# The Saturday Evening Post/The Highwaymen

Extracted from the Saturday Evening Post, 1909 Oct 16, pp. 16–19, 53–54, 57–59 & Oct 23, pp 19–21, 49–54. Illustrations by Edmund Frederick may be omitted.
[Illustration: Holding the Pigeon to the Window She Released It ]
THE HIGHWAYMEN
A Three-Cornered Fight for Peace, for Power, for War—and a Girl
By Edwin Balmer and William MacHarg
SO, ENCORE—once again—they have disperse', the Peace Pretenders at The Hague!"
The Frenchman driving the car flourished his gauntlet from the steering wheel—having waited until a swerve in the road assured effect to the gesture. His little black mustaches turned upward in a derisive smile. He replaced his hand, but only to rasp the fuel-feed farther open and rush his three American companions at twice their previous illegal speed along the Rhine road.
"Yes, once more, Monsieur Endicott," he triumphed over the American peace delegate holding to the seat beside him, "you have abandon' your hope at The Hague; and once more you run, like the scare' child, to Geneva?"
"Yes, Monsieur Racicot"—the American peace delegate raised his high-bred face with a grim smile—"again I came with the rest to Holland, hoping to prevent war; and once more, as you have guessed, I am on my way from the Peace Conference to the Red Cross in Switzerland. For the present we must be content to make war, when it comes, perhaps more—bearable."
The sallow-skinned chauffeur grinned. "The Red Cross! I am not oppose' to him. We may need your Red Cross—perhaps still once again!" He shoved it off with a shrug. "But The Hague—pouf! I blow away your Hague; it is nothing!"
The road beside the Rhine descended suddenly, and for ten kilometers ahead ran straight and safe. The Frenchman slowed the car. The American beside him relaxed his hold on the seat, but still smiled without answering. He glanced down at the banks of the Rhine, deep and green, marked by moist pasture and high sedge, with the great German river flowing majestically between. Across it he saw rise the smoky ranges of the great Black Forest of Baden, while nearer, upon his right, shot up the Vosges Mountains of Alsace-Lorraine.
"Alsace, Father"—the girl in the tonneau leaned forward before Endicott replied—"isn't the most tactful place to discuss The Hague with Monsieur Racicot, particularly as Roland tells me Monsieur Racicot is no longer his chauffeur, but his partner in working out, here in Alsace, a scheme which will make The Hague unnecessary! Oh!"—she sank back, half apologetic and half teasing—"shouldn't I have told him, Roland?"
Roland Travis, the owner of the car, bit the lip half hidden by his Vandyke beard and controlled himself. But the Frenchman threw up both hands in delighted acquiescence.
"Yes, yes! Precise'; precise', mademoiselle!" he cried, with a look of something more than admiration at the beautiful girl. "For why? Mademoiselle discerns plainly that The Hague is always futile! The nations are disperse'—all remain little—petit. They fight forever their little wars. All this because The Hague cannot agree and desire above all to avoid the one great war, mademoiselle, world-wide—so simple, so inevitable, so—nécessaire!"
The peace delegate frowned. "A universal war, Monsieur Racicot?"
"For once, monsieur! Since the world grew big there has lived in it only one man with the will to make of it all one empire—and he was French. I, too, am French, monsieur! When comes this war it shall set over the empire of Europe, America—tout le monde—a fourth Napoleon! Pah! you smile with your shaved lips, Monsieur Endicott, as though I speak wildly. For the instant we will say no more. But believe me, Messieurs de la Haye"—he flourished grandly to the audience he pretended to find before his wheels—"now comes the great war! I, Henri Racicot, am about to see to it myself—and soon!"
"Shut up, you fool!"—Travis' clutch on his collar choked the chauffeur effectively at last—"and get us back on to the road. I was trying to tell Alice, Mr. Endicott," he explained to his guest in front, "how I have come to expatriate myself here, as she calls it, for these last two years. I am working out an idea which, I trust, without bringing on the worldwide war of which Racicot speaks so crazily, still cannot fail to influence international relations as nothing since powder or steam. For me, Alice"—he lowered his voice meaningly—"it will mean power and station such as I could not otherwise attain; and for you also, if you wish. I have four working together for me on it, Mr. Endicott." He raised his voice again. "The Italian in the combination, thank Heaven, didn't demand to work on home soil. Racicot and Eller, the German, did. However, as Racicot has never conceded this Alsace to Germany, I fixed them up here."
