The Man Who Ended War

“You are neither of you going to do any such thing,” remarked Dorothy firmly. “I’ll tell you what you are going to do for the next three weeks. You’re going to Paris with me.”

“Oh, pshaw!” said Tom disgustedly. “Paris is a hole. I want to go to Cambridge. Do you like Paris, Jim?”

“Not particularly,” I said, with some hesitation, “but then – ”

“We’re going,” said Dorothy.

“What for?” said Tom argumentatively.

“Well, if you must know,” said Dorothy blushing, “I want to shop.”

Tom burst into a roar of laughter, and I looked at him in bewilderment. He leaned over towards me.

“Got the cards engraved yet, Jim?”

Dorothy blushed still more. I saw a sudden light.

“Of course we go to Paris,” I said enthusiastically. “It’s the place of places.”

“And you’ll sit round for hours, waiting in a dinky little cab or in a motor car on the Boulevard Haussmann, while Dorothy spends her patrimony inside. Is there a special duty on trousseaux, Dorothy?” he asked, with an affectation of seriousness.

“I wish you’d stop,” said Dorothy emphatically.

“All right,” said Tom. “Only I thought I’d better wire my banker to see if my balance would leave us anything to go home on.”

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.

Anxious as I was to return to the quest of “the man,” the work at The Hague proved fascinating in the extreme. My daily report told of the coming of representatives from almost every nation, and, best of all, told of the free and full powers given them to agree to complete disarmament, provided it could be universal. Day after day, in the month which intervened between the calling of the convention and the opening of the meeting, had come reports of parliaments and congresses hastily gathered together to consider the question, and of their eager passing of favorable votes. One by one they came, till every nation had joined in consent, save one. Germany still held aloof. Since the disappearance of the fleets, the German emperor had made no movement to advance the war, but kept his armies gathered, his transports riding at anchor in the ports. The Reichstag met, and discussed most favorably the call to The Hague, waiting anxiously for some sign from its imperial master, but none came. In absolute seclusion, in a lone castle in the depths of the Black Forest, he sulked like Achilles in his tent.

The first day of meeting came with every power represented save Germany. The second and third passed with no sign from Berlin. On the fourth, I began to see signs of difficulty. It was evident that the consent of the German empire was a sine qua non. Delegate after delegate arose and expressed the eager desire of his country to disarm and bring about universal peace, provided (and the provided was emphatic) all other nations did the same. On the evening of the fourth day, an American delegate rose, and by a powerful speech so roused the assembly that a delegation was appointed to meet the German Emperor and ask him, in the name of the conference, to join with the other nations. After the delegation was named, the meeting adjourned for three days, until they could return.

On the night when the delegates were to return, I was in my place in the correspondents’ section of the hall of the conference. The meeting came to order, the preliminary business was finished, and the presiding officer arose to say that the delegates had been delayed in returning, but had telegraphed that they would be there within an hour. He had scarcely finished speaking, when a door opened, and a marshal announced “The delegation sent to His Majesty the Emperor of Germany.”

Travel-worn and weary, the five men walked up the aisle to the space at the front. “Gentlemen, are you ready to report?” said the presiding officer.

“We are,” said the head of the delegation. “The Emperor of Germany refused absolutely to see us, pleading an indisposition. We were unable to obtain any satisfaction.”

The grave assembly rose like the sea. Shouts, cries, requests for recognition, came in one clamorous volume, and the president sounded his gavel fiercely. The excitable Latins were shouting recriminations. It looked as if the seething mass would break up in utter disorder, and the great conference would end without result. Far off by the door, I could see a marshal forcing his way through the crowded aisles, imploring, struggling, fighting. He reached the rostrum, mounted it, and spoke in the president’s ear. With a tremendous effort, he shouted, “Silence for important news.” Little by little, the crowd stilled. In a resonant voice came the words, “An envoy from the Emperor of Germany desires to address the conference in person.”

