that,” said Thompson. “That’s where the Royal George went
down, with all on board, a hundred and thirty years or so ago. Now the
Kaiserin Luisa disappears, in the same place. It’s a red buoy right off
Smithsea, you can’t miss it.”

“Right,” said Tom. “So far so good. Now, you haven’t a couple of divers
in your desk drawer, have you?”

Thompson laughed. “Sure thing,” he said. “At least I can send you to
one, Joe Miggs, who has done more or less work for us. There’s the
address,” he said, writing it on a card. “Come and see us before you
go.”

Exultantly we left the office, looking back through the window to see
our compatriot waving farewell, while his wife, patting her pompadour
with one hand, fluttered her handkerchief with the other. By dock and
arsenal, through sounds of clanging furnaces and roar of forges, we
passed to the street we sought and to the house, a house of mark which
bore proudly upon its front a life-size picture of a diver completely
apparisoned, with the words “J. Miggs, Diver,” in very small letters
below. The low, dark door gave entrance to a small shop, where a man,
whistling cheerfully, was using a small soldering tool on a diver’s
helmet, assisted by a boy clad in a ticking apron. The man was J.
Miggs. Our friend Thompson’s card brought a sudden stop to the cheerful
whistle, and it was with a somewhat troubled face that J. Miggs rose,
sending his young assistant from the room. The boy out, he locked both
doors to the shop carefully, and returned to us.

“Mr. Thompson says that you want a diver,” said Miggs, in a low voice.
“I’d do anything I could for Mr. Thompson. Many’s the good job he’s got
for me, but I can’t, I absolutely can’t. We’ve been forbidden to take
any jobs at all. Notice was served on every diver in town, and me and
my partner can’t risk it.”

“What’s your regular rate for going down here in the harbor?” asked Tom.

“Two pounds a day, sir, for each of us. Four pounds for the two, if me
and my partner work together.”

“I’ll give you ten pounds apiece for one night’s work,” said Tom.

The man wavered. “I’ve no money for a fortnight, sir, and I’d like to
do it, but I dare not; the officers would put me out of business, and
I’ve got to support my family.”

Tom persisted. “I’ll give you ten pounds for your family, and ten
pounds more when you go down.”

J. Miggs took thought, hesitated, wavered, and at length capitulated.
“I’ll do it, sir,” he said, “if you’ll do one thing. If they take my
diving rig away, will you agree to pay for a new one?”

“I will,” said Tom, “and I’ll leave the price of it with Mr. Thompson
to-night.”

His last scruples vanished, and J. Miggs was ours. “We’ve got two suits
over at Brading Harbor, on the Isle of Wight, where we were working.
If you’ll tell me your place, we’ll meet you to-night where you’re
staying, take you across in the motor boat, get the suits, and get back
in time to have five or six hours to work, wherever you say. But it
must be to-night. To-night’s the last night without a moon.”

Leaving J. Miggs our address, we went back to our lodgings, by way of
Southsea Castle and the piers, to take a preliminary observation of the
buoy of the “R’yal Jarge.” We had swallowed a hasty supper, laid in a
good store of clothing for the chill of night on the water, and were
waiting patiently for the call, when there was a knock at the door. As
it opened, there entered not J. Miggs, but his small boy helper, whom
we had seen earlier.

“Miggs’s been jugged,” he cried breathlessly. “He and Joe Hines. The
bobbies come and took ’em an hour ago. He told me, when he saw ’em
comin’, to run and tell you.”




CHAPTER IX


The engines of the motor boat slowed, gave a final chug, and stopped.
“Brading Harbor,” remarked our boy guide laconically, as he threw the
anchor, and stepped to the stern to pull in the skiff that trailed
after us. Before us lay the estuary of the Yar, its black water
scarcely differentiated in color from the dark shores that rose above
it. A huddle of buildings lifting on our left changed from blots of
blackness into shadowy outlines, sprinkled here and there with light,
as we rowed in. The lad pulled steadily, with but an occasional glance
at the shore. The steady strokes of the oar slowed down, the blackness
ahead seemed to rush towards us more swiftly, and the boat ran silently
up on to the sand. I jumped out, the little anchor in my hand. We were
at Brading Harbor.

Without a word, the boy pulled up the boat, dug the flukes of the
anchor deep into the sand, and started off into the darkness.

“Come on, Tom,” I said laughing. “This is an Arabian Night Expedition
headed by one of the mutes of Haroun Al Raschid. Hustle up, or we’ll
be left behind.” About three hundred yards from our landing-place our
guide suddenly disappeared; we came abruptly on the corner of a small
brick building, and rounded it to find him working on the padlock of a
broad, low door.

“Bee’s here,” remarked the boy, flinging the door open as we came up.

We stepped just inside and paused. The scratch of a fusee, the clatter
of a lifted lantern, and the low room sprung into light.

A weird sight met our eyes. On a shelf three great diving helmets, with
shining cyclopean eyes of heavy glass, reflected back the lantern’s
flame, and showed barred side windows looking like caged ear-muffs. On
the shelf below three pair of huge shoes, with leaden soles, seemed
ready for some giant’s foot, rather than for the use of man. As the
light shifted, the armor on the wall came into view; copper breastplate
and twilled overalls, hosepipe and coils of safety line; a veritable
museum of diving paraphernalia.

Tom turned to the boy. “You’ll have to show us very carefully how to
run the safety line and the air pump, while you’re down.”

“I don’t go down,” said the boy. “Heart’s wike loike. Niver go down.”

Tom and I stared at each other in consternation. With one accord we
turned to the boy again.

“Who is going down?” I cried.

“Ayther of you thot loikes,” responded the boy calmly.

“I’ll be the one to go, Tom,” I cried, “I’ve got to see it with my own
eyes to write it up properly.”

“Why can’t we both go?” exclaimed Tom eagerly. “I don’t want to be out
of this.”

The boy broke in. “Needs two men oop on rope and poomp.”

“Oh pshaw!” said Tom disgustedly, “I don’t see why I shouldn’t be in
this. I tell you what we’ll do,” he went on, his face brightening, “you
go down first, and then come up, and I’ll go down after you.”

“All right,” I said. “It’s a go.”

The boy had stood motionless while our discussion had gone on.

“How’ll you get the stuff down?” I asked.

“Tike it on a barrow,” he replied briefly, turning to bring a big
wheelbarrow forward.

“Tike they two,” he said, pointing to the two helmets on the right and
the shoes below them. Tom and the lad took a helmet, and placed it on
the barrow. I took a pair of shoes, and nearly dropped them. “Great
Scott,” I ejaculated, “they weigh a ton.”

“Twinty pund,” corrected the lad, without a smile. “You’ll need it on
bottom.”

We loaded till the boy said “stop,” then took our burden to the skiff,
carried it out to the boat, returned for a second load, shipped that,
locked the door, and came down to the shore through the still night. We
had neither seen nor heard any one during our visit.

