Devilishly, while the light-bombs flared, the telautomaton sped
relentlessly toward its mark.
We strained our eyes at the _Sybarite_. Would they never awake to their
danger? Was the wireless operator asleep or off duty? Would our own
operator be unable to warn them in time?
Then we looked back to the deadly new weapon of modern war science.
Nothing now could stop it.
Kennedy was putting every inch of speed into the boat which he had
commandeered.
“As a race it’s hopeless,” he gritted, bending ahead over the wheel
as if the boat were a thing that could be urged on. “What they are
doing is to use the Hertzian waves to actuate relays on the torpedo.
The wireless carries impulses so tuned that they release power carried
by the machine itself. The thing that has kept the telautomaton back
while wireless telegraphy has gone ahead so fast is that in wireless
we have been able to discard coherers and relays and use detectors and
microphones in their places. But in telautomatics you have to keep the
coherer. That has been the barrier. The coherer until recently has been
spasmodic, until we got the mercury steel disk coherer――and now this
one. See how she works――if only it could be working for us instead of
against us!”
On sped the destroyer. It was now only a matter of seconds when it
would be directed squarely at the yacht. In our excitement we shouted,
forgetting that it was of no use, that they would neither hear nor,
most likely, know what it was we meant.
Paquita’s words rang in my ears. Was there nothing that could be done?
Just then we saw a sailor rush frantically and haul in a boat that was
fastened to a boom extending from the yacht’s side.
Then another and another ran toward the first. They had realized
at last our warning was intended for them. The deck was now alive
and faintly over the water we could hear them shouting in frantic
excitement, as they worked to escape destruction coming at them now at
express train speed.
Suddenly there came a spurt of water, a cloud of spray, like a geyser
rising from the harbor. The _Sybarite_ seemed to be lifted bodily out
of the water and broken. Then she fell back and settled, bow foremost,
heeling over, as she sank down to the mud and ooze of the bottom. The
water closed over her and she was gone, nothing left but fragments of
spars and woodwork which had been flung far and wide.
Through my mind ran the terrible details I had read of ships torpedoed
without warning and the death and destruction of passengers. At least
there were no women and children to add to this horror.
Kennedy slowed down his engine as we approached the floating wreckage,
for there was not only the danger of our own frail little craft hitting
something and losing rudder or propeller, but we could not tell what
moment we might run across some of those on the yacht, if any had
survived.
Other boats had followed us by this time, and we bent all our energies
to the search, for pursuit of the scout cruiser was useless. There was
not a craft in the harbor capable of overtaking one of her type, even
in daylight. At night she was doubly safe from pursuit.
There was only one thing that we might accomplish――rescue. Would
we be in time, would we be able to find Shelby? As my mind worked
automatically over the entire swift succession of events of the past
few days I recalled every moment we had been observing him, every
action. I actually hated myself now for the unspoken suspicion of him
that I had entertained. I could see that, though Kennedy had been
able to promise him nothing openly, he had in reality been working in
Shelby’s real interests.
There flashed through my mind a picture of Winifred. And at the same
time the thought of what this all meant to her brought to me forcibly
the events of the night before. One attack after another had been
leveled against us, starting with the following and shooting at
Hastings at our very laboratory door. Burke had been attacked. Then had
come the attack on Kennedy, which had miscarried and struck me. Death
had been leveled even at Mito, as though he had possessed some great
secret. Next had come the attempted abduction of Winifred Walcott. And
at last it had culminated in the most spectacular attack of all, on
Shelby himself.
Try as I could by a process of elimination, I was unable to fix the
guilt on any one in particular, even yet. Fixing guilt, however, was
not what was needed now.
We had come into the area of the floating debris, and the possibility
of saving life was all that need concern us. In the darkness I could
make out cries, but they were hard to locate.
We groped about, trying hard to cover as much area as possible, but
at the same time fearful of defeating our own purposes by striking
some one with bow or propeller of our speed boat. Every now and then a
piece of the wreckage would float by and we would scan it anxiously in
mingled fear and hope that it would assume a human form as it became
more clearly outlined. Each time that we failed we resumed the search
with desperate determination.
“Look!” cried Burke, pointing at a wooden skylight that seemed to
have been lifted from the deck and cast but into the waves, the glass
broken, but the frame nearly intact. “What’s that on it?”
Kennedy swung the boat to port and we came alongside the dark, bobbing
object.
It was the body of a man.
With a boat-hook Craig hauled the thing nearer and we leaned over the
side and together pulled the limp form into our boat.
As we laid him on some cushions on the flooring, our boat drifted clear
and swung around so that the flare shone in his face. He stirred and
groaned, but did not relax the grip of his fingers still clenched after
we had torn them loose from the skylight grating.
It was Shelby Maddox――terribly wounded, but alive.
