DECLARING WAR.
Under ordinary circumstances, it is probable that the little room in
which Hines found himself would have seemed extraordinarily cramped and
crowded.
It was perhaps eight feet by ten, certainly no more, and it was inset
in a railroad fill which here was pierced for a vehicular roadway. A
door opened upon the curbstone, and from the narrow doorstep it was no
more than ten feet to the painted white line which normally marked the
center of the road.
On the farther side of the railroad embankment there was another
concrete highway, which explained the presence of the room. Here was a
dangerous crossroad, and this little cubby-hole was a shelter for the
State policemen.
There was a tiny stove, and a bench along one side of the wall, and a
cupboard and a table. There were nails, from which a slicker, a belt
with a holster attached, and a patched motorcycle inner tube depended.
On the table a tiny radio blared forth intermittent sounds from an even
tinier loud-speaker.
"To all authorities in New York State," said a voice crisply. "All
traffic must be stopped where the wind has now reached a velocity of
forty miles an hour. The storm is expected to increase in intensity
until four o'clock this afternoon. Wherever possible the population
must be warned of this fact. The storm will lessen markedly at about
sunset and may have ceased entirely by morning.
"It is imperative also that Inspector of Police Hines be reached and
warned not to enter the storm area. Where practicable, signs should be
painted on stone walls or the pavement. 'Hines Stop!' will be enough to
cause Inspector Hines to stop and make inquiry. He will probably travel
on one of the following roads--"
Hines turned to his companion, who was busily raking together a heap of
wires from the drawer of the table and twisting them together into a
single long strand.
"I'm getting a buzzer signal ready," said the State trooper woodenly,
"to use the railroad rails overhead. The radio said half an hour ago
that all State troopers were to use buzzer signals and railroad tracks
where they couldn't report otherwise. Not many, of us left, sir, and
very few of us can report, anyhow. I didn't bother with that until I'd
put up signs to stop you, sir."
The radio had finished a long list of highways. It began again,
repeating the previous message word for word, while wind roared
overhead in a deep-toned bellow which did not seem to vary by the
fraction of a semitone. It was rising slowly in pitch, as a matter of
fact, but so slowly that Hines's ears could not follow the change.
* * * * *
"This is an emergency means of communication, sir," said the trooper,
joining wires together with painstaking care. "It's the old buzzer
line that used to be used in the Army. I take an induction coil, the
one from my motorcycle, sir, and put the secondary into the rail up
overhead. The rail's iron, sir, and it isn't insulated, and it's not
very efficient, but they can pick it up with amplifiers at the other
end."
He bent two wires and fastened them to the storage-battery which
ran his radio. He was busy for a minute or more, improvising a
make-and-break contact.
The trooper put it down, satisfied, and tied a rope about himself.
"We have ropes here, sir, for towing," he observed. "I'm going out with
the wire, sir, and try to fasten this to the railroad rail. If I'm
blown away, sir, will you try to haul me back?"
"Wait a bit," said Hines shortly. "I'm going to do that. I don't
know Morse code; and you're needed for signaling. I'll make the
connection.... It's my order," he added sharply as the trooper shook
his head.
Reluctantly, the trooper gave him the rope-end.
Hines knotted the rope tightly about his body and stepped out of the
door. Wind struck him, and took his breath away. But that was the wind
that blew through the relatively sheltered traffic way. He was crawling
on his belly when he came out on the lee side of the railroad fill, and
a monstrous eddy of wind lifted him six inches off the ground and flung
him crashing ten feet away. He gasped, and began to crawl desperately
up the incline toward the rails.
The wind, here, had formed a monstrous whirl over the slight
obstruction. The dried cinders, dust, and small stones which once had
covered the side of the embankment had long since been sucked up and
flung madly away. It was naked damp clay that smeared him as he crawled
toward the tracks.
He seemed to be weightless, as the wind-whirl tried to lift him upward.
Hines had been in the European war, and he thought that he had learned
to hug the ground, but never before in his life had he clung so
desperately to the earth as he did now. He was blinded, strangled.
There was a vast, malevolent force pulling and tugging at his body. And
then quite suddenly his fingers scraped concrete, and he fought the
wind that strove to push his exploring hand aside and found a steel
signal-post that must be beside the track.
It was that post that really made it possible for him to reach the
rails. The blast that came over the top of the embankment was as
fierce, as savage, as nearly irresistible as a flood of swiftly-flowing
water. Nobody knows what velocity the wind ultimately attained in the
Storm, but it had reached a hundred and forty miles an hour when the
self-registering anemometer in the Burton observatory was wrecked.