A hush came over the assembly, a hush so sudden, so profound, that I could hear the scratching of the fountain pen with which the secretary before the president wrote the words. The aisles cleared, and the ordered assembly sat silently in their seats. The great door opened and, preceded by a corps of marshals, the envoy from the great Hohenzollern entered. The stiff, unbending figure, the haughty head, the piercing eyes and high, upturned moustache of the field marshal envoy showed his imitation of his master, the war lord. Proudly, as on parade, he paced to the space where the president, who had descended to the floor to greet him, stood. He bowed coldly and turned.

“My master has sent me here,” he said abruptly, “to address your conference. These are his words, ‘I have believed that war, that armies made for the best good of my state; I believe it still. I do not believe in peace. But I cannot expose my navy to destruction, my sailors and my soldiers to death. I therefore agree to peace. My armies shall disband, my fortifications be torn down, my battleships sunk or turned to peaceful ends. My Reichstag will have confirmed my words ere now.’”

As one man, the assembly arose and cheered. Never, in his own city or from his own troops, came heartier greetings than that which rung out for the last ruler to take up the cause of peace. The field marshal stood there, while the tumult raged, his hands resting on the hilt of his sword, erect as ever, impassive as ever. As the cheering ended, he bowed to the assembly. Turning, he bowed to the president, and then, with martial step, he slowly withdrew. The delegates from Germany arrived the next day with power to disarm, and the business of signing the agreements and plans of disarmament went on so rapidly that the conference was able to adjourn in but a few days’ time.

The day the conference closed, I rushed back from the telegraph office the moment I had sent off the last word of my final despatch. I found Tom and Dorothy in the laboratory. “There, thank goodness,” I cried exultantly, “that’s over. Now I can go back to the hunt for ‘the man’ with an easy conscience. What do you think that next move ought to be?”

“Hold on, till we finish this,” said Tom. “We’ll talk things over as soon as I get this screw set.”

I watched him idly as he worked. “What is he trying to do now?” I asked Dorothy.

Just as I spoke, Tom moved his hand, the low buzz of a Ruhmkoff coil broke in on the silence of the room, and the glorious beauty of the tube of unknown gas that we had found in Heidenmuller’s laboratory illumined the place.

“Why, there’s the gas tube,” I cried in amazement.

“Yes,” said Dorothy. “From that tube has come a marvellous development of the Denckel apparatus. Tom has been able to receive with it right along, but never send. One day he thought of placing that tube of gas in the circuit, and now he can send, as well as receive. Tom has done a big thing. He can reverse the action of the machine, not only receive a message from any place, but shoot a wireless back across space, and have it strike exactly where he wishes. It’s really a wonderful development, but I don’t see how it’s going to help us find ‘the man,’ and I don’t want to give up. There, Tom is finishing. We’ll talk things over now.”

“If ‘the man’s’ crusade were not over, it might be even more effective,” I remarked reflectively. “It would have been strange enough if we had found him by means of the gas released from metal destroyed by his terrific power.”

“It would have been,” answered Dorothy.

I stood watching Tom, as, pipe in mouth, he set the revolving belt in motion and watched the moving cylinders.

“To what strength of wave is it adjusted?” I asked.

“I’ve put it on the high,” said Tom. “It’s fixed for ‘the man’s’ waves. I’ve got one new dodge, though, among others. I have it arranged so I could have told at any time whether ‘the man’ was sinking a ship or just experimenting. It’s so delicate that when his waves strike a ship, the machine can tell it by the slight loss in power. See here,” he turned on the switch in its revolution, “it’s this.” Flash went the beam.

A groan burst from Dorothy’s lips. “He’s at it again. There’s a ship gone down.”

Tom’s face was ghastly. “That’s right,” he said. “Where is he?”

Five minute’s calculation brought it.

“He’s in Tokio,” said Dorothy.

Tom nodded. “What a fiend to have loose in the world. Here his mission is accomplished and war is over, and he keeps on.”

Dorothy sprang from her chair. “No, it isn’t that. I’m sure of it. He doesn’t know that war is over. It must be that. We must tell him of it.”

