The Man Who Ended War

“That is beyond anything I ever saw,” said Hamerly at length, breaking the silence. “I have observed every known gas under the influence of current, but never anything like this.”

“Nor I,” said Tom. “But there may be no time to spare. Let’s try it with the spectroscope.”

As Tom and Dorothy bent over the instrument, I asked Hamerly, “What do you expect to find from the spectroscope? What does it do?”

“It breaks down light,” answered Hamerly, “by means of a prism, as a prismatic chandelier or a prismatic glass thermometer throws the spectrum of a sunbeam on the floor, breaking the white light of the sun into a shifting mass of color that changes from red, through orange and green to violet. Every different glowing gas gives off a slightly different light. We can tell by the spectroscope whether the light from this gas is the same as any we have known before, or whether it is different. If the light waves sent out are unlike any recognized before, we can be sure we have a new gas.”

Tom was turning a screw, with his eye glued to a small telescope. “Change that tube a bit to the right, Hamerly,” he said, and it was changed. “Now a bit higher. No, not so high, a bit lower now. There you are.”

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. I believe you have done it this afternoon.”

“It is a new, elementary gas,” said Dorothy. “You found it, Tom, when you climbed that table.”

“Much good it will do me, so far as that goes,” remarked Tom. “So far as we know, all there is of it in the world is in this tube. I don’t know how to produce any more, and I can’t publish anything about it, for it would interfere with our search for the man.”

“You have no right to say that it’s no use,” said Dorothy. “Again and again as we have gone on, the slightest unexpected things have come to mean the most. I believe this tube of unknown gas may be a most important link in the chain.”

“All right,” said Tom. “Just as you say. You can be sure I wasn’t going to throw it into the waste basket.”

While Swenton cleared away, the rest of us went into the wooden room. Hamerly passed across and opened one of the wooden shutters. “The fog is lifting,” he said.

We looked out and saw that the other side of the street was gradually becoming visible. Dorothy seated herself by the window, and we joined her.

“I don’t know that there could be a better time,” I began, “than right here and now, to find out just where we are. For my part, I want to understand the relation between the new gas and all that has gone before. If we bring all our information together, won’t there be a better chance to get a line on our next move?”

“We have two things in our hands,” said Tom thoughtfully. “This tube of gas here and the cigarette case. We know that the ships really disappeared, because Jim has been to the bottom of Portsmouth Harbor and seen the men that lie there. We know by the same token that this force kills, by a sort of paralysis, every man whom it attacks. Oh, that reminds me,” he exclaimed, checking himself. “Let me see that cigarette case again, if you will, Hamerly?” The case once in his hand, he looked it over with minute care. “Insulated within the paraffin by caema, don’t you think?” he asked Dorothy.

After a brief inspection she also nodded. “That’s caema, all right.”

“Never mind caema, now, whatever it is,” I said. “Let’s go on with the business. What else do we know?”

Hamerly took up the tale. “We know to a reasonable certainty that Dr. Heidenmuller was the first man who found the source of this power, and that he died when it accidentally was let loose. We know that some of this substance, probably in powder form like radium, was kept in the leather cigarette case, insulated by paraffin and caema.” He paused.

“We know,” went on Dorothy, “that when the man who is trying to stop all war uses this force, a tremendous amount of radio-active energy is generated, enough to affect reflectoscopes half around the world.”

“We know there is something which is even more than all those things,” I broke in. “We know there is a man who is slaughtering men by the hundreds, in pursuit of his ideal, and that it is our business, in more ways than one, to run him down. How will the data we have on hand enable us to do that?”

As I spoke, Dorothy was sitting looking meditatively out of the window. The fog had lifted a little more. Hamerly straightened in his chair.

“Miss Haldane,” he said, “if you will look straight across the street from where you are sitting, you can see the spot from which the sign fell on the day that Dr. Heidenmuller died.”

