The Stolen War Secret/Chapter 4

ARLY the following morning we met Burke in the Long Island corner of the Pennsylvania Station. It had been late enough when we parted the night before, and as far as we knew nothing further had occurred in either the Sinclair robbery or the Valcour murder cases.

It was an early train and we had it mostly to ourselves, for we were starting even before the flood of the stream of commuters began, going the other way, toward the city.

As our train whisked us along Craig leaned back in his chair and surveyed the glimpses of water and countryside through the window. Now and then, as we got farther out from the city, through a break in the trees one could catch glimpses of the deep blue salt water of bay and sound and the dazzling whiteness of the sand in the clear morning air.

It was a pleasant ride, but we made it in silence and, without wasting any time, at a livery stable across from the quaint little Westport station we secured a rig and hastened out to Colonel Sinclair’s.

The house was situated on a neck of land, with the restless waters of the Sound on one side and the calmer waters of the bay on the other.

Westport Bay itself lay in a beautifully wooded, hilly country, and Sinclair’s house stood on an elevation, with a huge sweep of terraced lawn before it, running down to the water’s edge.

As we pulled up under the wide stone ivy-covered porte-cochère, Sinclair, who had been awaiting us anxiously after the receipt of a telegram from Burke, greeted us and led the way into his library, a large room crowded with curios and objects of art which he had collected on his travels in Latin-America.

Sinclair was a tall, lithe, wiry man with a seamed and furrowed face. I noticed particularly his loose-jointed but very deft manner of handling himself and could not help thinking that it marked him as a born bird-man.

It was a superb literary and scientific workshop overlooking the bay, with a stretch of several miles of sheltered water.

Sinclair, however, was evidently very much worried about several things.

“Tell me,” he asked anxiously before we were fairly in the library, “is—is it true—that story in the newspapers about Madame Valcour?”

“Yes, I’m afraid it is,” replied Burke, hastening to introduce us and at the same time watching Sinclair’s face narrowly.

“You knew her, I believe?” asked Kennedy.

“Yes,” he replied guardedly. “In fact, only the day before, I was out with her in my new boat, the Streamline, which you can see down there anchored just off the dock.”

He looked away and pointed down and across the bay. “She was staying at that hotel—the Seaville House.”

A quick look from Burke told us that that was where the colony of Mexicans had established themselves, spending the Summer, and I recalled that he had said that Señora Ruiz had hired a cottage back of the hotel and up the hill.

Sinclair had evidently said about all he was disposed to say on the subject, and Kennedy led the conversation around to the robbery.

The Colonel repeated substantially the same story we had already heard from Burke.

“And you found nothing—no marks—have no clue?” asked Craig who had been following attentively.

“Nothing except that peculiar instrument I gave Burke,” replied Sinclair. “You have seen it? What do you suppose it is, Burke?”

The Secret Service man nodded a blank negative.

Kennedy had drawn the thing from his pocket.

“I have studied it carefully,” he said simply.

He dropped down on his knees before the now-closed safe and opened the strange contrivance which Sinclair had found.

We watched in silence as Kennedy placed the peculiar telephone-like transmitter close to the combination lock and turned the combination slowly.

Suddenly he rose, gave the bolts a twist, and the heavy little door swung open!

“This is how your safe was opened so quickly,” he cried.

We looked in utter amazement.

“How did you do it?” asked Sinclair.

“With the burglar’s microphone,” he answered. “The microphone is now used by cracksman for picking combination-locks. When you turn the lock a slight sound is made when the proper number comes opposite the working-point. It can be heard sometimes by a sensitive ear, although it is imperceptible to most persons. But by using a microphone it is easy to hear the sounds which allow of opening the lock.”

“Well—I’ll—be—hanged!” gasped Sinclair.

IT WAS difficult to determine whether Burke or Sinclair had been the more impressed by the seeming wizardry of Kennedy in discovering how the safe had been opened. That point, how ever, was at present at least of minor importance to Kennedy. Not only was it necessary but he was most interested in knowing about the wonderful contrivance of Sinclair’s which had called forth such ingenuity in order to get possession of it.

“Just what is your gyroscope aeroplane, Colonel?” he asked.

With the true spirit of the inventor, Sinclair was now all enthusiasm, and was prepared to talk of nothing else except this child of his brain.

“It is a crewless aeroplane,” he explained eagerly. “It is exactly as if you sat here in this room and merely by manipulating a series of keys could control the action of either an aeroplane or a submarine—anything that moves by power—miles away.