Others of the crew were floating about, and we set to work to get them,
now aided by the volunteer fleet that had followed us out. When it was
all over we found that all had been accounted for so far, except the
engineer and one sailor.
Just at present we had only one thought in mind. Shelby Maddox must
be saved, and to be saved he must be rushed where there was medical
assistance.
Shouting orders to those who had come up to continue the search,
Kennedy headed back toward the town of Westport.
The nearest landing was the town dock at the foot of the main street,
and toward this Craig steered.
There was no emergency hospital, but one of the bystanders volunteered
to fetch a doctor, and it was not long before Shelby was receiving the
attention he needed so badly.
He had been badly cut about the head by flying glass, and the explosion
had injured him internally, how serious could not be determined,
although two of his ribs had been broken. Only his iron will and
athletic training had saved him, for he was weak, not only from the
loss of blood, but from water which he had been unable to avoid
swallowing.
The doctor shook his head gravely over him, but something had to be
done, even though it was painful to move him. He could not lie there in
an open boat.
Kennedy settled the matter quickly. From a tenant who lived over a
store near the waterfront he found where a delivery wagon could be
borrowed. Using a pair of long oars and some canvas, we improvised a
stretcher which we slung from the top of the wagon and so managed to
transport Shelby to the Harbor House, avoiding the crowd of curious
onlookers at the main entrance, and finally depositing him in the bed
in the room which he usually occupied.
The pain from his wounds was intense, but he managed to keep up his
nerve until we reached the hotel. Then he collapsed.
As we tried to help the doctor to bring him around I feared that the
injury and the shock might have proved fatal.
“Pretty serious,” muttered the doctor, in answer to my anxious inquiry,
“but I think he’ll pull through it. Call up Main 21. There’s a trained
nurse summering at the house. Get her down.”
I hastened to do so and had hardly finished when Kennedy came over to
me.
“I think we ought to notify his sister,” he remarked. “See if you can
get Mrs. Walcott on the house ’phone.”
I called, but the voice that answered was not that of Frances Walcott.
It took me a few seconds before I realized that it was Winifred
Walcott, and I covered up the transmitter as I turned to Kennedy to
tell him and ask what he wanted me to do.
“Let me talk to her,” decided Craig. “I think I won’t let events take
their course any longer. She can be the best nurse for Shelby――if she
will.”
Craig had evidently prepared to break the news gently to her, but, as
nearly as I could make out, it was not necessary. She had already heard
what had happened.
“No,” I heard him say, as if in answer to an anxious question from her.
“He is seriously hurt, to be sure, but the doctor says that with proper
nursing he will pull through.”
I did not hear the reply, of course, but I recognized the appeal hidden
in Kennedy’s answer, as he waited.
“Just a moment,” I heard him say next.
His forehead wrinkled as he listened to something, evidently trying to
make it out. Then he said, suddenly: “I think I had better say no more
over the telephone, Miss Walcott. Some one is listening to us.”
An angry look flashed over his face, but his voice showed no anger as
he said good-by and hung up.
“What was it?” I asked. “What did she do?”
“It wasn’t Miss Walcott,” he replied, scowling. “You heard me say that
some one was listening? Well, just as I said it there came a laugh over
the wire from somewhere, and a voice cut in, ‘Yes, there is some one
listening. You haven’t caught me yet, Kennedy――and you won’t.’ I said
good-by after that. Oh, have no fear about Miss Walcott.”
Kennedy was right. It seemed an incredibly short time when there came a
light tap on the door and he sprang to open it.
“Can I――be of any assistance?” pleaded a softly tremulous voice.
“Perhaps I――could play at nursing?”
Kennedy glanced at the doctor and the figure lying so quietly on the
bed, then at the girl, and decided. She had hesitated not a moment,
when she had heard how close Shelby was to death, but had hurried to
him. He opened the door and she entered softly, tiptoeing toward the
bed.
It must have been by some telepathic influence that Shelby, who had
a moment before been scarcely conscious, felt her presence. She had
scarcely whispered a word to the doctor, as she bent over him, but he
opened his eyes, caught just a glimpse of her face, and seemed to drink
it in as his eyes rested on the bunch of flowers she was wearing――his
flowers, which he had sent her.
He smiled faintly. Not even by a word or look was any reference made to
their misunderstanding. It was a strange meeting, but it seemed that
the very atmosphere had changed. Even the doctor noticed it. In spite
of his pain, Shelby had brightened visibly.
“I don’t think we need that nurse,” whispered the doctor to Kennedy,
with an understanding glance. “What was that you said about some one
listening over the telephone? Who could it have been?”
The doctor said it in a low enough tone, but it seemed that Maddox’s
senses must have been suddenly made more acute by the coming of
Winifred.
He had reached out, weakly but unhesitatingly, and had placed his hand
on hers as it rested on his pillows. At the mention of the telephone
he turned toward us with an inquiring look. It seemed to recall to his
mind something that had been on it before the accident.
