The Man Who Ended War. Godfrey Hollis

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СКАЧАТЬ made even the flamboyant advertisements of farthest Suburbia a matter of deep and abiding interest to me. I was half through the columns when, to my joy and surprise, the door opened, and Dorothy entered, followed by Tom and the lawyer. At her coming, the nodding court officer roused and became a model of soldierly deportment, the secret service men straightened in their chairs, the judge felt of his tie and rose hastily to offer a seat beside him with a courtly bow. Gracious and stately, Dorothy bowed to him, but she came to me.

      “Oh, Jim,” she said, in a low voice, “what a shame. I am so glad I was here to help.”

      I passed the gap from Miss Haldane to Dorothy at a bound. “Dorothy,” I answered, “I’m so glad you were.”

      After that how little mattered the long weary afternoon. It took but a few minutes to arrange a closet off the judge’s room for the exhibition of the evidence. As Dorothy brought forth the letter which had been the forerunner of three mighty tragedies, the judge asked to see it, and read it curiously.

      “And there is a second letter below this, Miss Haldane?” he queried.

      “Yes,” answered Dorothy, “I have seen it.”

      “Have you had this in your possession ever since the night’s meeting of which your brother and Mr. Orrington spoke?” he asked again.

      “It has been in my personal possession, or in a locked drawer of my own, in a locked safe in my own house,” replied Dorothy. “I asked Mr. Orrington for it, as I intended to make some tests with my brother on the ink. We have, however, not used it as yet.”

      “You are ready to swear that this is the original letter?”

      “I am,” said Dorothy calmly.

      “Very well, then, let us go on with the test.”

      The letter was placed open as before, with the radium in its leaden case before it. Tom threw back the cover, as we sat in front of the table, and turned off the lights. I waited as before, beside Dorothy. If I had felt a tightening bond before, I felt one a thousand times stronger now. I had seen the dear girl beside me day in and day out since our first meeting, and never had she failed to show the same fire of brilliant imagination, the same power of achievement. She had blazed my path to success in the weeks past. She had come to help me in my distress to-day. To gain her had become the whole end of my life. I looked into the darkness towards the letter, expecting each moment to see the curves and lines springing out luminous. Minute after minute passed. I could hear the ticking of the great clock, two rooms away, and the stifled roar of the summer afternoon in the great city, but the darkness held no light. No line appeared. Finally Tom spoke.

      “How long an exposure did you give it last time, Dorothy?”

      “Two or three minutes,” said she. He rose, turned on the lights and looked at his watch.

      “Twelve minutes and no results. It’s the same lot of radium, too. Look this over with me, will you, Dorothy?”

      They examined the apparatus carefully, turned off the light and tried again. No result. Tom went back into the other room and brought another sample of radium and used that. Still no result. At last he turned on the lights and spoke. “I can’t understand, judge, but I cannot bring out the second letter.”

      The judge rose blinking. “According to your own statements,” he said, “the letter has not been out of Miss Haldane’s possession at all, and the message once on there could not disappear. I fear I shall have to hold Mr. Orrington after all, till we can hear from the President.”

      My heart sank. Tom turned to me.

      “Never you mind, Jim, we’ll find the President for you, and have you out inside two days.”

      I smiled somewhat wearily. “You mustn’t leave your work to do that, Tom.”

      Dorothy broke in. “We can’t work alone. It needs all three of us to get anywhere, doesn’t it, Tom?”

      “Sure thing,” said Tom sturdily, and they left me, but not before Dorothy had given me a word of comfort that was a stay in time of trouble.

      I had often watched the gloomy walls of the prison as I passed, and wondered at the sensations of the prisoners when the gates closed behind them. My sensations as I drove into the courtyard and passed up the stairs, into the cell whose iron gate clanged shut behind me, were all poignant enough, but I could not be wholly downhearted. The whole thing seemed utterly absurd, yet as night came on, a deep gloom gradually settled over me. I could not see my way out. “Suppose the President and Secretary of War should both die, as had the last Secretary of the Navy!” I had no proof but the letter and the witnesses who saw the second message shine forth, and with that thought of witnesses came back the puzzling question, “Why did not the second message appear?” It had been there. I had seen it with my own eyes. Dorothy, Mrs. Hartnell, John King, Regnier, – each and all had seen it and read it. Tom had declared it impossible for the writing to disappear. What could be the explanation? One thought kept coming, returning to my mind again and again, as I sat on the edge of my narrow cot, watching the barred moonlight streaming through the great window opposite my tier. The letter must have been changed. The letter which we examined in the judge’s room could not be the same as that which had shown us the second message. Somewhere, somehow, an exchange must have been effected. It could have been no easy matter, either. Parchment of the kind used in all the letters was no easy thing to come by. It could by no means be bought in every stationer’s store, nor could so complete a copy of the message be produced without much trouble and labor. Only one man would be likely to have such a copy ready at hand, without the second message, the man who was trying to stop all war. He might have an extra copy. But how could he know the letter was in Dorothy’s hands? How could he get a chance to change the papers? Hour after hour, the long night through, I struggled with the question, and with the morning some crystallization came from the dull haze of my thoughts. There was one time and place where a man might easily make an exchange. At Mrs. Hartnell’s house in Washington, in the time which elapsed between the closing of the radium case and the turning on of the lights. It might be improbable, but it was the only solution I could find. Towards early morning I dropped off into a troubled sleep, and dreamed I was in court, where Regnier, as judge, was trying me, with John King as prosecuting attorney. I had just been condemned to disappear as had the Alaska, when Dorothy sailed through the courtroom in the Black Arrow’s launch, with Tom at the wheel. She reached out her hand to me. I leaped in and escaped.

      The late morning brought me a weary and exhausted waking. I had breakfast brought in from outside, sent word to the office that I would not be in for a few days, a by no means uncommon thing for me to do since I went on this assignment, and then I settled down to wait. I got enough waiting before eight o’clock that evening to last me the rest of my natural life, but at that hour came a warder with a short request to follow him to the office. There was Tom, good fellow, rushing towards me as I entered.

      “You’re a free man, Jim; I have the order for your release,” he cried. “The President came to your rescue, like the trump he is. Hurry up now, and come to our house for a late dinner.”

      The clang of the gates behind me was as much music to my ears as it had been discord on my entrance. I had endured all the prison life that I wanted. I was willing to leave any writing up of such experiences to the yellow newspaper reporter.

      Fifth Avenue never seemed so gay. New York never seemed so full of the wine of life as on that drive. It needed only Dorothy to make it complete, and I was speeding towards her as rapidly as the speed regulations would allow. As we went on, Tom told me the story of his search for the President. How he had found him off shooting in Virginia and how gladly he had given the word for my release.

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