“You catch what it means,” he went on. “That thing might carry enough of the most powerful explosive to blow up the locks of the Panama Canal, to send any of our super dreadnoughts to the bottom, if it were directed against us.

“In the hands of an enemy there is no telling what might not happen. He could send one of these infernal, self-propelled, safely directed machines where and when he wanted it and could explode it at exactly the moment, when it would do the most damage.”

He had risen and was pacing the room in excitement.

“Come out here,” he added, “I’ll show you the real thing.”

Sinclair led the way to a concrete and sheet-iron hangar down the terrace toward the water’s edge.

As he directed, a mechanician wheeled the aeroplane out on the runway in front of the hangar.

“This is the gyroscope,” began Sinclair, pointing out a thing encased in an aluminum sheath which weighed, all told, perhaps fourteen or fifteen pounds.

“You understand,” he continued, “the gyroscope is really a flywheel mounted on gimbals and can turn on any of its axes so that it can assume any angle in space. When it’s at rest, like this, you can turn it easily. But when it is set revolving, it tends to persist always in the plane in which it was started rotating.”

I took hold of it and it did turn readily in any direction that I desired. I could feel, as I turned it, the heavy little flywheel inside.

“There is a pretty high vacuum in that aluminum case,” went on Sinclair. “There’s very little friction on that account. The power to rotate the flywheel is obtained from this little dynamo here, run by the gas-engine which also turns the propellers of the aeroplane.”

“But, suppose the engine should stop?” I asked sceptically. “How about the gyroscope?”

“It will go right on for several minutes. You know the Brennan monorail-car will stand up some time after the power is shut off. And I carry a small storage-battery that will run the gyroscope for some time too. That’s all been guarded against.”

He was the typical inventor, optimistic. Sinclair cranked the engine, a seven-cylindered affair, with the cylinders sticking out like the spokes of a wheel without a rim. The propellers turned so fast that I could not see the blades—turned with that strong, steady, fierce, droning buzz that can be heard a long distance and which is a thrilling sound to hear, wafted on the Summer breeze as if a hundred giant cicadas had broken loose to predict warm weather.

The inventor reached over and attached the little dynamo, at the same time setting the gyroscope at its proper angle and starting it.

“This is the mechanical brain of my new flyer,” he remarked, patting the round aluminum case almost lovingly. “You can look in through this little window of glass which I have let into the case, and you can see the flywheel inside revolving—ten thousand revolutions a minute. Press down on it,” he shouted to me.

As I placed both hands on the case of the apparently frail instrument, he added—“You remember how easily you moved it just a moment ago.”

I pressed down with all my strength. Then I literally raised myself off my feet, resting my two hands on the case about the gyroscope. That uncanny little instrument seemed to resent—there is no other word that expresses it quite so well—resent my very touch. It was almost human, petulant with interference. Instead of yielding, it actually rose on the side I was pressing down!

Colonel Sinclair laughed at the puzzled look on my face. I took my hands off and the gyroscope leisurely and nonchalantly resumed its original position.

“Without going into the theory of the thing,” explained Sinclair, “those are the properties I use—applied to the rudder and the ailerons—those little flat planes at the ends, between the two large main planes. That gives me automatic stability for the machine. I’m not going to take time to explain how it is done. But it is in the combination of the various parts that I have discovered the basic principle.”

“How about the wireless control?” asked Kennedy, to whom the gyroscope was interesting but not new.

“I don’t know whether you are familiar with the theory of wireless telegraphy or not,” began Sinclair, to which Kennedy nodded an affirmative, forgetful of the rest of us. “But it has gone ahead fast during the past few years. The reason? Simple—very simple! In wireless telegraphy they have been able to discard coherers and relays and to use detectors of various kinds and microphones in their places.

“But in wireless telautomatics it is different. There we have been compelled to keep the coherer. That has been the trouble, that has been the thing that has held us back. The coherer is often spasmodic. We can’t always depend on it.

“Well, I suppose you are acquainted with Hammond’s mercury-steel disk coherer? I have improved on even that. So, I may say, we come finally to this coherer which I myself have invented for the special purpose of wireless-controlled vehicles of all kinds.”

He paused and led us to a little kiosk or station on the edge of the bluff.

“This,” he explained with pardonable pride, “is my radio-combinator. You see I have twelve numbers here on the keys—forward, back, start, stop propeller-motor, rudder right, rudder left, stop steering-motor, light signals front, light signals rear, launch air-torpedoes—there is one of them over in the corner—and so on.

“That instrument I call a telecommutator. Then, too, I use what is called an aerial coherer relay.”