Dorothy turned in her chair, and we all crowded about her. Hamerly pointed across the road. There, against the brick wall of an old house, blackened by the smoke of many sooty years, two small rectangles showed in light relief against the surrounding darkness. The sight of those spots, where the supports to the sign had once stood, brought the whole horror of it home to me more forcibly than anything else. The very smallness, the homeliness of the thing drove it in. The accumulated effects of the charged electroscopes, of the wave-measuring machine, of the bodies on the ocean’s floor, of Dr. Heidenmuller’s death, and of the gas we had just found, rose to their very crest in those small, light gray spots, less sullied than the rest of the wall.

“And there is where the wooden sign fell down, and its iron supports disappeared,” said Tom reflectively. “Jove, I’d like to have seen it happen. If anybody had seen it, though, he wouldn’t have believed his eyes.”

We were still standing, peering out through the rising mist, when Dorothy spoke out excitedly. “That’s the next clue, there’s nothing else that will do so well, – the hunt for disappearing iron.”

“What good will that do?” said Tom. “We know where iron has disappeared, and we’ve run everything down as far as we could. It isn’t likely that Heidenmuller or the man went around shooting off signs for fun.”

“Of course not,” answered Dorothy impatiently. “But don’t you see the man must have had a laboratory, or lodgings, anyway, somewhere in London, if he got his data and his power from Dr. Heidenmuller here. When Dr. Heidenmuller let his discovery get away from him, it killed him, and caused all the metal which it reached to disappear. Now, the man hasn’t been killed by his weapon, unless it happened very recently, but it’s perfectly possible that he might have allowed some of his magic substance to escape without injury to himself. If that happened, it would destroy any metal at hand. If we could find some place where iron disappeared, we might get a direct clue to the whereabouts of the man. It’s worth trying, anyway.”

“I’m sure it is,” I cried. “Tom, you old doubter, speak up and admit Dorothy knows twice as much about it as you and I put together.”

“I guess not,” said Tom firmly. “There may be something in this, if we could get track of everything that bore on disappearing iron, London over; but,” he went on, “talk about a needle in a hay stack. You went up against a hard enough proposition in running down Heidenmuller’s laboratory here, but this new deal is far worse. You can’t advertise.”

“No, I don’t see how you can,” remarked Dorothy, a trifle discouraged.

“Oh, this thing’s easy enough,” I broke in. “I wish everything was as simple. Inside of two days, I’ll have all the information that London holds with regard to disappearing iron.”

“How can you get it?” cried the three in unison.

CHAPTER XIV

“By using the device which ministers at the same time to the vanity and the necessity of man, the clipping bureau,” I replied. “We will subscribe to that distributor of special information, and get every clipping for the last six months that bears upon falling blinds, signs lost, or stolen iron. They can ransack the files for us, and send us the result of their labor.”

“Just the trick,” cried Tom enthusiastically. “We’ll go straight to work on it. Now let’s get out of here.”

Bearing our precious tube of gas, we started back, leaving Swenton to close the laboratory and follow later. No such delightful wandering was provided for our return as for our coming. All too soon we were back at the Savoy with our day’s labor over, ready to follow the new trail wherever it might lead us.

Two mornings after the eventful day in Heidenmuller’s laboratory, I knocked at Dorothy’s door, and entered to find the broad table of her sunny parlor covered with piles of neat clippings, each with a docketed slip at the top. The clipping bureau had exceeded my best hopes, and had turned in the information in quantities. Tom and Dorothy were bending over the piles sorting them, as the maid ushered me in.

“If you hadn’t told them to sort these things at their office, we should have been swamped beyond all hope of salvation,” grumbled Tom, as he stood with a bundle of clippings between every finger of both hands. “Where are the Westminster shutters, Dorothy?”

“Here they are,” said Dorothy. “Now I want the Chelsea signs. It’s just like solitaire. The signs are my cards. The blinds go to Tom, and you can take stolen iron. That’s stolen iron, that heap of packets over on the other side of the table.”

I sat down to my task. Hour after hour passed, and we sorted, read, and rejected. Now and then a clipping would go aside for further reference. Occasionally a packet or a single slip would pass from one to another. Lunch took an hour, but after lunch we turned again to our labors, and afternoon tea time came and went before we were done. At length Tom rose and gave a mighty yawn. “Eight that look good,” he remarked.

