Transcriber’s Notes:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
Additional Transcriber’s Notes are at the end.
* * * * *
THE MAN WHO ENDED WAR
* * * * *
[Illustration: “THERE’S REGNIER!” I CRIED, POINTING AT THE WINDOW.
[_Frontispiece. See p. 277._
]
* * * * *
THE MAN WHO ENDED WAR
By
HOLLIS GODFREY
Illustrated from drawings by
CHARLES GRUNWALD
BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, & COMPANY
1908
* * * * *
_Copyright, 1908_,
BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.
_All rights reserved_
Published September, 1908
_COLONIAL PRESS_
_Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co._
_Boston, U. S. A._
* * * * *
TO
My Wife
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
“THERE’S REGNIER!” I CRIED, POINTING AT
THE WINDOW _Frontispiece_
THE OFFICER RAISED HIS LANTERN TWICE _Page_ 30
THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF A WARSHIP WAS PLAYING
CONSTANTLY ON US ” 122
I FOUND MYSELF COUNTING ALOUD ” 247
* * * * *
THE MAN WHO ENDED WAR
CHAPTER I
The Secretary of War ended his statement. “That is all there is to
tell, gentlemen, concerning the building of the new transports.”
I had closed my notebook and was rising, as Ordway, the private
secretary, entered.
“May I give the correspondents that freak letter that came this
morning?” he asked. His chief nodded indulgently and left the room. I
opened my notebook expectantly.
“This is a very serious matter, and a great piece of news,” Ordway
remarked in a mock grandiose manner. “It is a declaration of war
against the civilized world in the interests of peace.” He threw
himself into an oratorical posture and began:
“To the United States of America and to all other nations--Greeting!”
“Whereas war has too long devastated the earth and the time has now
come for peace, I, the man destined to stop all war, hereby declare
unto you that you shall, each and all, disarm; that your troops shall
be disbanded, your navies sunk or turned to peaceful ends, your
fortifications dismantled. One year from this date will I allow for
disarmament and no more. At the end of that time, if no heed has been
paid to my injunction, I will destroy, in rapid succession, every
battleship in the world. By the happenings of the next two months you
shall know that my words are the words of truth.
“Given under my hand and seal this first of June, 19--
“Signed--
“THE MAN WHO WILL STOP ALL WAR.”
Ordway ceased and a laughing clamor rose.
“The biggest crank yet.” “Where was it mailed?” “I thought you said you
had something really good this time.” “Do you suppose he sent it to any
other country than the United States?”
Ordway raised his hand for a hearing and replied to the last question.
“The letter was mailed from London, and was sent to other countries.
I read the missive to one of the English attachés when it came, and
he looked the matter up. This notice has been sent to all the foreign
chancelleries, as well as the departments of war and of the navy. It
has been done in such a wholesale fashion that I thought you could use
it for a column anyway.”
“But is it such a fool idea?” asked Reid, one of the older
correspondents. “Couldn’t a man build a submarine in which he could run
amuck and destroy battleship after battleship, something as old Jules
Verne’s Captain Nemo did?”
“Not to-day,” said Ordway emphatically. “The new armor of the last
years, with its permanent torpedo nets, has stopped all that. The only
way you can destroy a modern battleship is by ramming, or by another
battleship. The day of the torpedo boat and of the submarine ended
almost as it began.”
“Well,” said Reid argumentatively, “why couldn’t a man have a
battleship? Any one of five hundred men living to-day could afford it.”
“No battleship could be built by a private citizen without some nation
knowing it and stopping it,” said Ordway seriously. “It takes months,
reaching into years, to build one. It takes skilled naval constructors,
hundreds of workmen and thousands of tons of material that must be
bought in the markets of the world.”
“Let’s see the paper it’s written on,” I said.
As I held the message, Reid looked over my shoulder and read for a
moment. Then, turning, he cried, “Come over here, boys, and look at
this a little more closely. That’s old parchment, just like that of
some of those papal bulls in the glass cases over in the library.”
