_Conference_
Captain Richard Rennell, of the U. S. Air Service, but temporarily
detached to Intelligence, thought that Fredegonde Valmy had never
looked so lovely as when he helped her out of the cockpit.
Her dark hair fell in disorder over her flushed cheeks, and her eyes
were sparkling with pleasure.
"A thousand thanks, M'sieur Rennell," she said, in her low voice with
its slight foreign intonation. "Never have I enjoyed a ride more than
to-day. And I shall see you at Mrs. Wansleigh's ball to-night?"
"I hope so--if I'm not wanted at Headquarters," answered Dick, looking
at the girl in undisguised admiration.
"Ah, that Headquarters of yours! It claims so much of your time!" she
pouted. "But these are times when the Intelligence Service demands
much of its men, is it not so?"
"Who told you I was attached to Intelligence?" demanded Dick bluntly.
She laughed mockingly. "Do you think that is not known all over
Washington?" she asked. "It is strange that Intelligence should act
like the--the ostrich, who buries his head in the sand and thinks that
no one sees him because it is hidden."
Dick looked at the girl in perplexity. During the past month he had
completely lost his head and heart over her, and he was trying to view
her with the dispassionate judgment that his position demanded.
As the niece of the Slovakian Ambassador, Mademoiselle Valmy had the
entry to Washington society. The Ambassador was away on leave, and she
had appeared during his absence, but she had been accepted
unquestionably at the Embassy, where she had taken up her quarters,
explaining--as the Ambassador confirmed by cable--that she had sailed
under a misconception as to the date of his leave.
* * * * *
Brunette, beautiful, charming, she had a score of hearts to play with,
and yet Dick flattered himself that he stood first. Perhaps the others
did too.
"Of course," the girl went on, "with the Invisible Emperor threatening
organized society, you gentlemen find yourselves extremely busy. Well,
let us hope that you locate him and bring him to book."
"Sometimes," said Dick slowly, "I almost think that you know something
about the Invisible Emperor."
Again she laughed merrily. "Now, if you had said that my sympathies
were with the Invisible Emperor, I might have been surprised into an
acknowledgment," she answered. "After all, he does stand for that
aristocracy that has disappeared from the modern world, does he not?
For refinement of manners, for beauty of life, for all those things
men used to prize."
"Likewise for the existence of the vast body of the nation in
ignorance and poverty, in filth and squalor," answered Dick. "No, my
sympathies are with law and order and democracy, and your Invisible
Emperor and his crowd are simply a gang of thieves and hold-up men."
"Be careful!" A warning fire burned in the girl's eyes. "At least, it
is known that the Emperor's ears are long."
"So are a jackass's," retorted Dick.
He was sorry next moment, for the girl received his answer in icy
silence. In his car, which conveyed them from the tarmac to the
Embassy, she received all his overtures in the same silence. A frigid
little bow was her farewell to him, while Dick, struggling between
resentment and humiliation, sat dumb and wretched at the wheel.
Yet the idea that Fredegonde Valmy had any knowledge of the conspiracy
or its leaders never entered Dick's head. He was only miserable that
he had offended her, and he would have done anything to have
straightened out the trouble.
* * * * *
It seemed impossible that in the year 1940 the peace of the civilized
world could be threatened by an international conspiracy bent on
restoring absolutism, and yet each day showed more clearly the immense
ramifications of the plot. Each day, too, brought home to the
investigating governments more clearly the fact that the things they
had discovered were few in number in comparison with those they had
not.
The headquarters of the conspirators had never been discovered, and it
was suspected that the powerful mind behind them was intentionally
leading the investigators along false trails.
The conspiracy was world-wide. It had been behind the revolution that
had recreated an absolutist monarchy in Spain. It had plunged Italy
into civil war. It had thrown England into the convulsions of a
succession of general strikes, using the communist movement as a cloak
for its activities.
But nobody dreamed that America could become a fertile field for its
insidious propaganda. Yet it was behind the millions of adherents of
the so-called Freemen's Party, clamoring for the destruction of the
constitution. Upon the anarchy that would follow the absolutist regime
was to be erected.