“Eight from me,” I echoed.

“Ten,” chimed in Dorothy.

“That’s not half bad,” said Tom reflectively. “There were hundreds of clippings there, and we’ve brought them down pretty low, all things considered.”

We three dined alone that night, and when the coffee came on, Tom reached into his pocket and pulled out a long envelope with the twenty-six clippings. “Which comes first?” he asked, “Signs or blinds or stolen iron?”

“Match you to decide,” I answered, and I pulled out a sovereign. “I’ll take signs, you take shutters.” Tom won.

“Shutters against stolen iron then,” cried Dorothy.

“I’ll match you this time,” said Tom. We matched again, and again Tom won.

“Then one of my eight shutters is the trump card,” exclaimed Tom. “I’ll number them one to eight, and then pass the bunch around so we can each pick the two that look like winners. Then I’ll pass the signs to pick a second choice.”

Dorothy, in her gray gown of shimmering silk, her face flushed with the excitement of the decision, pored over the little list carefully for some minutes before she returned them to Tom, who passed them on to me, remarking briefly, “I made up my mind when I picked the eight out of the bunch.” Three times over I read the list which told of blinds dropping on still days and injuring passers-by. Tom had eliminated the accounts which told of signs and shutters blown off in gales. It might easily happen that a gale and the escape of the destructive power would occur simultaneously, but the unusual was the thing we were after; there, most of all, would lie the clue we sought. At last I came to a decision and looked up. “One in the first lot and three in the second,” I said.

“One and three,” echoed Dorothy.

“The same,” said Tom. “Great thing to be unanimous. Read ’em aloud, Jim.” I obeyed.

“‘A shutter which fell from a house on Gower Street, just off Tottenham Court Road, struck a passing laborer yesterday morning, and inflicted injuries of so grave a character that he was immediately removed in an unconscious condition to the hospital. His identity has not yet been established.’ That’s number one.”

“‘A large sign which fell from a second story at Chelsea yesterday broke in pieces on the sidewalk beneath, but fortunately inflicted no serious injury.’ That’s number three. Which do we choose?”

“Both of those look rather good to me,” answered Tom. “But I think the one near Tottenham Court Road looks best. The chances of finding the man’s laboratory would be greater in Bloomsbury than farther out.” Dorothy nodded her approval.

“All right,” I said, as we rose. “The corps will move upon Bloomsbury at dawn, under command of General Dorothy Haldane.”

“Dawn being interpreted nine thirty, we will,” answered Dorothy laughing.

The next morning found us bowling along towards our destination, discussing meanwhile the method of attack. “Leave it to inspiration,” I said, as we drew up at the door. “Let me play a lone hand on this.”

Luck was with me. There was a sign of “Lodgings” in the window. Leaping out I walked up the steps and rang the bell, while the cab went on down the street. The maid who opened the door was trimmer than I had expected to find. The mistress of the lodging house, when she appeared, though a perfect mountain of flesh, gave signs of a very considerable intelligence. “Yes, there were lodgings. A second and fourth floor front.” Up the stairs panted and wheezed the stout landlady, while I followed in her train. On the fourth floor we halted and entered the small hall bedroom at the top of the stairs. I threw the window open and leaned out, and looked up and down the street.

“Bad thing if a shutter fell from here,” I said. “Wasn’t it in one of the houses near this that the shutter fell and injured a laborer a couple of months ago?”

The landlady seized my lead instantly. “It was the right hand shutter,” she said, “in the very window you’re looking out of now.”

I bent eagerly to look at the hinges. They were brand new, while those on the other side were strained and worn through years of exposure to wind and sun and rain.

“You don’t say,” I replied. “Most interesting. I suppose the hinges rusted and broke.”

“No,” said the landlady, “that was one of the queerest things about it. After the whole thing was over, and I came to look at the place where the shutter fell, there was no trace of a hinge. It must have pulled right out of the brick, and when I went next day to look at the shutters in the kitchen, the hinges, screws, and everything were gone, and I never saw the least trace of them from that day to this. We had the new shutter put up a week later.”

