ARTHUR B. REEVE (continued 4)

His wireless installed and adjusted, Kennedy clapped the ear-pieces on and tuned it up. Not only he, but the wireless operator tried it, rapidly changing the wave-lengths, as the system admitted, in the hope of discovering something. Whatever it was that had caused the trouble at the Seaville Station, it was not working now. They seemed able to discover nothing.

This had been going on for some time when our telephone rang and Burke jumped to answer it.

“That’s one of my men,” he exclaimed with a gesture that indicated he had forgotten something. “I meant to tell you that they were holding a funeral service for Marshall Maddox, and this apparatus of yours clean knocked it out of my head. Hello!... Yes, I remember. Wait.” Burke put his hand over the transmitter and looked at us. “Do you want to go?” he asked.

“I think I would like to see them together again,” Craig replied, after a moment’s consideration.

“All right,” returned Burke, removing his hand. “We’ll be down in a minute.”

Kennedy took from another package what looked like an arrangement containing a phonograph cylinder, and attached it, through a proper contrivance, to his receiving apparatus.

“Now I think we can safely leave this thing,” bustled Kennedy, eager to get back in touch with things at Westport.

The wireless operator, Steel, glanced at his watch. “I’m due back at Seaville soon to do my trick. Is there anything else I can tell you or do for you?”

Kennedy thanked him. “Not just at the moment,” he returned. “We shall have to wait now until something happens. Perhaps you are right. I think the best thing you can do is to return to Seaville and keep your eyes and ears open. If there is anything at all that comes up that seems to lead to our wireless jammer, I wish you would let me know.”

Steel was only too glad to promise and, a moment later, left us to return to the wireless station.

XIX

THE WIRELESS WIRETAPPER

A few moments later we went down-stairs again and Burke drove us in his car up to the town, where, in the main street, was a little chapel whose bell was now tolling slowly and mournfully.

As his car drew up at the end of the long line down the street, I saw why Kennedy had decided to break into the time so sorely needed in our own investigation of the case. It seemed as though every one must be at the funeral, even the reporters from New York. Kennedy and I managed to avoid them, but their presence testified to the wide interest that the case had aroused throughout the country.

“Rather a telling object-lesson in the business that the Maddoxes are in,” commented Kennedy as we walked the rest of the way to the shrubbery-surrounded chapel. “If there is such a thing as retributive justice, this is the result of the business of making a profit out of mere instruments to kill.”

I fancied that there was more than coincidence behind the reasoning. The Maddoxes had been so long engaged in making munitions, devoid of any feeling of patriotism, had amassed such an immense fortune out of which the curse had been taken by no philanthropy, that it must undoubtedly be a true philosophy which traced from their very business and consequent character the evils and tragedies that followed in the wake of the Maddox millions. I reflected that even over the telautomaton, the destroyer itself, there had been no thought of public service in the family, but merely the chance to extort more gain from the frailties and sufferings of humanity. And now this was the end of one arch-extortioner.

There seemed to be something hollow in the funeral of Marshall Maddox. It took me some time to explain it to myself. It was not because we were there, outsiders, and in our capacity of observers, in fact almost spies, although that may have had something to do with the impression it made on me.

The little chapel was crowded, but with the curious who had heard vague rumors about the death. As I looked at the real mourners I fancied that my impression must be due to them, that somehow this was a mockery of mourning.

I could not imagine that Irene Maddox was overwhelmed by grief after what had occurred to her. As for the gay little Paquita, she was, of course, not there at all, and her presence would only have sounded a new note of hollowness. I had not seen her manifest any deep sign of grief. At present, I supposed, she was still in New York, going about her own or some unknown business as unconcerned as if nothing had happened.

Shelby Maddox had come up from whatever business he was engaged in in New York just in time for the service. Once or twice I thought he showed real grief, as though the death of his brother brought back to his recollection other and better days. Yet I could not help wondering whether even his emotions might not be affectation for our benefit, for the tragedy seemed not to have deterred him from doing pretty much as he might have done anyhow.

I looked about for Winifred Walcott. Evidently the strain of events had been too much for her. She was not there, but her brother was there with his wife, who was next to her own brother, Shelby.

The service was short and formal, and I shall not dwell on it, for, after all, nothing occurred during it which changed our attitude toward any of those present.

For a brief moment at the close the family were together, and I felt that Shelby was the most human of them all, at least. Mrs. Walcott and her husband were the first to leave, and I could not help comparing it with a previous occasion, when they had taken Irene Maddox in their car. A little later Shelby appeared with his sister-in-law, leaving her only when some of her own family, who had come to Westport evidently to be with her, appeared.

Instead of going to the Lodge he walked slowly down to the pier and jumped into one of his tenders that was waiting to take him out to the Sybarite, alone. Now and then I had seen him glance sharply about, but it was not at us that he was looking. He seemed rather to be hoping that he might chance to meet Winifred Walcott. I think she was much more on his mind at present than even his brother.

Johnson Walcott and his wife passed us in their car and we could see them stop at the Harbor House porte-cochère. Frances Walcott alighted and, after a moment talking together, Johnson drove away alone, swinging around into the road to the city.

Our friends of the Secret Service seemed to be about everywhere, but unobtrusively, observing. There was much that was interesting to observe, but nothing that pointed the way to the solution of the mystery. The funeral over; it was again the old Maddox house of hate, each member going his own way. It was as though an armistice had been declared, and now the truce was over. I felt that we might now expect war again, to the last dollar. It was not to be expected that any of them would allow the other to control without a fight, nor relinquish any claim that was not fully compensated.

One bright spot only shone out in the drab of the situation. So far the dead hand of the Maddox millions had not stretched out and fallen on the lovely and pure personality of Winifred Walcott. The more I thought of it the more I had come to fear that these hates and jealousies and bitter rivalries might engulf her as they had many others.

Had that been the trouble with Irene Maddox? Had she been once even as Winifred now was? Had she been drawn into this maelstrom of money? I dreaded the thought of the possible outcome of the romance of Shelby Maddox and Winifred. Would it, too, blast another life—or might it be that by some miracle Winifred might take out the curse that hung over the blood-money of the Maddoxes? Never before had our responsibility in the case, far beyond the mere unraveling of the mystery, presented itself to me so forcibly as it did now, after the solemn and sobering influence of the last rites of the murdered head of the house.

We came along past the carriage entrance to the Lodge again. Beside the door were piled several large packages, and the uniformed boy who presided over that entrance of the Lodge was evidently much worried over them. Burke had left us on the way up, and as we turned the boy at the door caught sight of Kennedy and hurried over to us.

“The young man said these were for you, sir,” he announced, indicating the packages, undecided whether to play for a tip or to ask to have them taken away.

“Oh yes,” recognized Kennedy, as Watkins, who had brought them down, appeared. “Some stuff I had brought from the city. Will you help me down to the dock with them?”

The boy was more than willing. Not only were the packages to be taken away from his door, but Kennedy had crossed his palm with a coin. With Watkins he carried the things down.

Kennedy had no intention at present, evidently, of using the material which had come from New York, but left it in the little summer-house in charge of the student.

We were about to turn back to the Casino and the Lodge, when Craig caught my eye and nodded in the direction of the beach. There I could see the solitary figure of a girl coming slowly along. It was Winifred Walcott. I watched her. Evidently she had been out for a walk alone.

Now and then she gave a quick glance across the water and I soon realized that it was at the Sybarite she looked. Shelby had long since reached the yacht, but apparently she had seen his tender dashing out there. I could not help but think of the stroll that Shelby had taken with Paquita the night before down the beach in the same direction. Was Winifred thinking of it, too, and was she sorry that she had dismissed him without accepting his explanation at its face value?

“That shows what a great part chance plays in our lives,” mused Kennedy to me, as we watched her. “They’re thinking of each other. If Shelby had been a few minutes later, or she had been a few minutes earlier, they would have met. I suppose they are both too proud to go to each other now.”

“You’re not contemplating being a matchmaker?” I hazarded.

“On the contrary,” he smiled, “I think we shall gain more by letting events take their natural course. No, chance must bring them together again.”

Miss Walcott had seen us by this time, and seemed to realize that we were talking about her, for she quickened her pace and, instead of coming up to the summer-house, left the beach by another flight of steps, though not so far away that we could not see a faint flush on her cheeks as she purposely avoided us.

We, too, went toward the Lodge, but did not overtake her.

On the veranda of the Lodge, waiting for us, was Riley, just returned from the city.

“Where is Paquita?” inquired Kennedy. “Tell me what has happened?”

“Nothing much,” returned Riley, chagrined. “I stuck to her pretty closely. She’s back, you know.”

“I think I have an idea of what it was all about,” ventured Kennedy.

Riley nodded. “Mr. Burke has told me something of the cipher message to her, sir. I think you are right. She must have tried to divert our attention.”

“How does she seem?” inquired Kennedy.

Riley chuckled. “I think she’s terribly miffed,” he replied. “She acts to me as though she was disappointed in us—in you particularly. You don’t follow her about New York. I don’t think she quite understands what happened. You don’t play according to Hoyle.”

“What did she do after that last telephone call?”