“Some one――listening,” he repeated, more to himself than to us.
Winifred looked inquiringly at us, too, but said nothing.
Kennedy tried to pass the thing over, but the doctor’s remark seemed to
have started some train of thought in Shelby’s mind, which could not be
so easily stopped.
“Some one――pounding Maddox Munitions,” he murmured, brokenly, as if
feeling his way through a maze. “Now I’m out――they’ll succeed. What can
I do? How can I hold up the market?”
He repeated the last two questions as though turning them over in his
mind and finding no answer.
Evidently he was talking about his operations in the market which had
been so puzzling to Hastings as well as ourselves. I was about to say
something that would prompt him to go on with his revelation, when
Kennedy’s look halted me. Apparently he did not wish to interfere with
the train of thought the doctor’s remark had started, inasmuch as it
had been started now.
“Some one――listening――over the telephone,” strove Shelby again.
“Yes――how can I do it? No more secrecy――laid up here――I’ll have to use
the telephone. Will those Broad Street brokers take orders over long
distance? Everybody will know――what I’m doing. They’ll delay――play me
for a sucker. What am I to do?”
It was evident now what Shelby had been doing, at least in part. The
tragedy to his brother had quite naturally depressed the stock of the
company. Indeed, with Marshall Maddox, its moving spirit, gone, it was
no wonder that many holders had begun to feel shaky. Once that feeling
began to become general, the stock, which had had a meteoric rise
lately along with other war stocks, would begin to sag and slump sadly.
There was no telling where it would stop if once the downward trend
began.
As I looked at the young man I felt a new respect for him. Even though
I had not a much clearer idea than at the start of how or by whom
Marshall Maddox had been killed, still I do not think any of us had
believed that Shelby was capable of seeing such a crisis so clearly
and acting upon what he saw. Evidently it was in his blood, bred in
the Maddox nature. He was a great deal more clever than any of us had
suspected. Not only had he realized the judgment of outsiders about
himself, but had taken advantage of it. In keeping the stock up, if
it had been known that it was he who was doing it, it would not have
counted for half what it did when the impression prevailed that the
public was doing it, or even some hazy financial interest determined
to maintain the price. Both possibilities had been discussed by the
market sharps. It had never seemed to occur to them that Shelby Maddox
might be using his personal fortune to bolster up what was now in
greater measure his own company.
For a moment we looked blankly at Kennedy. Then Shelby began to talk
again.
“Suppose the bear raid continues?” he murmured. “I must meet it――I
must!”
The doctor leaned over to Craig. “He can’t go on that way,” he
whispered. “It will use up his strength in worry.”
Kennedy was thinking about that, too, as he considered the very
difficult situation the telautomaton attack had placed Shelby in. It
was more than a guess that the attack had been carefully calculated.
Some one else, perhaps some hidden group, was engaged in taking
advantage of the death of Marshall Maddox in one way, Shelby in another.
As for Shelby, here he was, helpless, at the Harbor House. Surrounded
by spies, as he seemed to be, what could he do? Every message in and
out of the hotel was most likely tapped. To use the telephone was like
publishing abroad one’s secrets.
Kennedy moved over quietly to the bedside, as Winifred looked
appealingly at him, as much as to say, “Isn’t there something you can
do to quiet him?”
He bent down and took Shelby’s hand.
“Oh――it’s you, Kennedy――is it?” wandered Shelby, not quite clear yet
where he was, in the fantasy of impressions that crowded his mind since
the accident. “I asked you to work with me once. You said you would
play fair.”
“I will,” repeated Kennedy, “as far as the interests of my client go,
I will give you every assistance. But if you are to do anything at all
to-morrow, you must rest to-night.”
“Have I――have I been talking?” queried Shelby, as though in doubt
whether he had been thinking to himself or aloud.
Kennedy ignored the question. “You need rest,” he said, simply. “Let
the doctor fix you up now. In the morning――well, to-morrow will be
another day.”
Shelby passed his hand wearily over his aching head. He was too weak to
argue.
While the doctor prepared a mild opiate Kennedy and I quietly withdrew
into the next room.
“Professor Kennedy――_won’t_ you help us?” pleaded Miss Walcott, who had
followed. “Surely something can be done.”
I could not help noticing that she said “us,” not “him.” As I watched
her the scene on the float, hours before, flashed over me. There
another woman, under quite different circumstances, had made the same
appeal. Where did Paquita fit into the scheme of things? Two women had
been striving over Shelby’s life. Did one represent his better nature,
the other his worse?
Kennedy looked frankly at Winifred Walcott.
“You will trust me?” he asked in a low tone.
“Yes,” she said, simply, meeting his eyes in turn.
“Then when the nurse arrives,” he directed, “get some rest. I shall
need you to-morrow.”