As we started out of Brading Harbor, Tom remarked, “I’ll take the
wheel, boy, I’ve got the course. Get the armor on Mr. Orrington.”

Never did I experience such a strange toilet. The dress of tan twill,
interlined with sheet rubber, and the copper breastplate were clumsy
and awkward enough. The shoes, twenty pounds to each foot, were no
winged sandals of Mercury, but the huge helmet was worst of all. I
seemed to be prisoned in a narrow cell and, despite myself, I could not
wholly keep from wondering what would happen, if the air pipe should
break, or the rope snap. The big lens, the bull’s-eye that was the
window of the front of the helmet, was left open till I went down, and
I took in the salt air in huge breaths through the orifice, expanding
my chest to its full capacity, while the lad silently plied his wrench
on the nuts that clamped the helmet water-tight. At length the suit was
adjusted, and the safety line tied securely round my waist. Then the
boy spoke.

“Up one, down two. That’s all ye need.” He jerked the rope in my hand
once, twice, and then started forward to take the wheel. We had been
racing swiftly across, towards the lights of Portsmouth, as I made
my diving toilet, but my thoughts, far swifter, had gone thousands
of miles more. Suppose I never came up? If I did not, would Dorothy
ever know? Had I made a mistake in not speaking before? Unavailing
regret tore at me. Yet stronger than any regret or any weakness was my
determination to fulfil my mission. Here was the next step. I must see
what lay below the waves. As I sat there, in my cumbrous raiment, I
tried to analyze my sensations. No danger I had heretofore encountered
had ever caused me anything but a pleasing excitement. Why should this
have a disquieting effect upon me, when Tom was so eager to go. The
answer came like a flash, in Lord Bacon’s words, “He that hath wife and
children, hath given hostages to fortune.” I had neither as yet, but my
whole heart was set on having them. My feeling was not cowardly fear.
Rather, it was instinctive regret at taking the chance of going and
leaving Dorothy behind. I breathed easier when I had worked that out,
and gradually, as my mind quieted, the uneasiness gave away to a sense
of eager expectation. The shore lights were growing brighter, and Tom,
leaving his place at the bow, came down the boat towards my seat in the
stern.

“We’re almost there, old man,” he remarked jubilantly. “The lad has
the bearings. He’ll put us over the exact spot, and then you can go
overboard. It’s a chance of a lifetime.”

Just as he spoke, the lad turned. “Bee’s there,” he said, as he stopped
the motor and threw out an anchor. The great coil of rope ran swiftly
down for a considerable distance, and brought the boat up with a jerk.
The boy came back towards us.

“Screw up t’ bull’s-eye now an’ start t’ poomp,” he directed.

“Good luck, old man,” said Tom, wringing my hand, as he started up the
air pump.

“Same to you. I go with leaden steps,” I remarked, waving my lead-soled
shoe as I spoke.

Tom’s hearty laugh was the last thing I heard. The bull’s-eye shut,
and I found myself breathing fast. To my surprise the air supply was
ample, no trace of taint,--good, wholesome air. “Come,” I said to
myself. “This is not half bad.” Aided by the boy, I clambered clumsily
over the bow and went down the little ladder. As I entered the water,
the weight of my suit went from me, I was borne up as if I were in
swimming, but, as I sank slowly, I began to feel a strange earache,
increasing in intensity till I thought I should cry out with the agony.
My forehead above my eyes seemed clamped in a circlet of red hot
iron, and the bells of a thousand church spires seemed ringing and
reverberating through my head. I could see dimly the black water about
me, and I gripped the metal case of the electric lamp that I held in my
hand, till I feared it would crush into fragments. All of a sudden I
touched bottom, and the pain ceased. The relief was so great that for
a moment or two I stood motionless, luxuriating in the respite and, as
I started to go on, I realized that a slight depression was the only
unusual bodily feeling left. I turned the switch of my lamp and looked
about me. Nothing but clean, white sand, nothing to show which way I
should turn. “Straight ahead is the best course,” I decided, and I
started forward, my boots and dress, heavy and dragging on the surface
as they were, of but the slightest inconvenience here. Fortunately for
me, the tide was no serious hindrance, and I was to windward of the
boat. Before moving I turned my lantern in every direction. One thing
was sure. There was no huge hulking shadow, such as a warship lying on
the bottom would make. My lamp but dimly outlined the lane of light on
the sand along which I started forward. Now that I was about my work,
and had safely reached the bottom, the strangeness of the situation
began to wear off. I went ahead twenty measured steps, casting my light
in every direction. No result. I paced back the same number to keep
my position even. Turned to the right, and repeated the maneuver.
Turned to the left, and did the same. No sign. Apparently the depths
had remained untouched since the Royal George had been cleared from
the harbor, back about 1840. Returned from my last trip, I turned off
my lantern, to save its current, and stood in the darkness pondering.
I did not want to go backward from the place where I was. Such a step
would put me to leeward of the boat, and the lad had warned me against
such a move, saying that it might be hard for me to make progress
against the tide. There was nothing to be done save to try a further
cast of fortune, so I pushed on twenty paces forward and started to
count twenty more. Just as I was reaching the limit, the lantern gleam
showed a shadow ahead of me. I hurried on till the object came into
the full light. There, peacefully as if sleeping in his quiet bed at
home, lay a midshipman in his blue uniform. He could not have been
fifteen years of age. His golden hair, that a mother might often have
kissed and caressed, swayed with the slight movement of the waters. His
arm lay naturally beneath his head. As I knelt beside this childish
victim of a dread mission, a wave of bitter rebellion passed over me.
I cried out in very intensity of feeling. The sound reverberating
through the helmet to my ears seemed a mighty roar, and, surprised into
realization, I braced myself to my work and looked more closely. There
was something strange about the uniform, something different from that
on the youngsters I had seen about German harbors. I studied the form
before me for a minute before I saw what it was. At last I placed it.
The buttons, the brass buttons were gone. I looked more narrowly.
Not a glint of metal showed. Rising, I passed on, and entered on a
city of the dead beneath the waves. Officer and sailor, steward and
electrician lay in quiet rest. They lay all around me, as if sleeping
on a battlefield, ready for the struggle of the morning. I had paced
many steps before I reached the end. A thousand men lay there. Not
one had even a shadow of surprise, of premonition of death, upon his
brow. All lay as if ready for the reveille, the reveille which would
not sound for them. It seemed no thing of earth. Rather a scene from
some unearthly vision where I, a disembodied spirit, walked among the
forgotten shells of other souls. I wakened with a start, as I came
sharp up against a mass which gave way at my approach. I flashed my
lamp upon it. A heap of crockery, broken and shattered, met my eye.
One plate in ornate gold showed the double eagle and below “Kaiserin
Luisa.” That heap of broken crockery and this city of the dead were all
that remained of as fine a battleship, of as magnificent a result of
human ingenuity and skill, as ever sailed the seas. I must not linger,
though, I had work enough to do, to find all I could of the reasons
for the catastrophe, and give place to Tom before the dawn could come.
Just beside me lay an officer. I could not tell his rank, for all
insignia had disappeared. I stooped to look for metal, when suddenly I
felt myself rising steadily. I was being drawn to the surface, though
I had given no signal. Indignantly I jerked the rope twice again
and again. The men above paid no heed to my commands, and I mounted
steadily upwards.