"I see." Endicott smiled a little more interestedly. "And the other—the fourth?"
"Oh, the other—the fourth——" Travis checked himself awkwardly.
But the Frenchman, having recovered his spirits with his breath, blew a salute from his fingertips toward a strange figure which shot suddenly into sight from a road to the right.
"The fourth, messieurs—mademoiselle!" he cried excitedly. "Behol'! He comes!"
The strange and very swiftly-moving object had cleared itself from the obstructions in the field to the right and directed itself, as if in mutual recognition, toward Travis' machine on the Rhine road. As it dashed upon them Endicott and his daughter made it out as some strange sort of motor with a very wide, flat body, all engine and naked cylinders, apparently without any cooling system whatever.
Even as it came very near, though it still continued its high speed, the motor ran without noise or vibration of any sort. The single man in it—bareheaded, sunburned and flannel-shirted—was not steering, but sat watching, as though fascinated, the working of his engine. They followed breathlessly, for the flash of the few remaining seconds, his daredevil rush to destruction. Then, suddenly, the expected happened: something burst, the machinery was flying in every direction and the man was lying in the grass beside the road.
Racicot had reversed his engines almost before the crash came. He and Travis leaped down at once beside the mass of machinery, but the young man who had been thrown from the motor was back to it before them. Without waiting to wipe the blood and mud from his bronzed face, without a glance at Travis' companions, he bent his broad shoulders over what was left of his cylinders and felt them all over. He stooped to a box thrown away from the main wreck and listened to it intently. He straightened.
"Listen!"—he pointed to it triumphantly—"and feel them, Roland!" He placed Travis' hand on the cylinders. "I don't know what went, but the control is all right and the cylinders stayed cool!"
"Hayden Colbert!" Alice Endicott brought him about by her cry of recognition. "You here, too! So you—Hayden was the other, Roland!" She turned upon Travis reproachfully. "Here with you, and you never told me!"
"I was about to, Alice," Travis defended himself. "But I didn't have time before——" He pointed to the wreckage and laughed.
"Hayden, you're not hurt?" She sprang down to the experimenter.
"You, Alice!" the young man cried, his frank eye shining with the light seen only by the woman who is loved, "and Mr. Endicott! Of course I'm not hurt. But you here!" He turned quickly to Travis, as the girl had a moment before.
"I ran across them at the Christoph, Strassburg, this morning. " Travis seemed again to defend himself. "They are going up the Rhine to Switzerland, and I offered to take them as far as Basle."
"Roland should have told me you were here with him," said the girl injuredly. "But that doesn't excuse you yourself, Hayden, for not letting me know where you were. And why didn't I see you before you left America?"
"After the New Netherlands Trust went up and never came down?" Colbert laughed.
"You should have known that would make me feel it much more."
Colbert's lips whitened.
"I must be in Geneva tomorrow morning to represent America when the conference convenes," Endicott said positively. "But surely you can see us soon, Colbert, either here after the Geneva conference or in America?"
Colbert looked to Travis quickly, but found the other young American already watching him.
"When the New Netherlands Trust smashed, you know, Mr. Endicott," Colbert explained straightforwardly, "I was turned out on the world. I had not many accomplishments. I had crossed the Baltic on the ice in a Monaston six-cylinder, and had gone more than half-way up Popocatepetl in my Bestal roadster. But no one but Roland here was sufficiently impressed with the value of my services to think me worth even food and shelter. We are just pushing our work here to a finish. I cannot leave Roland now. But"—he recollected suddenly—"I saw a telegram in a Paris paper, the other day, saying that the Secretary of War at Washington had resigned and that you are to be appointed when you return. Is that so?"
"Yes," Endicott admitted. "So the President has written me privately, and I have promised to accept."
