Top-Notch Magazine/Volume 27/Number 4/Shadows Tremendous/Chapter 1

ETTING up from the desk to stretch his legs a little, Knowlton Darrell glanced regretfully at the clock set amid the wilderness of dials and coils, shining spirals of copper pipe, and all the other complicated paraphernalia which covered the wall of the wireless room.

It was after midnight. He knew that he should be starting back to his hotel, for Bellamy's place was out on the Ocean Boulevard, and cars were uncertain quantities at this time of night; but he was oddly reluctant to depart.

It was not that the evening had brought him anything exciting, or even mildly interesting. On the contrary, the messages stolen from the air by the two wireless eavesdroppers had so far been ordinary and humdrum to a degree.

Darrell had not even troubled to take down the majority of them, and the soft pad before him was blank, save for the opening words of half a dozen messages which had sounded good to begin with, but had quickly trailed off into meaningless phrases.

Nevertheless, the young man was still disinclined to leave. He was expecting nothing in particular, waiting for nothing special. It had been simply a desire for relaxation and diversion which had caused him to spend so many of his free evenings in this room under the roof, where his wealthy San Francisco friend had fitted up a wonderfully complete private wireless station. That, at least, was how it had started; but swiftly the idle diversion had developed into something of enthralling interest and gripping fascination.

There was an uncertainty about it, an element of dramatic surprise which appealed to a man of Darrell's temperament. From every side, from far and near, those magical waves were caught by the complicated apparatus, and transformed into crackling, intelligible language, which but for its commonplace import might have been the gossiping chat of unseen gods. Then suddenly, in the midst of all this commonplace jangle, might sound a new vibration to set the listener's nerves tingling with the thrill or interest of its import.

It might be a call for help coming faintly but insistently across ocean leagues. Twice in a single week the two friends had been startled by the ominous, galvanic signal “S. O. S.” More often, however, it was apt to be something from much nearer at hand. More than once a single word or a brief sentence in code sent or received within a few miles of him had roused Darrell's interest to a white heat.

On one occasion he had gleaned information in this manner which proved to be of the greatest value in his profession—information which could have been obtained in absolutely no other way. It was scarcely surprising, therefore, that he was reluctant to unclasp the double telephone receiver from his ears, and depart. The very dullness of the messages he had listened to so far that evening made him oddly sure that something of compensating interest would come if he only waited long enough.

For ten minutes, at least, there had been a total cessation of vibrations in the receiving apparatus before him. The room was very still; only the strident ticking of the clock and Bellamy's rather heavy breathing broke the unnatural silence. Glancing at his friend, Darrell smiled. Evidently Bellamy had become discouraged, and lost interest in the game, for his head rested against the chair back, and he had fallen into a doze.

Presently the buzzing dots and dashes made Darrell straighten for an instant into keen attention. It was only Salt Lake City, however, sending a private message to a San Francisco broker, and the young man sank back again, a flicker of disappointment crossing his clean-cut, forceful face.

It was annoying to have his last evening at this fascinating game such a dull one. His work in San Francisco was practically finished, and he was only waiting instructions from the head of the secret-service bureau, at Washington, before taking his departure. He had been expecting those orders all day. They certainly could not be delayed more than a few hours longer.

The operator at Salt Lake continued to send private messages. They were all uninteresting, and Darrell followed them absently, his thoughts almost entirely on the question of where he would be sent next. It might be any one of half a dozen widely separated locations he had in mind.

“At any rate, he'll probably want me to come on to Washington first,” the secret-service agent reflected. “That'll be one comfort. It's a good four months since I”

He broke off abruptly, and his fingers gripped the pencil as his keen ear suddenly detected a new vibration in the receiver. The Salt Lake operator was still sending, but the pitch and timbre of these new sounds told Darrell instantly that a second totally different machine had begun to work.

For an instant he sat listening intently. Then a gleam of interest flashed into his eyes, his left hand shot out to one of the numerous dials before him, and in a second the one particular set of clicking dots and dashes leaped out clear and distinct, while all other sounds died away to a faint murmur.

The action roused Bellamy, who straightened up, blinking. “Got something?” he inquired, with a yawn.

Darrell nodded briefly. His pencil was gliding over the paper before him. There was a faint frown on his wide forehead. Bellamy readjusted the head-piece, which had slipped down a little from his ears, and sat listening in silence.

Presently he shrugged his shoulders indifferently. “Cipher,” he commented, in a low tone.

Darrell did not answer. The words had not been uttered loud enough to reach his ears. He went on writing rapidly. Then followed a brief pause, during which he sat silent, waiting for a reply. It came swiftly, merely a perfunctory repetition of the message he had taken down. He fellowed the writing on the pad, making one or two slight corrections, his face still puzzled, his gray eyes full of a keen interest. When the clicking finally ceased he sat staring expectantly at the receiver, as if waiting for something further.

