terrible about to happen, and, even before our first greetings were
over, I noticed that he paused two or three times and listened intently.
“I think I can guess to what I owe this visit,” he said as he went
up-stairs with me to my room, “and I would to God I thought you would
be able to accomplish what has so far proved impossible.”
I told him that it was owing to his advertisement that my present trip
had been undertaken, and begged him to tell me more about the wonderful
invention.
“Wait till after dinner,” he said, “for it is a long story. We will go
to my room, and I will tell you then a tale as strange as it is true.”
That dinner was the most dismal affair I ever attended. Churchill
sat like a man in a trance, completely absorbed in his meditations;
and twice, after listening as I had seen him on my first arrival, he
excused himself and left the table abruptly.
“You and Rannie are such old friends, you mustn’t mind him to-night,”
Mrs. Churchill said to me apologetically, while he was out of the
room; “this terrible affair of the seismaphone has upset us both
completely.”
That was the only mention of the subject during dinner; but after we
had sat in the library a little while discussing trivial topics, such
as Robert’s progress in school and the new furnishings of the house
since my last visit, Churchill and I excused ourselves and went to his
private room.
“I may as well start at the very beginning,” he said as he threw
himself down languidly in an easy chair, after drawing out from under
the table a long, narrow box, which he placed in his lap.
“On the night of the tenth of last June the maid brought me the card of
a man who was waiting down-stairs, and who said he wanted to see me on
very important private business. I glanced at the name scrawled in red
ink on the bit of card-board,‘Martin M. Bradley,’ and wondered vaguely
who the man could be, as I did not remember ever having heard of him
before.
“I told the maid to show him up here to the den, and a few minutes
later she ushered into this room the man who has been the cause of
these gray hairs.
“He was short and sallow, about thirty-five years of age, as I
afterwards found out, though care and privations had marked him so
harshly that he looked to be nearly fifty. He carried in his hand this
black, leather-covered box which you see in my lap; and, after seating
himself at my invitation, began:
“‘You are no doubt surprised, Mr. Churchill, to have a visit from me,
for you probably don’t remember ever having heard of me before; but
I’ve come to you because I know you are in the patent office, and used
to be a friend of mine back in the seventies, and because, too, I’ve
got something so valuable here that I don’t dare to send it up to the
office in the usual way.’
“He unstrapped, as he spoke, the box, which he had not let out of his
hands since he entered, and took from it two black, galvanized rubber
instruments, one of which you see here.”
Churchill lifted from the case a thing which resembled more than
anything else the receiver of a telephone, except that both ends were
turned out like the one you put to the ear. He unscrewed this outer cap
and handed both parts to me to examine.
About two inches in from the bell-shaped end of the cylinder was a
diaphragm of peculiar looking metal, which from appearance I judged
to be an alloy of copper and zinc, with something else included.
Immediately over this, and tightly stretched across at unequal
distances apart, were some twenty fine German silver wires.
“Bradley opened one of the instruments, as I have just done,” continued
Churchill, “and proceeded to explain to me its construction.
“‘These two instruments,’ said he, ‘which together I call the Martin
Bradley Seismaphone, are to the telephone what telegraphy without wires
is to the ordinary method of sending messages. Both light and sound,
as you know, travel by waves which produce sensation; one by striking
against the retina of the eye, the other by striking on the drum of the
ear.
“‘The light wave travels with a velocity of something over 185,000
miles a second, while the sound wave moves much slower. This
difference, however, is overcome by the mechanical device in the
tube-like section in the middle part of the instrument.
“‘As you have seen the sun’s rays collected and focused to one small
spot by a reading glass, and the power intensified so that combustion
takes place, so in a similar way does the seismaphone collect the sound
waves, intensify and bring them to a focus here,’ and he indicated with
his finger a point back of the metal diaphragm.
“‘By speaking into one of these instruments the sound passes through
the wires, and strikes against the metal disk. This sets in motion a
series of waves, which, traveling with the enormous velocity of which
I have spoken, produce such rapid vibrations that the ear, unaided,
cannot perceive the sound, but by means of the other half of the
seismaphone these sound waves are collected and so transformed by the
corresponding wires and diaphragm that the voice is reproduced by one
instrument in exactly the tone spoken.