Hines faced that wind, and fought his way inch by inch by means of the
steel bands connecting the signal-post to the rails. An outstretched
arm caught the wind. The sleeve ballooned out and burst. A flapping end
was seized by the wind and the rest of the garment was literally peeled
from him.
Here, of course, the wind was at its worst as far as Hines was
concerned. He was protected by no more than the four-inch steel rail
from its full force, and constantly there poured over him dust, smaller
fragments of débris, and above all and over all the overpoweringly
dense and solid wind itself.
When the connection was made, Hines was sobbing with sheer exhaustion.
He slid back down the incline, an inch at a time. And then suddenly
the wind caught him, and he felt himself lifted up. The rope about his
body tightened and hurt intolerably, and then he felt a crash and lost
consciousness.
* * * * *
When he came back to himself he was lying on the floor in the little
eight-by-ten room again, and the State trooper was working the buzzer
signal steadily. He stopped, and came over to Hines.
Hines stirred, and the trooper nodded to himself. He went back to the
buzzer and worked it again.
The radio broke off in the midst of its tediously repeated message.
"Corporal Woodford!" said the loud-speaker crisply. "Since Inspector
Hines has recovered consciousness, we will give him the message from
Professor Schaaf. He is in communication with the American Electric
Company by means of a short-wave set, and we will rebroadcast it to
you."
There were clickings. One or two curious crashing noises. Then a
re-enforcement of the roaring of the storm, only this extra roaring
came from the speaker. It was evident that wherever Schaaf was speaking
into a microphone, the storm was there too.
"Hello, Hines," said the placid voice of Schaaf. "This is a fery
pleasant situation, I dondt think. Now I giff you der works, and you
use your head. Here is what I haff found out.
"At six this morning der sun changed color. From where I am, I obserfe
with a spectroscope that der infra-red part of der sun spectrum is
completely gone cuckoo. I haff examined electric lights in der same
manner, and der infra-red spectrum is missing there, also.
"Der air where I am no longer transmits radiant heat. Der air, in
other words, is opaque to heat-wafes, as our friendt Breston has been
able to make it opaque to light. I think he is up to some more of his
deffilment. As you remember, he was able to make der air absorb and
neutralize light, producing his infernal darkness.
"I conclude that he has contrifed to make der air absorb heat instead
of permitting it to come on down to der ground, and in consequence der
air within range of his sending-apparatus is getting hot as der deffil
because it is absorbing all der heat that should pass through it to
warm the earth. Getting hot, it expands and rises. More cool air is
rushing in underneath. That, in turn, is getting excited and rushing to
der upper stratosphere.
"Der result is der Storm, that is raising hell. From der communications
I haff received from der American Electric Company, der storm-center is
fifty miles across, which makes it a hell of a storm. Der aferage for a
typhoon is ten to fifteen miles.
"Der information I haff for you is that it is definitely Breston who is
making this storm. He has a sending-apparatus with a range of twenty
to thirty miles in efery direction. Where his _verdammt_ short wafes
reach, der air is no longer transparent to heat-wafes and all der heat
of der sun is being used to heat der atmosphere, instead of der earth.
There is bractically a chimney fifty miles across, full of hot air
which is rising toward heafen and raising hell.
"You can locate der sending-station with apparatus like we used to
line up der source of der darkness, before. I will be in communication
with der Electric Company for some time to come. You can reach me, of
course. But be careful as der deffil how you talk. Breston is no doubt
listening in.
"I don't know what you are going to do, or how you are going to do it,
but you haff got to do something. Der chimney of hot air will stop
working, of course, at sunset. But it will probably begin again at
sunrise, and in der meantime there will be der deffil of a storm all
night long because of der hell that was raised all day. Good luck,
Hines. I sign off now."
* * * * *
There were more clickings and the storm-roar from the loud-speaker
stopped. Then the crisp voice of the announcer came once more.
"Mr. Hines! I hope you received Professor Schaaf's message. Woodford's
communications are coming through quite clearly. It is not yet known
just where you are. If you will send word, every effort will be made
to reach you. In the meantime, will you give what orders you can about
preparations for stopping 'this storm?"
The trooper, with his improvised key poised, looked expectantly at
Hines.
"My messages are getting through, sir," he said woodenly. "And I
imagine that they can't be read by anybody except at the other end of
the rails. Before you recovered consciousness, the commissioner of
police in New York City broadcast a message giving you full authority.