As I rose the same pains attacked me as when I descended, but the space
through which they endured seemed far shorter. In reality but a brief
interval elapsed before I was clambering up the little ladder, to find
myself in the full glare of a powerful search-light, while the boat
started off at full speed. I had no time to look around till the boy
helped me to loosen the bull’s-eye in the front of my helmet. Then I
surveyed the scene.

The boat was going at her top speed, while Tom ran her straight out
towards the Isle of Wight. The search-light of a warship a mile or more
away was playing constantly on us as we sped along, and I could see a
spot of darkness, probably a launch, leaving her side and starting in
our direction. As I gazed, I breathed in long breaths of fresh air. I
felt as if I had never known how good air, just plain air, was, before.

[Illustration: THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF A WARSHIP WAS PLAYING CONSTANTLY ON
US. [_Page 122._ ]

“Take off Mr. Orrington’s armor, boy,” ordered Tom sharply. “You all
right, Jim?”

“Sure,” I answered. “What are we in for?”

“I don’t know yet,” replied Tom, “but we’ll know pretty soon. We can’t
get away in this old boat. We’ll run as long as we can, though. Luckily
they sent a launch, not a torpedo boat or a destroyer. The battleship
landed us with their searchlight just a few minutes ago, and once they
fixed it on us, I pulled you up. Get anything?”

“Yes,” I replied, and fell back into silence, while the lad valeted me
out of my diving suit. The launch was coming swiftly. It seemed to be
moving two feet to our one.

“It’s going to be a pretty close shave,” I remarked, as I stood beside
Tom, who had given the wheel to the boy.

“Yes, but I’m going to head straight for Ryder, and trust to luck,” he
said. We were well towards the shores of the Isle as the launch came
near enough to hail.

“Stop or we shoot,” came hurtling at us.

“No go,” said Tom resignedly, as he stopped the engine, “and there’s
the shore not five hundred yards away.”

Just as he spoke, the light vanished. The searchlight had gone out;
something must have happened to the current. We could hear the officer
swear vigorously, as the launch came up.

Tom seized my arm. “To the dingy,” he whispered. “Lad, if you keep your
mouth shut, I’ll straighten everything out,” he murmured to the boy, as
we scrambled to the stern.

“Roight, sor,” said the boy briefly, as he sat phlegmatically beside
the engine.

Tumbling into the dingy, I seized the oars and pulled swiftly towards
the shore, as the launch came up on the opposite side. We could hear
the hail as the officer came aboard, and his angry raging “Where are
the other men?”

“Don’t know,” answered the boy.

The officer ran to the stern.

“They have the boat, follow them,” he cried, but just as the launch
turned, we struck the shore, and before the panting sailors could reach
us, were off the beach and sheltered in a deep doorway. We heard their
steps running by, as we stood crouched against the wall, but we dared
not venture out till we had heard them returning after a futile chase.
Once they were by, we started off into the country at a brisk pace.

The morning was well on as we came into Seaview, whence we had planned
to come back to Portsmouth. I had finished my story, and Tom had
meditated on it for an hour, while we strode sturdily on. As we stopped
by a wayside brook to freshen our toilet, he spoke. “No metal?”

“Not a bit,” I answered.

“Dorothy was right,” said Tom. “The man who is trying to stop all war
must have some terrific power which utterly destroys metal, causing it
to change completely into some other form, and instantly disappear. How
horrible to have that man at large. Jim, we’ve got to find him. That
little middy you told me of would fire my purpose ten times over, if it
were not ablaze already. There’s one thing though,--do you suppose the
British government knows what we know?”

“I have very little doubt they do,” I answered, “I fully believe that
somebody had been there before us. Everything points that way; the
closing of all diving operations by the authorities, the chase of our
boat and their persistent effort to capture us.”

“You must be right, Jim,” said Tom soberly. “They wouldn’t want any one
to know any more about conditions than they could help. You can’t tell
what little thing will start the fire of war just now. I guess we’d
better keep this to ourselves for the present.”

“Right you are,” I answered, as we walked into Seaview.

We reached our rooms without the slightest difficulty, and went to bed
after a hearty breakfast. We were awakened about twelve by a knock at
the door, and the call of a familiar voice. It was our friend Thompson,
the manager. He closed the door carefully, as I admitted him. Then he
turned and shook hands with me.

“Mr. Orrington,” he said, “you’re a great man, and a lucky one. J.
Miggs and his boy came to see me this morning.”

“Then they didn’t keep them?” I cried.

“No,” said Thompson laughing. “J. Miggs got out of prison, and his boy
never got there. The lad waked up for once. The launch with all its
crew went chasing you and, by the time they got back, the youngster was
safe at the dock at Portsmouth, and the suits were stored. You’d better
not see either of them though. They may be watched. If you’ll give me
the money, I’ll pay him and it will be all right.”

I paid the money, and we parted.

The moment Thompson closed the door, I rushed into Tom’s room.

“Get up,” I said energetically. “J. Miggs and his boy are both free;
I’ve left the money for them, and it’s time now for us to get out
immediately. This town is none too healthy a location for us, now that
business is out of the way.”

Tom’s loquaciousness had a habit of utterly disappearing, when a new
scientific conception entered his head. As we drove to the station,
he stopped the cab at a bookseller’s, dashed in, and returned with a
package of books and papers. Once settled in the train, “Don’t speak
to me till I get through, if you don’t mind,” he said, “I’ve got
something here I want to work out.” He opened his new package, spread
the books on the seat, and took up a block and his fountain pen. I
scanned the titles of his books casually. “New Insulators for High
Currents,” “Control and Insulation of Radio-active Apparatus,” “Yacht
Construction,” “Theory of Wood Working,” “Caema, What It Has Done for
Electricity,” “Types of Sailing Vessels for the Past Twenty Years.”
“Queer mixture,” I said to myself idly, and then I turned my attention
to the scenery.

Tom was busy with his pocket rule, measuring and laying off diagrams,
for three hours, until the outer edges of London began to appear.
Looking up suddenly, he spoke, “Almost in, aren’t we? Well, I’ll put my
work away, and we’ll discuss our future plans for a few minutes.”

As we rolled into Waterloo station, our discussion ended. “We’ll go
down somewhere on the Channel,” said Tom, “set up the wave-measuring
machine, and see what we can do with that. It’s our best card, and
we’ll work there till Dorothy comes. We’ve got to hang round here till
she arrives, anyway.”

“We certainly have,” said I, and my heart leaped exultantly at the
thought of her coming.




CHAPTER X


Once more I sought the booking office at Euston.