“Nothing—absolutely nothing. Oh, it was a plant, all right. She came back in the car, after awhile. We passed the church while the funeral was going on. She never even looked. Say, what has become of Sanchez?”

Kennedy retailed what Winifred had said about the sallow-faced man and his solicitude.

“I’ll wager he’ll be along soon, now,” asserted Riley, with professional assurance. “I just saw Irene Maddox, after she came back from the funeral. She seems to be rather out of it, doesn’t she? Since her own folks arrived the Maddoxes and the Walcotts seem to feel that they have no further responsibility.”

Kennedy smiled at the garrulity of the detective. “What made you connect Sanchez and Irene Maddox?” he asked. “Don’t you think she is really through with him?”

“I guess she is,” returned Riley. “But I can’t say the same of him. If I could only get at the true relation of that fellow with Paquita I’d be a good deal happier. Mrs. Maddox may have hired him to shadow her, but, if you want to know what I think, it is that that Mex, or whatever he is, has actually fallen in love with the girl.”

“Another love affair?” I queried, sarcastically. “Then all I’ve got to say is that they’re well matched.”

“All right,” defended Riley, rather hotly. “But we know that he double-crossed Mrs. Maddox, don’t we? Well, then, if he’s working for anybody else now, what reason have you to suppose that he won’t double cross them too? Mr. Burke thinks there may be a gang of them. All right. What’s to prevent this Sanchez from being stuck on her in that case? There are all sorts in the underworld, and there’s no telling what a woman or a man may do.”

“But look at the way she acts toward Shelby Maddox,” I urged. “If ever there was a woman who threw herself at a man, that’s a case of it.”

“Part of the game, part of the game,” returned Riley.

“What game?” interrupted Kennedy, who had been listening to us in amused silence.

Riley was not ready with an answer on the spur of the moment, and, as it was not my contention, I did not attempt it.

“Well,” finished the Secret Service man as he left us, “I’m going to look about, just the same, and you can take it from me this thing will never be cleared up until we explain that fellow Sanchez.”

Kennedy said nothing as Riley walked away, but I fancied that underneath he concurred largely with the operative.

We were about to leave the veranda when Burke rejoined us, his face indicating that some new problem had come up.

“I wonder what Shelby Maddox can be up to,” he began, as though appealing for aid. “I was using the telephone, and while I waited for my number I got to talking with the little girl at the switchboard. She tells me that in the last day or two, while Shelby has been out here, he has been talking a great deal over the wire with New York and has placed some large orders through different brokers for Maddox Munitions stock.”

It was an important piece of news. I recalled Hastings’s wonder at Shelby’s trips in to the city and our own discovery that he had been visiting a broker, coupled with the presence of Paquita down-town in the same building.

“Maddox Munitions isn’t so low that it’s a good buy,” considered Burke, “unless there’s some scheme to manipulate it up. It had a little slump when Marshall Maddox died, but recovered. What its future will be without him no one can say. There’s no reason why it shouldn’t decline—but it hasn’t done so.”

“Perhaps that’s the game,” I suggested. “Maybe Shelby is holding the market up. Some one must be supporting it. Why, if it weren’t for some support, I’ll wager the stock would have broken worse than it did, and it wouldn’t have recovered.”

Kennedy nodded, not so much in approval of the explanation as at the line of thought that the idea suggested.

“Do you suppose,” speculated Burke, “that there can be some manipulation of Maddox Munitions going on under cover? What can be Shelby’s purpose in all this? Perhaps we’re mistaken in that young man, and he’s a great deal deeper than any of us give him credit for being. Would it be impossible that he might be planning to get the control from the others?”

It was an explanation that could not be easily put aside. Only death had wrested the control from the elder brother. Who was there to take his place? Had Shelby undergone a transformation almost overnight? Or—more horrible thought—had the whole affair been preconceived from the conference on the yacht and the murder to the manipulation of the market?

What with both Riley and Burke theorizing on the case, I could see that Kennedy was growing a bit impatient. Though he formed many of them, theories never appealed to Kennedy as long as one little fact might knock out the prettiest deduction.

“We’ve been away from our room a long time,” he interjected, as though remembering what we had originally started to do. “Something must have happened by this time or we’ll never get anything. Let’s go up there and see whether our wireless wiretapper has caught anything yet.”

Scarcely past the door Kennedy nudged me, a signal to be on guard. I looked cautiously about. Sitting in the lobby where she could see everybody who came and went was Paquita. She saw us approaching, but made no effort to avoid us. In fact, I felt sure that it was we for whom she was looking. If it was, Kennedy did not give her any satisfaction by letting her know that we even noticed it. We passed by, still chatting, though careful to say nothing that could not safely be overheard, and entered the elevator. As the door clanged shut Paquita flashed a chagrined glance at us. It said as plainly as words that she wanted to focus our attention on herself instead of something else.

Up in the room Kennedy fairly ripped the wax cylinder from his wireless machine and jammed it into what looked like a miniature phonograph.

“A recording device invented by Marconi,” he explained, as a succession of strange sounds issued from the reproducer.

I could make nothing out of it, but Kennedy seemed quite excited and elated.

“It’s not a wireless message at all,” he exclaimed.

“Then what is it?” I inquired.

He listened a moment more, then burst out, “No, not a message. That’s just wireless power itself. And it seems to come from the water side, too.”

He relapsed into silence, leaving us only to speculate.

What possible object could there be in the use of wireless power solely? Why did it come from the water? Was there a boat hanging about, perhaps flying the burgee of some well-known club, yet in reality to be used for some criminal purpose?

XX

THE SPEED DEMON

There seemed to be no use in staying longer in our room observing the behavior of the wireless detector, when the very neighborhood still bristled with mystery and perhaps danger.

Accordingly, we went down-stairs again with Burke, just in time to meet Hastings, who had come down on the late afternoon train from the city.

“Has anything happened since we left?” inquired Kennedy of the lawyer, before he could begin to quiz us.

“Very little,” he replied. “The man was still watching that little office where the detectaphone wire led, when I left. Not a soul has been near it. I think you can assume that it has been left abandoned.”

“I thought as much,” agreed Craig. “Have you heard anything more about the activity of Shelby? He was here at the funeral this afternoon. He’s out on the Sybarite now, and has been very quiet, at least down here.”

“I’ve been making some inquiries,” replied Hastings, slowly. “As nearly as any of the brokers I know can tell, I should say that Shelby must be doing something. There have been several large blocks of stock unloaded and they have all been taken up. In spite of it the price has been maintained. But it’s all underground. I haven’t decided which side Shelby is on, bear or bull. He never was on either side before, so I don’t know what he is up to. You can reason it out either way—and, after all, it is a matter of fact, not reason.”

“It won’t take long to find that out to-morrow, if we want to,” remarked Kennedy. “The trouble to-day was that there were more pressing things that had to be done.”

We had scarcely finished outlining to Hastings what we had discovered at Westport when Riley edged up to report to Burke.

“Miss Walcott’s acting very strangely, sir,” he ventured. “You’d think she hadn’t a friend in the world.”

“How’s that?” cut in Kennedy.

“I saw her coming up from the beach awhile ago alone,” replied Riley. “First she passed Mrs. Maddox and they scarcely spoke, then later I saw her do the same thing with Mrs. Walcott. They’ve been that way, now, for some time.”

“Where is she—in her room?” asked Burke.

Riley nodded. “Yes.”

“I can’t see any reason why she should stay here, if she feels this way about it,” put in Hastings testily. “She doesn’t belong to the family.”

Kennedy glanced covertly at me. I fancied I understood what was in his mind. Winifred Walcott probably would not have admitted, even to herself, why she stayed.

“That little dancer and Miss Walcott are as friendly as Kilkenny cats, too,” added Riley, with a left-handed attempt at humor.

“You have an X-ray eye,” commented Craig, with veiled sarcasm, which quite amused me, for the detective actually took it literally and thanked him. “Paquita is still about, then?”

“Yes, sir. Right after you went up-stairs she had her car brought around and started out for a spin—down the shore road. But she must have seen that one of our men was following, for she turned up-country and was back again in half an hour. If she intended to do anything, she must have been scared off. She’s up-stairs now, dressing for dinner, I suppose. I’ve got her checkmated. She can’t move without my knowing it—and she knows it.”

“Down the shore road,” repeated Kennedy, reflectively. “I wonder what she could have wanted down there. The wireless impulses came from the water side. Walter would you mind going down on the dock and telling that young man of mine he had better get a bite to eat right away and that then he can begin getting the stuff unpacked and set up!”

While Watkins took a hasty dinner at the Lodge, I relieved him of watching the packages he had brought. It was a tiresome wait, for I longed to be with Kennedy.

One thing, however, broke the monotony. Once when I looked up I caught sight of a launch putting out from the Sybarite and feathering over the choppy waves in the direction of the dock. As it came closer I saw that it contained Shelby Maddox, still alone. He came ashore and, as he walked up the dock, saw me and nodded absently. Evidently he was thinking of something else.

I was glad to rejoin Kennedy a few minutes later when Watkins returned and began to unwrap the packages, as Craig had ordered. Fortunately for the sake of my curiosity, nothing had occurred during my absence, except that Craig and Burke had seen Shelby enter, although he had done nothing.

