HOW IT ALL WAS
For his share in the foregoing Percy Darrow was extensively blamed. It was
universally conceded that his action in permitting Monsieur X to continue
his activities up to the danger point was inexcusable. The public mind
should have been reassured long before. Much terror and physical suffering
might thus have been avoided--not to speak of financial loss. Scientific
men, furthermore, went frantic over his unwarranted destruction of the
formulas. Percy Darrow was variously described as a heartless monster and
a scientific vandal. To these aspersions he paid no attention whatever.
Helen Warford, however, became vastly indignant and partisan, and in
consequence Percy Darrow's course in the matter received from her its full
credit for a genuine altruism. Hallowell, also, held persistently to this
point, as far as his editors would permit him, until at last, the public
mind somewhat calmed, attention was more focused on the means by which the
man had reached his conclusions rather than on the use of them he had
made.
The story was told three times by its chief actor: once to the newspapers,
once to the capitalists from whom he demanded the promised reward, and
once to the Warfords. This last account was the more detailed and
interesting.
It was of a late afternoon again. The lamps were lighted, and tea was
forward. Helen was manipulating the cups, Jack was standing ready to pass
them, Mr. and Mrs. Warford sat in the background listening, and Darrow
lounged gracefully in front of the fire.
"From the beginning!" Helen was commanding him, "and expect
interruptions."
"Well," began Darrow, "it's a little difficult to get started. But let's
begin with the phenomena themselves. I've told you before, how, when I was
in jail, I worked out their nature and the fact that they must draw their
power from some source that could be exhausted or emptied. You have read
Eldridge's reasoning as to why he thought Monsieur X was at a distance and
on a height. He took as the basis of his reasoning one fact in connection
with the wireless messages we were receiving--that they were faint, and
therefore presumably far distant or sent by a weak battery. He neglected,
or passed over as an important item of tuning, the further fact that the
instrument in the Atlas Building was the only instrument to receive
Monsieur X's messages.
"Now, that fact might be explained either on the very probable supposition
that our receiving instrument happened in what we may call its undertones
to be the only one tuned to the sending instrument of Monsieur X; or it
might be because our instrument was nearer Monsieur X's instrument than
any other. This was unlikely because of the quality of the sound--it
sounded to the expert operator as though it came from a distance.
Nevertheless, it was a possibility. Taken by itself, it was not nearly so
good a possibility as the other. Therefore, Eldridge chose the other.
"There were a number of other strictly scientific considerations of equal
importance. I do not hesitate to say that if I had been influenced only by
the scientific considerations, I should have followed Eldridge's lead
without the slightest hesitation. But as I told him at the time, a man
must have imagination and human sympathy to get next to this sort of
thing.
"Leaving all science aside, for the moment, what do we find in the
messages to McCarthy? First, a command to leave within a specified and
brief period; second, a threat in case of disobedience. That threat was
always carried out."
Darrow turned to Mrs. Warford.
"With your permission, I should like to smoke," said he. "I can follow my
thought better."
"By all means," accorded the lady.
Darrow lighted his cigarette, puffed a moment, and continued:
"For instance, at three o'clock he threatens to send a 'sign' unless
McCarthy leaves town by six. McCarthy does not leave town. Promptly at six
the 'sign' comes. What do you make of it?"
Nobody stirred.
"Why," resumed Darrow, "how, if Monsieur X was a hundred miles or so away,
as Eldridge figured, did he know that McCarthy had not obeyed him? We must
suppose, from the probable fact of that knowledge, that either Monsieur X
had an accomplice who was keeping him informed, or he must be near enough
to get the information himself."
"There is a third possibility," broke in Jack. "Monsieur X might have sent
along his 'sign' at six o'clock, anyhow, just for general results."
Darrow nodded his approval.
"Good boy, Jack," said he. "That is just the point I could not be sure
about. But finally, at the time, you will remember, when I predicted
McCarthy's disappearance, Monsieur X made a definite threat. He said,"
observed Darrow, consulting one of the bundle of papers he held in his
hand:
"'My patience is at an end. Your last warning will be sent you at
nine-thirty this morning. If you do not sail on the _Celtic_ at noon, I
shall strike,' and so forth. The _Celtic_ sailed at noon, without
McCarthy. At twelve thirty came the first message to the people calling on
them to deliver up the traitor that is among you.' How did Monsieur X know
that McCarthy had not sailed on the _Celtic_? The answer is now
unavoidable: either an accomplice must have sent him word to that effect,
or he must have determined the fact for himself.
"I eliminated the hypothesis of an accomplice on the arbitrary grounds of
plain common sense. They don't grow two such crazy men at once; and one
crazy man is naturally too suspicious to hire help. I took it for granted.
Had to make a guess somewhere; but, contrary to our legal friends, I
believe that enough coincidences indicate a certainty. But if Monsieur X
himself saw the _Celtic_ sail without McCarthy, and got back to his
instrument within a half-hour, it was evident he could not be quite so far
away as Eldridge and the rest of them thought."
"One thing," spoke up Jack, "I often wondered what you whispered to
Simmons to induce him to pass those messages over to you. Mind telling?"
"Not a bit. Simmons is an exceptional man. He has nerve and intelligence.
I just pointed out to him the possibility that Monsieur X might have
control over heat vibrations. He saw the public danger at once, and
realized that McCarthy's private rights in those messages had suddenly
become very small."
Jack nodded. "Go ahead," said he.
"I had already," proceeded Darrow, "found out where the next wireless
station is located. Monsieur X must be nearer the Atlas station than to
this other. It was, therefore, easy to draw a comparatively small circle
within which he must be located."
