The Stolen War Secret/Chapter 11

ENNEDY, Burke and myself hustled over to the railroad-station and there were met by Kennedy’s messenger, carrying the packages he had ordered from his laboratory by the wireless courier of the air. We piled them into the rear of the car and a few moments later were speeding to rejoin Sinclair at the Yacht Club.

The club was a large square building, extending out into the water on made land, from which ran a long, substantial dock at the end of which was a platform with a flag and alongside it a searchlight.

We entered the club and, without going up through the large porch where the “rocking-chair fleet” was anchored, went directly down the dock to Sinclair whom we could see on the platform.

“Did you see Mrs. Hawley as you came through?” inquired Sinclair as we greeted him.

“Why no,” replied Kennedy, evidently a little put out, for he had chosen the yacht club because, even though there were bound to be many people there and much gossip, still it was not like the Seaville House.

“Where is she?”

“On the porch, upstairs,” answered Sinclair.

Kennedy did not look around, but continued to busy himself on the end of the dock. I wondered whether she might have been sent out by some one up at the hotel to watch.

“I suppose we’ll have to speak to her as we go out,” added Kennedy, “but let us finish here quietly first.”

Craig had set up on the platform a large affair which looked very much like a mortar. I watched without saying anything, dividing my attention between it and the splendid view of the harbor which the end of the dock offorded [sic].

“What is all that—fireworks?” asked Sinclair, smiling.

“It’s a light-weight rocket-mortar,” replied Kennedy, who impressed Burke into service and was explaining something to him in an undertone. “By the way, Sinclair, did Mrs. Hawley say anything about any of the others being down here?”

“I believe that Sanchez and Señora Ruiz and their Japanese servants are at the cottage,” reported Sinclair.

Kennedy had next uncovered a round brass case. It did not seem to me to amount to much, as compared to some of the complicated apparatus which Craig had used. In it was merely a four-sided prism of glass, as if it had been cut off the corner of a huge glass cube.

He handed it to us, saying—

“Look into it.”

It surely was about the most curious piece of crystal-gazing I had ever seen. Turn the thing any way I pleased and I could see my face in it, just as in an ordinary mirror.

Craig covered it up and gave it to Burke, who assisted him in carrying some other bulky pieces of apparatus as well as another similar brass case containing a second prism down to the Streamline.

It was now getting dark, and just before we were ready to start Kennedy proposed that we all should go up and pay our respects to Mrs. Hawley.

AS IT happened it was the night of a dance at the club, and members and their guests were already assembling. It was a brilliant spectacle, faces that radiated pleasure, gowns that for startling combinations of color would have pleased the Futurists, and music, already tuning up, that set the feet tapping irresistibly.

I shall not pause to describe the scene, for the fascination of the ballroom over looking the bay, on which now a myriad of lights on the boats twinkled, was absolutely wasted on Craig, and indeed has no part in the story. In front of the club was strung out a long line of cars and at the dock now were several speed-boats of national and international reputation, besides Sinclair’s Streamline.

Mrs. Hawley was indeed surprised to see us, but as far as I could detect there was no element of suspicion in it.

“They were tired of the city,” she added as she repeated what Sinclair had already told us of Ruiz and the rest. “I thought I might as well come down, too, and I have rooms at the Seaville. Some acquaintances there who are members of the club asked me if I wouldn’t like to come down here, so here I am.”

Kennedy had been watching her keenly. Quite contrary from being disconcerted at meeting us she seemed to be pleased, especially at seeing Sinclair.

“Wasn’t it too bad about the air-ship?” she added. “I heard them talking about it up at the hotel and I asked Mr. Sinclair, but he didn’t seem to know what caused the accident himself.”

“No,” replied Kennedy. “It was most unfortunate, whatever it was. By the way, I wonder whether any of your friends intend to be here tonight?”

“I think not,” she answered frankly. “You know they are very clannish. They live much to themselves. You can’t blame them. They’re a good deal like we are down in Mexico, you know, with our own American clubs.”

Kennedy had arisen and was looking over the gay crowd, but apparently did not find any faces there that he recognized. We chatted a few moments more, then excused ourselves and went down the dock to the boat.

“Either she doesn’t know anything or she is a mighty good actress,” I commented, falling in with Craig.

“Whatever she knows or doesn’t know,” he answered, “there is one thing I am sure of. That woman may be depended on to do nothing that would hurt Sinclair. Did you notice? She scarcely took her eyes off him.”

“And Sinclair?” I whispered.

“I’m not so sure how much he cares for her,” returned Craig.

WE HAD reached the end of the dock, and Sinclair’s presence forbade pursuing the subject further. It was only a matter of a few seconds and the engine was started. Kennedy had been talking earnestly with Burke and was the last to jump into the boat.

“Isn’t Burke coming along?” asked Sinclair.

“No,” replied Craig. “There are several things here that I want him to do, and in the meantime we must get back to your house.”