“‘By means of the seismaphones, you and I, though separated by
thousands of miles, can converse as easily as though we were in the
same city, connected by an ordinary metallic current.’
“In a fifteen years’ experience with patent seekers, I have met many
inventive freaks, and probably something of what I was thinking of his
seismaphone showed in my face, for he stopped describing it abruptly,
and handing me one of the instruments, said,--
“‘I see you don’t believe a word I’ve told you, and you probably think
I’m crazy; so, before I tell you anything more about the construction
or possibilities of my invention, I want to ask you to take this half
of the seismaphone, and go up to the top of your house. When you are
ready to make the test, put the end marked “voice” to your mouth, and
say in a distinct tone, “Ready, Bradley.” Then, when you see this
little hammer striking against the bell, and hear a sharp tinkling
inside the cylinder, put the other end to your ear and listen. Oh, you
may lock me in as you go out, if you are afraid I may remove any of the
bric-à-brac,’ he added, as I seemed to hesitate.
“I don’t know why it was, for I am not over credulous, but something
told me the man was speaking the truth. And when you stop to think of
it, what was there so very improbable about it?
“Who would have believed one hundred years ago that we would ever be
able to communicate instantaneously with the inhabitants of another
continent by any means whatever? Or, to come nearer to our own time,
twenty years ago we would have scoffed at the idea of telegraphing
without wires. Why, then, was it so impossible to transmit the tones
of the human voice without them? It would be only another step in the
march of progress.
“I took the instrument and climbed to the garret without a word.
Placing the end he had indicated to my lips, I said loudly, ‘Ready,
Bradley.’ Without any special expectation I then put the other end
to my ear, and at the result nearly fell over backwards; for, as
distinctly as if the man I had left down-stairs had been standing
beside me, I heard him say,--
“‘Don’t speak so loud. I can hear you at this distance if you merely
whisper. Now press the little button at the end marked “ear,” and wait
for the megaphone attachment.’ I did as he said, and again I jumped and
nearly dropped the instrument, for the room was filled with a voice
which sounded louder than a peal of thunder.
“‘By pressing that button you do for the seismaphone what by putting on
the horns you do for the phonograph or graphophone,’ the stentorian
voice said. ‘You had better press the button in the other end, for my
voice with this attachment is probably too loud for pleasure.’
“I pressed the button obediently as directed, and walked back
down-stairs filled with wonder.
“We shall not get to bed any earlier than Martin Bradley and I did that
night, if I stop to tell you all of our conversation. I found that he
was a man I had known slightly some years ago when I was trying for the
patent office position.
“He had in his youth been through a technical school and received
a good education; but had been unable to settle down to any steady
employment, preferring to devote himself to some great invention. Eight
years ago he began working on this instrument, and had been developing
and perfecting it ever since.
“The proposition he made me was that I should go into partnership
with him to get the seismaphone patented and before the public, he
furnishing the device, and I the money and backing.
“We sat and talked for hours, and the morning sun found us still in our
chairs discussing the immense possibilities of the invention.
“It would supersede the mails. Speaking-tubes, telephones, telegraphs,
and cables would give way to it. In short, the inventor of such an
instrument would win for himself a name greater than a Morse or an
Edison, and the fortune he could amass would exceed that of all the
Vanderbilts, Goulds, and Rockefellers in the country.
“Martin Bradley remained at my house all that week, and had the best of
everything that money could buy. I secured a two weeks’ vacation from
the patent office, and he and I worked together every hour of that time.
“One day as a test he took one-half of the seismaphone and went down
the Potomac a hundred and forty miles to Point Lookout, while I stayed
at home with the other instrument. He had by use of the long-distance
telephone hired a man down there to keep watch for the arrival of the
boat he was coming on, and given him instructions to telephone me when
it first hove in sight.
“I sent Nellie and the children out to Chevy Chase for the day, and sat
all the afternoon in front of the telephone, with the seismaphone on my
knee. Several times I called to Bradley, but he did not answer.
