CHAPTER XXII
THE MAN NEXT DOOR
When, three hours previous, Darrow had arisen with the remark beforechronicled, Jack Warford had followed him in the expectation of a longexpedition. To the young man's surprise it lasted just to the hall. ThereDarrow stopped before the blank door of an apparently unused office. Intothe lock of this he cautiously fitted a key, manipulated it for a moment,and turned to Jack with an air of satisfaction.
"You have your gun with you?" he asked.
Jack patted his outside pocket.
"Very well, now listen here: I am going to leave the key in the lock. Ifyou hear me whistle sharply, get in as quickly as you know how, and get toshooting. Shoot to kill. If it happens to be dark and you can not make usout, shoot both. Take no chances. On your quickness and your accuracy maydepend the lives of the whole city. Do you understand?"
"I understand," said Jack steadily. "Are you sure you can make yourselfheard above all this row?"
Darrow nodded, and slipped inside the door.
He found the office chamber unlighted save by the subdued illuminationthat came in around the drawn shades of the window. Against the dimness hecould just make out the gleaming of batteries in rows. An ordinary dealtable supported a wireless sender. A figure stood before the darkenedwindow, the figure of a little, old, bent man facing as though lookingout. Through the closed casement the roar of the panic-stricken citysounded like a flood. The old man was in the attitude of one looking outintently. Once he raised both arms, the fists clenched, high above hishead.
Darrow stole forward as quietly as he could. When he was about half-wayacross the room the old man turned and saw him. For the briefest instanthe stared at the intruder; then, with remarkable agility, cast himselftoward the table on which stood the wireless sender. Darrow, too, sprangforward. They met across the table. Darrow clutched the old man's wrists.
Immediately began a desperate and silent trial of strength. The old mandeveloped an unexpected power. The table lay between them, prohibiting acloser grip. Inch by inch, impelled by the man's iron will, his handforced his way toward the sending key. Darrow put forth all his strengthto prevent. There was no violent struggle, no noise; simply the pressureof opposing forces. Gradually the scientist's youth prevailed against theolder man's desperation. The hand creeping toward the sender came to astop. Then, all at once, the older man's resistance collapsed entirely.Darrow swept his arm back, stepped around the table, and drew hisopponent, almost unresisting, back to the window.
"Jack!" he called.
At the sound of his voice the old man gathered his last vitality in atremendous effort to jerk loose from his captor. Catching Darrow unawares,he almost succeeded in getting free. The flash was too brief. He managedonly to rap the young man's head rather sharply against a shade-fitting ofthe window.
The outer door jerked open, and Jack Warford leaped into the room,revolver in hand. Darrow called an instant warning.
"All right!" he shouted. "Turn on the light, next to you somewhere. Shutthe door."
These orders were obeyed. The electric flared. By its light the office wasseen to be quite empty save for a cabinet full of books and papers; rowsand rows of battery jars; the receiving and sending apparatus of awireless outfit; the deal table, and one wooden chair. Darrow lookedaround keenly.
"That's all right, Jack," said he. "Just get around here cautiously andraise the window shade. Look out you don't get near that table. That's it.Now just help me get this man a little away from the table! Good! Now, tiehim up. No, bring over the chair. Tie him in that chair. Gently. That'sall right. Whew!"
"You're hurt," said Jack.
Darrow touched his forehead.
"A bump," he said briefly. "Well, Jack, my son, we've done it!"
"You don't mean to say--" cried Jack.
Darrow nodded.
"Now, my friend," he addressed the huddled figure in the chair, "the gameis up. You are caught, and you must realize it." He surveyed the captivethoughtfully. "Tell me, who are you?" he added. "I should know you, foryou are a great discoverer."
The old man stared straight at his interlocutor with his expressionlesseyes, behind which no soul, no mind, no vitality even seemed to lie.
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 hisdisorder has grown on him lately. When I drove back his wrist just now thecord 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 ofdestruction ever invented or wielded by mortal man. I suspect that if youwere to reach out your hand and hold down the innocent-looking telegraphkey 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'sthe 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 carefullyevery detail of the apparatus.
"The batteries are nothing extraordinary, except in strength," he toldJack, "and as near as I can make out the instrument is like any other. Itmust be some modification in the sending apparatus, some system of'tuning', perhaps--it's only a surmise. We'll just disconnect thebatteries," he concluded, "before we go to monkeying."
He proceeded carefully and methodically to carry out his expressedintention. 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 mightnot happen."
"Me, either," confessed Darrow. "But now I think we're safe."