It was the dinner hour and the guests were beginning to enter the dining-room. Shelby had already done so, selecting a table where he was in sight of that usually occupied by the Walcotts. Their table seemed deserted to-night. Johnson Walcott was not yet back, and Irene Maddox now sat at another table, with those of her family who had come to be with her at the funeral. Winifred did not come down to dinner at all, which seemed to vex Shelby, for it looked as though she were avoiding him. The only person at the table was Frances Walcott.

Convinced that no one else was coming in, Shelby glumly hurried through his meal, and finally, unable to stand it any longer, rose, and on the way out stopped to talk with his sister.

What was said we could not guess. But it was more like a parley during an armistice than a talk between brother and sister, and it did not seem to do Shelby much good.

Finally he drifted out aimlessly into the lobby again. As he stood undecided, we caught a glimpse of the petite figure of Paquita flitting from an alcove in his direction. Before he could avoid her she spoke to him.

However unwelcome the meeting might have been to Shelby—and his face showed plainly that it was so—there could be no doubt of Paquita’s eagerness to see him. As I looked at her I could only wonder at the strangeness of life. She whom men had pursued and had found elusive, even when they thought they had her captured, was now herself in the anomalous rôle of pursuer. And the man whom she pursued cared no more for her than she for those who pursued her. Nay more, he was openly, hopelessly in love with another woman, in every respect the antithesis of herself. Much as I disliked Paquita’s type, though realizing her fascination as a study, I could not help seeing the potential tragedy and pathos of the situation.

She did not accuse or upbraid. On the contrary, she was using every art of which she was a past mistress to fascinate and attract. I did not need prompting from Kennedy to see the strange romance of the situation. The little dancer was subtly matching all the charm and all the knowledge of men and the world which she possessed against the appeal that Winifred had made to a hitherto latent side of Shelby’s nature. The struggle between the two women was no less enthralling than the unraveling of the mystery of Marshall Maddox’s death.

“By Heaven!” I heard Kennedy mutter under his breath, as we watched Paquita and Shelby, “I wonder whether it is right to let events take their course. Yes—it must be. If he cannot go through it now, he’ll never be able to. Yes, Shelby Maddox must fight that out for himself. He shall not ruin the life of Winifred Walcott.”

His remark set me thinking of the responsibility Craig had had thrust on him. It was far more than merely running down the murderer of Marshall Maddox, now.

Shelby himself evidently appreciated what faced him. I could see that he was talking very bluntly and pointedly to her, almost rudely. Now and then she flashed a glance at him which, with her flushed face and the emotion expressed in her very being, could not have failed only three days ago. Shelby seemed to feel it, and took refuge in what looked to be an almost harshness of manner with her.

Kennedy jogged my arm and I followed his eyes. In the alcove from which she had come I was not surprised to see Sanchez, standing and looking at them. His dark eyes seemed riveted on the man as though he hated him with a supernal hate. What would he himself not have given to be where Shelby was? I wondered whether his blinded eyes saw the truth about Shelby’s position. I doubted it, for it was with difficulty that he restrained himself. Black and ominous were the looks that he darted at the younger man. Indeed, I did not envy him.

As I turned to say something to Kennedy I saw that Sanchez and ourselves were not the only ones interested. Frances Maddox had just come out of the dining room, had seen her brother and Paquita, and had drawn back into the shadow of a doorway leading to the porch, where she could see them better without being seen by them. Yet she betrayed nothing of her feelings toward either.

Meanwhile Shelby had been getting more and more vehement as he talked. I could not hear, but it was quite evident now that he was repeating and enforcing the remarks he had made to Paquita the night before during their secret stroll down the beach. And she, instead of getting angry, as he no doubt hoped she would, was keeping her temper and her control of herself in a most dangerous manner.

There was so much to think about that it was not until now that I noticed that the face we had seen in the alcove was gone. Sanchez had disappeared. Had the thing been too much for him? Was it that he could not trust himself to stay? At any rate, he was gone.

Just then Shelby turned on his heel, almost brutally, and deliberately walked away. It was as though he felt it his only escape from temptation.

Paquita took an involuntary step after him, then stopped short. I followed her quick glance to see what it might be that had deterred her. She had caught sight of Frances Walcott, whose interest had betrayed her into letting the light stream through the doorway on her face. Instantly Paquita covered the vexation that was on her face. Least of all would she let this man’s sister see it. Consummate actress that she was, she turned and walked across the lobby, and a moment later was in gay conversation with another of her numerous admirers. But it did not take an eye more trained than mine to see the gaiety was forced, the animation of quite a different character from that she had showed to Shelby.

“Of one thing we can be sure,” remarked Craig. “Miss Walcott will hear all about this. I hope she hears the truth. I’m almost tempted to tell her myself.” He paused, debating. “No,” he decided, finally, “the time hasn’t come yet.”

Shelby had retreated to the porch, where now he was pacing up and down, alone. As he came past the door his abstracted glance fell with a start on his sister. He drew himself together and spoke to her. Evidently he was debating whether she had seen anything, and, if so, how much and how she had interpreted it. At any rate, he was at pains to speak now, hoping that she might carry a message which he dared not send. What was going on in their minds I could not guess, but to outward appearance they were more like brother and sister than I had seen them ever before.

They parted finally and Shelby continued his measured tread about the porch, as though trying to make up his mind on a course of action. For about a quarter of an hour he walked, then, his face set in determined lines, entered the Lodge and went deliberately over to a florist’s stand. There, oblivious to anything else, he selected the handsomest bunch of violets on the stand. He was about to drop his card into their fragrant and reconciling depths when he paused, replaced the card in his case, and directed the man to deliver them anonymously. There was no need for us to inquire where they were sent.

Still oblivious to the gay life of the Lodge and Casino, he strode out into the night and down to the dock, paying no attention to Craig’s student as he passed. He stepped into the tender which was still waiting and we saw him head straight for the Sybarite. Ten minutes later the lights in the main saloon flashed up. Shelby was evidently at work over some problem, wrestling it out himself. Was it his relations with Winifred or his stock-market schemes—or both?

“Well, I’ve been looking all over for you. Where have you been?” sounded Burke’s voice back of us, as Kennedy and I were silently looking out over the dark waters at the yacht.

Without waiting for us to reply Burke hurried on. “You remember that operator, Steel, that was here from Seaville?”

“Yes,” encouraged Kennedy. “What of him?”

“He went back to the station and has done his trick. He has just crossed over again with a message to me. That wireless power, whatever it is, is jamming the air again. I thought you’d like to know of it.”

For just a second Kennedy looked at Burke in silence, then without further inquiry turned and almost ran down the length of the dock to the float at the end.

There Watkins had already set up on the float a large affair which looked for all the world like a mortar. We watched as Craig fussed with it to make sure that everything was all right. Meanwhile the student continued adjusting something else that had been let down over the edge of the float into the water. It seemed to be a peculiar disk, heavy and suspended by a stout wire which allowed it to be submerged eight or ten feet.

“What’s this thing?” inquired Burke, looking at the mortar over which Craig was bending. “Fireworks, or are you going to bombard somebody?”

“It’s a light-weight rocket mortar,” explained Kennedy, ramming something into it. “You’ll see in a moment. Stand back, all of you—off the float—on the dock.”

Suddenly there came a deep detonation from the mortar and a rocket shot out and up in a long, low parabola. Kennedy rushed forward, and another detonation sent a second far out in a different angle.

“What is it?” gasped Burke, in amazement.

“Look!” called Kennedy, elated.

Another instant, and from every quarter of the harbor there seemed to rise, as if from the waves, huge balls of fire, a brilliant and luminous series of flames literally from the water itself. It was a moonless night but these fires seemed literally to roll back the Cimmerian darkness.

“A recent invention,” explained Craig, “light-bombs, for use at night against torpedo-boat and aeroplane attacks.”

“Light-bombs!” Burke repeated.

“Yes, made of phosphide of calcium. The mortar hurls them out, and they are so constructed that they float after a short plunge in the water. You see, the action of the salt water automatically ignites them merely by contact and the chemical action of the phosphide and the salt water keeps them phosphorescing for several minutes.”

As he talked he shot off some more.

“Kennedy, you’re a genius,” gasped Burke. “You’re always ready for anything.”

The sight before us was indeed a beautiful pyrotechnic display. The bombs lighted up the shores and the low-lying hills, making everything stand forth and cast long spectral shadows. Cottages hidden among trees or in coves along the wide sweep of the shore line stood out as if in an unearthly flare.

What people on the shore thought we had no time even to wonder. They crowded out on the porches, in consternation. The music at the Casino stopped. No one had ever seen anything like it before. It was fire on water!

As yet none of us had even an inkling of what it was that Kennedy expected to discover. But every craft in the harbor now stood out distinct—in the glare of a miniature sun. We could see that, naturally, excitement on the boats was greater than it was on shore, for they were closer to the flares and therefore it seemed more amazing.

Craig was scanning the water carefully, seeking any sign of something suspicious.

“There it is!” he exclaimed, bending forward and pointing.