Already the mysterious powers had struck. Departments of State had
been entered and important papers abstracted. The _Germania_ had
mysteriously disappeared in mid-Atlantic, and a shipping panic had
ensued. There were tales of mysterious figures materializing out of
nothingness. It was known that the conspirators were in possession of
certain chemical and electrical devices with which they hoped to
achieve their ends.
The Superintendent of the penitentiary had had in his pocket an
authorization to stop the execution of Von Kettler after he stood on
the trap. Dead, he would be a mere mark of vengeance: alive, he might
be persuaded to furnish some clue to the headquarters of the
miscreants.
* * * * *
And behind the conspirators loomed the unknown figure that signed
itself the Invisible Emperor--in the communications that poured in to
the White House and to the rulers of other nations. In the threats
that were materializing with stunning swiftness.
Who was he? Rumor said that a former European ruler had not died as
was supposed: that a coffin weighted with lead had been buried, and
that he himself in his old age, had gone forth to a mad scheme of
world conquest with a body of his nobles.
It had been practically a state of war since the shipment of gold,
guarded by a detachment of police, had been stolen in broad daylight
outside Baltimore, the police clubbed and killed by invisible
assailants--as they claimed. The press was under censorship, troops
under arms, and it was reported that the fleet was mobilizing.
In the midst of it all, Washington shopped, danced, feasted, flirted,
like a swarm of may flies over a treacherous stream.
Intelligence was alert. As Dick started to drive away from the
Slovakian Embassy, a man stepped quickly to the side of the car and
thrust an envelope into his hand. Dick opened it quickly. He was
wanted by Colonel Stopford at once, not at the camouflaged
Headquarters at the War Department, but at the real Headquarters where
no papers were kept but weighty decisions were made. And to that
devious course the Government had already been driven.
Dick parked his car in a side street--it would have been under
espionage in any of the official parking places--and set off at a
smart walk toward his destination. Nobody would have guessed, from the
appearance of the streets, that a national calamity was impending. The
shopping crowds were swarming along the sidewalks, cars tailed each
other through the streets; only a detachment of soldiers on the White
House lawn lent a touch of the martial to the scene.
* * * * *
The building which Dick entered was an ordinary ten-story one in the
business section; the various legal firms and commercial concerns that
occupied it would have been greatly surprised to have known the
identity of the Ira T. Graves, Importer, whose name appeared in modest
letters upon the opaque glass door on the seventh story. Inside a
flapper stenographer--actually one of the most trusted members of
Intelligence's staff--asked Dick's name, which she knew perfectly
well. Not a smile or a flicker of an eyelid betrayed the fact.
"Mr. Rennell," said Dick with equal gravity.
The girl passed into an inner room, and a buzzer sounded. In a few
moments the girl came back.
"Mr. Graves will be here in a few minutes, Mr. Rennell, if you'll
kindly wait in his office," she said.
Dick thanked her, and walked through into the empty office. He waited
there till the girl had closed the door behind him, then went out by
another door and found himself again in the corridor. Opposite him was
a door with the words "Entrance 769" and a hand pointing down the
corridor to where the Intelligence service had established another
perfectly innocent front. Dick tapped lightly at this door, and a key
turned in the lock.
The man who stepped quickly back was one of the heads of the Civil
Service. The man at the flat-topped desk was Colonel Stopford. The man
on a chair beside him was one of the heads of the police force.
* * * * *
The Colonel, a big, elderly man, dressed in a grey sack suit, checked
Dick's commencing salutation. "Never mind etiquette, Rennell," he
said. "Sit down. You've heard about the man Von Kettler's escape last
night, of course?"
"Yes, sir."
"It's known, then. We can't keep things dark. He vanished from his
cell in the death house, three minutes before the time appointed for
his execution, though, as a matter of fact, he wasn't going to be
hanged. Apparently he walked through the walls.
"There's a sequel to it, Rennell. It seems he had told the
assistant-superintendent, a man named Anstruther, that he'd meet him
at a restaurant in town that night. He promised to leave him a
memento. Anstruther happened to remember this boast of Von Kettler's,
and he surrounded the restaurant with armed detectives, on the chance
that the fellow would show up. Rennell, _Von Kettler was there!_"
"He went to this restaurant, sir?"
"He walked in, just before the place was surrounded, engaged a table,
and ordered a sumptuous meal. He told the waiter his name, said he
expected a friend to join him, walked into the wash-room--and
vanished! Two minutes later Anstruther and his men were on the job.