He proceeded on a methodical search through the intricacies of theapparatus. For a time Jack followed him about, but after a while weariedof so profitless an occupation, and so took to smoking on thewindow-ledge. Darrow extended his investigations to the bookcase, and to adrawer in the deal table. For over two hours he sorted notes, compared,and ruminated, his brows knit in concentration. Jack did not try tointerrupt him. At the end of the time indicated, the scientist looked upand 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. Absolutelymotionless there he stood while the night fell, oblivious alike to theroar and crash of the increasing panic and to the silent figures in thedarkened room behind him. At last he gave a sigh, walked quietly to theelectric light, and turned it on.
"It's the biggest thing--and the simplest--the world has ever known inphysics, Jack" said he, "but it's got to go."
"What?" asked Jack, rousing from the mood of waiting into which he hadloyally forced himself in spite of the turmoil outside.
"The man has perfected a combined system of special tuning and definiteelectrical energy," said Darrow, "by which through an ordinary wirelesssender he can send forth into the ether what might be called deadening ornullifying waves. You are no doubt familiar with the common experiment bywhich two sounds will produce a silence. This is just like that. By meansof this, within the radius of his sending instrument and for a period oftime up to the capacity of his batteries, a man can absolutely stopvibration of either heat, sound, light, or electricity length. It isentirely a question of simple formulas. Here they are."
He held out four closely written pages bound together with manuscriptfasteners.
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 theiredges. The flame caught, flared up the flimsy paper. Darrow dropped theburning 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 tothe chair did not wink, but stared straight in front of him, his eyesfixed like those of an owl or a wildcat.
"For God's sake, Darrow!" cried Jack Warford. "Do you know what you havedone?"
"Perfectly," replied Darrow calmly. "This is probably the greatestachievement of the scientific intellect; but it must go. It would give tomen an unchecked power that belongs only to the gods."
CHAPTER XXIII
HOW IT ALL WAS
For his share in the foregoing Percy Darrow was extensively blamed. It wasuniversally conceded that his action in permitting Monsieur X to continuehis activities up to the danger point was inexcusable. The public mindshould have been reassured long before. Much terror and physical sufferingmight thus have been avoided--not to speak of financial loss. Scientificmen, furthermore, went frantic over his unwarranted destruction of theformulas. Percy Darrow was variously described as a heartless monster anda scientific vandal. To these aspersions he paid no attention whatever.
Helen Warford, however, became vastly indignant and partisan, and inconsequence Percy Darrow's course in the matter received from her its fullcredit for a genuine altruism. Hallowell, also, held persistently to thispoint, as far as his editors would permit him, until at last, the publicmind somewhat calmed, attention was more focused on the means by which theman had reached his conclusions rather than on the use of them he hadmade.
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, andonce to the Warfords. This last account was the more detailed andinteresting.
It was of a late afternoon again. The lamps were lighted, and tea wasforward. Helen was manipulating the cups, Jack was standing ready to passthem, Mr. and Mrs. Warford sat in the background listening, and Darrowlounged gracefully in front of the fire.
"From the beginning!" Helen was commanding him, "and expectinterruptions."
"Well," began Darrow, "it's a little difficult to get started. But let'sbegin with the phenomena themselves. I've told you before, how, when I wasin jail, I worked out their nature and the fact that they must draw theirpower from some source that could be exhausted or emptied. You have readEldridge's reasoning as to why he thought Monsieur X was at a distance andon a height. He took as the basis of his reasoning one fact in connectionwith the wireless messages we were receiving--that they were faint, andtherefore presumably far distant or sent by a weak battery. He neglected,or passed over as an important item of tuning, the further fact that theinstrument in the Atlas Building was the only instrument to receiveMonsieur X's messages.
"Now, that fact might be explained either on the very probable suppositionthat our receiving instrument happened in what we may call its undertonesto be the only one tuned to the sending instrument of Monsieur X; or itmight be because our instrument was nearer Monsieur X's instrument thanany other. This was unlikely because of the quality of the sound--itsounded to the expert operator as though it came from a distance.Nevertheless, it was a possibility. Taken by itself, it was not nearly sogood a possibility as the other. Therefore, Eldridge chose the other.
"There were a number of other strictly scientific considerations of equalimportance. I do not hesitate to say that if I had been influenced only bythe scientific considerations, I should have followed Eldridge's leadwithout the slightest hesitation. But as I told him at the time, a manmust have imagination and human sympathy to get next to this sort ofthing.
"Leaving all science aside, for the moment, what do we find in themessages to McCarthy? First, a command to leave within a specified andbrief period; second, a threat in case of disobedience. That threat wasalways carried out."
Darrow turned to Mrs. Warford.
"With your permission, I should like to smoke," said he. "I can follow mythought 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' unlessMcCarthy leaves town by six. McCarthy does not leave town. Promptly at sixthe 'sign' comes. What do you make of it?"