We strained our eyes. A mile or two out I could distinguish a power-boat of good size, moving swiftly away, as though trying to round the shelter of a point of land, out of the light. With a glass some one made out a stubby wireless mast on her.

Kennedy’s surmise when we had first studied the wireless interference had proved correct.

Sure enough, in the blackness of the night, there was a fast express cruiser, of the new scout type, not large, almost possible for one man to control, the latest thing in small power-boats and a perfect demon for speed!

Was that the source of the strange wireless impulses? Whose was it, and why was it there?

XXI

THE SUBMARINE EAR

Almost before we knew it the speed demon had disappeared beyond the circle of the flares.

“Suspiciously near the Sybarite,” remarked Kennedy, under his breath, watching the scout cruiser to the last moment as she ran away.

I wondered whether he meant that the swift little motor-boat might have some connection with Shelby Maddox and his new activities, but I said nothing, for Kennedy’s attention was riveted on the wake left by the boat. I looked, too, and could have sworn that there was something moving in the opposite direction to that taken by the boat. What could it be?

On the end of the dock was an incandescent lamp. Craig unscrewed the bulb and inserted another connection in the bulb socket, an insulated cable that led down to the apparatus on the float over which his assistant was still working.

By this time quite a crowd had collected on the dock, and on the float, watching us.

“Burke,” ordered Kennedy, “will you and Jameson make the people stand back? We can’t do anything with so many around.”

As we pressed the new-comers back I saw that among them was Paquita. Though I looked, I could not discover Sanchez, but thought nothing of it, for there were so many about that it would have been hard to find any particular person.

“If you will please stand back,” I implored, trying to keep the curious from almost swamping the float, “you will all be able to see what is going on just as well and, besides, it will be a great deal safer—providing there is an explosion,” I added as a happy afterthought, although I had almost as vague an idea what Kennedy was up to as any of them.

The words had the effect I intended. The crowd gave way, not only willing, but almost in panic.

As they pressed back, however, Paquita pressed forward until she was standing beside me.

“Is—Mr. Maddox—out there?” she asked, pointing out at the Sybarite anxiously.

“Why?” I demanded, hoping in her anxiety to catch her off guard.

She shot a quick glance at me. There was no denying that the woman was clever and quick of perception.

“Oh, I just wondered,” she murmured. “I wanted to see him, so much—that is all. And it’s very urgent.”

She glanced about, as though hoping to discover some means of communicating with the yacht, even of getting out to it. But there did not seem to be any offered.

I determined to watch her, and for that reason did not insist that she get back as far as the rest of the crowd. All the time I saw that she was looking constantly out at the Sybarite. Did she know something about Shelby Maddox that we did not know? I wondered if, indeed, there might be some valid reason why she should get out there. What did she suspect?

Again she came forward, inquiring whether there was not some way of communicating with the Sybarite, and again, when I tried to question her, she refused to give me any satisfaction. However, I could not help noticing that in spite of the cold manner in which Shelby had treated her, she seemed now to be actuated more by the most intense fear for him than by any malice against him.

What it meant I had the greatest curiosity to know, especially when I noticed that Paquita was glancing nervously about as though in great fear that some one might be present and see her. Nor did she seem to be deterred from showing her feelings by the fact that she knew that I, Kennedy’s closest friend, was watching and would undoubtedly report to him. It was as though she had abandoned discretion and cast fear to the winds.

As the minutes passed and nothing happened, Paquita became a trifle calmer and managed to take refuge in the crowd.

I took the opportunity again to run my eye over them. Nowhere in the crowd could I discover Winifred, or, in fact, any of the Maddox family. They seemed to be studiously avoiding appearance in public just now, and I could not blame them, for in a summer colony like that at Westport facts never troubled gossipers.

“What do you suppose Kennedy is afraid of?” whispered Hastings in my ear, nervously. “Your friend is positively uncanny, and I can almost feel that he fears something.”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” I confessed, “but I’ve seen enough of him to be sure that no one is going to catch him napping. Here’s Riley. Perhaps he has some news.”

The Secret Service operative had shouldered his way through the throng, looking for Burke, who was right behind me.

“What’s the matter,” demanded his chief.

“There’s another message, by telephone from the Seaville Station,” Riley reported. “They say they are having the same trouble again—only more of it.”

“That operator, Steel, came back again,” considered Burke. “Where is he?”

“As soon as I got the message, I hunted him up and took the liberty of sending him up to Mr. Kennedy’s room to look at that arrangement there. I couldn’t make anything out of it myself, I knew, and I thought that he could.”

“Did he?” inquired Burke.

“Yes. Of course he hadn’t seen it work before. But I told him as nearly as I could what you had told me, and it didn’t take him very long to catch on to the thing. After that he said that what was being recorded now must be just the same as it had been before when Mr. Kennedy was there—not messages, but just impulses.”

“Where is he—down here?”

“No, I left him up there. I thought it might be best to have some one there. Did you want to speak to him? There’s a telephone down here in the boat-house up to the switchboard at the Lodge.”

Riley jerked his thumb back over his shoulder at a little shelter built on the end of the dock.

“N-no,” considered Burke. “I wouldn’t know what to tell him.”

“But I think you ought to tell Kennedy that,” I interrupted. “He might know what to do.”

Together Riley and I walked across the float to where Craig was at work, and briefly I told him what had happened.

He looked grave, but did not pause in his adjustment of the machine, whatever it was.

“That’s all right,” he approved. “Yes, get the operator on the wire. Tell him to stay up there. And—yes—tell him to detach that phonograph recording device and go back to straight wireless. He might try to wake up the operator on the Sybarite, if he can. I guess he must know the call. Have him do that and then have that telephone girl keep the line clear and connected from the boat-house up to my room. I want to keep in touch with Steel.”

Riley and I pushed through the crowd and finally managed to deliver Kennedy’s message, in spite of the excitement at the Lodge, which had extended by this time to the switchboard operator. I left Riley in the boat-house to hold the wire up to our room, and rejoined Burke and Hastings on the float.

Kennedy had been working with redoubled energy, now that the light bombs had gone out after serving their purpose. We stood apart now as he made a final inspection of the apparatus which he and his assistant had installed.

Finally Craig pressed down a key which seemed to close a circuit including the connection in the electric-light socket and the arrangement that had been let over the edge of the float. Standing where we were we could feel a sort of dull metallic vibration under our feet, as it were.

“What are you doing?” inquired Hastings, looking curiously at a headgear which Kennedy had over his ears.

“It works!” exclaimed Craig, more to Watkins than to us.

“What does?” persisted Hastings.

“This Fessenden oscillator,” he cried, apparently for the first time recognizing that Hastings had been addressing him.

“What is it?” we asked crowding about. “What does it do?”

“It’s a system for the employment of sound for submarine signals,” he explained, hurriedly. “I am using it to detect moving objects in the water—under the water, perhaps. It’s really a submarine ear.”

In our excitement we could only watch him in wonder.

“People don’t realize the great advance that has been made in the use of water instead of air as a medium for transmitting sounds,” he continued, after a pause, during which he seemed to be listening, observing a stop watch, and figuring rapidly on a piece of paper, all at once. “I can’t stop to explain this apparatus, but, roughly, it is composed of a ring magnet, a copper tube which lies in an air gap of a magnetic field, and a stationary central armature. The magnetic field is much stronger than that in an ordinary dynamo of this size.”

Again he listened, as he pressed the key, and we felt the peculiar vibration, while he figured on the paper.

“The copper tube,” he resumed mechanically to us, though his real attention was on something else, “has an alternating current induced in it. It is attached to solid disks of steel, which in turn are attached to a steel diaphragm an inch thick. Surrounding the oscillator is a large watertight drum.”

“Then it makes use of sound-waves in the water?” queried Hastings, almost incredulously.

“Exactly,” returned Craig. “I use the same instrument for sending and receiving—only I’m not doing any real sending. You see, like the ordinary electric motor, it is capable of acting as a generator, too and a very efficient one. All I have to do is to throw a switch in one direction when I want to telegraph or telephone under water, and in the other direction when I want to listen.”

“Talking through water!” exclaimed Burke, awestruck by the very idea, as though it were scarcely believable.

“That’s not exactly what I’m doing now,” returned Kennedy, indulgently, “although I could do it if there was any one around this part of the country equipped to receive and reply. I rather suspect, though, that whoever it is is not only not equipped, but wouldn’t want to reply, anyhow.”

“Then what are you doing?” asked Burke, rather mystified.

“Well, you see I can send out signals and listen for their reflection—really the echo under water. More than that, I can get the sounds direct from any source that is making them. If there was a big steamer out there I could hear her engines and propellers, even if I couldn’t see her around the point. Light travels in straight lines, but you can get sounds around a corner, as it were.”

“Oh,” I exclaimed, “I think I see. Even if that little scout cruiser did disappear around the point, you can still hear her through the water. Is that it?”

“Partly,” nodded Kennedy. “You know, sound travels through water at a velocity of about four thousand feet a second. For instance, I find I can get an echo from somewhere practically instantaneously. That’s the bottom of the bay—here. Another echo comes back to me in about a twentieth of a second. That, I take it, is reflected from the sea wall on the shore, back of us, at high tide. It must be roughly a hundred feet—you see, that corresponds. It is a matter of calculation.”