“What luck!” I thought to myself, as I looked around over the adjoining housetops. “Hit it first time trying. Somewhere, behind those roofs, lies the laboratory of the man who is trying to stop all war.” I parted with the landlady, promising an early decision, and went in search of Tom and Dorothy.

They left the carriage as I approached and hurried towards me. “The iron of the shutter disappeared,” I said significantly.

Tom gave the long, low whistle which always typified interest and surprise to him.

“You think the man’s laboratory is somewhere near here, then,” asked Dorothy excitedly.

“Judging by Hamerly’s experience with the sign opposite Dr. Heidenmuller’s laboratory, I certainly do,” I answered seriously. “This probably happened just as that did.”

“Then,” said Tom, “it’s probably up to us to make a house to house canvass of the neighborhood. It looks to me as if the chances were better in one of the buildings on Tottenham Court Road than in any of the houses round here.”

“That’s right,” I answered briefly. “Tell you what we’ll do. We’ll ask at every shop if they know of any chemical laboratory. Tell ’em we’re hunting for a man who works in such a laboratory. Lay it on thick and give ’em plenty of detail. That’s the way to get the information you want.”

“I’ll wait for you in the carriage round the corner,” Dorothy called after us, as we started away.

From bakeshop to dairy, from furniture store to shoe shop, I travelled, searching for some news of my poor Cousin George, who had worked in a laboratory somewhere near the corner of Tottenham Court Road and Gower Street, and who had disappeared. Persistently diplomatic, I forced my way on, under rebuff after rebuff, leaving no store until I had a pretty vivid idea of the various occupations which made their home on every floor of its building. As I left after receiving one particularly stinging answer, I caught sight of Tom across the street, beckoning. I followed him at a little distance until he turned a sharp corner into a little alley. He appeared slightly dishevelled as he turned around.

“See here,” he said abruptly, “I’m afraid we’ll be run in if we keep this up much longer. I’ve been in one row already. Had to knock a man down who made caustic remarks about sneak thieves. What have you got hold of, anyway?”

“Haven’t got hold of a thing,” I responded.

“Well, then,” said Tom, “let’s cast back and take another look at the topography, just where the shutter fell.”

Back we went over the ground once more, and stopped to examine cautiously the window with its green blind.

“That’s a fourth story corner room,” said Tom reflectively, “and the house next to it is only three stories. Why, you blind man,” he went on suddenly, “only one side of the shutter fell, so the attack couldn’t have come from the front. It must have come from the back of the house. Let’s go round and see what is just behind this.”

Round the square we circumnavigated, landing finally at a building some five stories high, whose first story showed the shelves and cluttered window of a second-hand book shop. Beside the shop a flight of stairs led to the upper stories. No sign gave evidence of any business carried on above the first.

“Here goes for the book shop,” said Tom, and we marched in.

A tall, stooping youth of exaggerated height, with lank and flaming red moustache, came wearily forward, stifling a cavernous yawn as he came. We repeated our stock inquiry to him. We were Colonials from Australia seeking our Cousin George, who worked in a laboratory. Did our friend with the red moustache know of any laboratory near? A gleam of interest lighted the slightly watery eyes.

“H’I don’t rightly know w’ether h’it’s h’a laboritory h’or not,” he began, “but there’s some sort h’of a bloomin’ show h’occupies h’our ’ole fifth. H’I’ve never been h’ible to see h’inside h’it yet. You might try h’a shot h’at h’it ’owever.”

We received the volley of misplaced aspirates with joyous hearts, noting the gleam of avid curiosity in the watery eyes, as the clerk thought of the mysterious laboratory on the top floor. All he could tell was that the top floor had been let a few months before to a tall man. With the usual vagueness of his type of mind, that was as far as he could go. Over and over again he repeated the same indefinite phrase, a tall man. When the man moved in, a couple of vans had brought strange furnishings, a small furnace, glassware and instrument cases. A little while ago an assistant had appeared, a foreigner who knew no English, or at least refused to understand the language. The two, the man and his assistant, often worked together till late at night. Sometimes, the clerk believed, they worked all night. As for him, he would have repeated the thing to the police. He didn’t believe in having mysteries like that around, but his master, the proprietor of the book shop, refused to part with regular paying tenants. Yes, sir, he’d tried again and again to see what they were doing, but there was a curtain over the door, and you couldn’t see anything through the keyhole. The door was always locked, so that the adventurous spirit of the clerk had to be content with imagining the horrible crimes perpetrated behind the curtained door.