“The Express has left Prince’s Stage at Liverpool, sir. Will be here in
about three hours now, sir,” was the response to my question.

I turned away, dismissed my cab, and started out through the great
pillars of the entrance. Three hours more and Dorothy would be here.
Tom and I, with the wave-measuring machine, had taken the first boat,
which happily left the evening after our interview with Ordway.
Dorothy, following a week later, had arrived at Liverpool and was
speeding to London. It had been hard to wait the week, filled as it
had been with work, but it seemed as if these last hours would never
go. Three hours to wait! I had paced the platform of Euston for two
already, and I walked out now towards Bloomsbury, passing slowly
through its pleasant squares, and watching the foliage behind their
guarding railings. Before I knew it, I was in front of the British
Museum, and I glanced at my watch. “As good a place to wait as any,”
I said to myself, and I crossed the courtyard and started up the
steps. Just then a man, hurrying out, slipped at the top of the stone
steps and fell heavily, striking his head and lying unconscious where
he fell. As it chanced, I was the only spectator, save for a single
policeman, and, as I hurried forward, I noticed a Theta Sigma Rho
fraternity pin on the waistcoat of the fallen man. I reached him first,
the policeman coming up a second later, and together we raised the
unconscious form and carried the man to an office, where we placed
him on a lounge. I read the name on the reverse of his pin. “E. S.
Hamerly.” As he lay there, breathing heavily, I watched him with that
interest which a fellow countryman, and far more than that, a member of
one’s own fraternity, in distress in a foreign land inspires. He was a
clean-cut young fellow, neatly but very simply clad, and I noticed a
red acid stain on his sleeve. I had time for no more, for the doctor
came hurrying in.

“Only a scalp wound,” he said, as he made his brief examination. “I can
bring him round in a minute.”

A vigorous application of cold water, an aromatic to his nose, and
the patient sneezed and opened his eyes. As he gazed around I stepped
forward.

“Mr. Hamerly,” I said, “I’m Orrington of Columbia. I’m a Theta Sigma
Rho man, myself, as I see you are. You’ve had a nasty fall, but you’re
coming out all right. I’m going to see you home.”

Hamerly smiled rather wanly. “I don’t feel very energetic,” he said.
“I’d be mighty glad to have you. I’m in lodgings up on Half-Moon
Street.”

The doctor broke in. “That’s enough talking for the present. Let me fix
up your head and you can go all right.”

While the doctor bandaged Hamerly’s head, I signalled a hansom, and in
a few minutes we were speeding off to Half-Moon Street.

Too much shaken up by his fall for conversation, Hamerly lay back
against the cushions till we reached his lodgings, but he arrived
there without seeming any worse for the trip. I saw him safely to bed,
promised him an early visit, and left a call for a near-by doctor.
Then I looked at my watch. Barely time to reach Dorothy’s train. “To
Euston. Rush!” I cried to the cabby, and away we sped. Just as the
train came puffing in, I reached the platform, and there was Dorothy’s
dear head leaning from the window of her car. The black old station was
transformed as she stepped lightly to the platform, followed by her
maid. She came towards me with both hands outstretched. “Oh, Jim, it’s
good to see you. Where’s Tom?”

“Down at Folkestone,” I answered. “We’ll join him there as soon as
you’ve had a night’s sleep.”

“Why wait for that?” asked Dorothy energetically. “It’s only twelve
now. We can run down there after lunch. Where are our rooms?”

“At the Savoy,” I said. “Suppose you send your maid up there with the
luggage, and we go up in a hansom.”

It took scarcely ten minutes to load the maid and the luggage in a
four-wheeler and join Dorothy. As we swung out through the gates,
she spoke with a long breath. “It seems good to be back in London
again, even with war so near and with so much ahead of us. Now,
tell me everything that’s happened since you came over to London
from Portsmouth. I got your letter at Queenstown telling about your
experiences on the bottom of the sea. How I wish I could have been
there. But never mind that now. Tell me all you’ve done in the last
four days.”

I settled down to my task. “Tom and I came over safely, as you already
know, from our wire at Queenstown. We decided that ‘the man’ would
be working in the Channel and, after some discussion, settled on
Folkestone as the base from which to work the wave-measuring machine.
We took the apparatus down there three days ago, got a big room and set
it up. I chartered a yacht.”

“What did you do that for?” interrupted Dorothy.

“So we could run down ‘the man’ if he was on the sea. We decided,
coming over, that he was more likely to do his experimenting on water
than on land, and Tom thinks he can get him from his experimental
waves.”

“I see,” said Dorothy. “Go ahead.”

“After chartering the yacht, I helped Tom all I could till last night,
when I came up to London to meet you. Tom expects to get the machine
set up to-day. That’s about all.”

“How is the war progressing?” asked Dorothy. “Everybody on board the
liner was greatly afraid it would begin before we got across, and that
we might be captured, but we reached Liverpool all right.”

“Nothing’s happened yet,” I answered. “But I think it’s coming, may
come any minute. They say that the Emperor has refused to see visitors,
since the Kaiserin Luisa went down, and I think the government expects
war immediately. They’re mobilizing rapidly on both sides.”

“Then there certainly isn’t a minute to lose in reaching Folkestone,”
said Dorothy decisively. “We’ll just stop for lunch and go right down.”

It was a day of wonders. Since the night when we had searched for
Joslinn, Dorothy and I had never been alone together. The ride from
the station to the Savoy was a glorified pilgrimage; the lunch, as we
sat looking out on the embankment bathed in sunshine, was a celestial
repast, even the time of waiting in the hotel for Dorothy to condense
her luggage, and make ready for the coming trip, was a delight. But
best of all was the trip down to Folkestone. The guard smiled widely at
the golden sovereign which saved the compartment for us, and the porter
heaped attentions on us for his tip, but the value which they purchased
was priceless. Two hours of speeding through the lovely English country
in a tête-à-tête with my lady.

All too soon came Folkestone, and there beside the train was Tom. “I’ve
got him,” he whispered excitedly. “Hurry up, it’s just time to take
another reading.”

As we bowled along through the old streets, Tom hurriedly told us of
his experience. “He’s experimenting constantly now,” he said. “He sent
off some waves yesterday afternoon about four o’clock, just after I
got the apparatus going; sent off some more about ten, and some this
morning, a little after nine. They’re all from some place out in the
Channel, over towards the French coast. They’re from practically the
same spot, so I got everything ready for an instant departure on
our little boat, and the moment we hear from him again, we’ll start
straight for him.”

Dorothy’s eyes sparkled with excitement. “I’m so glad I got here. I
wouldn’t miss the end for anything.”

“But you’re not going with us on the yacht?” I said anxiously.

“Of course she’s not,” said Tom gruffly.

“Well, I am,” said Dorothy, “and that’s all there is about it.”

Tom and I broke out in a jumble of incoherent objections, which Dorothy
met with smiling assurance.