“Is that all?” I prompted, as he paused again.

“No, I’ve located the echo from the Sybarite and some others. But,” he added slowly, “there’s one I can’t account for. There’s a sound that is coming to me direct from somewhere. I can’t just place it, for there isn’t a moving craft visible and it doesn’t give the same note as that little cruiser. It’s sharper. Just now I tried to send out my own impulses in the hope of getting an echo from it, and I succeeded. The echo comes back to me in something more than five seconds. You see, that would make twenty thousand-odd feet. Half of that would be nearly two miles, and that roughly corresponds with the position where we saw the scout cruiser at first, before it fled. There’s something out there.”

“Then I was right,” I exclaimed excitedly. “I thought I saw something in the wake of the cruiser.”

Kennedy shook his head gravely. “I’m afraid you were,” he muttered. “There’s something there, all right. That wireless operator is up in our room and you have a wire from the boathouse to him?”

“Yes,” I returned. “Riley’s holding it open.”

Anxiously Kennedy listened again in silence, as though to verify some growing suspicion. What was it he heard?

Quickly he pulled the headgear off and before I knew it had clapped it on my own head.

“Tell me what it sounds like,” he asked, tensely.

I listened eagerly, though I was no electrical or mechanical engineer, and such things were usually to me a sealed book. Still, I was able to describe a peculiar metallic throbbing.

“Record the time for the echo from it,” ordered Kennedy, thrusting the stop watch into my hands. “Press it the instant you hear the return sound after I push down the key. I want to be sure of it and eliminate my own personal equation from the calculation. Are you ready?”

I nodded and an instant later, as he noted the time, I heard through the oscillator the peculiar vibration I had felt when the key was depressed. On the qui vive I waited for the return echo. Sure enough, there it was and I mechanically registered it on the watch.

“Five and thirty-hundredths seconds,” muttered Kennedy. “I had five and thirty-five hundredths. It’s coming nearer—you hear the sound direct again?”

I did, just a trifle more distinctly, and I said so.

Confirmed in his own judgment, Craig hastily turned to the student. “Run up there to the boat-house,” he directed. “Have Riley call that wireless operator on the telephone and tell him to get the Sybarite on the wireless—if he hasn’t done it already. Then have him tell them not to try to move the yacht under any circumstance—but for God’s sake to get off it themselves—as quick as they can!”

“What’s the matter?” I asked, breathlessly. “What was that humming in the oscillator?”

“The wireless destroyer—the telautomaton model—has been launched full at the Sybarite,” Craig exclaimed. “You remember it was large enough, even if it was only a model, to destroy a good-sized craft if it carried a charge of high explosive. It has been launched and is being directed from that fast cruiser back of the point.”

We looked at one another aghast. What could we do? There was a sickening feeling of helplessness in the face of this new terror of the seas.

“It—it has really been launched?” cried an agitated voice of a girl behind us.

Paquita had pushed her way altogether through the crowd while we were engrossed in listening through the submarine ear. She had heard what Kennedy had just said and now stood before us, staring wildly.

“Oh,” she cried, frantically clasping her hands, “isn’t there anything—anything that can stop it—that can save him?”

She was not acting now. There could be no doubt of the genuineness of her anxiety, nor of whom the “him” meant. I wondered whether she might have been directly or indirectly responsible, whether she was not now repentant for whatever part she had played. At least she must be, as far as Shelby Maddox was involved. Then I recollected the black looks that Sanchez had given Shelby earlier in the evening. Was jealousy playing a part as well as cupidity?

Kennedy had been busy, while the rest of us had been standing stunned. Suddenly another light-bomb ricocheted over the water.

“Keep on sending them, one by one,” he ordered the student, who had returned. “We’ll need all the light we can get.”

Over the shadowy waves we could now see the fine line of foam left by the destroyer as it shot ahead swiftly.

Events were now moving faster than I can tell them. Kennedy glanced about. On the opposite side of the float some one of the visitors from the cottages to the dance at the Casino had left a trim hardwood speedboat. Without waiting to inquire whose it was, Craig leaped into it and spun the engine.

“The submarine ear has warned us,” he shouted, beckoning to Burke and myself. “Even if we cannot save the yacht, we may save their lives! Come on!”

We were off in an instant and the race was on—one of the most exciting I have ever been in—a race between this speedy motor-boat and a telautomatic torpedo to see which might get to the yacht first. Though we knew that the telautomaton had had such a start before it was discovered that we could not beat it, still there was always the hope that its mechanism might slow down or break down.

Failing to get there first, there was always a chance of our being in at the rescue.

In the penetrating light of the flare-bombs, as we approached closer the spot in which Watkins was now dropping them regularly, we could see the telautomaton, speeding ahead on its mission of death, its wake like the path of a great man-eating fish. What would happen if it struck I could well imagine.

Each of us did what he could to speed the motor. For this was a race with the most terrible engine yet devised by American inventive genius.

XXII

THE TELAUTOMATON

Devilishly, while the light-bombs flared, the telautomaton sped relentlessly toward its mark.

We strained our eyes at the Sybarite. Would they never awake to their danger? Was the wireless operator asleep or off duty? Would our own operator be unable to warn them in time?

Then we looked back to the deadly new weapon of modern war science. Nothing now could stop it.

Kennedy was putting every inch of speed into the boat which he had commandeered.

“As a race it’s hopeless,” he gritted, bending ahead over the wheel as if the boat were a thing that could be urged on. “What they are doing is to use the Hertzian waves to actuate relays on the torpedo. The wireless carries impulses so tuned that they release power carried by the machine itself. The thing that has kept the telautomaton back while wireless telegraphy has gone ahead so fast is that in wireless we have been able to discard coherers and relays and use detectors and microphones in their places. But in telautomatics you have to keep the coherer. That has been the barrier. The coherer until recently has been spasmodic, until we got the mercury steel disk coherer—and now this one. See how she works—if only it could be working for us instead of against us!”

On sped the destroyer. It was now only a matter of seconds when it would be directed squarely at the yacht. In our excitement we shouted, forgetting that it was of no use, that they would neither hear nor, most likely, know what it was we meant.

Paquita’s words rang in my ears. Was there nothing that could be done?

Just then we saw a sailor rush frantically and haul in a boat that was fastened to a boom extending from the yacht’s side.

Then another and another ran toward the first. They had realized at last our warning was intended for them. The deck was now alive and faintly over the water we could hear them shouting in frantic excitement, as they worked to escape destruction coming at them now at express train speed.

Suddenly there came a spurt of water, a cloud of spray, like a geyser rising from the harbor. The Sybarite seemed to be lifted bodily out of the water and broken. Then she fell back and settled, bow foremost, heeling over, as she sank down to the mud and ooze of the bottom. The water closed over her and she was gone, nothing left but fragments of spars and woodwork which had been flung far and wide.

Through my mind ran the terrible details I had read of ships torpedoed without warning and the death and destruction of passengers. At least there were no women and children to add to this horror.

Kennedy slowed down his engine as we approached the floating wreckage, for there was not only the danger of our own frail little craft hitting something and losing rudder or propeller, but we could not tell what moment we might run across some of those on the yacht, if any had survived.

Other boats had followed us by this time, and we bent all our energies to the search, for pursuit of the scout cruiser was useless. There was not a craft in the harbor capable of overtaking one of her type, even in daylight. At night she was doubly safe from pursuit.

There was only one thing that we might accomplish—rescue. Would we be in time, would we be able to find Shelby? As my mind worked automatically over the entire swift succession of events of the past few days I recalled every moment we had been observing him, every action. I actually hated myself now for the unspoken suspicion of him that I had entertained. I could see that, though Kennedy had been able to promise him nothing openly, he had in reality been working in Shelby’s real interests.

There flashed through my mind a picture of Winifred. And at the same time the thought of what this all meant to her brought to me forcibly the events of the night before. One attack after another had been leveled against us, starting with the following and shooting at Hastings at our very laboratory door. Burke had been attacked. Then had come the attack on Kennedy, which had miscarried and struck me. Death had been leveled even at Mito, as though he had possessed some great secret. Next had come the attempted abduction of Winifred Walcott. And at last it had culminated in the most spectacular attack of all, on Shelby himself.

Try as I could by a process of elimination, I was unable to fix the guilt on any one in particular, even yet. Fixing guilt, however, was not what was needed now.

We had come into the area of the floating debris, and the possibility of saving life was all that need concern us. In the darkness I could make out cries, but they were hard to locate.

We groped about, trying hard to cover as much area as possible, but at the same time fearful of defeating our own purposes by striking some one with bow or propeller of our speed boat. Every now and then a piece of the wreckage would float by and we would scan it anxiously in mingled fear and hope that it would assume a human form as it became more clearly outlined. Each time that we failed we resumed the search with desperate determination.

“Look!” cried Burke, pointing at a wooden skylight that seemed to have been lifted from the deck and cast but into the waves, the glass broken, but the frame nearly intact. “What’s that on it?”

Kennedy swung the boat to port and we came alongside the dark, bobbing object.

It was the body of a man.