“About three o’clock, however, the ’phone rang; and, just as I had got
connection, and began talking with the man down at the Point, I saw the
little hammer of the seismaphone vibrating, and, putting the instrument
to my ear, heard Martin Bradley say distinctly: ‘Have just sighted the
lighthouse, so get down to the telephone for a message.’
“I turned to the telephone, and, sure enough, the man at the other end
of the wire was telling me that the Petrel was in sight. As the boat
neared the shore, Bradley kept up a running comment on events that took
place.
“‘We’re just pulling up the flag and firing a salute,’ he called; and
scarcely did I catch his words when from the telephone at my ear, as if
in echo, came the message, ‘They have just run up a flag and are firing
a salute.’
“During the next week we tried every kind of test imaginable with the
seismaphone, and there was not a flaw in its workings.
“I was perfectly satisfied, and had started proceedings to secure a
patent, when the first news of the recent trouble in China came; and
then, for two weeks, as you know, the various legations were regularly
slaughtered one day and reported safe on the following.
“Martin Bradley was so excited that he nearly forgot his seismaphone.
In the course of his wanderings he had lived for two years in Northern
China, and could talk the lingo like a native, and was wild to go out
there as a newspaper correspondent.
“One day he came rushing to my room with a copy of a morning paper in
his hand.
“‘See that,’ he cried excitedly, ‘this paper says that Minister Conger
was butchered in cold blood June 24, and all the others of the legation
tortured to death by those yellow devils. To-morrow if you buy a paper
you will read that they are safe and well. I tell you, I am going
to China to find out for myself the truth of this matter, and when I
do the world shall know what is true and what is false. They can put
restrictions on the press, the telegraph, and the cables, but they
can’t restrict Martin Bradley’s seismaphone.
“‘Just think of the advertisement for the invention, too,’ he
continued, getting more and more excited. ‘Every reading person in the
world will know that the truth was finally obtained through Martin
Bradley, by means of his greatest of all inventions, the seismaphone.’
“I tried to dissuade him, telling him of the terrible risk he would
run, but he would not listen. He had lived in Peking for two years, he
said, and knew the city perfectly and the customs and language of the
people.
“He scraped together three hundred dollars some way, the Lord only
knows how, engaged a berth for San Francisco, and inside three days had
made all preparations for the trip. When I found that nothing I could
say or do made any difference, I gave up arguing and helped him all I
could.
“He knew what he wanted, though, so much better than I that the only
practical assistance I gave him was of the financial kind. I arranged
credit for him at the British bank of Hong Kong and Shanghai, and
furnished all the money needed for his traveling expenses.
“He purchased a complete Chinese disguise from a Washington costumer,
and when one night, before leaving, he appeared before me, a long
black cue hanging down his back, his face stained, and chattering the
disjointed dialect he had learned during his two years’ stay in Peking,
I felt a little hope that his scheme, daring as it was, might succeed.
“I heard from him several times each day, all along the journey to
San Francisco. Every time he grew tired or lonesome he called me up
and told me of the country he was passing through, while I kept him
informed of what was going on back here in Washington.
“For a whole week after he left San Francisco I didn’t hear a word from
him, though I kept the seismaphone with me all the time, and I was
growing terribly worried, when one night he signaled and I heard a weak
voice saying, ‘Oh, Lord, I’ve been so seasick, I didn’t care for one
while whether there was any such place as China or not, and the thought
of the seismaphone never entered my head.’
“After landing at Hong Kong he had to wait two days before starting for
Shanghai, but he had to be resigned, and I never spent a pleasanter
afternoon in my life than that day when I sat in the patent office and
heard him describing his trip about Victoria, that beautiful possession
of the British crown.
“He put on the megaphone attachment while he was being wheeled about
in a little jinrikisha, and I could hear him talking to the coolie
who pulled it, and the squeaking of the wheels, as plainly as the
scratching of the pens over where the clerks sat writing in my office.
“All the men at the office thought me crazy, and I don’t know as
I blame them, for of course I hadn’t taken any of them into my
confidence, and it is rather an unusual sight to see a man stop in the
midst of a conversation with you, put an unconnected receiver up to his
ear, then start talking apparently with the empty air.
