The Adventuress Read online

  ‘Record the time for the echo from it,’ ordered Kennedy, thrusting the stop watch into my hands. ‘Press it the instant you hear the return sound after I push down the key. I want to be sure of it and eliminate my own personal equation from the calculation. Are you ready?’

  I nodded and an instant later, as he noted the time, I heard through the oscillator the peculiar vibration I had felt when the key was depressed. On the qui vive I waited for the return echo. Sure enough, there it was and I mechanically registered it on the watch.

  ‘Five and thirty-hundredths seconds,’ muttered Kennedy. ‘I had five and thirty-five hundredths. It’s coming nearer—you hear the sound direct again?’

  I did, just a trifle more distinctly, and I said so.

  Confirmed in his own judgment, Craig hastily turned to the student. ‘Run up there to the boat-house,’ he directed. ‘Have Riley call that wireless operator on the telephone and tell him to get the Sybarite on the wireless—if he hasn’t done it already. Then have him tell them not to try to move the yacht under any circumstances—but for God’s sake to get off it themselves—as quick as they can!’

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked breathlessly. ‘What was that humming in the oscillator?’

  ‘The wireless destroyer—the telautomaton model—has been launched full at the Sybarite,’ Craig exclaimed. ‘You remember it was large enough, even if it was only a model, to destroy a good-sized craft if it carried a charge of high explosive. It has been launched and is being directed from that fast cruiser back of the point.’

  We looked at one another aghast. What could we do? There was a sickening feeling of helplessness in the face of this new terror of the seas.

  ‘It—it has really been launched?’ cried an agitated voice of a girl behind us.

  Paquita had pushed her way altogether through the crowd while we were engrossed in listening through the submarine ear. She had heard what Kennedy had just said and now stood before us, staring wildly.

  ‘Oh,’ she cried, frantically clasping her hands, ‘isn’t there anything—anything that can stop it—that can save him?’

  She was not acting now. There could be no doubt of the genuineness of her anxiety, nor of whom the ‘him’ meant. I wondered whether she might have been directly or indirectly responsible, whether she was not now repentant for whatever part she had played. At least she must be, as far as Shelby Maddox was involved. Then I recollected the black looks that Sanchez had given Shelby earlier in the evening. Was jealousy playing a part as well as cupidity?

  Kennedy had been busy, while the rest of us had been standing stunned. Suddenly another light-bomb ricocheted over the water.

  ‘Keep on sending them, one by one,’ he ordered the student, who had returned. ‘We’ll need all the light we can get.’

  Over the shadowy waves we could now see the fine line of foam left by the destroyer as it shot ahead swiftly.

  Events were now moving faster than I can tell them. Kennedy glanced about. On the opposite of the float someone of the visitors from the cottages to the dance at the Casino had left a trim hardwood speedboat. Without waiting to inquire whose it was, Craig leaped into it and spun the engine.

  ‘The submarine ear has warned us,’ he shouted, beckoning to Burke and myself. ‘Even if we cannot save the yacht, we may save their lives! Come on!’

  We were off in an instant and the race was on—one of the most exciting I have ever been in—a race between this speedy motor-boat and a telautomatic torpedo to see which might get to the yacht first. Though we knew that the telautomaton had had such a start before it was discovered that we could not beat it, still there was always the hope that its mechanism might slow down or break down.

  Failing to get there first, there was always a chance of our being in at the rescue.

  In the penetrating light of the flare-bombs, as we approached closer the spot in which Watkins was now dropping them regularly, we could see the telautomaton, speeding ahead on its mission of death, its wake like the path of a great man-eating fish. What would happen if it struck I could well imagine.

  Each of us did what he could to speed the motor. For this was a race with the most terrible engine yet devised by American inventive genius.

  CHAPTER XXII

  THE TELAUTOMATON

  DEVILISHLY, while the light-bombs flared, the telautomaton sped relentlessly toward its mark.