With a boat-hook Craig hauled the thing nearer and we leaned over the side and together pulled the limp form into our boat.

As we laid him on some cushions on the flooring, our boat drifted clear and swung around so that the flare shone in his face. He stirred and groaned, but did not relax the grip of his fingers still clenched after we had torn them loose from the skylight grating.

It was Shelby Maddox—terribly wounded, but alive.

Others of the crew were floating about, and we set to work to get them, now aided by the volunteer fleet that had followed us out. When it was all over we found that all had been accounted for so far, except the engineer and one sailor.

Just at present we had only one thought in mind. Shelby Maddox must be saved, and to be saved he must be rushed where there was medical assistance.

Shouting orders to those who had come up to continue the search, Kennedy headed back toward the town of Westport.

The nearest landing was the town dock at the foot of the main street, and toward this Craig steered.

There was no emergency hospital, but one of the bystanders volunteered to fetch a doctor, and it was not long before Shelby was receiving the attention he needed so badly.

He had been badly cut about the head by flying glass, and the explosion had injured him internally, how serious could not be determined, although two of his ribs had been broken. Only his iron will and athletic training had saved him, for he was weak, not only from the loss of blood, but from water which he had been unable to avoid swallowing.

The doctor shook his head gravely over him, but something had to be done, even though it was painful to move him. He could not lie there in an open boat.

Kennedy settled the matter quickly. From a tenant who lived over a store near the waterfront he found where a delivery wagon could be borrowed. Using a pair of long oars and some canvas, we improvised a stretcher which we slung from the top of the wagon and so managed to transport Shelby to the Harbor House, avoiding the crowd of curious onlookers at the main entrance, and finally depositing him in the bed in the room which he usually occupied.

The pain from his wounds was intense, but he managed to keep up his nerve until we reached the hotel. Then he collapsed.

As we tried to help the doctor to bring him around I feared that the injury and the shock might have proved fatal.

“Pretty serious,” muttered the doctor, in answer to my anxious inquiry, “but I think he’ll pull through it. Call up Main 21. There’s a trained nurse summering at the house. Get her down.”

I hastened to do so and had hardly finished when Kennedy came over to me.

“I think we ought to notify his sister,” he remarked. “See if you can get Mrs. Walcott on the house ’phone.”

I called, but the voice that answered was not that of Frances Walcott. It took me a few seconds before I realized that it was Winifred Walcott, and I covered up the transmitter as I turned to Kennedy to tell him and ask what he wanted me to do.

“Let me talk to her,” decided Craig. “I think I won’t let events take their course any longer. She can be the best nurse for Shelby—if she will.”

Craig had evidently prepared to break the news gently to her, but, as nearly as I could make out, it was not necessary. She had already heard what had happened.

“No,” I heard him say, as if in answer to an anxious question from her. “He is seriously hurt, to be sure, but the doctor says that with proper nursing he will pull through.”

I did not hear the reply, of course, but I recognized the appeal hidden in Kennedy’s answer, as he waited.

“Just a moment,” I heard him say next.

His forehead wrinkled as he listened to something, evidently trying to make it out. Then he said, suddenly: “I think I had better say no more over the telephone, Miss Walcott. Some one is listening to us.”

An angry look flashed over his face, but his voice showed no anger as he said good-by and hung up.

“What was it?” I asked. “What did she do?”

“It wasn’t Miss Walcott,” he replied, scowling. “You heard me say that some one was listening? Well, just as I said it there came a laugh over the wire from somewhere, and a voice cut in, ‘Yes, there is some one listening. You haven’t caught me yet, Kennedy—and you won’t.’ I said good-by after that. Oh, have no fear about Miss Walcott.”

Kennedy was right. It seemed an incredibly short time when there came a light tap on the door and he sprang to open it.

“Can I—be of any assistance?” pleaded a softly tremulous voice. “Perhaps I—could play at nursing?”

Kennedy glanced at the doctor and the figure lying so quietly on the bed, then at the girl, and decided. She had hesitated not a moment, when she had heard how close Shelby was to death, but had hurried to him. He opened the door and she entered softly, tiptoeing toward the bed.

It must have been by some telepathic influence that Shelby, who had a moment before been scarcely conscious, felt her presence. She had scarcely whispered a word to the doctor, as she bent over him, but he opened his eyes, caught just a glimpse of her face, and seemed to drink it in as his eyes rested on the bunch of flowers she was wearing—his flowers, which he had sent her.

He smiled faintly. Not even by a word or look was any reference made to their misunderstanding. It was a strange meeting, but it seemed that the very atmosphere had changed. Even the doctor noticed it. In spite of his pain, Shelby had brightened visibly.

“I don’t think we need that nurse,” whispered the doctor to Kennedy, with an understanding glance. “What was that you said about some one listening over the telephone? Who could it have been?”

The doctor said it in a low enough tone, but it seemed that Maddox’s senses must have been suddenly made more acute by the coming of Winifred.

He had reached out, weakly but unhesitatingly, and had placed his hand on hers as it rested on his pillows. At the mention of the telephone he turned toward us with an inquiring look. It seemed to recall to his mind something that had been on it before the accident.

“Some one—listening,” he repeated, more to himself than to us.

Winifred looked inquiringly at us, too, but said nothing.

Kennedy tried to pass the thing over, but the doctor’s remark seemed to have started some train of thought in Shelby’s mind, which could not be so easily stopped.

“Some one—pounding Maddox Munitions,” he murmured, brokenly, as if feeling his way through a maze. “Now I’m out—they’ll succeed. What can I do? How can I hold up the market?”

He repeated the last two questions as though turning them over in his mind and finding no answer.

Evidently he was talking about his operations in the market which had been so puzzling to Hastings as well as ourselves. I was about to say something that would prompt him to go on with his revelation, when Kennedy’s look halted me. Apparently he did not wish to interfere with the train of thought the doctor’s remark had started, inasmuch as it had been started now.

“Some one—listening—over the telephone,” strove Shelby again. “Yes—how can I do it? No more secrecy—laid up here—I’ll have to use the telephone. Will those Broad Street brokers take orders over long distance? Everybody will know—what I’m doing. They’ll delay—play me for a sucker. What am I to do?”

It was evident now what Shelby had been doing, at least in part. The tragedy to his brother had quite naturally depressed the stock of the company. Indeed, with Marshall Maddox, its moving spirit, gone, it was no wonder that many holders had begun to feel shaky. Once that feeling began to become general, the stock, which had had a meteoric rise lately along with other war stocks, would begin to sag and slump sadly. There was no telling where it would stop if once the downward trend began.

As I looked at the young man I felt a new respect for him. Even though I had not a much clearer idea than at the start of how or by whom Marshall Maddox had been killed, still I do not think any of us had believed that Shelby was capable of seeing such a crisis so clearly and acting upon what he saw. Evidently it was in his blood, bred in the Maddox nature. He was a great deal more clever than any of us had suspected. Not only had he realized the judgment of outsiders about himself, but had taken advantage of it. In keeping the stock up, if it had been known that it was he who was doing it, it would not have counted for half what it did when the impression prevailed that the public was doing it, or even some hazy financial interest determined to maintain the price. Both possibilities had been discussed by the market sharps. It had never seemed to occur to them that Shelby Maddox might be using his personal fortune to bolster up what was now in greater measure his own company.

For a moment we looked blankly at Kennedy. Then Shelby began to talk again.

“Suppose the bear raid continues?” he murmured. “I must meet it—I must!”

The doctor leaned over to Craig. “He can’t go on that way,” he whispered. “It will use up his strength in worry.”

Kennedy was thinking about that, too, as he considered the very difficult situation the telautomaton attack had placed Shelby in. It was more than a guess that the attack had been carefully calculated. Some one else, perhaps some hidden group, was engaged in taking advantage of the death of Marshall Maddox in one way, Shelby in another.

As for Shelby, here he was, helpless, at the Harbor House. Surrounded by spies, as he seemed to be, what could he do? Every message in and out of the hotel was most likely tapped. To use the telephone was like publishing abroad one’s secrets.

Kennedy moved over quietly to the bedside, as Winifred looked appealingly at him, as much as to say, “Isn’t there something you can do to quiet him?”

He bent down and took Shelby’s hand.

“Oh—it’s you, Kennedy—is it?” wandered Shelby, not quite clear yet where he was, in the fantasy of impressions that crowded his mind since the accident. “I asked you to work with me once. You said you would play fair.”

“I will,” repeated Kennedy, “as far as the interests of my client go, I will give you every assistance. But if you are to do anything at all to-morrow, you must rest to-night.”

“Have I—have I been talking?” queried Shelby, as though in doubt whether he had been thinking to himself or aloud.

Kennedy ignored the question. “You need rest,” he said, simply. “Let the doctor fix you up now. In the morning—well, to-morrow will be another day.”

Shelby passed his hand wearily over his aching head. He was too weak to argue.

While the doctor prepared a mild opiate Kennedy and I quietly withdrew into the next room.

“Professor Kennedy—won’t you help us?” pleaded Miss Walcott, who had followed. “Surely something can be done.”