This certainly looked good. With anxious hearts, Tom and I started up the stairs in search once more of our Cousin George, halting, however, at the second story, once the clerk was left safely behind.

“It certainly looks like queer street, anyway,” remarked Tom reflectively. “It may be the man, or it may be some bunch of counterfeiters or other criminals. I’m not going to back down for a minute, but I think one of us had better hunt up Dorothy, tell her where we are, and have her put the police on the trail, if we shouldn’t happen to turn up to-night. Strikes me that that would be only an elementary precaution.”

“I’ll do it,” I said. “You watch here.”

Before Tom could object, I was half way down the stairs and out on the street. On Tottenham Court Road, I found Dorothy driving up and down. She leaned forward questioningly as I jumped in. I nodded in answer, “Yes. We’ve got the place, but we need your help now.” Warned by experience as to its necessity, I had mapped out my line of argument carefully, as I hurried along. “We have the very place, but we want you to stay outside and send us help, if we should get into trouble.”

Dorothy’s face fell. “I want to go with you the worst way,” she said. “Yet I don’t like the idea of you two going into danger without any outside assistance. What have you found out?”

It was no easy matter to convince her, yet when Dorothy saw the condition of affairs, there was really nothing she could do but give in. For us to explore that unknown territory, without some line on the outside to protect us in case of peril, was manifestly unwise. Certainly it was not possible for us to let so plain a clue go by.

At my command, the cabman drove past the old book store, up the street, and round the square. Back on the main thoroughfare again, I made ready to return and join Tom.

“You’ve got the place fixed clearly in mind?” I asked, looking up at her from the sidewalk.

To my surprise, Dorothy’s eyes were filled with tears, and her voice came pleadingly. “I wish you did not feel you had to go. I don’t know why I feel so strangely about your going, but I do. Isn’t there some other way out?”

I felt my resolution waning, as an almost overmastering desire to seize her in my arms, in the face of shocked and respectable Bloomsbury, swept over me.

“We’ve got to follow the trail to the end, Dorothy,” I answered. “Everything’s going to be all right, don’t worry.”

As I turned away, I felt a light touch, almost like a caress, on my coat sleeve. Accident or not, no knight ever went into battle more inspired by his lady’s gage than I, bearing that accolade, strode towards the old book shop and the mysterious laboratory on the fifth floor.

Tom greeted me eagerly as I reached the second story. “Not a sound from the laboratory,” he began. “And, luck of lucks, there’s an open, empty room opposite, where we can wait. Come on up.”

Up the stairs and into the empty room we passed, pausing briefly to examine the blank and heavy door of the mysterious workers fastened by heavy locks. Our waiting place proved nothing more than a bare attic chamber, with a constricted view of roofs and chimney pots.

“Not exactly the abode of luxury,” I said, glancing around critically, “but then it’s all in the day’s work. I’ve waited in worse places for a lot smaller stakes.”

Folding his great coat for a cushion, Tom seated himself back against the wall. He had left the door a trace ajar. “I’m practically sure that there’s no one in there now, and we’ll wait here till they arrive. We shall be sure to hear them when they come up the stairs. By Jove, never thought of it. Not a thing to read with us. There’s the book shop downstairs; I wonder if I dare to try a sortie.” He thought a moment. “No, not yet, anyway. Tell you what I’ll do. Here’s a sporting proposition for you.” He pulled out his penknife and opened it. “Here’s a bully bare floor. I’ll play you a game of stick knife to while away the time.”

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. In an instant we were on our feet, waiting for the ascending heavy footsteps. Tom’s mobile face stiffened into rigid lines as he crouched, poised beside the door, while I stood ready to swing the door open, and spring if necessary on the man who came. As the footsteps halted on the landing before us, Tom bent towards me.