“You think ‘the man’ may be desperate if we find him,” she said. “Well,
I don’t for a minute believe he will be. He’s doing too big a thing to
have anything against ordinary people, and if something did happen,
you’d need me to protect you.”

Ten minutes more of the drive brought ten minutes more of heated
discussion, but it brought us no victory, and the end of the debate
came when Tom gave in with the brotherly remark: “Well, go your own
confounded, obstinate way then.” To which Dorothy, as calm and smiling
as a summer morn, responded simply, “I shall.”

“Here’s our place,” said Tom, as we rattled up to a house which
displayed on the stairs to the second story a sign, “Dancing Academy.”
“This was the only room we could get that had incandescent wiring, and
that was long enough to hold the scale of the Denckel apparatus,” he
explained to Dorothy, as we crossed the bare floor to the apparatus,
standing in front of the chairs whereon was wont to repose the beauty
and chivalry of Folkestone, at the “assemblies” advertised below.

“The machine is working beautifully. Look at this.” He threw the
switch, lighted the lamp, and lowered the green shade. The belt of
metal had revolved scarcely a minute, and Tom was pulling down the last
shade, as the beam fluttered and the machine stopped. “Just in time,”
said Dorothy delighted. “Hurry up, Tom.” The old inherent passion of
the chase was on us all, and in less than twenty minutes, the last
figures made, Tom and Dorothy compared their work.

“Just there,” said Tom, making a cross with his pencil on a point on
the French coast some ten miles up from Boulogne. “Come on, don’t waste
a minute. It’s practically a straight run across the channel.”

Ten minutes brought us aboard the little yacht and ten minutes more saw
us steaming out of the harbor. Dorothy was with us. Further discussion
had been useless.

“Not much like the Black Arrow,” I said, as we came out rather slowly
into the Channel.

“You wait till she gets speeded up,” said Tom. “She can go. I proved
that yesterday.”

He was right. Once out into the Channel, our speed gradually
increased, till we were making good progress. In an hour we sighted the
French coast from the little bridge, and Tom, beside the skipper, was
making for the cross on the chart.

“We’ll sight her, if she hasn’t gone directly away from us, inside of
fifteen minutes,” Tom said. Dorothy stood beside the wheel, ranging the
whole horizon with her binoculars. She had thrown aside her hat, and
a loosened tress of her hair flew lightly across my face as I stood
beside her.

“Two sails off that point,” she announced, in a few moments. “They look
more like those tubs of French fishing-boats than a yacht,” she said
shortly. “Look at them, Jim.”

She handed her glasses to me. The horizon, for five miles in any
direction from the point where we were heading, showed but the two
sails she had mentioned, and we headed directly for them. As we neared
them, we saw that Dorothy’s eyes had proved true. They were wide,
clumsy, fishing craft, such as sail from the harbor of Boulogne,
or hang in miniature as votive offerings before the altars of the
cathedral. Undecked and open, they could hold no complicated apparatus.
Their crews were sturdy, jerseyed fishermen, who stared in open-mouthed
wonder, as our yacht came up alongside the first, and a volley of
questions came in rapid French from the beautiful girl on the bridge.

With instinctive courtesy, every sailor on either boat removed his cap
as she spoke, and the skipper gave answer in slow, deeply considered
words. “No, we have seen no yacht except your own. Hein! is it not so?”
he turned to the sailors.

A chorus of affirmatives came back. There had been no other vessel off
this point save the Virginie of their own town, (an expressive thumb
pointed to the other boat,) for four, five hours. They would surely
have seen it if there had been. Tom consulted his chart and consulted
our own skipper. It was the very spot. With knitted brow, he ordered
the boat headed for the other fishermen. I pulled a half sovereign from
my pocket.

“Buvez avec moi, mes garçons,” I cried, and flung the coin into the
fishing boat. A chorus of “Merci’s” followed our path.

The other boat gave no better results. Its sailors had seen nothing,
and we ran back to the point whence the waves had come, for a brief
consultation. As we gazed on the quiet water just tinged with the last
of the sunset, I spoke.

“There’s only one explanation, if the wave-measuring machine is
correct. He’s down on the bottom in a submarine, or he was there when
he sent off those waves.”

“I’m afraid that’s right, Jim,” said Tom. “If I could only see down
there. I wonder how deep it is.” He called to the captain. “Take a
sounding here, will you please?”

We hurried forward and watched the line overboard. Fathom after fathom
disappeared up to the very end. “It’s more than a hundred twenty
fathom, sir,” reported the captain.

“No use, then,” said Tom. “Go right back to Folkestone. We’ll have a
couple more tries to-morrow,” he went on. “But, frankly, I’m afraid it
won’t do any good. To find a submarine in these waters would be worse
than finding a needle in a haystack.”

It was a rather gloomy little party that landed at Folkestone that
night. We had seemed so near success. Yet there was one alleviation. I
had dreaded bringing Dorothy into danger, and I had had a most uneasy
feeling as to the possible result of the meeting with a man inspired
with so fixed and fearful a purpose as he whom we sought. Much as I
desired the completion of my search, I could not therefore feel too
complete a sense of regret at the two failures which we encountered
on the Channel the next day. The man was in the Channel sea. He was
experimenting with his apparatus daily under its waves. We could be
sure of that, but he could not be reached, so we finally gave in and
returned to London.

All the way up in the train, Dorothy sat in deep thought, but no result
came from her meditations, and we returned to the Savoy without a ray
of light as to our next move.

The next morning I woke with fresh courage. We had gained so much and
so unexpectedly, that I felt convinced we must gain more. I found a
table in the dining-room, and waited there for Tom and Dorothy, who
shortly appeared. We breakfasted gaily. The morning sun shone brightly
on the little park below the window and on the Thames, flowing slowly
beyond. The peaceful scene looked little like war, but the papers
before us were full of dire forebodings. The German Emperor still
sulked. Movements of army corps and of battleships were the main
part of their story. Despite the columns filled with martial things,
every newspaper had at least one reference to the man who was trying
to stop all war, and in more than one of them was a word as to the
double danger of the fleets, who faced not only a foreign foe, but
annihilation at the hands of this unseen destroyer. As we finished
breakfast, Dorothy asked, “What are you boys going to do this morning?”

“I must go down to the city to get some money,” I replied.

“I think I’ll do the same,” remarked Tom.

“We’ll all go together, then,” said Dorothy.

As we passed out into the courtyard, I raised my stick for a cab, but
Dorothy stopped me. “Let’s go down on top of a bus. I haven’t been on
one since I landed, and we’re in no hurry.”

Up the winding stair we climbed, and Tom and Dorothy found a seat
beside the driver, while I was just behind. Down the Strand into Fleet
Street we passed, through the crowds before the bulletins, watching
anxiously for the message which should spell “War.” At the top of
Ludgate Hill, just by St. Paul’s, came a block, one of those hopeless
tangles which so completely ties up London traffic. Another bus stood
just ahead, and I read off the big advertisements which lined its top.
“Alhambra Radium Ballet,” I read. “There’s a scientific scheme for you
people. What is a radium ballet, anyway?”