As he spoke a sudden remembrance flashed across me. “Anybody got a
microscope around here?” I asked quickly.
“There’s a reading glass,” said Ordway, and opening a drawer he handed
one to me. I took the paper to the sunlit window, and began examining
it closely with the lens. The rest watched me curiously. At last I
shook my head. “No use,” I exclaimed. “I thought I had a clue, but it
didn’t pan out. There’s a good story though, without anything more.
Here, Ordway,” and I handed back the letter.
The other correspondents moved away, seeking fresh fields for copy, but
I lingered a moment as John King, my classmate at Columbia and my good
friend, stepped forward to bid Ordway good-bye. As I watched his deeply
lined, melancholy face and his emaciated form, I wondered if wealth had
not come to him too late.
“Good-bye, Ordway,” said John. “This is the last you’ll see of me. I’m
through with the daily grind at six o’clock to-night.”
“I’m sorry to hear that in one way, King,” said Ordway gravely. “I
felt last year when you went abroad that you were running down hill and
I expected, when I heard you had come into your uncle’s money, that you
would pull out. What are you going to do?”
“Oh! I shall travel again for a bit,” replied John. “There are some
things I want to do before I get through with this old earth, if I am
to get through.”
“You’ll be all right,” answered Ordway. “I only wish I had your chance.
There’s my bell now. You see how it is--tied like a slave to the wheels
of the chariot, etc. But good luck, anyway, and good-bye.”
He gave John a friendly grasp, and as he turned away, threw the massive
folded sheet, which he still held, into the waste basket. “I guess we
won’t file that with the state documents,” he said laughing. “Good-bye,
and good luck once more.”
We parted and John and I started down the corridor. We had gone but
a few steps when exclaiming, “There, I’ve left my stick,” I turned
swiftly back, recovered the letter from its place in the waste basket,
and emerged with my cane. Silently we walked down the broad avenue
until, just before we reached my office, I turned sharply.
“Come in here,” I said, dragging John into a café. We sat down at one
of the small tables. “You used to do the Smithsonian and scientific
stories for your paper, didn’t you?” I asked.
John was sitting staring into vacancy. He paid no attention to my
question and I repeated it twice before he turned nervously with a
shake of the head and asked sharply, “What is it?”
I repeated the question once more.
“Yes,” he said abstractedly.
“Well, who do you know that owns any radium?”
He thought for a moment and said slowly, “Why, the Smithsonian people
have a little, of course, and there’s some in half a dozen places in
the city.”
“But from whom could we get some most easily?” I inquired.
“Oh! I know,” he answered. “Dorothy Haldane has some. She’s here in
Washington working with part of her brother’s radium, and she’s with
her cousin Mrs. Hartnell.”
“Who’s Dorothy Haldane? Any relation to Tom Haldane who was just ahead
of us, the chap who went into the Physical Laboratory at Columbia and
who’s doing private research now?”
“His sister. She is Barnard A. M., and his research assistant.”
“Regular bluestocking,” I remarked with some dislike, for the learned
research woman never appealed to me.
“Oh, no,” said John. “Not at all. She is one of the prettiest, nicest
girls I ever knew.”
“Any feeling about your remarks, John?” I said hopefully.
“Of course not,” he answered with some irritation. “There’ll never be
any more feeling. Since Anna’s death there can’t be. I know you’ll like
Dorothy, though. What do you want her radium for?”
“There’s just a chance that I may have a scoop, and if you’ll take me
up there to-night I’ll let you in.”
“I’ll take you up there,” said John, “but you can have your scoop to
yourself. For the last word of copy I ever write will be in print
before we call.”
