The Sign at Six Part 26

Darrow asked him several more questions, to which he received no replies.

The man sat like a captured beast.

"I'm sorry," said Darrow to Jack. "I should like to have talked with him.

Such a man is worth knowing; he has delved deep."

"He'll talk yet, when he gets over his grouch," Jack surmised.

But Darrow shook his head.

"The man is imbecile," he said. "He has been mentally unbalanced; and his disorder has grown on him lately. When I drove back his wrist just now the cord snapped in his brain."

Jack turned to stare at the captive.

"By Jove, I believe you're right!" said he at last.

Darrow was standing looking down on the deal table.

"Come here, Jack," said he. "I want you to look at the deadliest engine of destruction ever invented or wielded by mortal man. I suspect that if you were to reach out your hand and hold down the innocent-looking telegraph key there you would instantly destroy every living creature in this city."

Jack turned a little pale, and put both hands behind him.

Darrow laughed. "Feel tempted?" he inquired.

"Makes me a little dizzy, like being on a height," confessed Jack. "How's the trick turned?"

"I don't know," said Darrow. "I'm going to find out if I can."

Without attempting to touch anything, he proceeded to examine carefully every detail of the apparatus.

"The batteries are nothing extraordinary, except in strength," he told Jack, "and as near as I can make out the instrument is like any other. It must be some modification in the sending apparatus, some system of 'tuning', perhaps--it's only a surmise. We'll just disconnect the batteries," he concluded, "before we go to monkeying."

He proceeded carefully and methodically to carry out his expressed intention. When he had finished the task he heaved a deep sigh of relief.

"I'm glad you feel that way, too," said Jack. "I didn't know what might not happen."

"Me, either," confessed Darrow. "But now I think we're safe."

He proceeded on a methodical search through the intricacies of the apparatus. For a time Jack followed him about, but after a while wearied of so profitless an occupation, and so took to smoking on the window-ledge. Darrow extended his investigations to the bookcase, and to a drawer in the deal table. For over two hours he sorted notes, compared, and ruminated, his brows knit in concentration. Jack did not try to interrupt him. At the end of the time indicated, the scientist looked up and made some trivial remark.

"Got it?" asked Jack.

"Yes," replied Darrow soberly. He reflected for several minutes longer; then moved to the window and looked out over the city. Absolutely motionless there he stood while the night fell, oblivious alike to the roar and crash of the increasing panic and to the silent figures in the darkened room behind him. At last he gave a sigh, walked quietly to the electric light, and turned it on.

"It's the biggest thing--and the simplest--the world has ever known in physics, Jack" said he, "but it's got to go."

"What?" asked Jack, rousing from the mood of waiting into which he had loyally forced himself in spite of the turmoil outside.

"The man has perfected a combined system of special tuning and definite electrical energy," said Darrow, "by which through an ordinary wireless sender he can send forth into the ether what might be called deadening or nullifying waves. You are no doubt familiar with the common experiment by which two sounds will produce a silence. This is just like that. By means of this, within the radius of his sending instrument and for a period of time up to the capacity of his batteries, a man can absolutely stop vibration of either heat, sound, light, or electricity length. It is entirely a question of simple formulas. Here they are."

He held out four closely written pages bound together with ma.n.u.script fasteners.

"No man has ever before attained this knowledge or this power," went on Darrow, after a moment; "and probably never again in the history of the race will exactly this combination of luck and special talent occur. These four pages are unique."

He laid them on the edge of the table, produced a cigarette, lighted it, picked up the four pages of formulas, and held the burning match to their edges. The flame caught, flared up the flimsy paper. Darrow dropped the burning corners as it scorched his fingers. It fell to the floor, flickered, and was gone.

Jack leaped forward with an exclamation of dismay. The old man bound to the chair did not wink, but stared straight in front of him, his eyes fixed like those of an owl or a wildcat.

"For G.o.d's sake, Darrow!" cried Jack Warford. "Do you know what you have done?"

"Perfectly," replied Darrow calmly. "This is probably the greatest achievement of the scientific intellect; but it must go. It would give to men an unchecked power that belongs only to the G.o.ds."

CHAPTER XXIII

HOW IT ALL WAS

For his share in the foregoing Percy Darrow was extensively blamed. It was universally conceded that his action in permitting Monsieur X to continue his activities up to the danger point was inexcusable. The public mind should have been rea.s.sured long before. Much terror and physical suffering might thus have been avoided--not to speak of financial loss. Scientific men, furthermore, went frantic over his unwarranted destruction of the formulas. Percy Darrow was variously described as a heartless monster and a scientific vandal. To these aspersions he paid no attention whatever.

Helen Warford, however, became vastly indignant and partisan, and in consequence Percy Darrow's course in the matter received from her its full credit for a genuine altruism. Hallowell, also, held persistently to this point, as far as his editors would permit him, until at last, the public mind somewhat calmed, attention was more focused on the means by which the man had reached his conclusions rather than on the use of them he had made.

The story was told three times by its chief actor: once to the newspapers, once to the capitalists from whom he demanded the promised reward, and once to the Warfords. This last account was the more detailed and interesting.

It was of a late afternoon again. The lamps were lighted, and tea was forward. Helen was manipulating the cups, Jack was standing ready to pa.s.s them, Mr. and Mrs. Warford sat in the background listening, and Darrow lounged gracefully in front of the fire.

"From the beginning!" Helen was commanding him, "and expect interruptions."

"Well," began Darrow, "it's a little difficult to get started. But let's begin with the phenomena themselves. I've told you before, how, when I was in jail, I worked out their nature and the fact that they must draw their power from some source that could be exhausted or emptied. You have read Eldridge's reasoning as to why he thought Monsieur X was at a distance and on a height. He took as the basis of his reasoning one fact in connection with the wireless messages we were receiving--that they were faint, and therefore presumably far distant or sent by a weak battery. He neglected, or pa.s.sed over as an important item of tuning, the further fact that the instrument in the Atlas Building was the only instrument to receive Monsieur X's messages.

"Now, that fact might be explained either on the very probable supposition that our receiving instrument happened in what we may call its undertones to be the only one tuned to the sending instrument of Monsieur X; or it might be because our instrument was nearer Monsieur X's instrument than any other. This was unlikely because of the quality of the sound--it sounded to the expert operator as though it came from a distance.

Nevertheless, it was a possibility. Taken by itself, it was not nearly so good a possibility as the other. Therefore, Eldridge chose the other.

"There were a number of other strictly scientific considerations of equal importance. I do not hesitate to say that if I had been influenced only by the scientific considerations, I should have followed Eldridge's lead without the slightest hesitation. But as I told him at the time, a man must have imagination and human sympathy to get next to this sort of thing.

"Leaving all science aside, for the moment, what do we find in the messages to McCarthy? First, a command to leave within a specified and brief period; second, a threat in case of disobedience. That threat was always carried out."

Darrow turned to Mrs. Warford.

"With your permission, I should like to smoke," said he. "I can follow my thought better."

"By all means," accorded the lady.

Darrow lighted his cigarette, puffed a moment, and continued:

"For instance, at three o'clock he threatens to send a 'sign' unless McCarthy leaves town by six. McCarthy does not leave town. Promptly at six the 'sign' comes. What do you make of it?"