“Oh, they cover the girls’ dresses with phosphorescent paint, and turn
out the lights,” said Tom. “It’s an old idea. They had them ten years
ago.”

Dorothy turned suddenly. “That’s what we want. It’s the very thing
we’ve been hunting for, the new clue. We’ve never run that down, at
all.”

Tom and I followed slowly her quick intuition. “What new clue?” I asked.

“The phosphorescent paint clue,” answered Dorothy energetically. “‘The
man’ wrote his first message with a peculiar type of phosphorescent
ink. He must have been working with it for some time. If we can only
find anybody that knows about that kind of paint, we might find out
something more definite about him. It’s the best clue we have, anyway.”

“But how will you get hold of the people who know about phosphorescent
paint?” said Tom. “I think you’re in the blindest alley yet.”




CHAPTER XI


As the horses started up, Dorothy refuted Tom’s statement indignantly.
“It isn’t a blind alley. It’s a good clue. We’ve run down practically
every other line, and now we may as well try this. Everything points to
the belief that ‘the man’ is a scientist of no slight ability. Whether
he or some one else discovered his high power radio-active force, he
must be a good man, or he wouldn’t be able to use it. Now, it seems
probable to me that he was working with phosphorescent ink simply
because it was the nearest at hand. A man engaged in research like that
would be likely to have at least one assistant. I propose to find that
assistant.”

“I’d like to see you do it,” said Tom doubtingly. “How would you go to
work?”

“I’d advertise,” said Dorothy.

“Advertise,” remarked Tom. “Here’s the way to do it,--‘Wanted, the
assistant of the man who is trying to stop all war.’”

“Of course not, stupid,” said Dorothy impatiently. “We’ll advertise for
a man who has had some experience in making phosphorescent ink. That’s
the line to work on. Don’t you see that since phosphorescent paint acts
best with such energy as is given by radio-active substances, that he’s
likely to have been using it. There’s such a close relation between
phosphorescence and radioactivity, that a man might be working with
both.”

“But where will you advertise?” I said. “How can you tell where the
man has worked? How can you tell his nationality? I think he is an
American, but no one can tell.”

“If you mean Dick Regnier,” exclaimed Dorothy, her eyes flashing,
“you’re wrong. I’ve known him for years, and I know he is not the man.
It takes just a touch of insanity that Dick never had, to do what
‘the man’ is doing. ‘The man’ must be practically a monomaniac on the
subject.”

The bus stopped just as the Bank came in sight. Dorothy turned squarely
in her seat and faced me. The seats around us happened to be empty. She
looked at my somewhat guilty face and spoke emphatically.

“Jim Orrington, you don’t believe me, but it isn’t Dick Regnier.”

“Now, Dorothy,” I said, “look here. How did the letter get changed,
unless it was done by Regnier that night at your cousin’s?”

“I don’t know,” she answered.

“Oh, come now,” said Tom. “Drop it. Here’s where we get off.”

We had drawn our money and had started away, when I suddenly thought
of the mail. I turned back to the little window and asked if there
were any letters for us which had not been forwarded. A few moments
brought a big package, among them three or four bulky envelopes from
the office. Hailing a cab, we read busily as we drove back to the
Savoy. One long typewritten report I read with especial care, and
handed over to Dorothy when she had finished her mail. She looked at me
reproachfully, as she read the title. “And you never mentioned this at
all.”

“I forgot all about it,” I answered. “I started that inquiry the day I
was in prison. The night I got out, the Denckel letter came, and we’ve
been so busy ever since that I completely forgot this.”

“Let’s hear it,” said Tom.

“Just read the condensed paragraph at the top,” I said. “That tells the
whole story. You can read the rest at your leisure.” Dorothy began in
her clear voice.

“Report on Mr. Richard Regnier. Richard Regnier is the son of the late
Colonel Arthur Regnier of Savannah, Georgia. He was educated at private
schools, and at Princeton. His residence is Savannah, but he has spent
much time in England. He specialized in chemistry when in college, and
published one paper after graduation on some rare chemical compounds.
He has no regular occupation, has an independent income, and spends
most of his time in various philanthropic works. Is a member of several
organizations, such as the Peace Society, the Tuberculosis League,
etc., and of four clubs. Complete details given below. Every effort has
been made to obtain his present address, but not even his bankers know
it. The only fact concerning this which could be obtained was that he
sailed for Europe on the Hamburg-American line, the last of June, this
present year. For details of this part of the investigation, see below.”

“Well, he didn’t do it; he isn’t doing it,” said Dorothy emphatically.

“He’s got the training for it,” said Tom reflectively.

“I am sure,” began Dorothy, but I broke in.

“What’s the use of discussing it now. We can’t get hold of Regnier,
anyway, and your phosphorescent ink scheme seems the next scheme to
try. Here we are at the Temple. Let’s go to one of my friends who is a
solicitor here, and see if we can use his office as headquarters to see
the applicants.” So the discussion ended.

A brief interview with my friend, and a short debate on the best method
of procedure, brought us to certain conclusions. It was really just
as possible that the man had worked in London as anywhere else, and
we decided to advertise in six of the morning papers for three days,
asking for a man who had had some experience with phosphorescent inks,
and who was capable of assisting in a scientific examination with
regard to them. Applicants were to meet at the office of my friend in
the Middle Temple at three o’clock on the afternoon of the third day.

For two days and a half I spent my time watching the preparations for
war, and urging forward the search for Regnier. He had completely
dropped out of sight. No information of his whereabouts could be
obtained, and when we met at the Temple on the afternoon of the third
day, we were no further ahead.

At three o’clock the waiting room of the office was full, and a long
line of men extended down the stairs. The crowd bore striking witness
to the horde of unemployed seeking for even the slightest chance of
employment. My friend’s clerks were in despair, but somehow they
managed to evolve something like order from the mass, and one by one
the applicants were admitted. After the first half dozen, we saw that
they could be divided into three classes,--the men who knew nothing
about science and nothing about any kind of ink, the men who knew
something about ink but nothing about phosphorescent ink, and the men
who had been laboratory assistants to various research followers. We
divided them rapidly on this basis, and in an hour had dismissed all
the members of classes one and two. There were left some ten others who
had been assistants in research laboratories. One by one we examined
these. They had worked in various lines; the first five in chemical
researches; the last five in various physical and engineering lines.
Try as we might, we could get no information from any of them with
regard to phosphorescent ink, or with regard to any unusual work with
radio-active energy.

The last man had been dismissed and we had sat down to afternoon tea
with my friend, when we heard words in the outer office. The door
opened and a clerk entered. “There’s one man more, sir,” he said, “I
told him he was too late, but he’s quite insistent, sir. Will you care
to see him?”

