Kitabı oku: «The Man Who Ended War», sayfa 4

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

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

“It is,” I said emphatically.

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

CHAPTER VI

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

“A letter from Carl Denckel,” she replied.

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

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

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

“Read it, Dorothy. What does he say?”

“An Herrn Doktor Thomas Haldane.

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

“To Doctor Thomas Haldane.

“Dear Professor:

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

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

“Go on,” said Tom.

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

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

I nodded.

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

“I do,” I answered. “But – ”

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

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

“Carl Denckel.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER VII

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What’s that belt for?” I asked.

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

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

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

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

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

“All right,” I said.

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

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

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

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

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

“Want my figures, Tom?” she asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Tokio, confound it!” said Tom.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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