The State authorities have done the same. What shall I tell them you
want done?"
Hines's hands were clenched tightly. Kathryn was up in the mountains
somewhere, somewhere near the center of the storm which was Preston's
work. Preston's work!
She was probably dead by this time. Few buildings could stand the blast
that blew outside. There was nothing to do, now, but get Preston.
Preston was the one man on earth that Hines unfeignedly hated. He had
seen the man once. He had fought him twice, with the scientist Schaaf's
aid. Preston should have been one of the greatest scientific geniuses
on earth, but instead had now made himself the most cold-blooded
murderer in history.
Preston found that certain short Hertzian waves produced a state of
fluorescence in the air[1] so that the visible waves of light were
absorbed by the ions of the atmosphere, and an utter darkness was
produced.
[Footnote 1: The fluorescence of atmospheric air under the influence
of certain wave-lengths of radiation was described as long ago as
1911 in a lecture before the Royal Institution of Great Britain by
Professor R. W. Wood of Johns Hopkins University. The very short rays
discovered by Schumann were demonstrated to produce fluorescence in
air. The experiments and a photograph of the phenomenon may be found
reprinted in the Report of the Smithsonian Institution for 1911, which
is available in many public libraries. See page 165 _et seg_.]
Once, some months before, he had sent a beam of those waves down
Fifth Avenue, in New York. In fifteen minutes of utter blackness the
forewarned underworld of the city reaped a harvest of which Preston
received his share.
With every resource of science and courage, Hines and Schaaf had
fought him then, and had won. His apparatus for producing darkness was
destroyed, and he seemed to have been killed. It was that success that
had won Hines promotion to an inspectorship of police.
* * * * *
Preston, however, was not dead. Three months since, he had reappeared
with a new and larger apparatus for the broadcasting of his short
waves. He filled the whole city with the unbelievably high-frequency
broadcast, and the air above the whole metropolitan district absorbed
all visible rays and transformed them into invisible heat. The whole
city was immersed in an ocean of oblivion.
Again Hines had fought him, with Schaaf's assistance. That bulky blond
German scientist had invented instruments for locating the source
of this radiation which had an almost catalytic effect in producing
darkness. The effect of the waves was out of all proportion to the
power used in producing them.
By Schaaf's instruments and Hines's courage, again the menace to the
city had been nullified; but Preston had gone scot-free, and had become
a millionaire through the panic in the stock-market his horrible weapon
had caused.
He remained undiscovered and at large, and his captured apparatus had
been destroyed by the explosion of an evidently prepared bomb before it
could be examined.
Now he was again at work. He had prepared apparatus which could send
over a circle from fifty to sixty miles across. Wherever that station
maintained a field of force of the extremely short radio waves, there
the effects of the unholy radiation were evident.
He seemed to be using now a slightly different wave-length than had
caused all light radiation to be absorbed by the air. Now it was that
all heat was arrested by the atmosphere. The warmth of the sun did not
reach the earth. The air itself became heated instead. Heated, it rose,
and created a cyclonic storm beyond all parallel.
Preston, in the midst of that storm, was as safe from any danger save
that of the storm as if he were protected by armies. No man could reach
him, alive. He was invulnerable, protected by the sheer destruction he
had invoked.
* * * * *
Hines clenched his hands in the cubby-hole dug in the railroad
embankment. His eyes narrowed. Kathryn was very probably dead, and
Preston still lived. Preston would have to be killed for the sake of
humanity alone; yet Hines would kill him to avenge her only.
"First," said Hines in a cold and utterly bitter tone, "I want
everybody who's sold stocks short for a week past to be checked up.
Preston will be operating in terms of millions. I suggest that the
stock-market be closed, because when it's closed he can have no motive
to continue the storm. And then--"
He paused to marshal his thoughts, while rage pumped in every artery
and an almost insane hatred maddened him.
"Then," he said harshly, "I want the biggest tanks in the United States
Army to be sent up here as soon as the wind dies down a little. They'll
have to travel under their own power, because the roads and railroads
alike are useless. I want the big forty-ton ones. I want at least two
gun-carrier tanks with six-inch guns and a supply of gas and high
explosive shell. And I want some bombs."
He went on to list cables, more bombs, and airplane photo maps of all
the Catskills.
Meanwhile the Storm increased in force. It had been unbelievable
before. Now the wind reached an intensity hitherto unknown upon the
earth.