I could not help noticing that she said “us,” not “him.” As I watched her the scene on the float, hours before, flashed over me. There another woman, under quite different circumstances, had made the same appeal. Where did Paquita fit into the scheme of things? Two women had been striving over Shelby’s life. Did one represent his better nature, the other his worse?

Kennedy looked frankly at Winifred Walcott.

“You will trust me?” he asked in a low tone.

“Yes,” she said, simply, meeting his eyes in turn.

“Then when the nurse arrives,” he directed, “get some rest. I shall need you to-morrow.”

XXIII

THE CURB MARKET

“It’s impossible to trace all the telephone lines back,” considered Kennedy, thinking still of the eavesdropping, as we met Burke again down-stairs. “Perhaps if we begin at the other end, and follow the wires from the point where they enter the building to the switchboard, we may find something. If we don’t, then we shall have to work harder, that’s all.”

With the aid of Burke, who had ways of getting what he wanted from the management of anything, from a bank to a hotel, we succeeded in getting down into the cellar quietly.

Kennedy began by locating the point in the huge cellar of the Lodge where the wires of the two telephones, 100 and 101 Main, entered underground, that system having been adopted so as to avoid unsightly wires outside the hotel.

Carefully Craig began a systematic search as he followed the two lines to the point underneath the switchboard up-stairs. So far nothing irregular had been apparent.

Craig looked up perplexed, and I feared that he was about to say that the search must be continued wherever the wires led through the house, a gigantic and almost impossible task.

Instead, he was looking at a little dark store-room that was near the point where we were standing. He walked over to it curiously and peered in. Then he struck a match. In the flickering light we could see a telephone receiver and a little switchboard standing beside it.

For a moment his hand hesitated on the receiver, as though he were afraid that by taking it off the hook it might call or alarm somebody. Finally he seemed to decide that unless something were risked nothing would be gained. He took the receiver deliberately and held it up to his ear.

“Do you hear anything?” I asked.

He shook his head as if to discourage conversation. Then he changed the plugs and listened again. Several times he repeated it. At last he kept the plugs in for some time, while we waited in the darkness, in silence.

“Evidently some one has tapped the regular telephone wires,” he said to us at length, “and has run extensions to this little switchboard in the store-room, prepared to overhear almost anything that goes on over either set of wires that come in. And they have done more. They must have tampered with the switchboard up-stairs. Just now I heard the girl call Shelby’s room. The doctor answered. That trained nurse has arrived and Miss Walcott has gone to her room as she promised. We can’t take the time to trace out how it is done, and besides it is too dark at night to do it, anyhow. Shelby was right.”

For a moment Kennedy tried to puzzle the thing out, as though determining what was the best course to pursue. Then he stooped down and began picking up even the burnt matches he had dropped.

“Don’t disturb a thing,” he said to Burke. “We must circumvent this scheme. Has the last train back to the city gone?”

Burke looked at his watch. “Yes, unfortunately,” he nodded.

“Then I’ll have to send some one back to the city to my laboratory by automobile,” continued Kennedy. “I can’t wait until morning, for we shall have to go to the city then. There’s that student of mine—but he’s pretty tired.”

“I can get a car and a fresh driver for him,” remarked Burke. “Perhaps he could doze off during the ride. How would that do?”

“It will have to do,” decided Kennedy. “Get the car.”

We went back up-stairs by the way of the kitchen to avoid suspicion, and while Burke hunted up a car and driver Kennedy found Watkins and gave him detailed instructions about what he wanted.

“I calculate that it will take him at least four hours to go and get back,” remarked Kennedy, a few minutes later. “There isn’t anything we can do yet. I think we had better get a little rest, for I anticipate a strenuous time to-morrow.”

We passed through the lobby. There was Sanchez, talking to the night clerk.

“I was down on the dock in front of the Casino when the explosion came,” we could hear him telling the clerk. “Yes, sir, it’s a wonder any of them were saved.”

“What did you think of that?” queried Burke, in the elevator. “A crude attempt at an alibi?”

Kennedy shrugged non-committally.

“I think I’ll have Riley watch him until he goes to bed,” continued the Secret Service man. “I can telephone down from the room. No one is listening now, at least.”

“By all means,” agreed Craig.

Tired though we were, I do not think we slept very much as we waited for the return of the car from New York. Still, we were at least resting, although to me the hours seemed to pass as a shifting phantasmagoria of fire-balls and explosions strangely blended with the faces of the two beautiful women who had become the chief actresses in the little drama. From one very realistic dream in which I saw Winifred, Paquita, Irene Maddox, and Frances Walcott all fantastically seated as telephone operators and furiously ringing Shelby’s bell, I woke with a start to find that it was our own bell ringing and that Kennedy was answering it.

“The car is back from the city,” he said to me. “You needn’t get up. I can do this job alone.”

There was no sleep for me, however, I knew, and with a final yawn I pulled myself together and joined Craig and Burke in the hall as we went down-stairs as quietly as we could.

Riley had left a hastily scribbled report in the letter-box for Burke, saying that Sanchez had done nothing further suspicious, but had gone to bed. Paquita was in her room. Winifred, Mr. and Mrs. Walcott, Irene Maddox, and all the rest were present and accounted for, and he had decided on resting, too.

Kennedy sent Watkins off to bed, after taking from him the things he had brought back from the city, and the early morning, just as it was beginning to lighten a bit, found us three again in the cellar.

Kennedy carefully reconnoitered the store-room where the telephone outfit had been placed. It was deserted, and he set to work quickly. First he located the wires that represented the number 100 Main and connected them with what looked very much like a seamless iron tube, perhaps six inches long and three inches in diameter. Then he connected in a similar manner the other end of the tube with the wires of Main 101.

“This is a special repeating coil of high efficiency,” he explained to Burke, whom he was instructing, as it occurred to him, just what he wanted done later. “It is absolutely balanced as to resistance, number of turns, everything. I shall run this third line from the coil itself outside and up-stairs through Shelby’s window. Before I go to the city I want you to see that the local telephone company keeps a couple of wires to the city clear for us. I’ll get them on the wire and explain the thing, if you’ll use your authority at this end of the line.”

In spite of the risk of disturbing Shelby Maddox, Kennedy finished leading the wires from the coil up to his room and placed a telephone set on a table near the bed. Then he carefully concealed the tube in the cellar so that under ordinary circumstances no one could find it or even guess that anything had been done with the two trunk lines.

Shelby was resting quietly under an opiate and the nurse was watching faithfully. I did not hear Kennedy’s instructions entirely, but I remember he said that Burke was to be allowed into the outer room and that Shelby Maddox and Winifred were to talk only over the new line as he would later direct.

Again we retired to our rooms, and I fell asleep listening to Kennedy instruct Burke minutely in something which I think was just as much Greek to the Secret Service man as it was to me. Kennedy saw that it was and wrote down what he had already said, to make doubly sure.

My sleep was dreamless this time, for I was thoroughly tired. Whether Kennedy slept I do not know, but I suspect that he did not, for when he was conducting a case he seemed unable to rest as long as there was something over which he could work or think.

It seemed almost no time before Kennedy roused me. He was already dressed—in fact, I don’t think he had taken time for more than a change of linen.

A hasty bite of breakfast and we were again on the first accommodation train that went into the city in the cool gray dawn, leaving Burke with instructions to keep us informed of anything important that he discovered.

No one for whom we cared saw us leave and we had the satisfaction of knowing that we should be in the city and at work long before any one probably knew it. That was a quality of Kennedy’s vigilance and sleeplessness.

“It’s just as important to guard against prying ears at this end of the line as the other,” remarked Kennedy, after hurriedly mapping out a course for ourselves, which included, first of all, calling out of bed an officer of the telephone company with whom he was intimately acquainted and whom he could therefore afford to take into his confidence.

Without a moment’s more delay we hurried down-town from the railroad station.

Shelby Maddox had given Craig the names of two Curb brokers with whom he was dealing in confidence, for, although Maddox Munitions was being traded in largely, it was still a Curb market stock and not listed on the big exchange.

“They are in the same building on Broad Street,” remarked Kennedy as we left the Subway at the Wall Street station and took the shortest cuts through the basements of several tall buildings in the financial district. “And I don’t trust either one of them any farther than I can see him.”

It was very early, and comparatively few people were about. Craig, however, managed to find the janitor of the building where the brokers’ offices were—a rather old structure overlooking that point where Broad Street widens out and has been seized on by that excited, heterogeneous collection of speculators who gather daily in a corner roped off from traffic, known as the Curb market. From the janitor he learned that there was one small office in the front of the building for rent at a seemingly prohibitive rate. It was no time to haggle over money, and Kennedy laid down a liberal deposit for the use of the room.

His tentative arrangements with the janitor had scarcely been completed when two men from the telephone company arrived. Into our new and unfurnished office Craig led them, while the janitor, for another fee, agreed to get us a flat-topped desk and some chairs.

“Whatever we do,” began Craig in a manner that inspired enthusiasm, “must be done quickly. You have the orders of the company to go ahead. There’s one line that runs into the office of Dexter & Co., on the second floor, another to Merrill & Moore on the fourth. I want you to locate the wires, cut in on them, and run the cut-in extensions to this office. It’s not a wire-tapping game, so you need have no fear that there will be any come-back on what you do.”