Nobody stirred.
"Why," resumed Darrow, "how, if Monsieur X was a hundred miles or so away,as Eldridge figured, did he know that McCarthy had not obeyed him? We mustsuppose, from the probable fact of that knowledge, that either Monsieur Xhad an accomplice who was keeping him informed, or he must be near enoughto get the information himself."
"There is a third possibility," broke in Jack. "Monsieur X might have sentalong his 'sign' at six o'clock, anyhow, just for general results."
Darrow nodded his approval.
"Good boy, Jack," said he. "That is just the point I could not be sureabout. But finally, at the time, you will remember, when I predictedMcCarthy's disappearance, Monsieur X made a definite threat. He said,"observed Darrow, consulting one of the bundle of papers he held in hishand:
"'My patience is at an end. Your last warning will be sent you atnine-thirty this morning. If you do not sail on the _Celtic_ at noon, Ishall strike,' and so forth. The _Celtic_ sailed at noon, withoutMcCarthy. At twelve thirty came the first message to the people calling onthem to deliver up the traitor that is among you.' How did Monsieur X knowthat McCarthy had not sailed on the _Celtic_? The answer is nowunavoidable: either an accomplice must have sent him word to that effect,or he must have determined the fact for himself.
"I eliminated the hypothesis of an accomplice on the arbitrary grounds ofplain common sense. They don't grow two such crazy men at once; and onecrazy man is naturally too suspicious to hire help. I took it for granted.Had to make a guess somewhere; but, contrary to our legal friends, Ibelieve that enough coincidences indicate a certainty. But if Monsieur Xhimself saw the _Celtic_ sail without McCarthy, and got back to hisinstrument within a half-hour, it was evident he could not be quite so faraway as Eldridge and the rest of them thought."
"One thing," spoke up Jack, "I often wondered what you whispered toSimmons to induce him to pass those messages over to you. Mind telling?"
"Not a bit. Simmons is an exceptional man. He has nerve and intelligence.I just pointed out to him the possibility that Monsieur X might havecontrol over heat vibrations. He saw the public danger at once, andrealized that McCarthy's private rights in those messages had suddenlybecome very small."
Jack nodded. "Go ahead," said he.
"I had already," proceeded Darrow, "found out where the next wirelessstation is located. Monsieur X must be nearer the Atlas station than tothis other. It was, therefore, easy to draw a comparatively small circlewithin which he must be located."
"So far, so good," said Helen. "How did you finally come to the conclusionthat Monsieur X was in the next office?"
"Do you remember," Darrow asked Jack, "how the curtain of darkness hungabout ten or twelve feet inside the corridor of the Atlas Building?"
"Sure," replied Jack.
"And do you remember that while the rest of you, including Eldridge, wereoccupied rather childishly with the spectacular side of it, I haddisappeared inside the blackness?"
"Certainly."
"Well, in that time I determined the exact extent of the phenomena. Ifound that it extended in a rough circle. And when I went outside andlooked up--something every one else was apparently too busy to do--I sawthat this phenomenon of darkness also extended above the building, outinto open space. At the moment I noted the fact mere
ly, and tried to fixin my own mind approximately the dimensions. Then here is another point:when the city-wide phenomena took place, I again determined their extent.To do so I did not have to leave my chair. The papers did it for me. Theytook pains to establish the farthest points to which these modern plaguesof Manhattan reached."
Darrow selected several clippings from his bundle of papers.
"Here are reports indicating Highbridge, Corona, Flatbush, Morrisania,Fort Lee, Bay Ridge as the farthest points at which the phenomena weremanifested. It occurred to nobody to connect these points with a pencilline. If that line is made curved, instead of straight, it will be foundto constitute a complete circle _whose center is the Atlas Building_!"
The audience broke into exclamations.
"Going back to my former impressions, I remembered that the pall ofblackness extended this far and that far in the various directions, sothat it required not much imagination to visualize it as a sphere ofdarkness. And strangely enough the center of that sphere seemed to belocated somewhere near the floor on which were installed the UnitedWireless instruments. It at once became probable that what we may call thenullifying impulses radiated in all directions through the ether fromtheir sending instrument.
"Next I called upon the janitor of the Atlas Building, representing myselfas looking for a suitable office from which to conduct my investigations.In this manner I gained admission to all unrented offices. All were empty.I then asked after the one next door, but was told it was rented as astoreroom by an eccentric gentleman now away on his travels. That wasenough. I now knew that we had to do with a man next door, and not milesdistant, as purely scientific reasoning would seem to prove."
"But Professor Eldridge's experiments--" began Jack.