"So far, so good," said Helen. "How did you finally come to the conclusion
that Monsieur X was in the next office?"
"Do you remember," Darrow asked Jack, "how the curtain of darkness hung
about ten or twelve feet inside the corridor of the Atlas Building?"
"Sure," replied Jack.
"And do you remember that while the rest of you, including Eldridge, were
occupied rather childishly with the spectacular side of it, I had
disappeared inside the blackness?"
"Certainly."
"Well, in that time I determined the exact extent of the phenomena. I
found that it extended in a rough circle. And when I went outside and
looked up--something every one else was apparently too busy to do--I saw
that this phenomenon of darkness also extended above the building, out
into open space. At the moment I noted the fact merely, and tried to fix
in my own mind approximately the dimensions. Then here is another point:
when the city-wide phenomena took place, I again determined their extent.
To do so I did not have to leave my chair. The papers did it for me. They
took pains to establish the farthest points to which these modern plagues
of Manhattan reached."
Darrow selected several clippings from his bundle of papers.
"Here are reports indicating Highbridge, Corona, Flatbush, Morrisania,
Fort Lee, Bay Ridge as the farthest points at which the phenomena were
manifested. It occurred to nobody to connect these points with a pencil
line. If that line is made curved, instead of straight, it will be found
to constitute a complete circle _whose center is the Atlas Building_!"
The audience broke into exclamations.
"Going back to my former impressions, I remembered that the pall of
blackness extended this far and that far in the various directions, so
that it required not much imagination to visualize it as a sphere of
darkness. And strangely enough the center of that sphere seemed to be
located somewhere near the floor on which were installed the United
Wireless instruments. It at once became probable that what we may call the
nullifying impulses radiated in all directions through the ether from
their sending instrument.
"Next I called upon the janitor of the Atlas Building, representing myself
as looking for a suitable office from which to conduct my investigations.
In this manner I gained admission to all unrented offices. All were empty.
I then asked after the one next door, but was told it was rented as a
storeroom by an eccentric gentleman now away on his travels. That was
enough. I now knew that we had to do with a man next door, and not miles
distant, as purely scientific reasoning would seem to prove."
"But Professor Eldridge's experiments--" began Jack.
"I am coming to that," interrupted Darrow. "When Eldridge began to call up
Monsieur X, that gentleman answered without a thought of suspicion; nor
was he even aware of the very ingenious successive weakenings of the
current. In fact, as merely the thickness of a roof separated his
receiving instrument from the wires from which the messages were sent, it
is probable that Eldridge might have weakened his current down practically
to nihil, and still Monsieur X would have continued to get his message."
"Wouldn't he have noticed the sending getting weaker?" asked Jack
shrewdly.
"Not until the very last. Our sending must have made a tremendous crash,
anyway, and he probably read it by sound through the wall."
"But at about the fifty-mile limit of sending we lost him," objected Jack.
"You mean at about two o'clock in the morning," amended Darrow.
"Eh? Yes, it was about two. But how did he get on to what Eldridge was
doing?"
"He read it in the paper," replied Darrow. "At twelve the reporters left.
At a little before two our enterprising friend, the _Despatch_, issued an
extra in its usual praiseworthy effort to enlighten the late Broadway jag.
Monsieur X read it, and knew exactly what was up."
"How do you know?"
"Because I read the extra myself."
"But even then?"
"Then he began to pay more attention. It was easy enough to fake when he
knew what was doing. For all I know, he could hear Eldridge giving his
directions."
The company present ruminated over the disclosures thus far made.
"About the City Hall affair?" asked Helen finally.
"I used to sit where I could command the hall," said Darrow, "and,
therefore, I was aware that Monsieur X never left his room. To make the
matter certain, I powdered the sill of the door with talcum, which I
renewed every day after the cleaners. You remember we got to talking very
earnestly in the hall, so earnestly that I, for one, forgot to watch. When
I realized my remissness, I saw that the powder on the sill had been
disturbed, that Monsieur X had gone out.
"My first thought then was to warn the people. To that end I was on my way
to the _Despatch_ office when sheer chance switched me into the City Hall
tragedy. I possessed myself of the apparatus--"
"That was the square black bag!" cried Jack.
"Of course--and hustled back to the Atlas Building. You can bet I was
relieved when I found that Monsieur X had returned to his lair."
"Talcum disturbed again?" asked Jack.
"Precisely."
"And the black bag?"
"Contained merely a model wireless apparatus with a clockwork arrangement
set to close the circuit at a certain time. That is why Monsieur X was not
involved in his own catastrophe."
"I see!"
"Then all I had to do was to sit still and wait for him to become
dangerous."
"How did you dare to take such chances?" cried Helen.
"I took no chances," answered Darrow. "Don't you see? If he were to
attempt to destroy the city, he must either involve himself in the
destruction, or he must set another bit of clockwork. If he had left his
office again I should have seized him, broken into the office, and smashed
the apparatus."
"But he was crazy," spoke up Mrs. Warford. "How could you rely on his not
involving himself in the general destruction?"
"Yes, why did you act when you did?" seconded Helen.
"As long as he held to his notion of getting hold of McCarthy," explained
Darrow, "he had a definite object in life, his madness had a definite
outlet--he was harmless. But the last message showed that his disease had
progressed to the point where McCarthy was forgotten. His mind had risen
to a genuine frenzy. He talked of general punishments, great things. At
last he was in the state of mind of the religious fanatic who lacerates
his flesh and does not feel the wound. When he forgot McCarthy, I knew it
was time to act. Long since I had provided myself with the requisite key.
You know the rest."