That afternoon came an unexpected Cabinet change. For hours I
interviewed, and wrote, telephoned and telegraphed, reaching my room at
half after eight, to find John just ready to leave without me. He had
written the story of the man who was to stop all war, only to see it
killed by more important news. His experience had been that of every
man in the secretary’s office, a common fate in the crowding rush of
newspaper life. I had never seen John more distrait than that night,
and we walked up to the Hartnells’ in utter silence.
I so completely expected, despite John’s assurances, to find a
stooping, bespectacled student type inside the Hartnells’ door, that
the girl who rose as I entered gave me a sudden shock of amazement
and delight. She was the sunniest, daintiest type of American girl you
could meet the country through. Her mobile face was lit with glowing
life and interest in the world around. Her fine firm form showed no
trace of scholastic life. Her laugh was like rippling water. Her eyes
held the fine deep beauty of a summer’s night. With her was a dark and
clear-cut Southerner who was introduced to me as Richard Regnier. The
talk went hither and thither until John broached my search for radium.
“What is your need of radium, Mr. Orrington?” said Miss Haldane.
I hesitated for a moment and John broke in. “Don’t be afraid of
Regnier, Jim. He’s no newspaper man. He’s a reformer like myself. We’re
co-members of the Tuberculosis League and the Civic League and the
Peace Society. Now what’s up? You haven’t told me yet.”
So urged, I told the story of the morning and brought forth the heavy
parchment which I had retrieved from the waste basket. Regnier sat
immobile during the whole tale, though Dorothy broke into it with
pointed questions a dozen times.
“That’s what I want the radium for,” I said in ending.
“But what has radium to do with that letter?” asked John.
“Just this,” I replied. “As you may have seen, I held that letter to
the light under a reading glass, which acted as a burning glass, for
some minutes. I was looking for invisible ink, which could be brought
out by heating. I didn’t find any, but as I turned away, the paper came
for a moment into the shadow and I saw a slight gleam like the glimmer
of phosphorescence on water. Now last year I met an old scientist, Von
Meyren, who happened to mention that he had found that certain inks
which had been used for parchments in olden times held a substance
which becomes phosphorescent when exposed to radium. He got a second
letter in that way once, from beneath a message one of the Popes sent
to a king of France. You see parchment was and is expensive, and hard
to get. They used the same piece over and over again, removing the old
inks by scraping or dissolving. Somehow the radium brought out the
stuff that had been apparently removed. When Reid said ‘Papal Bulls’
it gave me an idea. It is barely possible that the man who wrote the
letter might have written something on that piece of parchment before
and then erased it. I thought I’d try radium on the chance. There may
be nothing in it, but it will do no harm, will it, Miss Haldane?”
“Oh, no,” said Miss Haldane. “I have some of my brother’s radium right
here. I’ll bring it down and we’ll expose the letter to it.”
A moment later she returned, this time with her cousin Mrs. Hartnell.
“Now we will darken the room,” she said, holding out a small lead case
with hinged cover, “and try this wonder worker. But you must not move
from your places. If you get in the way of the rays, you are likely to
be badly burned.”
We were grouped in a semi-circle before a bared table whereon was
placed the open letter in a holder, confronted with the leaden casket.
I was given the place of honor, directly in front, and Miss Haldane
put her chair beside mine. Carefully she opened the hinged door in
the front of the radium holder, stepped to the switch, threw off the
electric light, and came to sit beside me.
We waited in perfect silence, our eyes bent on the blackness before us.
I could hear her regular breathing, I could feel the brush of her skirt
as she leaned forward, and I forgot all else,--the noise of the city
without, the audience within, both disappeared from my consciousness.
There was but a vast rolling ocean of blackness, and she and I, bound
by a swiftly tightening chain, were being dragged closer and closer
together. Old Von Meyren’s pet saying, “Love! Pah! What is it but an
excess of positive electrons in a certain man, urging him towards the
negative electrons in a certain woman?” kept ringing in my ears, the
while I indignantly refuted it. Again and again it persisted, and with
it came the thought that the waves from the radium were the chain
which bound us.