CHAPTER XIX

“What is your idea, Dorothy?” asked Tom gravely. This last catastrophe, coming when all danger from the man who had stopped all war seemed past, had sobered us all.

“You said there was a mast with wires beside the conning tower of the submarine, that time you saw ‘the man,’ didn’t you, Jim?” she asked.

I nodded.

“Well, that mast was the aerial of a wireless. I don’t know what he uses it for, but apparently he has one. Now that we have the Denckel apparatus fixed to send waves to any given point, we can send off waves of all kinds to Tokio, calling him and recalling him, until we get a wave which his receiver will take. Then we can set up a straight, wireless receiving station here to take his answer.”

“What will you say to him?” Tom asked.

“I’ll just say, – ‘To the man who stopped all war. War is over. All nations are disarming. Reply to us.’”

“It’s worth trying, anyway,” said Tom, with an air of finality. “I’ll go right to work setting up a receiving plant. I can do that, all right, but I can’t send Morse through our machine.”

“If you’ll look out for the construction end of it, I can send Morse over an ordinary key,” I suggested.

“Then that’s settled,” said Tom. “I can set up a wireless that will receive any waves sent from Japan, and I can set up a duplicate of the wave-measuring machine that will send messages straight to Tokio, by means of an ordinary Morse key. Where had we better run our aerial?”

“Down by the shore,” said Dorothy. “We want to avoid the interfering action of the currents that are loose in and around the city.”

“There’s one thing you’ve forgotten,” I interposed. “If ‘the man’ is in a submarine, your message may not reach him under water.”

“He’ll spend most of his time on the surface,” said Tom. “With a first-class submarine he could spend two months under water at a time, but he wouldn’t want to.”

“Don’t spend any more time in discussion, boys,” interrupted Dorothy. “We must reach him the first moment possible, before any other ship goes down. Meanwhile, Jim, you want to get this to the paper, don’t you?”

“I surely do,” I responded, and I hurried off to wire the London office. I sent my telegram over our private line, and waited for the answer. In five minutes it came back.

“Too late, this time, my boy. Japanese first-class battleship disappeared in broad daylight in the harbor of Tokio. They sent it on here immediately, and we have had it for some minutes. Rest on your laurels.” Signed, Maxwell.

“Well,” I thought to myself, as I returned, “I can afford to rest on my laurels. There’s not a country in the civilized world where my name is not known to-day.” My mail was full of requests for interviews, for magazine articles, for lecture tours. 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. Most of all, I had not yet accomplished the one thing I set out to do. I had not found the man who was stopping all war. He still eluded me, and still was carrying on his dread work. I reached our hotel feeling that I was really a very ordinary mortal, after all.

While I had been gone, events had been moving swiftly. Some miles out from The Hague, there was a little inn on the shore among the dunes over beyond Scheveningen to which we had twice motored down during the conference. Thoroughly comfortable, a favorite meeting place in summer for the artist colony about the watering place, it was now almost wholly deserted, because of the lateness of the season. We felt it would make ideal headquarters for our work, and soon established ourselves there. Tom was never more in his element than when assembling apparatus, or when controlling men. Here was his chance to do both. Like magic, the tall mast reared its height among the dunes, while coils, wires, and instruments fell swiftly into place. Acting chiefly as a burden bearer, I ran to and fro, while Tom and Dorothy, with their assistants, brought things to completion. As I came in from a final staying of the aerial, Tom turned to me, wiping the sweat of honest toil from his face.

“All ready, Jim,” he said. “If you’ll start a message over that wire, we’ll send it through the ether by means of Denckel’s machine, and drop it straight on Tokio. Hold on a minute, though. Let me call up my assistant on the wave-measuring machine, and see if he has heard anything.”

A rapid conversation over the telephone we had installed, resulted. Tom turned back to me.

“As yet, I’m thankful to say, nothing happened. ‘The man’ has evidently been experimenting this morning, and was experimenting this afternoon. He’s right off Tokio, still. Go ahead.”