He paused a moment to let the thing sink into our minds. I had long since given up and had joined Burke in silent wonder. Not so with Kennedy. His mind ran along, if anything, ahead of Sinclair; and now and then he asked a question which elicited an answer that showed that Sinclair appreciated talking to him about his hobby.

“The idea,” went on Sinclair again, “is that of delayed contact. You understand, the machinery to propel and steer the aeroplane is always ready. But when the right impulse is given to it, it actually delays a few seconds. That is so that the direction given can be automatically repeated back to me. Then if it should prove to be wrong or undesirable I can change it—instantly—before it is too late.”

We were intensely interested, even if we could not follow all the details.

“Oh, there are many technicalities,” he went on. “But you can see for yourself that it really takes no great experience to run the air-ship. You could do it—any one with common sense could do it after I had showed him once what to do. It is all done by merely paying attention to the signals and depressing the right key here, of a limited number.

“You see I have improved on all my predecessors—on Wilson and Gardner in England, Roberts in Australia, Wirth and Lirpa in Germany, Gabet in France, and Tesla, Edison, Sims, and the younger Hammond in our own country.”

“I should like to see a trial,” suggested Kennedy.

“I should be only too glad,” returned Sinclair.

He depressed a lever.

“Of course,” he observed, “you know that wireless power doesn’t operate the aeroplane. The wireless waves merely operate a system of relays. The air-ship carries its own power, just like any other—with the exception of the gyroscope, of course. I control that power, sitting here, just as if I were aboard the aeroplane.”

As I went over quickly in my mind the points he had touched on in our talk, I felt that everything had been thought out most carefully. And when I reflected that it all could be controlled automatically, or, perhaps better, telautomatically, I felt simply astounded.

Sinclair pointed again to the air-ship herself.

“You see,” he went on, “when she is working automatically, the wireless impulses are carried to a short aerial, like a mast, sticking up there just a little above the planes.”

The mechanician threw in a switch. The motor caught on. The air-ship hummed and trembled. The fumes of gasoline spread out through the air, stifling.

We watched the inventor with tense interest.

The mechanician retired and there was the air-ship, throbbing away, an inanimate thing, yet somehow now in my eyes endowed with life, with something akin to intelligence.

Sinclair merely depressed a key.

THE aeroplane rose under the unseen guidance of the wireless. Out she streaked from the run-way and shot up, up, up, with the flag flapping proudly from the upper plane. She swayed from side to side as the mechanism which operated the stabilizing by means of the ends of the planes, counteracting the puffs of wind from the land, did its work with an intelligence almost superior to that of man himself.

Upward she soared.

“Now,” remarked Sinclair, flattered by the appreciative looks on our faces, “imagine that she is sailing along there, carrying death under her wings in the shape of my aerial torpedoes, or even plain ordinary bombs.”

He pressed another key.

Far off we could see a speck seemingly detached from the aeroplane. It fell rapidly with gathering momentum. Suddenly it touched the water and a huge cloud of foam rose.

“Suppose there had been a ship or a hostile army under that,” he said quietly.

It did not take a very vivid imagination to supply the context to such a supposition. I had already begun to look on Sinclair with a feeling almost akin to awe.

He depressed another key. The aeroplane turned, obeying his every whim. He depressed keys in quick succession. She cut a figure eight.

“Why,” he cried in his enthusiasm, “I can do anything with that aeroplane you want. I have even turned her completely over and flown her upside down just as Pegoud did first. Look—you never saw that before.”

“Why, she has stopped!” exclaimed Kennedy.

“Exactly. I can use the gyroscope for that—to make her hover in one spot just like a bird, riding the air waves, if you can call it that. Why, man, there isn’t anything I can’t do with this machine.”

“And you never have any trouble with other wireless?” asked Craig.

“No, I have guarded against that,” he said, starting the aeroplane again, turning it and directing it straight back at us like a huge, irresistible force sweeping at us and beyond our power to stop—yet obeying absolutely the magic touch of the little keys before him. “I am the only person who can interfere with it—I who know how to direct it.”

“Not the only one—now,” put in Kennedy quietly.

Sinclair in his enthusiasm over the machine itself had forgotten the very occasion of our being there.

His face clouded.

“No—you’re right,” he answered. “And for God’s sake—get back that secret,” he implored, as he brought the machine on down the bay back to its nesting place.

I was thrilled not only by his tone, but by the momentous possibilities in this long electric arm that could be stretched out through space to fight our battles.

Kennedy’s words sent a horror-stricken thrill through me. What if that arm were stretched out against us, instead of for us, in war?