I had forgotten the letter utterly when suddenly I heard a slight
catch in the regular breathing beside me, and a soft warm hand, raised
swiftly, brushed mine for a moment as it was raised. The sharp thrill
shook me into consciousness. I looked before me, and there, glimmering
into light, a single curve came from the darkness, then a straight
line, then appeared a large U. One by one letters filled out, whole
words appeared,--“United States” first, “July” second, and a single
capital “I” next. Word after word appeared. Half lines filled into
sentences. I could hear behind me a quick, almost sobbing breath
that half penetrated my mind, but leaning forward close beside was
Miss Haldane. At last in a clear low voice she began to read, “I,
the man who will stop all war, hereby declare that I will destroy
one battleship of the United States during the first week of July,
19--, one battleship of England during the second week of July, 19--,
one battleship of France during the third week of July, 19--, one
battleship of Germany during the fourth week of July, 19--. I shall
follow that destruction by sinking, in regular order, one battleship of
each of the other great powers. May the Lord have mercy on the souls of
them who suffer for the cause of peace!”
She stopped and we waited, watching the glowing signal for what seemed
hours, for what was minutes. No more appeared, though the brightness
of the words of the second message did not dim. At last Miss Haldane
rose and with a quick movement turned on the lights and shut the cover.
The letter returned to its former appearance. I sat blinking. Regnier
still sat immobile. John held his face in his hands. Mrs. Hartnell sat
with closed eyes.
“Do you believe it?” I asked Miss Haldane quickly.
She nodded gravely. “It’s what he means to do,” she said. “He wrote it
that way first, and then erased it and made it general afterwards.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Mrs. Hartnell, sharply. “It’s impossible.”
“It certainly doesn’t seem probable,” said John, at last raising his
face. Regnier alone did not speak.
For a moment we were silent, each busy with the thoughts the message
had roused within him. At last I rose with an effort. “Good-night, Miss
Haldane,” I said, “I thank you for your help.”
“I am very glad you brought the letter to me,” she said simply, “I am
going back to New York to-morrow so I cannot ask you to call upon me
here, but if you are in New York won’t you come and see me and give me
any news you may have of this threatening peril?”
“I shall be only too glad to do so,” I responded, my heart bounding.
I had reached the door when Miss Haldane called after me. “Oh, Mr.
Orrington, would you be willing to let me have the letter? I should
like to show it to my brother. I’ll send it to you any time you wish.”
“Certainly you may have it,” I replied, and I handed her the parchment.
Regnier left the house with John and me. We walked in silence to the
corner where Regnier turned off. As we parted, he hesitated for a
moment.
“You were strangely right in your surmise, Mr. Orrington,” he said
slowly. “I am very glad to have been present at so curious an event.”
“Queer chap Regnier,” said John musingly, as we watched the retreating
form. “Clever scientist and good fellow, but queer. I hope he’ll never
get Dorothy Haldane. She wouldn’t be happy with him.”
My heart sank like lead. “Do you think there’s much chance that he
will?” I queried anxiously.
“To tell the truth,” answered John slowly, “I don’t know.” We had come
by this time to the door of John’s hotel. “I’m not going to ask you
up to-night, Jim,” he said, “I’m utterly fagged out and exhausted.
Besides, I must get off early in the morning. So good-night and
good-bye both.”
He paused and I could see the muscles of his face twitching and his
hands nervously clasping. He went on with a rush, “Don’t forget me
while I’m gone, old man, will you? Remember our commencement night when
we walked up Riverside, and talked of the great future lying before us?
Of all I cared for then, not one remains except yourself. Of all the
health and vigor I had then, only a shred is left. I shall not see you
for two years anyway. There’s nobody left to write to me. Don’t forget
me. Drop me a line occasionally, care Barings, will you?”
With such an intensity of pleading came the last words that I was
shaken despite myself. “Write you? I guess I will,” I cried. “Don’t you
worry about that.” We grasped hands and parted.