  We strained our eyes at the Sybarite. Would they never awake to their danger? Was the wireless operator asleep or off duty? Would our own operator be unable to warn them in time?

  Then we looked back to the deadly new weapon of modern war science. Nothing now could stop it.

  Kennedy was putting every inch of speed into the boat which he had commandeered.

  ‘As a race it’s hopeless,’ he gritted, bending ahead over the wheel as if the boat were a thing that could be urged on. ‘What they are doing is to use the Hertzian waves to actuate relays on the torpedo. The wireless carries impulses so tuned that they release power carried by the machine itself. The thing that has kept the telautomaton back while wireless telegraphy has gone ahead so fast is that in wireless we have been able to discard coherers and relays and use detectors and microphones in their places. But in telautomatics you have to keep the coherer. That has been the barrier. The coherer until recently has been spasmodic, until we got the mercury steel disc coherer—and now this one. See how she works—if only it could be working for us instead of against us!’

  On sped the destroyer. It was now only a matter of seconds when it would be directed squarely at the yacht. In our excitement we shouted, forgetting that it was of no use, that they would neither hear nor, most likely, know what it was we meant.

  Paquita’s words rang in my ears. Was there nothing that could be done?

  Just then we saw a sailor rush frantically and haul in a boat that was fastened to a boom extending from the yacht’s side.

  Then another and another ran toward the first. They had realised at last our warning was intended for them. The deck was now alive and faintly over the water we could hear them shouting in frantic excitement, as they worked to escape destruction coming at them now at express train speed.

  Suddenly there came a spurt of water, a cloud of spray, like a geyser rising from the harbour. The Sybarite seemed to be lifted bodily out of the water and broken. Then she fell back and settled, bow foremost, heeling over, as she sank down to the mud and ooze of the bottom. The water closed over her and she was gone, nothing left but fragments of spars and woodwork which had been flung far and wide.

  Through my mind ran the terrible details I had read of ships torpedoed without warning and the death and destruction of passengers. At least there were no women and children to add to this horror.

  Kennedy slowed down his engine as we approached the floating wreckage, for there was not only the danger of our frail little craft hitting something and losing rudder or propeller, but we could not tell what moment we might run across some of those on the yacht, if any had survived.

  Other boats had followed us by this time, and we bent all our energies to the search, for pursuit of the scout cruiser was useless. There was not a craft in the harbour capable of overtaking one of her type, even in daylight. At night she was doubly safe from pursuit.

  There was only one thing that we might accomplish—rescue. Would we be in time, would we be able to find Shelby? As my mind worked automatically over the entire swift succession of events of the past few days I recalled every moment we had been observing him, every action. I actually hated myself now for the unspoken suspicion of him that I had entertained. I could see that, though Kennedy had been able to promise him nothing openly, he had in reality been working in Shelby’s real interests.

  There flashed through my mind a picture of Winifred. And at the same time the thought of what this all meant to her brought to me forcibly the events of the night before. One attack after another had been levelled against us, starting with the following and sho
oting at Hastings at our very laboratory door. Burke had been attacked. Then had come the attack on Kennedy, which had miscarried and struck me. Death had been levelled even at Mito, as though he had possessed some great secret. Next had come the attempted abduction of Winifred Walcott. And at last it had culminated in the most spectacular attack of all, on Shelby himself.

  Try as I could by a process of elimination, I was unable to fix the guilt on anyone in particular, even yet. Fixing guilt, however, was not what was needed now.

  We had come into the area of the floating debris, and the possibility of saving life was all that need concern us. In the darkness I could make out cries, but they were hard to locate.

  We groped about, trying hard to cover as much area as possible, but at the same time fearful of defeating our own purposes by striking someone with bow or propeller of our speedboat. Every now and then a piece of the wreckage would float by and we would scan it anxiously in mingled fear and hope that it would assume a human form as it became more clearly outlined. Each time that we failed we resumed the search with desperate determination.