We left Burke standing on the end of the float and made a quick trip down the bay to Sinclair’s.

As we walked up the flight of steps that surmounted the terrace, Kennedy asked—

“I suppose you have a phonograph here?”

“Yes,” answered Sinclair somewhat mystified, for he at least was in no mood for entertainment.

“Unless I’m mistaken,” remarked Kennedy, “I think I shall find something here that will keep us busy for at least a part of the evening and take our minds off our troubles a little bit.”

He had diverged off toward the kiosk and the wireless-apparatus which he had rigged up during the afternoon. Loosening the wires, he carried the apparatus bodily with him into the house where Sinclair had the phonograph in his splendidly equipped library.

“This is what I might call my radio-detective,” explained Kennedy with just a trace of pride in his voice, as we entered. “Even if it is mainly improvised, I think it is built up on a very compact system and ought to prove efficient.”

He had taken the thing apart and from it abstracted the cylinder which I had observed. Brushing it off, he slipped it on the phonograph like an ordinary record.

“Everybody knows, I suppose,” he said, pausing and turning to us, “that messages by wireless may be received from any number of stations by using an aerial pole and other apparatus properly.

“Laws, rules and regulations have been adopted to cut off interlopers and stop busybody ears. But, as a matter of fact, nearly everything that is transmitted by the Hertzian waves can be snatched down from the very sky by other wireless-apparatus.

“An operator, his ear-phone clamped to his head, may drink in news conveyed surely and swiftly to him through wireless-signals, plucking from the air secrets of war and,” he added significantly—“love.”

Kennedy paused a moment over the word, whether to catch some reaction from Sinclair or not I could not make out.

“In other words,” he continued, dropping back suddenly into his usual scientific manner, “such apparatus might be used for eavesdropping by a wireless wire-tapper, and I concluded that if there was any of that sort of thing that could be done I would do it. Let me see what result I have from this radio detective-work.”

As he adjusted the cylinder, he explained: “You see now why I wanted to visit the wireless-station, for I am using Marconi’s new radiotelephone. In connection with his receivers, Marconi uses phonographic recorders and on them has captured wireless telegraph-signals sent out over hundreds of miles.

“That is to say, he has found it possible to receive wireless-signals, although ordinary records are not loud enough. He uses a small microphone on the repeating diaphragm and connected with a loud speaking telephone. At first there was trouble getting a microphone that would carry a sufficient current without burning up. There were other difficulties, too, but all have been overcome, and with this apparatus which I have here it is possible now automatically to record wireless-messages and actually make them audible.”

The very idea of the thing, capturing the noiseless impulses in the air and repeating them so that our finite ears might hear them, seemed incredible.

Kennedy started the phonograph and from it we could hear a succession of ticks.

He translated it rapidly, but it did not seem to be of any interest to us, being simply a message from some one at the Seaville House to a friend on one of the Sound steamers as it passed Westport. Still, although it did not satisfy our curiosity, it was wonderful enough. More than ever, it seemed that he was doing the impossible, for before us buzzing and ticking forth, were message after message which his radio detective had actually dragged down by magic out of the clouds.

Kennedy would try a message, find that it had no interest for us, then move the needle ahead to pick out the next.

Suddenly he stopped, started the phonograph again at the beginning of a series of ticks and cried—

“Listen!”

I was unable to read the ticking myself but, realizing that it must be something of importance, I bent over Kennedy as, with Sinclair, he set down what the radio-detective had caught.

As nearly as I could make out what he had written, it was:

Kennedy looked vacantly at the message. It appeared to be a mere jumble of letters.

“Humph!” exclaimed Sinclair. “What good is that?”

“I can’t say,” replied Kennedy. “And yet why should any one send a message like that unless it were in a cipher and he had something to conceal?”

There was no disputing Kennedy’s reasoning. It must be a cipher-message, though from whom and to whom and what it contained not even the marvelous radio detective could tell. I wondered whether Kennedy could fathom it.

Craig wrote it out, reversed, and read off the letters slowly, but that did not seem to do any good. It was no plainer forward than backward.

“There must be some key,” he persisted, looking it over thoughtfully.

I felt like urging haste, but when I considered how helpless I would be myself, I realized that such urging would come from me with very ill grace.

“Can’t you apply the rules that are usually used in deciphering ciphers?” asked Sinclair. “For instance, you know E is the most commonly used letter. How many letters are there and what is the most commonly used? That must stand for E.”

“Exactly what I am trying to do,” replied Kennedy quietly, his brow still puckered in thought as he bit the end of a pencil nervously. “There are eighteen E’s here already. E itself is here the most commonly used letter, and, as you say, E is the commonest letter that we have. It looks to me,” he added slowly, “as if E must stand for E.”

Over and over he studied the series of letters, comparing his results with a table he carried in his pocketbook, giving the relative frequency of various letters, combinations of letters and the most common short words such as “the” and “and” and others.