“Surely,” I said, and we all went out into the outer office. A tall,
bent man with drooping mustache stood by the window. His gaunt face and
threadbare clothes, neatly brushed though they were, showed an evident
lack of prosperity.

“I ventured to insist, sir,” he said, addressing me, “as I have had
quite a little experience in phosphorescent ink. It was only a year
ago that I served in a laboratory where they were working with it, and
while I was simply working under the direction of other people, I think
I could work well along that line. I should try to do my best. I need a
place.”

This looked more like the real thing. I waved towards Tom. He could run
this end of the inquiry better than I.

“What’s your name?”

“George Swenton.”

“Where did you have your experience?” questioned Tom.

“With Doctor Heidenmuller, in his private research laboratory,”
answered the man.

“What training have you had?”

“Not much. Only a few courses at the University of London. I was only
the second assistant. I worked with Doctor Heidenmuller for four years,
until he died six months ago. I have had no place since, sir.”

“Did your employer do anything with radio-active work?”

“Yes, sir. He died that way. He was killed, paralysed, you might say,
while working with something in a locked room. He always did that work
in a locked room.”

“What were the circumstances of his death?” asked Tom. The man
hesitated and looked up somewhat fearfully.

“I don’t see what that has to do with phosphorescent ink,” he said.
“The police went all into the matter of his death, and they said it was
just death by paralysis.” He stopped and shut his mouth hard. Dorothy
broke in.

“Mr. Swenton, here is the state of affairs. I don’t think my brother
has made it quite plain. We are more interested in Dr. Heidenmuller’s
radio-active work than in his phosphorescent paint. We have no question
of you at all. We do not want to know anything which is not entirely
right for us to know, but we do want to know all you feel you can
rightly tell us of his work. I feel sure that my brother will be ready
to employ you, if you can show that you have done this, and that you
can do what he wants.”

The man’s face cleared. Dorothy’s words were more convincing than
evidence. He reached into his pockets and drew forth a bunch of papers,
which he gave to Tom, who rapidly ran through them.

“They’re all right,” he said, handing them back. “Now, if I give you
twenty pounds a month for two months, will that be all right?”

A dull red rose in the man’s face as his eyes lighted. “It will mean
everything to me, sir,” he said. “I’ve got a wife and a boy.”

Tom drew out his purse. “Here’s ten pounds to clinch the bargain,” and
he handed him two five pound notes.

“I appreciate that more than I can say,” said the man, the tears
welling up into his eyes with emotion. “Now, what did you want to know?”

“First about Dr. Heidenmuller’s apparatus, and then about his death.”

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you much of the apparatus. I never even saw
it. It was in an inner room to which the doctor had the only key. I
never was in the room till the day we broke down the door and took him
out dead. There was no apparatus there then. It must have been removed.”

“How did the room look?” asked Dorothy.

“It was all bare. Nothing in it at all, except the wooden chair where
he sat and a wooden table.”

“How about the walls and ceiling?”

“They were all of wood.”

“How about the locks on the door and windows?”

“That was a funny thing. They were of wood, too, though he had an iron
key.”

“What did the doctor have in his pockets?”

“Four five-pound notes, no change, and his watch was gone. There was
nothing in his watch pocket except a watch crystal. His keys were gone,
too, and only the ribbon of his watch was left lying on the floor.”

“What did the doctors say about his death?”

“Straight paralysis, they said. I had been away for three days. He was
around the laboratory for one day after I left, and the day after that
he must have died. They said death was instantaneous.”

“Did the doctor leave any family?”

“None.”

“What became of his papers?”

“Nobody knows. He had scarcely any friends. His property went to a
niece in Germany, and she came over to hunt for papers, but she found
none.”

“What became of the other assistant?”

“He went back to Germany. He knew nothing more than I did, however.”

“Did the doctor have any friends who came to see him?”

“Very few. There was one American who came to see him now and then. I
never knew his name or where he came from, nor did I know the name of
the two or three German friends he had.”

“Anything else you think of?” asked Tom.

“Nothing else, I’m afraid,” answered Swenton.

Tom rose from his chair and paced up and down the room, his hands in
his trousers pockets, his coat flung back. As he walked, Swenton,
watching him, uttered an exclamation.

“I can tell you one thing about the American,” he said. “He wore a
peculiar shaped pin on his waistcoat, such as you wear on your fob.”

Tom pulled up his fob with its Theta Sigma Rho pin. “There’s a good
clue, anyway,” he said. “He must be a Theta Sigma Rho man.”

We could get nothing more from Swenton and, after directing him to call
at the Savoy the next morning, we sent him away happy. As we came down
the narrow stairs and out of the old arched passages of the Temple,
Dorothy said, “Let’s walk up the embankment to the hotel. We can think
better that way.”

We had gone half the distance, when she stopped. “Suppose we talk it
over here,” and we stopped beside the parapet to discuss the matter.

“As I make it out,” said Tom, “Heidenmuller was the man who discovered
the secret power which has been destroying the battleships, but he
can’t be ‘the man,’ because he died before the first ship went down.
Therefore he must have passed it on to some one else who is using it,
possibly the American who was his friend, or one of the Germans. It
strikes me that the next thing to do is to find an American in London
who wears a Theta Sigma Rho pin.”

Instantly I startled the peaceful calm of the embankment, and made
myself an object of suspicion to the neighboring bobby, by leaping in
the air and clapping my hands together.

“Hamerly, by all that’s holy!” I cried. “You remember that fellow I
took home that night you arrived, Dorothy?”

She nodded, her eyes gleaming with interest.

“He’s one of our men, and he had an acid stain on his coat. I’ll wager
you he’s the American. I know where he lives and I’ve been up to see
him once, but he was out. I’ll go up there right after dinner.”

“Do you think he’s ‘the man’?” asked Tom in excitement.

“I don’t see how he could be,” I said slowly. “‘The man’ was working
in the Channel, when he was in the British Museum. But he’s surely the
next man to interview.”

By eight I was in a hansom speeding towards Half-Moon Street. “Was Mr.
Hamerly in?” He was, and met me half way down the stairs. “This is very
good of you, Orrington,” he said. “I was very sorry to miss your last
call.”

For some time we talked of various things, of college days, and of
affairs at home. He had come over as a Rhodes scholar and, having a
little money left him while at Oxford, had gone on in London after
graduation, leading a life of quiet study. As we talked, I sized my
companion up. “A trifle grave but, after all, a sane, sterling fellow,”
I decided, and I put my errand directly to him.

“You knew Dr. Heidenmuller,” I said abruptly.

“Yes, poor old chap,” he said calmly. “How did you happen to run across
him?”

“I didn’t know him personally,” I said, “but I knew a man who did know
him. One of our own men, Tom Haldane of Columbia, who is very greatly
interested in the radio-active work which Dr. Heidenmuller was carrying
on before his death, is here with me.”

Hamerly’s face filled with eagerness. His whole attitude changed. “Did
Haldane know what he was doing?” he asked breathlessly.