  ‘Look!’ cried Burke, pointing at a wooden skylight that seemed to have been lifted from the deck and cast out into the waves, the glass broken, but the frame nearly intact. ‘What’s that on it?’

  Kennedy swung the boat to port and we came alongside the dark, bobbing object.

  It was the body of a man.

  With a boat-hook Craig hauled the thing nearer and we leaned over the side and together pulled the limp form into our boat.

  As we laid him on some cushions on the flooring, our boat drifted clear and swung around so that the flare shone in his face. He stirred and groaned, but did not relax the grip of his fingers still clenched after we had torn them loose from the skylight grating.

  It was Shelby Maddox—terribly wounded, but alive.

  Others of the crew were floating about, and we set to work to get them, now aided by the volunteer fleet that had followed us out. When it was all over we found that all had been accounted for so far, except the engineer and one sailor.

  Just at present we had only one thought in mind. Shelby Maddox must be saved, and to be saved he must be rushed where there was medical assistance.

  Shouting orders to those who had come up to continue the search, Kennedy headed back toward the town of Westport.

  The nearest landing was the town dock at the foot of the main street, and toward this Craig steered.

  There was no emergency hospital, but one of the bystanders volunteered to fetch a doctor, and it was not long before Shelby was receiving the attention he needed so badly.

  He had been badly cut about the head by flying glass, and the explosion had injured him internally, how serious could not be determined, although two of his ribs had been broken. Only his iron will and athletic training had saved him, for he was weak, not only from loss of blood, but from water which he had been unable to avoid swallowing.

  The doctor shook his head gravely over him, but something had to be done, even though it was painful to move him. He could not lie there in an open boat.

  Kennedy settled the matter quickly. From a tenant who lived over a store near the waterfront he found where a delivery wagon could be borrowed. Using a pair of long oars and some canvas, we improvised a stretcher which we slung from the top of the wagon and so managed to transport Shelby to the Harbour House, avoiding the crowd of curious onlookers at the main entrance, and finally depositing him in the bed in the room which he usually occupied.

  The pain from his wounds was intense, but he managed to keep up his nerve until we reached the hotel. Then he collapsed.

  As we tried to help the doctor to bring him around I feared that the injury and the shock might have proved fatal.

  ‘Pretty serious,’ muttered the doctor, in answer to my anxious inquiry, ‘but I think he’ll pull through it. Call up Main 21. There’s a trained nurse summering at the house. Get her down.’

  I hastened to do so and had hardly finished when Kennedy came over to me.

  ‘I think we ought to notify his sister,’ he remarked. ‘See if you can get Mrs Walcott on the house ’phone.’

  I called, but the voice that answered was not that of Frances Walcott. It took me a few seconds before I realised that it was Winifred Walcott, and I covered up the transmitter as I turned to Kennedy to tell him and ask what he wanted me to do.

  ‘Let me talk to her,’ decided Craig. ‘I think I won’t let events take their course any longer. She can be the best nurse for Shelby—if she will.’

  Craig had evidently prepared to break the news gently to her, but, as nearly as I could make out, it was not necessary. She had already heard what had happened.

  ‘No,’ I heard him say, ‘as if in answer to an anxious question from her. ‘He is seriously hurt, to be sure, but the doctor says that with proper nursing he will pull through.’

  I did not hear the reply, of course, but I recognised the appeal hidden in Kennedy’s answer, as he waited.

  ‘Just a moment,’ I heard him say next.

  His forehead wrinkled as he listened to something, evidently trying to make it out. Then he said suddenly: ‘I think I had better say no more over the telephone, Miss Walcott. Someone is listening to us.’

  An angry look flashed over his face, but his voice showed no anger as he said goodbye and hung up.

  ‘What was it?’ I asked. ‘What did she do?’

  ‘It wasn’t Miss Walcott,’ he replied, scowling. ‘You heard me say that someone was listening? Well, just as I said it there came a laugh over the wire from somewhere, and a voice cut in, “Yes, there is someone listening. You haven’t caught me yet, Kennedy—and you won’t.” I said goodbye after that. Oh, have no fear about Miss Walcott.’

