The Man Who Ended War. Godfrey Hollis

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ car.

      We had waited perhaps five minutes in Dr. Forrester’s office, when he entered. Clear-cut, with clean shaven mouth and searching eyes, he seemed the very man to solve our problem, if it could be solved. Briefly I told him the condition. Here was an unknown man, with absolutely no clue to his identity, who, we believed, possessed certain information which we needed, information of the utmost public importance. Our desire was to bring him back to a normal sanity and to learn his story. My tale done, Forrester looked questioningly at Tom.

      “It’s all right, Doctor, every bit of it,” said Tom decisively. “I’m right behind this thing, and it’s all perfectly straight. My sister and I were with Mr. Orrington when he found the man.”

      Forrester rose as Tom spoke the last words. “That’s all that is necessary. I shall be very glad to do what I can. If you’ll excuse me now, I think that the patient has arrived. If you care to wait, I’ll make a preliminary examination and let you know something of the result immediately.”

      For half an hour we waited anxiously for the verdict. Could Dr. Forrester find the missing spring which would roll the curtain from that brain, and enable it to give forth the information which might mean so much to me? Finally the door opened and he entered. We sprang up. He shook his head.

      “A most trying and puzzling case. There seems to have been absolutely no injury to the brain, that can be recognized. None of the ordinary causes seem to have any share in the causation of this. I can do nothing for you to-day. I will try every means known to us in succession, and report to you day by day.”

      I felt baffled and seriously puzzled. It was most essential that I should get the story the moment the man recovered, if he did recover. It was equally essential that I should be free to hunt for new clues. Dorothy saw my anxiety.

      “What is it, Mr. Orrington?” she questioned.

      “Simply wondering how I could be in two places at the same time – here waiting and on the coast searching,” I answered.

      “I can settle that,” said she. “I am going to take a week of observing in Tom’s research laboratory, and I’ll be right in reach of a telephone every minute.”

      I objected in vain. Dorothy settled matters as she had settled them before. Tom and I were to go down the coast in the Black Arrow, returning every night to New York. She was to remain in the city.

      I reported my findings to the paper, and still the chief said, “Wait! Don’t write anything till you have more. Keep at it till you have something.”

      Morning after morning we telephoned the hospital and found no change. Day after day we spent in the Black Arrow, searching the coast, or in the motor car, skirting the shores. Evening after evening we spent in the library at the Haldanes’, in endless discussion and consultation. The country was daily growing more and more alarmed. Rumors of war, of foreign fleets coming to attack our shores, filled the papers. Stories that the Alaska had been sent to the Pacific and had been seen in South American ports, that she had been seen in European waters, that she had struck a derelict and, badly disabled, was coming slowly in, were current. Every story run to earth proved a fake, and every day had a new story. The Government knew no more than any one else, and had been driven to a sphinx-like silence in self-defence. They had employed, as had the newspapers, every known means of getting some news of the battleship, but all in vain.

      The Alaska had disappeared on Monday or Tuesday of the first week in July. On Tuesday, we had found the man who was still gazing with unseeing eyes at the bare wall of the hospital room, still moaning the same cry. In six days he had never varied it but twice, and both those times he repeated his words in the cottage, “The sea, the awful sea.”

      Experiment after experiment had been tried without avail. Two consultations with the best alienists of the city had given Dr. Forrester no more light. Six days of searching the coast gave us not a single clue. On Monday night we reached the wharf about six, to find Dorothy waiting for us in the automobile. As we rode up town she rapidly explained the plan for the evening.

      “They tried a high frequency current on the patient to-day,” said Dorothy, “and it seemed to have the first effect. He stopped his plaint, went off to sleep, and woke silent for the first time. He did not drop back into his old condition until three hours later. They are going to try it again, as soon as we get there.”

      In one of Dr. Forrester’s offices stood the high frequency apparatus. Before it sat the man, his eyes staring before him, his lips moving with his moaning cry. The doctor moved the cup-shaped terminal above his head, adjusted the negatives, then nodded to the nurse at the switch. Slowly increasing in sound and speed went the motor. Hissing low and sibilantly shot the vibrant discharge. Five minutes passed as we gazed intently on the man in the chair, five more, and yet five more. His words came slowly, drowsily now. The harsh, clashing syllables became a low hum. He dropped off into sleep, breathing regularly, and the nurse threw off the switch.

      “That regular sleep is a great gain,” said Forrester. “He’ll probably wake soon.”

      Silently we sat waiting. The clock ticked loudly. I fell at once to my constant occupation, watching Dorothy. She sat beside Tom, her eager face bent intently on the man, so intently that it would seem as if she must obtain the secret from his sleeping form. I had watched her expressive face for perhaps half an hour, Forrester had been out and returned, when the man stirred drowsily, put up his hand to his eyes, rubbed them, yawned and looked up.

      “Where – where am I?” he said stumblingly. “Where’s the boat?” he went on.

      Forrester soothed him. “You’re all right,” he said. “You had an accident, but you’re all right again.”

      The man sank back resignedly. “Well – ” he began, and then a wave of remembrance flashed across his face, a look of horror. We bent forward instinctively, hanging on his words.

      “Where’s the ship?” he cried. “What’s happened to the Alaska? I saw her disappear. For God’s sake tell me I didn’t – ” The red flush in his face grew deeper, his breath grew labored, and the watching physician, stepping beside his bared arm, brought something concealed in his hand against it once, twice. “Oh!” said the man shrinking. “What – ” and then without another word he became unconscious.

      I jumped up in excitement. “Couldn’t you have, – ” I began, but Forrester stopped me.

      “I let him say all that was safe. Wait three hours, and he will probably be all right.” He smiled somewhat exultantly. “The high frequency did it. Somehow it seems to rearrange the disordered parts by the electric flow.”

      “Why do you think the high frequency current did the work when all other methods failed?” asked Tom, as we descended the stairs.

      Forrester pulled at his chin with an air of abstraction. “I don’t really know,” he answered frankly. “The action is almost as if some electrical matter in the patient had been jarred by an electrical shock, and when the high frequency got control, it put things back into shape. Readjusted the parts, as it were. I don’t believe at all that the shock of seeing the battleship go down did the whole mischief. There was something else, something decidedly out of the common, mixed up in the case.”

      As we waited, I telephoned the office, and found the chief still there.

      “Victory is in sight,” I said. “Save as many columns as you can.”

      “You can have all you want,” came back over the wire.

      I asked for a desk, and began to write. СКАЧАТЬ