“Not exactly,” I said.

“Well if he knows anything about it, I believe he knows one of the
greatest things in modern science. The Doctor never told me anything
about it, but I went into that room the day he was taken out dead, and
ever since that time I’ve felt that he had found a force greater than
anything yet obtained, and that that force killed him.” He paused.
“I’ve never said that to anybody else, but Haldane is the man of all
others to know it, and you might tell him that from me. He may be
able to use it somehow. I can’t. I tried my best to get hold of some
clue concerning it after Heidenmuller’s death, but it was absolutely
useless. Do you think that Haldane has enough data to work it out?”

“Frankly, I don’t know,” I said.

“Except for two things, I should have said the secret died with him,”
said Hamerly slowly.

I bent forward hanging on every word.

“I’ve never spoken of either, but,”--he paused, “you know this man who
is trying to stop all war?”

I nodded.

“Well, from the way Heidenmuller’s room looked, and the way the things
in his pockets were left, I’ve wondered if the man had not his secrets.
Do you know,” he said, leaning forward, “there were no eyelets in his
shoes when he was found. The crimps were in the leather of the strings,
but the metal ends were gone. The lenses of his spectacles, without
any mounting, were lying on the floor. The very filling of his teeth
had gone. Why couldn’t a battleship disappear into its elemental parts
the same way, all its living contents paralyzed by the shock, dying
instantly and sinking below the waves. I’ve wondered more than once if
the government sent down divers in Portsmouth harbor and if they did,
what they found.”

There was just one thing to do. He held as much as we did of the
secret. Perhaps he knew more. From beginning to end, I told the whole
story of our search. As I went on, he grew more and more excited. As I
paused towards the end, he broke in.

“The second thing fits in here, the reason why I believe the secret
might not be lost. One day as I went into the laboratory, the Doctor’s
assistant told me that he was in the inner room, but had left word for
me to wait. I was extremely curious for no one had ever entered that
inner room to my knowledge. The door opened at last, and a tall, dark
man, an American I should say, came out of that closed room with the
doctor. I never saw him before or since. Now, is he the man who got the
secret, and with it is trying to stop all war?”

I was out of my seat with excitement. “I believe he is. Would you know
him if you saw his photograph?”

“Surely,” said Hamerly.

I rose to go.

“Hold on,” exclaimed Hamerly, “I haven’t told you half yet.”

“Go on,” I said eagerly, seating myself once more.

“That first day, after I had made a rough examination, I started to go
over the inner room inch by inch. At first I thought it was perfectly
insulated by wood. There wasn’t a piece of metal nor even a piece of
glass in it. Where the incandescent light came down, hung a bit of
twisted cord, without a scrap of metal remaining. There was a length of
insulating cloth, minus the wire it covered, lying on the floor. I went
round and round, hunting for metal, but I could find none. There was
a wooden shutter over the window, and no glass. I closed the door and
walked over every inch of the room, trying to find any break whatsoever
in the insulation. The only thing I could find was a faint glimmer,
where the wooden window shutter did not quite join. I went outside and
studied the place from the street. There was no appearance of anything
unusual on the wall of the laboratory, excepting that the boarded
window of the wooden room looked out like a rectangular unseeing eye.
I crossed to the sidewalk just before the laboratory, and looked up
and down the opposite wall. There was nothing unusual on that side,
save two square places, side by side on the painted wall, which looked
fresher than the wall around. I examined them more carefully, crossed
and recrossed. The two spots were almost exactly opposite the lower
end of the shuttered window where I had seen a slight chink of light,
the only place where the insulation of wood was broken. I went up the
stairs of the house opposite. It was a little tea shop. A wooden sign
leaned against the wall beside the door. I picked it up. The screw
holes and the whiter paint where the hinges had lain showed clear,
but there was no metal about it. The proprietress bustled up to take
my order and, as she saw me looking at the sign, broke into voluble
explanation. ‘I should have put the sign back in its place, sir, but
fairly didn’t dare to. It was a week come Tuesday when it fell. It’s
God’s own mercy there wasn’t somebody killed, sir. And the strangest
thing, too. I couldn’t find sight nor smell of the hinges and the
rod where it hung. It must have pulled out of the wall, and somebody
have picked up the iron, before I could get down, sir. Now isn’t that
strange, sir?’

“It had fallen the day that Heidenmuller died.

“I went back into the laboratory and hunted over every square inch of
it, but I found nothing. I stood there puzzling. If there had been
some power that had killed Heidenmuller, there must have been some
material substance in which it was kept. I had made the most careful
inquiries about the things on his person and in the room. No one could
tell me anything. Swenton and Griegen, the two assistants, were neither
of them there, but the first one who had entered the room when the
doctor’s body was found was a sharp-faced lad who acted as janitor. I
had questioned him thoroughly, as I thought, but I resolved to see if
he did not know more. I went to him again, and a lucky inspiration came
to me. Holding a sovereign in my hand I remarked casually, ‘If there is
any little personal memento of the doctor left, I should like very much
to have it.’ The narrow eyes of the lad gleamed. He thrust his hand
into his pocket, and drew out what was apparently a leather cigarette
case, snatched the sovereign, and handed me the case. ‘Found h’it h’on
the floor, h’after we took ’im h’out,’ he mumbled. ‘H’it’s the h’only
think was there.’”

Hamerly rose as he spoke and walked to his desk. I followed, my heart
pulsating with great leaps. He took from a drawer what seemed to be a
pigskin cigarette case, cut in half. Hamerly held the two sections out
on his hand. At the top was a queerly constructed valve,--the case was
lined with a black substance that looked like rubber.

“I believe,” said Hamerly gravely, “that in this case there was
some terrifically powerful substance, which killed Heidenmuller and
destroyed all the metal in the wooden room, by escaping through the
accidentally opened valve. I believe the man who is trying to stop all
war uses the same dread agent. I believe, once the substance escapes
and does its work, that it turns to a harmless gas, as hydrogen, once
it has been exploded with oxygen, forms harmless water, or as the
carbon of coal, which has blazed when united with the oxygen of the air
becomes, after that union, inert carbon dioxide. You know, now, all I
know. I’ve done all I could with it,” he ended, “Take it to Haldane.”

Dazed with the story, I could only thank him and take the case. We
parted with a word of good will, and assurance of secrecy on his side.




CHAPTER XII


I threw up my curtain next morning to find London settling down into a
sea of fog. Already the Thames was wholly hidden, and the water side of
the embankment showed only faint, twinkling lights, just on the point
of complete extinguishment. The caped policeman, the hurrying butcher’s
boy, the laborers and the charwomen passing through the garden below,
had all completely lost their individuality and became, in place of
common London types, misty twentieth century Niobes. But dismal though
it was without, my spirits were cheerful enough within as I started
down to meet Tom and Dorothy.

We were half through breakfast when Hamerly’s card was brought in,
to be followed a few moments later by the man himself. I looked wit

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