"I am coming to that," interrupted Darrow. "When Eldridge began to call upMonsieur X, that gentleman answered without a thought of suspicion; norwas he even aware of the very ingenious successive weakenings of thecurrent. In fact, as merely the thickness of a roof separated hisreceiving instrument from the wires from which the messages were sent, itis probable that Eldridge might have weakened his current down practicallyto nihil, and still Monsieur X would have continued to get his message."
"Wouldn't he have noticed the sending getting weaker?" asked Jackshrewdly.
"Not until the very last. Our sending must have made a tremendous crash,anyway, and he probably read it by sound through the wall."
"But at about the fifty-mile limit of sending we lost him," objected Jack.
"You mean at about two o'clock in the morning," amended Darrow.
"Eh? Yes, it was about two. But how did he get on to what Eldridge wasdoing?"
"He read it in the paper," replied Darrow. "At twelve the reporters left.At a little before two our enterprising friend, the _Despatch_, issued anextra in its usual praiseworthy effort to enlighten the late Broadway jag.Monsieur X read it, and knew exactly what was up."
"How do you know?"
"Because I read the extra myself."
"But even then?"
"Then he began to pay more attention. It was easy enough to fake when heknew what was doing. For all I know, he could hear Eldridge giving hisdirections."
The company present ruminated over the disclosures thus far made.
"About the City Hall affair?" asked Helen finally.
"I used to sit where I could command the hall," said Darrow, "and,therefore, I was aware that Monsieur X never left his room. To make thematter certain, I powdered the sill of the door with talcum, which Irenewed every day after the cleaners. You remember we got to talking veryearnestly in the hall, so earnestly that I, for one, forgot to watch. WhenI realized my remissness, I saw that the powder on the sill had beendisturbed, that Monsieur X had gone out.
"My first thought then was to warn the people. To that end I was on my wayto the _Despatch_ office when sheer chance switched me into the City Halltragedy. I possessed myself of the apparatus--"
"That was the square black bag!" cried Jack.
"Of course--and hustled back to the Atlas Building. You can bet I wasrelieved when I found that Monsieur X had returned to his lair."
"Talcum disturbed again?" asked Jack.
"Precisely."
"And the black bag?"
"Contained merely a model wireless apparatus with a clockwork arrangementset to close the circuit at a certain time. That is why Monsieur X was notinvolved in his own catastrophe."
"I see!"
"Then all I had to do was to sit still and wait for him to becomedangerous."
"How did you dare to take such chances?" cried Helen.
"I took no chances," answered Darrow. "Don't you see? If he were toattempt to destroy the city, he must either involve himself in thedestruction, or he must set another bit of clockwork. If he had left hisoffice again I should have seized him, broken into the office, and smashedthe apparatus."
"But he was crazy," spoke up Mrs. Warford. "How could you rely on his notinvolving himself in the general destruction?"
"Yes, why did you act when you did?" seconded Helen.
"As long as he held to his notion of getting hold of McCarthy," explainedDarrow, "he had a definite object in life, his madness had a definiteoutlet--he was harmless. But the last message showed that his disease hadprogressed to the point where McCarthy was forgotten. His mind had risento a genuine frenzy. He talked of general punishments, great things. Atlast he was in the state of mind of the religious fanatic who lacerateshis flesh and does not feel the wound. When he forgot McCarthy, I knew itwas time to act. Long since I had provided myself with the requisite key.You know the rest."
CHAPTER XXIV
WHAT HAPPENED AFTERWARD
There remains only to tell what became of the various characters of thetale.
McCarthy, on whom the action started, returned, but never regained hispolitical hold. Darrow always maintained that this was only the mostobvious result of his policy of delaying the denouement. People had beenforced to think seriously of such matters; and, when aroused, the publicconscience is right.
Darrow demanded, and received, the large money reward for his services inthe matter. Pocketing whatever blame the public and his fellow scientistssaw fit to hand out to him, he and Jack Warford disappeared in command ofa small schooner. The purpose of the expedition was kept secret; itsdirection was known only to those most intimately concerned. If it everreturns, we may know more of it.
Eldridge went on being a scientist, exactly as before.
Simmons received a gold medal, a large cash sum, any amount of newspaperspace, and an excellent opportunity to go on a vaudeville circuit.
Hallowell had his salary raised; and received in addition that rathervague brevet title of "star reporter".
Helen Warford is still attractive and unmarried. Whether the lattercondition is only pending the return of the expedition is not known.
As for the city, it has gone back to its everyday life, and the riffles onthe surface have smoothed themselves away. In outside appearanceseverything is as before. Yet for the present generation, at least, thepersistence of the old independent self-reliance of the people is assured.They have been tested, and they have been made to think of elementalthings seriously. For some time to come the slow process ofstandardization has been arrested.
THE END
The Sign at Six Page 22
