WHERE IS IT?
The Secretary left the room after practically turning the entire matter
over to Edestone. He feared that the time had come to show force. The
Germans, in what they felt might be a desperate strait, had thrown to
the wind caution, tradition, and the usages of civilized warfare. They
were preparing some desperate move which he felt that he was powerless
to stop. Diplomacy with them now was as useless as pure logic on a
charging elephant.
How they expected to stand against Edestone and his diabolical mystery
of the air, he could not comprehend, but he had lived long enough with
this nation to know them. Simple, kind, and lovable in their ordinary
lives, they were nevertheless, on the subject of war, individually and
collectively mad and they were ready to die fighting.
Whereas any sane man could see that their fight with Edestone was
hopeless, they with their absolute confidence and conceit were
preparing to pit themselves against him and some unknown secret of
nature. While he, with his discovery, was apparently in a position to
let loose upon their defenceless city an engine of destruction too
terrible to think of. Edestone, like the pilot who has come aboard the
ocean liner, had now taken entire charge.
The first thing was to get off this message, so he sat down to work out
the cipher known only to himself and “Specs.” He said to Lawrence:
“My initials J. F. E. are the call which must be repeated three times,
then twice, and then finally once. This must all be repeated with one
minute intervals until answered by the single letter ‘E,’ which will be
repeated eight times, once for every letter in my name, and after an
interval of five minutes, once again only.
“After you have satisfied yourself that you are in touch with Mr. Page,
my head man, ‘Specs,’ I call him, send him this.” He handed Lawrence
one word of twenty-two letters, or rather twenty-two letters which he
had apparently taken indiscriminately from a small pocket dictionary.
“Have him repeat, and see that there is no mistake,” and continuing, he
said: “We are certainly being watched by the German servants; the
condition of my trunks shows that, so the first thing to do is to get
them out of the way. Call them all down into the ballroom, and say that
I wish to speak to them. See that everyone is there, and if there is a
single one missing, search the house from garret to cellar until you
find them all. I will give them a little talk which will give you and
Black time to get off this message. I will, incidentally, show them
that I propose to put up with no nonsense whatever.”
As Lawrence was leaving the room he said to him with a jolly laugh:
“Oh, by the way, how does it feel to be rich again? I have been so
occupied with other things that I have not had time to thank and
congratulate you on your splendid work. What a fine story it will make
when we get back to New York, which will be very soon, I hope.”
When the servants came in he first gave them a little insight into the
real state of affairs from a standpoint that they had never known. He
then explained to them that the Embassy was practically in a state of
siege, and that he was in command, and that if he heard of any one of
them having any communication whatever with anyone on the outside, he
would treat them in the way that he had treated the people in the
pictures which he had shown them, only he would put them out of the
window and they would keep going up and up and never come down again.
So when Lawrence returned and signalled that he might let them go, a
more thoroughly scared set of domestics never waited on the word of
“Ivan the Terrible.”
“Well, Bo,” said Lawrence as he threw himself into a comfortable chair,
after slopping whisky and water all over the tablecloth and dropping a
large piece of ice on the floor which he kicked violently at the
retreating servant at whom he had bellowed, giving a perfect imitation
of a Prussian officer in a public restaurant when American ladies are
present, “this has certainly been ‘some day.’ Will you please be so
kind as to put me wise on a few of your dates?
“In the first place, who was the ‘wise guy’ who rushed out from nowhere
and swallowed up my J. F. E. like an old trout from under a bank who
had never seen a Silver Doctor before? Where is he? How is he to get
here, and what is he going to do when he does?”
Edestone quietly finished the lighting of his cigar, and after he was
thoroughly satisfied that this was perfectly done and it was going to
draw to his entire satisfaction, he said:
“Well, now that you are to be my fellow-partner in crime, and Jones is
our associate, I will tell you. Do you remember the summer way back in
the 90's that you and I spent in Switzerland mountain climbing?”
“Yes, perfectly,” said Lawrence, “but that was a long time ago. We were
nothing but kids then.”
“Do you remember that you, kid-like, insisted upon going over a very
flimsy-looking snow bridge, simply because the old guide told us that
he had never seen that crevasse bridged before, and that the tradition
down in Chamonix was that it had only been bridged once or twice in the
memory of man?
