Hollis Godfrey

“ 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. ”

“ The golden ribbons of the reflectoscopes once more stood stiffly separate and the moving belt stood still. The beam of light was just fluttering to rest almost on the zero.
“Out there! Right out there!” I shouted. “Come!” and throwing open the door, I rushed towards the beach, followed by the others. I pointed to the mass of wreckage rising and falling on the tide. “There! there!” I shouted. “He just destroyed that yacht.”
“There’s a survivor,” cried Tom, as we ran stumbling on over the rocks and sand towards a plank which bore a living man towards shore. ”

“ 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. ”

“ How are you planning to use your man Swenton?”
Dorothy answered for Tom and myself. “We are going straight to Dr. Heidenmuller’s laboratory, taking Swenton along. I want to have the whole scene before my eyes to see what can be made out of it. We should be very glad to have you come with us, Mr. Hamerly.”
Tom bent towards me with a look of mock anguish on his brow. “How I had hoped for a peaceful Sunday morning,” he said, in a low aside, “and now we’ve got to plunge out into a nasty fog, and chase all over this benighted city. Never mind, I might have known. I never can have my own way.” ”

“ Through quiet villages where red farmhouses stood framed in vivid green, by tower and manor house embowered in ancient oaks, through hedge-rowed land and city street we sped, till the rows of villas, each modelled from a single type, showed the outskirts of London. Then, at a slower pace, we passed through a smoky fog, across the river, by the Abbey, to the long front of Buckingham Palace. All the way we sat silent under the heavy burden of the news that brought the end of those long centuries of unconquerable British power. No enemy who could be conquered had they met. ”

“ Nobody but an eternal boy like Tom would have conceived of a game of stick knife to while away the time of waiting before the mystery hidden by the blank face of the oaken door across the passage. Nobody but an eternal boy would have won so exasperatingly. Expert in all intricacies of the art, Tom had far outdistanced me as a knife juggler and I was lagging far in the rear, when we heard the quiet closing of the door five stories below. ”

“ That night Regnier dined with us. I had never seen him so gay, so brilliant. He was full of his plans for an expedition to the Ural Mountains in search of some new deposits of platinum, for which he had obtained a grant from the Russian government. He was the life of our party, and we parted from him with regret. As he left, I walked out into the courtyard with him. He turned suddenly.
“Orrington,” he said, “you’ve got the finest girl in the world to be your wife. You’re not good enough for her. Nobody is, but I’m sure you’ll make her happy. I’ve loved her for five years. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Three weeks in Paris, hours when I sat and smoked outside big shops and little shops, afternoons in the Bois, little “diners à trois” at great restaurants, life, and light, and joy. Three weeks with Dorothy, then the day express to The Hague, and a week of watching the arrival of the envoys, while Tom, who had run across an old assistant of Carl Denckel’s, set up the wave-measuring machine, and spent his days working over it, in an attempt to widen its scope and bring it nearer to its ever present mission. It still remained our chief reliance for our search. ”

“ Maxwell,” said Dorothy anxiously, “is the right thing to do. Should this go straight to the paper, or ought it to go first to the English government? You see there’s probably no living man who saw this except Jim and his sailors, and we want to do right. We want to do right by the men that died, and the people that remain.”
Wise, able, thoughtful, a scholar and a gentleman, a great journalist, a man who counted among his friends the greatest men of two countries,—no man could be found who could decide such a question better than Maxwell. He looked at Dorothy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ How little you could dream of all that has come when you left your office to look up some stupid transports,—or Dorothy imagine it when she went down to standardize that radium. But the end will never be complete till we find ‘the man.’ While he roams the earth with his secret the world is never wholly safe. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I was a made man, and as I mused on these things I walked on somewhat more proudly than my wont, but as I thought over the experiences of the last months, saw in what an extraordinary fashion fortune had played into my hands, saw how Tom Haldane had saved my life by his shrewd foresight and scientific knowledge, and saw, most of all, how I had profited by my dear girl’s quick wit, I became far more humble. ”

“ He gazed long and intently, then rose, motioning Hamerly in silence to take his place. Dorothy followed Hamerly, and Swenton followed her. I ended, but I could distinguish nothing save some lines crossing a scale placed within the tube. As I rose from the stool, Tom reached up to throw on the lights. As he faced around, Hamerly met him with outstretched hand.
“It is only given to a handful of scientists in a century,” he said, “to find a new element, to discover one of those units from which the world is made. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The sailors shall be safe from his hand. This will he do, if peace be sure and disarmament [282] be complete. But, on the day that any nation violates its solemn oath and arms its citizens, on that day will he rise, and no ship, be it battleship or peaceful merchantman, bearing that country’s flag, shall be safe from destruction.’”
The sounder ceased its clamor. Tom spoke in a low voice, as if he feared to be overheard.
“How can we tell he is the man and not some one else, who is simply playing with us? We can’t afford to take risks. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.”
[74]
“Absolutely tremendous,” I cried, and Tom chimed in, his eyes blazing with enthusiasm. “Here’s to the successful working out of the new clue.” ”

“ Dorothy’s face was clouded as Tom came up to the spot where we were standing a little apart, Hamerly and Swenton had already started up the stairs. “I’m not sure that you are doing right in this, Tom,” said Dorothy swiftly, in a low voice. “I don’t like to bribe a servant to let us into a place where we don’t belong.” ”

“ 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 [39] and up the wide stairs. ”

“ Again and again we changed the strength of the wave. We struggled with the insensate metal till our heads reeled. At last, about ten o’clock, we gave up for the day. Dorothy and Tom both were worn out, and both went to their rooms. My head felt too feverish to sleep, so I wandered out for a final pipe along the shore, struggling with the old problem which had been the theme of my thoughts for so long,—who was “the man,” and how could I find him? Again and again Regnier came to my mind, as I debated the pros and cons of the ever vexing question. ”