“I had to take Nellie into the secret after a while, though, for she,
too, thought I must be insane, and smuggled a couple of doctors up
to the house to dinner one night to watch me. I told Bradley, and he
submitted to the necessary evil, as he called it.
“So, while he was in Shanghai, describing one of the Chinese pagodas
to me (at twelve o’clock at night, mind you) I awakened her and let
her take the seismaphone, and you never saw a more excited woman. She
sat up all the rest of the night, listening to Bradley and asking him
questions.
“Towards morning I told her to throw in the megaphone attachment, and
the instrument was laid up for four days, for she was so frightened at
the loudness of the voice that she dropped the seismaphone, and two of
the German silver wires snapped. I was nearly crazy in fact for the
next few days, for I thought that the instrument was ruined.
“I couldn’t tell whether Bradley was getting my messages all right or
not, and not a word did I hear from him during all that time.
“After working all one night, however, I succeeded in getting the wires
fixed in the right position and signaled to Bradley. Almost immediately
he answered and I heard him shouting:--
“‘What the devil has happened to you? Have you been seasick too? I
haven’t heard a word from you for four days, and here I’ve been sending
you the most exciting kind of messages. The disguise is working fine,
and I shall soon be in the city of Peking.’
“That day I received a note from the head of my department, telling me
I was granted an indefinite leave of absence, and I haven’t been in the
office since. They think me a lunatic, and God knows I’ve been through
enough to make a maniac of any man.
“For three days more I didn’t get a message from Bradley, and I had
begun to fear that the wires I had fixed weren’t right, when the bell
started to tinkle and I heard him signaling faintly.
“‘This is the last time you will ever hear from me,’ he said, and
I noticed that he spoke as if in great pain. ‘I worked my way into
the city last night, but got mixed up in a street fight between the
imperial troops and a crowd of ruffians and was captured by the latter,
who found out my disguise.
“‘Don’t interrupt me,’ he called faintly, for I had uttered an
exclamation of horror, and he, seeing the hammer striking, thought I
was trying to speak to him, ‘for I can’t hear if you do. They cut my
ears off this morning, and filled up the holes with hot wax.
“‘There are three Englishmen and a Russian here also, all of whom were
captured and brought in to-day.’
“He stopped for a few minutes, and I stood cursing the helplessness of
the whole thing. There he was, thousands of miles away, being tortured
to death in some filthy Chinese den, and I had to stand and listen
calmly to his voice, not able to raise a hand to aid him.
“‘I give you my share in the seismaphone,’ he continued after a while,
‘and I pray you may be able to duplicate the half you now have, for you
will never see this one again. The two instruments are exactly alike,
except for the wiring, and that you will have to get by experiment, for
all my data have been destroyed.’
“Then he must have fainted, for he stopped suddenly, and I heard a
voice, probably that of one of the Englishmen, saying, ‘Poor devil, I
wish I could get to him; but they’ve tied me to this ring in the wall,
and I can’t move a foot.’
“I didn’t hear another word till late that night, when I woke up to
find Nellie by my bed, pale and trembling.
“‘Don’t you hear him calling you?’ she gasped.
“I seized the seismaphone, pressed the button, and, in the silence of
the night, I heard Martin Bradley wailing, ‘Churchill--Churchill.’
“I spoke into the thing, so that his bell would ring, and he would know
that I was listening.
“‘Good-by,’ he called. ‘They are killing us off one by one. The
Russian, and two of the Englishmen are dead now, and it’s my turn next.
They’ve just brought in an American, and he told me on his fingers that
the legations----’
“That was as far as he got. I heard a terrible screeching, which
drowned out his voice; and suddenly all was quiet.
“Three times since that some of those heathen have got hold of the
thing; but that death message of Bradley’s is the last English word
that has come over the seismaphone.
“The third time I heard them at it, I threw in the megaphone
attachment, and shouted as loud as I could. Since then not a sound has
come from the instrument.
“I put the advertisement you saw in the papers; but though hundreds
of men have tried, no one has been able to duplicate the part of
the seismaphone I now have. Some have refused even to try, when I
explained what was wanted, for they thought me either crazy or a fool.