Bellamy yawned, slipped off the head-piece, and stood up, stretching. “Any code we know?” he inquired, bending over Darrell's shoulder to look at the pad.

The secret-service agent shook his head. “I think not. It looks a bit familiar in spots, as if it were made up of two or three different codes, but I'll have to look over my books to make sure.”

Bellamy ran the fingers of one hand through his rumpled dark hair, and frowned over the cipher message which filled nearly the whole of a page.

“Does look sort of rummy,” he commented. “'Dittifico allegro ustora compravero' Say, compravero means 'have closed' in the Underwood commercial cipher, doesn't it? I remember running up against that night before last.”

“Sure!”

Darrell reached forward, and reversed the dial he had previously turned. The receiver was sounding faintly again; but it proved to be simply an immaterial message from Portland, and, after listening for a moment, the secret-service agent pulled off his headpiece, and laid it down on the table.

“You're quite right, Jack,” he agreed, picking up the pad, and resting it on his crossed knees, “There are several other words which look familiar, too, but I'll have to go over it with my copies of the various codes. It's certainly not a government message, for I've got that cipher down pat. Ever heard of this Edwards it's addressed to?”

“Nope. It's a pretty common name. Some traveling man very likely. Humph! Look at the signature—'Levi.' I'll bet the whole thing is nothing but somebody's buying or selling directions.”

“That's an S, not an L.” Darrell had opened a drawer in the table, and taken out several long, slim code books which he spread out before him. “It's signed Sevi, which is not particularly common or commercial. In fact, I've a notion that it's the man's name reversed.”

“Oh! You mean—er—Ives? I see. Still, I can't say that even that touches a responsive chord in my memory. Take my word for it, Dal, it'll turn out to be nothing more than the announcement of a new line of union suits just purchased.”

“In cipher?” Darrell shrugged, flicking over the leaves of a book.

“Oh, well,” Bellamy yawned, “you know what fool things people turn into cipher. Sometimes I believe they do it just because they think it's smart.”

The secret-service agent jotted down a word from the code book. “I dare say they do—sometimes,” he returned absently, glancing down the sheet. “I've a hunch this isn't that sort, though. The name Ives plagues me. I've run across it before, but when or where I can't seem to remember. You don't mind if I dope it out now, do you? It won't take long.”

“Not a bit,” said Bellamy. “Fire away; only you mustn't mind if I go to sleep.”

He showed no immediate signs of dozing, however. Drawing his chair closer, he settled down where he could follow the progress of the translation as it appeared word by word on the fresh sheet of paper under Darrell's hand. There was an undoubted fascination in watching one word follow another, and in trying to guess what was coming next. Moreover, the context of the message swiftly began to interest him. After the first brief sentence there was nothing in the least commonplace about it.

Darrell worked rapidly, a faint frown wrinkling his wide forehead. Used as he was to repressing every sign of emotion, those few slight lines showed how greatly he was stirred by the enigma he was unraveling. At length he paused, evidently puzzled by a word which he failed to find in any one of the codes.

“'Cslazaro,'” he read aloud. “Wonder if I took that right? Seems as if there ought to be another vowel or two tucked in there some place, doesn't it? C—s—lazaro.”

He drawled it slowly, meditately [sic]. The last syllable had scarcely passed his lips, however, before he caught his breath swiftly, and a sudden gleam of comprehension leaped into his gray eyes.

“It isn't cipher at all!” he exclaimed abruptly. “Its Cape San Lazaro. By Jove!”

In a flash the silent, dusky room vanished, and he was standing on the deck of a coasting vessel steaming slowly along the western shore of that desolate, almost unknown peninsula of Lower California. A low, gaunt point nosed its way out into the wide, restless Pacific. There were no dwellings there, no life, no speck of green; nothing but arid, burning sand, carved by the wind into fantastic hills and hummocks, torn and beaten by the waves which lapped or rolled or thundered against it year after year with ceaseless monotony.

He had passed a hundred such on the way down the coast, but he remembered some one near him saying, as he focused his glass upon the desolate wilderness, “That's San Lazaro.”

The cape itself was less than nothing, but back of it, across a strip of sand dunes rising swiftly to towering, naked rock, lay Magdalena Bay, the greatest natural harbor in the world. Forty miles long, and over twelve miles in width, it could hold the fleets of the world, and still seem empty. All about it towered massive cliffs lofty enough to shelter the harbor from the fiercest gales.

There were two entrances, neither over five hundred yards in width, and easily made impregnable. Its location within two thousand miles of the Panama Canal, and less than twelve hundred from San Francisco, made it startlingly strategic. In the hands of an unfriendly power, the menace to the United States would be incredible.

Mexico held the sovereign rights over this territory. The harbor lay there unused, unoccupied. It happened, however, that every foot of land around it, and a great deal more beside, was owned by a syndicate of Eastern capitalists, the president of which was the well-known Harrington Ives, of Philadelphia.