Von Kettler never came out of the wash-room, so far as anybody knows.
"In the midst of the hue and cry somebody pointed to the table that
Von Kettler had engaged. There was a twenty-dollar bill upon it, and a
scrap of paper reading: 'I've kept my word. Von K.'"
Colonel Stopford looked at Dick fixedly. "Rennell, we may be fools,"
he said, "but we realize what we're up against. It's a big thing, and
we're going to need all our fighting grit to overcome it. You're one
of the four men we're depending on. We're counting on you because of
your record, and because of your degree in science at Heidelberg. The
President wishes you to take charge of the whole Eastern Intelligence
District, covering the entire south-eastern seaboard of the United
States. You are to have complete freedom of action, and all civil,
military, and naval officials have received instructions to co-operate
with you."
"There goes Mrs. Wansleigh's ball," thought Dick, but he said nothing.
* * * * *
"We're not the hunters, Dick Rennell," went on Colonel Stopford.
"We're hiding under cover, and I'm counting on you to turn the tables.
They even know my office is here. I had a long distance call from
Savannah this morning in mocking vein. They advised me to have the
White House watched to-night. I warned the President, and we've posted
guards all round it."
"They held the wire while you called up the President?" asked Dick.
"Damn it, no! They called me up from Scranton the instant he'd
finished speaking. They have the power of the devil, Rennell, with
that infernal invisibility invention of theirs. Rennell, we're
fighting unknown forces. Who this Invisible Emperor is, we don't even
know. But one thing we've found out. He has his headquarters somewhere
in your district. Somewhere along the south Atlantic seaboard. The
greater part of his activities emanate from there. But we're fighting
in the dark. The clue, the master clue that will enable us to locate
him--that's what we lack."
The sun had set, it was beginning to grow dark. Colonel Stopford
switched on the electric lamp beside his desk.
"What have you to say, Rennell?" he asked; and Dick was aware that the
two other men were regarding him attentively.
"It's evident," said Dick, "that Von Kettler possessed this means of
invisibility in his cell, and wasn't detected. He simply slipped out
when the guard came to fetch him."
"Invisibility? Yes! But invisible's not the same thing as
transparent," cried Stopford. "These folks have operated in broad
daylight. They're transparent, damn them! Not even a shadow! You know
what I mean, Rennell! What I'm thinking of! That crazy man you were in
touch with six months ago, who prophesied this! We turned him down! He
showed me a watch and said the salvation of the world was inside the
case! I thought him insane!"
* * * * *
"You mean Luke Evans, sir. That watch was his pocket model. He went
off in a huff, saying the time would come when we'd want him and not
be able to find him."
"But, damn him, he wanted to produce universal darkness, or some such
nonsense, Rennell, and I told him that we wanted light, not darkness."
"It wasn't exactly that, sir." Colonel Stopford was a man of the old
school: he had been an artillery officer in the Great War, and was
characteristically impatient of new notions. Dick began carefully:
"You'll remember, sir, old Evans claimed to have been the inventor of
that shadow-breaking device that was stolen from him and sold in
England."
"To a moving picture company!" snorted Stopford. "I asked him what
moving pictures had to do with war."
"Evans was convinced that the invention would be applied to war. He
claimed that it made the modern methods of military camouflage out of
date completely. He said that by destroying shadows one could produce
invisibility, since visibility consists in the refraction of wave
lengths by material objects.
"When they stole his invention, he foresaw that it would be used in
war. He set to work to nullify his own invention. He told me that he
had unintentionally given to the enemies of the United States a means
of bringing us to our knees, since he believed that British motion
picture company was actually a subsidiary of Krupp's. He worked out a
method of counteracting it."
"You must get him, Rennell. Even if it's all nonsense, we can't afford
to let any chance go. If Evans's invention will counteract this damned
invisibility business--"
The telephone on the Colonel's desk rang. He picked it up, and his
face assumed an expression of incredulity. He looked about him, like a
man bewildered. He beckoned to the police official, who hurried to his
side, and thrust the receiver into his hand. The official listened.
"All right," he said. He turned to Dick and the Civil Service
representative.
"Gentlemen," he said, "the President has disappeared from his office
in the White House, and there are grave fears that he has been
kidnapped!"