"Then I don't mind letting you go for a while, Mr. Endicott—Alice!" He cleaned his hands as well as he could before he took theirs. "For if you are Secretary of War, and things keep on with us as they have—eh, Roland?—I hope soon to call on you, Mr. Endicott, on business concerning"—he hesitated and glanced at Travis—"universal peace."
Five minutes later Colbert, standing where he had watched the motor disappear, looked at the wreck of his machinery, then passed his hand across his eyes and smiled.
"What in the world are you doing, Roland"—Alice Endicott put the question directly—" which to Monsieur Racicot means universal war, to you means power, and to Hayden means peace?"
[Illustration: "'I'll Make an Appointment With the President for You at Eleven o'clock Tonight"]
"Are you so anxious to know?" Travis teased vaguely.
"Of course I am," the girl pressed.
"I'll tell you this much," he granted. "Your father isn't the only man going away from The Hague to become a Minister of War. All the rest who've been speaking for peace are hurrying home to every capital in Europe to cry for more men and guns and ships. Soon you'll hear how they are rushing the work in arsenals and shipyards. And then, if I'm not mistaken, some day—well, one of them will stop work all of a sudden. And you'll hear from me! No; that is all I can tell you now! "—he prevented her next question. "Until then you must wait."
The girl resigned herself, demurely pouting, then turned impulsively to look back along the road where they had left Hayden Colbert standing over his wrecked machinery.
The month was November.
It began in Turkey. April—the fifth month of John Endicott's administration of the War Department of the United States—had opened as brightly as the four preceding. Of course, the European delegates to The Hague had hurried home to their different capitals to recommence, without delay, increasing their army and navy appropriations against each other. By February they had ceased even to throw up to each other their peace protestations of three months before, and were as busy building more battleships and raising more regiments as ever. Yet up to the first week in April there had been nothing more menacing in the European situation than the disturbing fact—to England—that Germany was undoubtedly rushing work on its new Dreadnoughts faster than the Britons themselves were building, when out of this clear sky flashed the lightning.
It concerned itself first with the status of American citizens in Turkey; its second step had to do with one of these American citizens (by name, Ali Muchad), with a German tramp steamer which touched in an evil hour at the Turkish port of Saloniki, and with an English gunboat which it happened to find there. Its temporary culmination was the sudden and unexpected revelation of an abrupt and inexplicable change in the attitude of Germany toward the Powers, which disrupted diplomacy, set suspicion scurrying after suspicion, sent rushing upon Washington a hundred secret cipher dispatches from the five chief chancelleries of Europe, and—for the day of April 6—put the preservation or the destruction of the balance of power in Europe in the hands of the chief American advocate of peace, the Secretary of War.
So the morning of Thursday, April 7, opened early in the offices of the War Department—a gray day, shadowy with forebodings. As the Assistant Secretary of War hurried into the great granite building at eight-thirty, already the anterooms were besieged by messengers, correspondents, envoys and attachés of a dozen different legations. The Assistant Secretary, entering the inner office hurriedly, glanced anxiously over his chief's calendar for the day. He saw, as he well knew, that before the first formal appointment at nine o'clock with a most important personage representing a most important continental Power, Mr. Endicott had a mass of correspondence, dispatches and detail to examine. Yet, though it was now a quarter to the hour, the Secretary had not arrived.
The quarter hour passed pitilessly; the gilded clock struck nine. The important personage—small and podgy, but in impressive uniform and attended by an officer whose mustaches tickled his eyelashes—had arrived promptly at the hour of his appointment, and was sternly pacing the anteroom. The Assistant kept one eye upon the clock: the gilded hand crept on and turned toward the three-quarters. The important personage, his rosy gills purple with vexation, sent his attendant for the fifth time to the Secretary's door.
The Assistant to the Secretary, desperate at the approach of the ten-o'clock appointment with a second important personage from another Power, again called up the Endicott home without satisfaction; again appealed by telephone to the Secretaries of State and Navy and to all the other Cabinet officers; appealed once more even to the President himself, and put down the receiver despairingly. The Assistant Secretary felt on his shoulders the weight of the five continents that were awaiting word from his chief.
"There is no use calling any one further, Acton." A quiet voice behind him brought the Assistant around quickly. "Announce at once that the Secretary of War is indisposed and detained at his home indefinitely."