I pressed the key and the vibrant discharge rattled from pole to pole. Over and over again I gave the call. “To the man who has stopped all war.” Over and over again I hurled my message out across half a world. For an hour I repeated the call, my eyes and ears waiting for some response from the sounder at my left.

“Let’s shift the wave strength,” said Tom, and they made a hurried series of adjustments. Once more I took up my task, and at five minute intervals for three hours sent out my call. 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. Along the sand, beside the black water, over dune, and through the long wiry grass of the hollows I tramped, till the lights of Scheveningen were just ahead. Neither moon nor stars shone forth, and my feet fell noiselessly on the yielding sand. As I crossed the summit of a dune, I stumbled on the prostrate body of a man lying there looking out to sea. I hastened to utter apologies in French, English and German, but the unknown simply bowed courteously, and started back in the direction from which I had come. “Some smuggler, I presume,” I said to myself. “For want of anything better to do, I may as well dog his steps.” On and on in the blackness went my stranger, his head bowed as if in deep thought. By beach and road I followed, till, to my surprise, as we came up to the door of the inn, the man ahead entered without once turning round. I hurried after him, but the only occupant of the wide hall was the proprietor. Mustering my best French, I asked news of the man who had entered.

“An Englishman,” said my host, “mad, a little touched here;” he laid an expressive finger beside his head. “He has been with me for two months. He eats and stays all day in his room. He goes at night and looks at the sea.”

An Englishman! Strange he had not replied to me. But weightier matters oppressed me, and I went to bed, only to pass a troubled night, haunted strangely by my chance acquaintance. Throughout the night he led me in a mad chase, always seeming about to turn into some one I knew and wished to see, but always at the moment of recognition, when I was about to cry his name, he faded, changing into a gigantic, cloudy, unfamiliar form.

The morning brought a messenger from the city with our mail, and we each found a package of letters beside our plate at breakfast. One postmarked London and addressed to me in my own handwriting, I seized and opened eagerly. It was from Hamerly. I had sent him a photograph of Regnier, which I had received only a week before.

“Dorothy,” I said, “here is a letter from Hamerly about Regnier. As you know, I sent him that picture.”

“Read it, please,” requested Dorothy.

I obeyed.

“Half Moon Street,”London, Nov. 2d, 19 – .

“Dear Orrington: – The man who came out of Dr. Heidenmuller’s locked room is not the man of your picture. Both are tall and dark, but there the resemblance ends. No allowance for the changes of a year could make them the same. I am sorry that the clue from which you hoped so much should have ended in a cul de sac. I see by the papers that the possessor of this dread power has not ceased his awful work. The country here is in a state of wild excitement and fear over the sinking of the Japanese battleship. I sincerely trust that you may soon be successful in your quest.

“Yours fraternally,“Edgar Hamerly.”

“I knew it,” said Dorothy, with conviction. “I’ve told you he wasn’t ‘the man,’ from the very first.”

“Well,” ejaculated Tom, stirring his chocolate viciously, “I wish to blazes he was, or at least that we could find out who it is, and make him understand that he’s a blamed fool.” Drinking his chocolate, Tom rose with the remark, “Now I’m going to find out whether the Denckel apparatus has recorded anything new during the night.” A few minutes later he returned, with a negative shake of his head. “Nothing,” he said. “Let’s get to work.”

That day passed as had the preceding afternoon and evening. Twelve times an hour I sent forth the call. As each hour struck, Tom changed the strength of the wave. The morning passed, the long afternoon waned, and the early night came on. Monotonously, as I pressed the key, my thoughts would range outward into space, peering, searching, striving to find some way to reach the man. My only occupation was the watching of the clock, for Tom and Dorothy were working hard in the next room on plans for altering the wave-measuring machine in such a way as to make it even more effective.