“I hoped at first that some one might be able to replace the loss, but
now I know it cannot be done. Bradley told me that it took him three
years to determine the distances at which the wires had to be placed,
and he alone knew the principle on which the whole mechanism depends.
“No one has ever been able to duplicate the diaphragm. It is a curious
alloy of copper, zinc, and some other metal; but what that third metal
is, no one can determine.”
Churchill had finished his strange story; and now he leaned back in his
chair, his face gray and set. Outside the noise of a great city waking
to another day’s life could be heard, and somewhere in the house I
heard a clock slowly strike five.
I picked up the seismaphone from the table and brought it over to the
light. Then, even as I held it in my hand, I saw the little hammer
begin vibrating rapidly, and heard the tinkling of the bell.
But Randolph Churchill had heard that signal too, and starting from his
chair, he snatched the instrument from my hands, and held it to his ear.
“It’s only those damned heathen at it again,” he groaned, and threw the
thing on the table.
In falling it must have pressed the tiny button, which threw on the
megaphone attachment. The little bell began ringing again, and I
started back, trembling with a strange mixture of fear and awe.
For, above the clatter of the wagons, and the grinding of the cars
as they climbed Fourteenth Street hill, there, in that little room,
fifteen thousand miles from the Celestial Empire, I heard a confused
bable of many voices, howling and cursing in the Chinese tongue.
A QUESTION OF HONOR.
A QUESTION OF HONOR.
The man on the shore stood perfectly motionless watching his companions
of a few hours before as they hastened down the beach, launched their
boat, and pulled away toward the huge ship some quarter of a mile
distant. He saw them clamber on board; a few minutes later the sails
were run up, the ship headed off to the south, and soon disappeared
around a rocky promontory which ran out into the ocean.
Then, overcome with the hopelessness and helplessness of his position,
The Man threw himself on the sand cursing and moaning.
Three days before he had been first mate of that ship, engaged in
various profitable but decidedly questionable undertakings. Now he
was alone, marooned on a deserted coral island, over a hundred miles
from any regular steamer line. The mutiny which he had incited had
almost succeeded. But for that cursed cabin boy who had listened at the
key-hole and then run to the Captain on the very eve of his success,
he would now be in command of the NORSKA, and the sale of the five
hundred blacks down in the hold would have made him a rich man. Well,
the cabin boy would never tell any more tales, he had at least had the
satisfaction of assuring himself of that before he was put in irons.
Yesterday, when he first heard the fate in store for him, he had begged
the Captain to have him shot rather than leave him on that deserted
isle. But now, such is the perversity of man, though death was easily
within his reach, he did not attempt to kill himself.
Indeed, after the first paroxysm of rage and anger was over he gathered
the few possessions which had been left him and carried them back out
of reach of any high tide. The next day he began building himself a
rough house, and within a week he was planning escape from his prison.
Then followed weary days and weeks in which he spent the time hewing
timber and fashioning it into a rude boat. He had much time during
this enforced solitude to think over his past, and the thoughts of it
brought him little satisfaction. For ten years he had lived the life
of the sea in its worst phases. He had been pirate, ship-scuttler and
slave-trader. He had murdered and tortured the innocent. His life had
been only one long succession of crimes, and still--he clung to it.
At the end of six weeks he had constructed a boat in which he would
attempt to reach the nearest land--some three hundred miles away. Then,
one day, just before his departure, the dream of his life was realized.
While roaming over the shore he stumbled into a lagoon which was
literally studded with pearls. For another week he worked loading his
boat with the precious stones, and after some difficulty succeeded in
getting his cumbersome craft out to sea.
But the oars which he had hewn out being too weak to have any
appreciable effect on his boat, he was completely at the mercy of the
sea. For days he drifted about, now driven north, now south. The scanty
supply of water which he had brought with him soon gave out, and then
he suffered the tortures of the damned; and, as if to mock his misery,
the pearls, loosened from the rough bags by the rocking of the boat,
rolled to and fro under his feet. About the sides of the craft the
water swarmed with sharks, and several times in his delirium The Man
was on the point of ending his misery by jumping overboard.