Immediately began a desperate and silent trial of strength. The old man developed an unexpected power. The table lay between them, prohibiting a closer grip. Inch by inch, impelled by the man's iron will, his hand forced his way toward the sending key. Darrow put forth all his strength to prevent. There was no violent struggle, no noise; simply the pressure of opposing forces. Gradually the scientist's youth prevailed against the older man's desperation. The hand creeping toward the sender came to a stop. Then, all at once, the older man's resistance collapsed entirely. Darrow swept his arm back, stepped around the table, and drew his opponent, almost unresisting, back to the window.

"Jack!" he called.

At the sound of his voice the old man gathered his last vitality in a tremendous effort to jerk loose from his captor. Catching Darrow unawares, he almost succeeded in getting free. The flash was too brief. He managed only to rap the young man's head rather sharply against a shade-fitting of the window.

The outer door jerked open, and Jack Warford leaped into the room, revolver in hand. Darrow called an instant warning.

"All right!" he shouted. "Turn on the light, next to you somewhere. Shut the door."

These orders were obeyed. The electric flared. By its light the office was seen to be quite empty save for a cabinet full of books and papers; rows and rows of battery jars; the receiving and sending apparatus of a wireless outfit; the deal table, and one wooden chair. Darrow looked around keenly.

"That's all right, Jack," said he. "Just get around here cautiously and raise the window shade. Look out you don't get near that table. That's it. Now just help me get this man a little away from the table! Good! Now, tie him up. No, bring over the chair. Tie him in that chair. Gently. That's all right. Whew!"

"You're hurt," said Jack.

Darrow touched his forehead.

"A bump," he said briefly. "Well, Jack, my son, we've done it!"

"You don't mean to say—" cried Jack.

Darrow nodded.

"Now, my friend," he addressed the huddled figure in the chair, "the game is up. You are caught, and you must realize it." He surveyed the captive thoughtfully. "Tell me, who are you?" he added. "I should know you, for you are a great discoverer."

The old man stared straight at his interlocutor with his expressionless eyes, behind which no soul, no mind, no vitality even seemed to lie.

Darrow asked him several more questions, to which he received no replies. The man sat like a captured beast.

"I'm sorry," said Darrow to Jack. "I should like to have talked with him. Such a man is worth knowing; he has delved deep."

"He'll talk yet, when he gets over his grouch," Jack surmised.

But Darrow shook his head.

"The man is imbecile," he said. "He has been mentally unbalanced; and his disorder has grown on him lately. When I drove back his wrist just now the cord snapped in his brain."

Jack turned to stare at the captive.

"By Jove, I believe you're right!" said he at last.

Darrow was standing looking down on the deal table.

"Come here, Jack," said he. "I want you to look at the deadliest engine of destruction ever invented or wielded by mortal man. I suspect that if you were to reach out your hand and hold down the innocent-looking telegraph key there you would instantly destroy every living creature in this city."

Jack turned a little pale, and put both hands behind him.

Darrow laughed. "Feel tempted?" he inquired.

"Makes me a little dizzy, like being on a height," confessed Jack. "How's the trick turned?"

"I don't know," said Darrow. "I'm going to find out if I can."

Without attempting to touch anything, he proceeded to examine carefully every detail of the apparatus.

"The batteries are nothing extraordinary, except in strength," he told Jack, "and as near as I can make out the instrument is like any other. It must be some modification in the sending apparatus, some system of 'tuning', perhaps—it's only a surmise. We'll just disconnect the batteries," he concluded, "before we go to monkeying."

He proceeded carefully and methodically to carry out his expressed intention. When he had finished the task he heaved a deep sigh of relief.

"I'm glad you feel that way, too," said Jack. "I didn't know what might not happen."

"Me, either," confessed Darrow. "But now I think we're safe."

He proceeded on a methodical search through the intricacies of the apparatus. For a time Jack followed him about, but after a while wearied of so profitless an occupation, and so took to smoking on the window-ledge. Darrow extended his investigations to the bookcase, and to a drawer in the deal table. For over two hours he sorted notes, compared, and ruminated, his brows knit in concentration. Jack did not try to interrupt him. At the end of the time indicated, the scientist looked up and made some trivial remark.

"Got it?" asked Jack.

"Yes," replied Darrow soberly. He reflected for several minutes longer; then moved to the window and looked out over the city. Absolutely motionless there he stood while the night fell, oblivious alike to the roar and crash of the increasing panic and to the silent figures in the darkened room behind him. At last he gave a sigh, walked quietly to the electric light, and turned it on.

"It's the biggest thing—and the simplest—the world has ever known in physics, Jack" said he, "but it's got to go."

"What?" asked Jack, rousing from the mood of waiting into which he had loyally forced himself in spite of the turmoil outside.

"The man has perfected a combined system of special tuning and definite electrical energy," said Darrow, "by which through an ordinary wireless sender he can send forth into the ether what might be called deadening or nullifying waves. You are no doubt familiar with the common experiment by which two sounds will produce a silence. This is just like that. By means of this, within the radius of his sending instrument and for a period of time up to the capacity of his batteries, a man can absolutely stop vibration of either heat, sound, light, or electricity length. It is entirely a question of simple formulas. Here they are."

He held out four closely written pages bound together with manuscript fasteners.

"No man has ever before attained this knowledge or this power," went on Darrow, after a moment; "and probably never again in the history of the race will exactly this combination of luck and special talent occur. These four pages are unique."

He laid them on the edge of the table, produced a cigarette, lighted it, picked up the four pages of formulas, and held the burning match to their edges. The flame caught, flared up the flimsy paper. Darrow dropped the burning corners as it scorched his fingers. It fell to the floor, flickered, and was gone.

Jack leaped forward with an exclamation of dismay. The old man bound to the chair did not wink, but stared straight in front of him, his eyes fixed like those of an owl or a wildcat.

"For God's sake, Darrow!" cried Jack Warford. "Do you know what you have done?"

"Perfectly," replied Darrow calmly. "This is probably the greatest achievement of the scientific intellect; but it must go. It would give to men an unchecked power that belongs only to the gods."



CHAPTER XXIII

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."



CHAPTER XXIV

WHAT HAPPENED AFTERWARD

There remains only to tell what became of the various characters of the tale.

McCarthy, on whom the action started, returned, but never regained his political hold. Darrow always maintained that this was only the most obvious result of his policy of delaying the denouement. People had been forced to think seriously of such matters; and, when aroused, the public conscience is right.

Darrow demanded, and received, the large money reward for his services in the matter. Pocketing whatever blame the public and his fellow scientists saw fit to hand out to him, he and Jack Warford disappeared in command of a small schooner. The purpose of the expedition was kept secret; its direction was known only to those most intimately concerned. If it ever returns, we may know more of it.

Eldridge went on being a scientist, exactly as before.

Simmons received a gold medal, a large cash sum, any amount of newspaper space, and an excellent opportunity to go on a vaudeville circuit.

Hallowell had his salary raised; and received in addition that rather vague brevet title of "star reporter".

Helen Warford is still attractive and unmarried. Whether the latter condition is only pending the return of the expedition is not known.

As for the city, it has gone back to its everyday life, and the riffles on the surface have smoothed themselves away. In outside appearances everything is as before. Yet for the present generation, at least, the persistence of the old independent self-reliance of the people is assured. They have been tested, and they have been made to think of elemental things seriously. For some time to come the slow process of standardization has been arrested.

THE END