While the telephone men were busy locating the two sets of wires, Kennedy laid out on the desk which the janitor brought up on the freight elevator a tube and coil similar to that which I had already seen him employ at Westport.

Though the telephone men were as clever as any that the official of the company could have sent, it was a complicated task to locate the wires and carry out the instructions that Kennedy had given, and it took much longer than he had anticipated. At least, it seemed long, in our excited frame of mind. Every minute counted now, for the advance guard of office boys, stenographers and clerks had already begun to arrive at the offices in preparation for the work of the day.

We had fortunately been able to start early enough so that that part of the work which would have excited comment was already done before the office workers arrived. As for the rest, on the surface it appeared only as though some one had rented the vacant office and had been able to hurry the telephone company along in installing its service.

There was no difficulty about connecting up our own regular telephone, and as soon as it was done Kennedy hastened to call Westport and the Lodge on long distance.

“Shelby has awakened much improved after his night’s rest,” he announced, after a rapid-fire conversation. “Miss Walcott is with him now, as well as the nurse. I think we can depend on Burke to handle things properly out there. It’s an emergency and we’ll have to take chances. I don’t blame Shelby for feeling impatient and wishing he could be here. But I told the doctor that as long as things were as they are he had better humor his patient by giving him an outlet for his excitement than to keep him fuming and eating his heart out in bed, helpless. Between Winifred and ourselves we ought to keep him occupied.”

I do not think that the telephone men had the faintest idea what it was that Kennedy was planning to do, and I am quite sure that I did not. For, in addition to the outfit like that at Westport, he now laid on the table a peculiar arrangement. It seemed to consist of a metal base, which he placed near the telephone receiver. From the base three prongs reached up, and there was attached to it on one side one of those little flat, watch-case receivers such as are used on office telephones.

It was getting late, and Kennedy and the men from the telephone company were working as rapidly as possible, testing and adjusting the connections he had caused to be made.

As I stood by the window, watching the gathering crowd below, I suddenly realized that the market had opened.

It was as Kennedy had expected. Pandemonium seemed to reign on the Curb. Buyers and sellers crowded and elbowed one another, wildly shouting and gesticulating. From the thick of what looked like a huge free-for-all fight orders and sales were relayed by word of mouth to clerks standing on the sidewalk, who in turn shouted them to other clerks in the windows of our own building or others about, or despatched messengers to offices farther away. It was a curious sight, and one never to be forgotten.

Passers-by stopped on both sides of the street to look and listen to the struggling mob, and I soon saw that even the usually electrified atmosphere of the Curb was this morning more than ordinarily surcharged with excitement. Far above all the noise and bustle I made out that there had been overnight a veritable flood of orders from weak holders, as well as others, to sell Maddox Munitions. It was not the weak holders we feared so much as the hidden “others” who were seeking to manipulate the stock.

Our telephone rang and Craig answered it, while the men still worked on the new line. It was Shelby. He had called up his brokers and had heard of the market opening.

“Not quite ready yet,” hastened Kennedy. “Go ahead and place your orders over the regular wire with the brokers. I’ll let you know when we’re ready and what to do. Don’t worry.”

Kennedy had stationed me now permanently at the window to report what was happening below. From my eery point of vantage I could now see that the first flood of selling orders was receding, as Shelby’s brokers wormed their way in and now and then snapped up a lot of stock offered for sale. The buying momentarily seemed to stiffen the price which before had threatened to toboggan.

Yet no sooner had the buying begun than it seemed as if other blocks of stock were brought up for sale. It was, for all the world, like a gigantic battle in which forces were hurled here and there, with reinforcements held in reserve to be loosed at just the right moment. Who was back of it?

Gradually, in spite of the large purchases which Shelby had made, the price of the stock worked its way down. I began to understand something of what was going on. Actually it seemed as though every time there was an order to buy, coming from either Dexter or Merrill & Moore, there was a corresponding new order to sell by some other broker. Thousands of shares were thus being dumped on the market, recklessly, relentlessly.

It looked as though some one was “wise.” Were the brokers with whom Shelby was dealing straight? I said as much to Kennedy, but he merely shook his head and plunged into work deeper.

One after another blocks of stock appeared for sale. There could be no doubt now that there was a carefully planned quick assault being made at the very opening of trading to take people by surprise at the suddenness of the bear raid.

More and more frenzied became the selling and buying. I could imagine the strain that it placed on Shelby, miles away, forced to take only the reports that his brokers sent him, and to fling back other and larger orders to buy.

As the trading progressed it became evident that the offerings of stock were coming with more surprising regularity. The more I observed the more I was convinced that there was some collusion here. It was not chance. Some one was informed of each move of Shelby’s, even before it could be executed, was enabled to prepare for it, to meet it with a decided advantage. It was a game being played for high stakes, but as far as Shelby was concerned, the cards were stacked and marked.

Our telephone rang insistently and Kennedy answered it. It was from Dexter. They were feeling shaky and worried.

Our door opened and a clerk from the Merrill & Moore firm entered. He was suave and polite. But back of it all could be discovered the eagerness to stand from under a possible crash.

“You will readily understand,” the broker hinted, “that under the circumstances we cannot continue to take Mr. Maddox’s orders over the telephone indefinitely. Suppose he should repudiate some of them? Where would we find ourselves?”

Kennedy glanced at the two telephone men, one of whom had straightened up and was watching the other.

“I understand,” he said, simply, a grim smile flickering about his mouth. “Just a moment, sir. Walter—keep Dexter on this wire.”

Below on the street I could hear the babel of voices. I knew what it meant. At both ends of Shelby’s telephone line were traitors. A panic in the stock was not only threatened. It was here.

Maddox Munitions was on the verge of collapse!

XXIV

THE PHANTOM CIRCUIT

I looked at Kennedy in despair. He was not even perturbed. It was for just this moment that he had hurried to New York and had worked so intensely.

Over the telephone that I was holding, Dexter himself politely informed us that he had reached a point where orders from Mr. Maddox to be filled must have some more binding force than word of mouth over the telephone.

“Tell him to wait just a moment,” directed Kennedy, turning to the other broker who had come to us. “Will you, sir, tell Mr. Merrill to step down to the office of Mr. Dexter? I shall be there in a moment myself. Walter,” he added, calmly, “ring Dexter off. Get Shelby Maddox and tell him to use the new wire connections.”

I did as I was told. Even over the telephone I could feel that the strain was telling on Shelby’s shattered strength. His voice was shaky as he inquired thickly for news. I shouted something encouraging back, and urged him to get on the other wire, at which, at our end, Kennedy was already impatiently waiting.

A moment later I heard Kennedy and Shelby exchange a few words. Shelby was evidently much alarmed over the sudden turn of events.

As I waited, I saw Kennedy jam the receiver down on the little metal base. The three prongs, reaching upward, engaged the receiver tightly, fitting closely about it. Then he took the small disk receiver from its hook and placed it to his ear instead of the regular one.

I wondered what it all meant. Craig’s face showed that, whatever it was, it was most important.

“Yes,” I heard him call back, “give whatever orders you want now to me. I will see that they are delivered. Pay no attention to the other telephone. Let it ring—until I tell you. Go ahead.”

Evidently Shelby was giving orders for stock up to the limit of his resources that were available.

For a moment there evidently came a pause in what was being said over the telephone at the Westport end, and Kennedy gazed impatiently about the room.

“What good will that do?” I objected, seeing that Kennedy was not occupied. “Don’t you suppose they’ll hear what is said over this line, too? We know they’ve cut in on the two trunk lines at the Harbor House, and there is every reason to suppose that some one taps the brokers’ wires here—unless the brokers are crooks, too. They’ll know what Shelby is going to do.”

Kennedy shook his head. “No,” he replied, calmly, “no outsider knows a thing about this. You see, I’m not using any ordinary means to prepare against the expert who has brought this situation about. The messages that I am receiving are coming over what we call the ‘phantom circuit.’”

“‘The phantom circuit?’” I repeated, mystified.

“Yes. It seems fantastic at first, I suppose,” he pursued, “but, after all, it is in accordance with the laws of electricity. They know nothing and they cannot cut us off or interfere. You see, I am taking advantage of the fact that additional telephones or so-called phantom lines can be superposed on existing physical lines. It is possible to obtain a third circuit from two similar metallic circuits by using for each side of this third circuit the two wires of each of the other circuits in multiple. All three circuits are independent, too.”

He was growing more and more impatient. Apparently there was some delay at the other end.

“The third telephone current,” he went on, hurriedly, covering up his nervousness by talking about his machine, “enters the wires of the first circuit, as it were, and returns along the wires of the second circuit. There are several ways of doing it. One is to use retardation or choke-coils, bridged across the two metallic circuits at both ends, with taps taken from the middle points of each. But the better method, I think, is the one you have seen me install. I have introduced repeating coils into the circuits at both ends. Technically, the third circuit is then taken off from the mid-points of the secondaries or line windings of these repeating coils. I don’t know what’s the matter,” he added, calling vainly for Shelby Maddox. “Oh, all right. Yes, I’ll wait. But hurry, please.”