Directly beneath the clock on the wall, a window looked out to sea. As the evening wore on towards night, a storm rose, and the fierce wind of late autumn drove the breakers with a resounding roar on the long beach. I marked the hour, as the storm reached its height, – 9.05. I sent my message, 9.10. I sent it again, and as I raised my eyes from my key I looked at the window. There, pressed against the pane, was the face of a man we had long sought. I leaped to my feet.

“There’s Regnier!” I cried, pointing at the window. The face disappeared as I spoke, and Tom and Dorothy, springing from their chairs, looked out through the panes at the storm. In the hush of the night the sound of breakers bore in on us insistently.

“Wild as a loon,” said Tom, shaking his head mournfully in my direction.

“Where was he?” asked Dorothy.

“Right outside that window!” I shouted. “Come, we must find him.”

We all started for the outer air, but before we could leave the room, the door opened and Richard Regnier entered. Mental trouble showed in his unquiet look and in his hesitating hand.

“Why, Dick,” began Tom, but Dorothy, with an emphatic gesture, commanded silence.

“I beg your pardon,” said Regnier slowly, and with evident difficulty. “I saw you through the window, and I thought somehow I might have known you once, and that you could tell me who I am.”

Her eyes shining with pity, Dorothy spoke gently. “I’m so glad to see you, Richard. Don’t you remember you are Richard Regnier, and that I am Dorothy Haldane? You know Tom, here, my brother, well, and this is Jim Orrington whom you met one night in Washington.”

At Dorothy’s low voice, the clouded brow cleared. The curtain rolled from the darkened eyes, and the bent form straightened. “Thank God. I am Richard Regnier. But where am I, and how did I get here?” he asked.

“You are on the coast of Holland, near The Hague,” responded Dorothy quietly. “I don’t know how you got here.”

“How did you come to be here?” asked Regnier eagerly.

“We came to The Hague to the Peace Congress, and we came down here to try to find the man who has stopped all war,” answered Dorothy.

“The man who destroyed the Alaska and the Dreadnought Number 8?” queried Regnier, in great excitement. “I have known nothing since that time. Has he done anything since?”

“Many things,” said Dorothy sadly. “He is doing great harm now, and that is why we are trying to reach him. We ought not to lose a minute more, Jim. If you and Tom will go to work again, I will sit down and tell Richard about the happenings of the last two months.”

Back we went to our tasks and, as I pounded out the message, waited five minutes and pounded it out again, I thought of the strange suspicion under which Regnier had lain. I had believed him the man who had sunk every battleship on that fatal day. I had felt convinced that he was the man for whom we had searched so diligently for weeks. And while we searched, he had been wandering along the sands of the Holland coast.

Regnier and Dorothy had sat for perhaps half an hour in earnest conversation, when they rose and came over to us.

“Tom,” said Dorothy, “Dick has had more experience with wireless apparatus than you have. Suppose you let him look over the whole business.”

“Glad enough to have him,” answered Tom. “It’s always possible there may be an error somewhere.”

Step by step, Regnier examined the transmitting end of the apparatus, passed from the house to the aerial, came back, and went over the receiving end in every part. As he ended, he straightened up.

“If you don’t mind, Tom, I’d like to change that coherer a little. I should judge that your transmitter was all right, but I question if you could get a reply from Tokio through the coherer, as it now stands connected with that sounder.”

“Go ahead,” said Tom, and I rose from my seat and went over beside Dorothy, while Regnier worked at the powdery mass in the glass tube. He took up the tube at last and held it to the light.

“There, let’s try that,” he said, and placed the tube in its supports, screwing up the terminals. Scarcely had he made the last turn when the sounder broke forth. Clickety clack, clack, clack, clack. Dots and dashes came with the rapidity of a practised sender. Swiftly I read them off, as they came to my telephone receiver.

“I am the man who is trying to stop all war. Is your news true? What do you want of me? Why don’t you answer?”

I jumped to my seat beside the key, and sent the answer out into the ether about us.

“We have only just got your answer through the receiver. Our news is true. All the nations are disarming. Why do you not cease sinking battleships? Your purpose is accomplished.”

I had scarcely ended when the reply came back.