Patiently he studied it, using every method he could think of to unlock the mystery quickly. And yet, after perhaps half an hour’s work with paper and pencil, covering sheets with figures that looked as if he were doing sums, he had arrived at the significance of only half a dozen letters, and that without any certainty, for it did not make the message read intelligibly even yet.

“Of course I can do it by the long scientific method, if I take the time,” he remarked, pausing thoughtfully and some what vexed at the obstacles the thing afforded. “But in the meantime who knows what may be taking place?”

He was looking at the message first forward, as he had written it, then reversed. As he looked at it, he tapped absently on the edge of the desk with his pencil, more to relieve his impatience than for anything else.

Suddenly his pencil-tapping ceased. It seemed as if an idea had suddenly occurred to him.

Slowly he wrote out both versions of the message in the dots and dashes of the Morse alphabet.

Still, to me, it meant nothing. But Kennedy appeared to be at last highly elated. He ran his eye over what he had written again, then paused a moment, and began tapping on the table with his pencil.

“By George, that’s it, Sinclair,” he cried. “Here’s the original message as we got it. Now I reverse it, tapping off its letters just as they come in Morse. Do you catch the idea? First they wrote the message out in ordinary words. Then that was translated into the dots and dashes of the Morse code. That in turn was reversed, and then that reversion was reduced to letters again.”

Sinclair nodded, as we followed him excitedly.

“You know there are some letters that would come out in the cipher just as in the original, for in Morse they are just the same one way as the other—symmetrical. E is such a letter, so is I and O and a lot of others. But there are just enough which, when reversed, make some other letter to make such a cipher most difficult. For instance, take A, which is a dot and dash. Reverse that and a dash and dot stand for N. Therefore, wherever you find an A in this cipher replace it by N, and vice versa. Oh, this is easy now,” he gloated, as we watched him with both wonder and satisfaction at the ease with which he had finally solved it.

They had sent the message backward in Morse. Kennedy did not bother to translate it further. He seized his pencil and with it quickly clicked off the letters, taking the message backward, in reverse order, and Sinclair wrote down the new, translated latters [sic] as he called them off.

It was the work of scarcely more than a minute and we had the original message which some one had gone to so much trouble to conceal in the transmission. It read:

Kennedy looked at the message with puckered face a long time. I do not think he himself could quite figure out what it meant at first.

Sinclair was the first to speak.

“Evidently, then, Sanchez does not know what caused the disaster to my aeroplane,” he remarked simply.

“No,” replied Kennedy. “That puzzles me. Yet it is possible that many things may be going on, almost under his eyes, and he might not realize their importance. What puzzles me is that, although he did not know the cause of the disaster, he seems to know about that message I sent to New York for my apparatus and to have found out who we are and something of why we are here.”

KENNEDY had returned to his radio-detective and was hastily running it along again. He had passed several perfectly intelligible messages that had been caught and recorded, but were of no value to us, when he paused again.

“There’s what I was looking for,” he cried, “the cipher again. It must be the reply. By George, it comes from across the Sound, from Bridgeport, as nearly as I can make it.”

He ran the thing over slowly and copied down another message, reversed it, and translated through the Morse.

“What is it?” we asked breathlessly.

“It is signed Alvarez,” he answered excitedly. “They must have separated. Evidently Alvarez has been on the trail of Morelos since Burke seized the arms. His message is:

“That’s another puzzle, too,” he added, as he finished reading.

“I should say so,” rejoined Sinclair. “As nearly as I can make out, neither Sanchez or Ruiz here nor Alvarez knows anything about the disaster. And apparently neither does Morelos, the Revolutionist leader, know. Nobody seems to know.”

Sinclair was nonplused.

“Still, that may not mean that they know nothing about the stolen plans,” remarked Kennedy quietly, as he read over the message again. “Apparently they knew perfectly well that the plans had been stolen. It does not tell us which party stole them or who has them, it is true, but it does go a long step in clearing up the mystery. We don’t know how Madame Valcour got them or who got them from her, but we are on the road at last to finding that out.”

Sinclair had taken the two messages and was reading them over again.

“You are right,” he exclaimed, as he laid them down again. “Those people over at Seaville evidently fear us. The last train up to the city had gone when that message was sent, for there isn’t very good service in that direction at night. They have called for help by wireless and Alvarez is coming to get them away in the best manner possible. That is the way I figure it out, at least.”

“And that is right,” agreed Kennedy. “Our problem is to intercept them.”

Sinclair looked hastily at his watch, then out of the window at the Cimmerian darkness of the hundreds of square miles of water of the sheltered bays and harbors and the Sound beyond.

“How is it to be done?” he asked almost hopelessly.

We both looked at Kennedy as he stood there calm and collected. The radio-detective had unmasked the plotters. But was it too late to catch them?