“And do you remember,” went on Edestone, “that at first he refused to
go, saying that if it broke after we got over, there was no possible
way of our getting back?”
“Yes,” acknowledged Lawrence, “the old ‘chump,’ and I remember that we
went over and got back all right, and those guides are talking about it
yet.”
“Well, do you remember,” continued Edestone, “that when we scrambled
up over the next rock ridge we looked into a regular bowl-shaped
valley that had the appearance of a crater of an extinct volcano?”
“Yes,” said Lawrence.
“Well, ‘Specs’ is there in that valley, where perhaps no human being
has ever been before. I sent him there for that reason. He has been
there for the last two months and a half, unknown to anyone on the face
of the earth and thoroughly protected from the storms that sweep over
that portion of the French Alps.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Lawrence. “Is ‘Specs’ the skipper of that
pretty little toy you were showing on the screen?”
“No, Captain Lee is the skipper,” laughed Edestone. “Dear old ‘Specs’
is my boss. He is the Admiral.”
“Well, for the love of Mike,” exploded Lawrence. “What a swell chance
those mortars out there with their long distance telephone attachments
will have with that Queen of the Milky Way. You don’t mean to say that
he is coming over here with his forty thousand tons and float around up
there five thousand feet above the Embassy?” he exclaimed as he looked
up at the ceiling with a look of alarm, as if he expected to see it
come crushing down on him at any moment. And jumping out of his chair
he ran about the room, making the most ridiculous gestures, crying:
“Air, I want air!” while Edestone laughed until the tears rolled down
his cheeks.
“But say, Bo,” said Lawrence, “there is nothing to it. What do you
suppose those crazy Dutchmen are thinking about? Why I thought that sky
pirate belonged to the United States, and was now probably tied to a
dock in some mud flat, with a crew of two brass polishers and a Sunday
School teacher, while the Virginia creeper and the North Carolina
milkweed twined about it to make nests for the Dove of Peace.”
“No,” said Edestone, “it is what you have just called it, a Sky Pirate,
and I am the buccaneer.”
“Did the Emperor know that when he got so gay with you tonight?” asked
Lawrence.
“No, he does not know that, but he knows everything else.”
“Well, what is his game?”
“Well,” said Edestone, after thinking for a while, “as far as I can
make it out it is this: They do not want to kill me; they are using me
to bait the trap with which they hope to catch the ‘Queen of the Milky
Way,’ as you call her. They will take her dead, now that they cannot
get her alive, and they hope to be able to put new life into her after
they have taken all life out with the ‘long distance telephone
attachments,’ as you call them.”
“Why is he so certain that you will not drop bombs on his city?” asked
Lawrence.
“I do not know,” replied Edestone, “unless he knows that I am more of a
gentleman than he is. Or perhaps he thinks that I will not allow any
damage to be done until I am safely on board, which may or may not be
perfectly true.”
“_Tu as raison, mon vieux_,” shrugged Lawrence.
“They will do nothing to me until they are certain that they are going
to lose me. They want me alive, but would rather have me dead than in
the hands of the other fellow. Now do you understand?”
“Not exactly,” replied Lawrence, pretending to look very wise. “What do
you mean about taking her dead if they can’t get her alive, and what
have those wires got to do with it?”
“I mean by taking her alive,” said Edestone, “buying her from whoever
she belongs to, and keeping me here to show them how to run her. And
when I spoke of taking her dead, I had forgotten that you had not heard
what I said tonight while showing the pictures. I will explain this to
you sometime when we get on board and we have more time, but you will
understand enough when I tell you this.”
Lawrence listened attentively as Edestone continued.
“They know that she floats by virtue of an instrument that I have; they
know that she will not float if brought in contact with the earth or if
connected with it by means of some electrical conductor. They propose
to establish an electrical connexion between her and the ground by
throwing those wires over her with mortars, just as the life-saving men
throw a life-line to a ship in distress.”
“Oh, that was why they were so carefully connected with the water
main,” interrupted Lawrence.
“Yes,” replied Edestone, “and when they get her down they will expect
me with my instrument to float her off again.”
“Well, what do you think of their chances of pulling this off?” asked
Lawrence.
“I think,” said Edestone thoughtfully, “their chances are small, but
you can never tell what these very resourceful people may do. They are
buoyed up by a hopefulness that is almost uncanny and they can’t all be
crazy!”