  Kennedy was right. It seemed an incredibly short time when there came a light tap on the door and he sprang to open it.

  ‘Can I—be of any assistance?’ pleaded a softly tremulous voice. ‘Perhaps I—could play at nursing?’

  Kennedy glanced at the doctor and the figure lying so quietly on the bed, then at the girl, and decided. She had hesitated not a moment, when she had heard how close Shelby was to death, but had hurried to him. He opened the door and she entered softly, tip-toeing toward the bed.

  It must have been by some telepathic influence that Shelby, who had a moment before been scarcely conscious, felt her presence. She had scarcely whispered a word to the doctor, as she bent over him, but he opened his eyes, caught just a glimpse of her face, and seemed to drink it in as his eyes rested on the bunch of flowers she was wearing—his flowers, which he had sent her.

  He smiled faintly. Not even by a word or look was any reference made to their misunderstanding. It was a strange meeting, but it seemed that the very atmosphere had changed. Even the doctor noticed it. In spite of his pain, Shelby had brightened visibly.

  ‘I don’t think we need that nurse,’ whispered the doctor to Kennedy, with an understanding glance. ‘What was that you said about someone listening over the telephone? Who could it have been?’

  The doctor said it in a low enough tone, but it seemed that Maddox’s senses must have been suddenly made more acute by the coming of Winifred.

  He had reached out, weakly but unhesitatingly, and had placed his hand on hers as it rested on his pillows. At the mention of the telephone he turned toward us with an inquiring look. It seemed to recall to his mind something that had been on it before the accident.

  ‘Someone—listening,’ he repeated, more to himself than to us.

  Winifred looked inquiringly at us, too, but said nothing.

  Kennedy tried to pass the thing over, but the doctor’s remark seemed to have started some train of thought in Shelby’s mind, which could not be so easily stopped.

  ‘Someone—pounding Maddox Munitions,’ he murmured brokenly, as if feeling his way through a maze. ‘Now I’m out—they’ll succeed. What can I do? How can I hold up the market?’

  He repeated the last two
questions as though turning them over in his mind and finding no answer.

  Evidently he was talking about his operations in the market which had been so puzzling to Hastings as well as ourselves. I was about to say something that would prompt him to go on with his revelation, when Kennedy’s look halted me. Apparently he did not wish to interfere with the train of thought the doctor’s remark had started, inasmuch as it had been started now.

  ‘Someone—listening—over the telephone,’ strove Shelby again. ‘Yes—how can I do it? No more secrecy—laid up here—I’ll have to use the telephone. Will those Broad Street brokers take orders over long distance? Everybody will know—what I’m doing. They’ll delay—play me for a sucker. What am I to do?’

  It was evident now what Shelby had been doing, at least in part. The tragedy to his brother had quite naturally depressed the stock of the company. Indeed, with Marshall Maddox, its moving spirit, gone, it was no wonder that many holders had begun to feel shaky. Once that feeling began to become general, the stock, which had had a meteoric rise lately along with other war stocks, would begin to sag and slump sadly. There was no telling where it would stop once the downward trend began.

  As I looked at the young man I felt a new respect for him. Even though I had not a much clearer idea than at the start of how or by whom Marshall Maddox had been killed, still I do not think any of us had believed that Shelby was capable of seeing such a crisis so clearly and acting upon what he saw. Evidently it was in his blood, bred in the Maddox nature. He was a great deal more clever than any of us had suspected. Not only had he realised the judgment of outsiders about himself, but had taken advantage of it. In keeping the stock up, if it had been known that it was he who was doing it, it would not have counted for half what it did when the impression prevailed that the public was doing it, or even some hazy financial interest determined to maintain the price. Both possibilities had been discussed by the market sharps. It had never seemed to occur to them that Shelby Maddox might be using his personal fortune to bolster up what was now in greater measure his own company.