"At his home?" The Assistant stared into the face of the Chief of the United States Secret Service. "But I have called up his home and he is not there!"
"Notify the President," the Chief of Secret Service went on mercilessly, "that the Secretary disappeared last night between eleven and twelve in the Observatory grounds at the end of Massachusetts Avenue. My men have been scouring the city for him ever since. We have just made certain that it is not possible he is now in Washington."
"What?" the Assistant gasped. "Mr. Endicott left Washington when the President has put the very preservation of peace in his hands?"
"Disappeared, I said—not left," the Chief corrected precisely, "in the Naval Observatory grounds. A young man named Colbert—you do not know by chance any one giving his name as Colbert? Thank you. I thought not. Neither does any one else connected with official life here in Washington. This Colbert called at Mr. Endicott's home last night. The Secretary admitted him into the private study. They had a very heated talk. Both left together almost on a run down Massachusetts Avenue. My man detailed to look after the Secretary could scarcely keep up with them. He followed, however, only a few hundred feet behind. The Secretary and Colbert entered the Naval Observatory grounds together just at half-past ten. They never came out."
"What happened to him? Why did he not come out?" the Assistant appealed excitedly.
The Chief smiled grimly. "You ask more than I know. Mr. Endicott went into the Observatory grounds. He never came out of them. He is not in them now. This man Colbert never came out. He is not in them now. That is all I can tell you."
The Assistant stared at the Chief, wild-eyed.
"What are you going to do?" he demanded.
"I have sent for my best man—McBirnie—to come here at once from New York. I have telegraphed Alice Endicott—who is in California—to wire me at once anything she may know about Colbert, and also anything she may know of any one having initials R. V. T."
"R. V. T.?" Acton jumped up quickly. "Why?"
"Because the only clew of any sort," the Chief explained, "is this, which was found in the Observatory grounds." He pulled an automobile gauntlet from his pocket.
"I see. R. V. T." The Assistant read the initials embroidered on the glove. "Four days ago—Monday," he recollected suddenly, "I forwarded to Alice Endicott a telegram from Roland V. Travis. It was personal. But"—he dived among Endicott's private papers and drew out the original form triumphantly—"see: 'Am sailing for America today on the Terrestria. Expect me in Washington next week. Roland V. Travis.' But it was sent from Berlin, and even the new Terrestria could not bring him here before Sunday, at the soonest—if this R. V. T. were he."
"Berlin! No, he could not have been here," the Chief agreed, "though this gauntlet, as perhaps you noticed, was bought in Berlin." He repocketed the glove, carefully folding the message with it.
"You do not believe Berlin had anything to do with Mr. Endicott's disappearance?" the Assistant questioned.
[Illustration: "With Forty Machines, in One Night I Can Destroy London, Paris, Berlin, St. Petersburg!"]
"Certainly, at the present moment," the Chief answered guardedly, "Berlin is the European capital most interested in Mr. Endicott's disappearance. It is out of my line, but since Monday nobody has known what to make of Germany. All other cards, except hers, are on the table. For a week Germany has been flouting in the face nations; it has overturned all international expectations. Diplomats pooh-pooh the chance of European war; but that is the diplomatic method—and those same diplomats are walking as if on eggs. The journals—to be sure, they are yellow journals—predict military and naval preparations in Germany unequaled since all Europe jumped to arms against the first Napoleon! Yes, I would keep an eye on Germany!"
The Assistant glanced at a cipher telegram before locking it in the Secretary's desk.
"Preparations for war!" he said contemptuously. "If it is any satisfaction to you to know, Germany yesterday suspended the orders for its new Dreadnoughts!"
Since the Spanish-American War Washington had not so shaken the diplomatic centers of Europe as by the information published in the evening papers that the Secretary of War had disappeared. The foreign correspondents, crowding the cables with their news, within five hours had flashed it to a score of capitals. At home the Republican imperialist newspapers commented upon the affair guardedly. The Democratic journals displayed it as the first of a series of international scandals to be expected if the Administration continued to interfere in foreign affairs. In Europe it was taken as a cause for alarm and suspicion of the sincerity of the United States; each country feared it a trick to favor some other in the existing international crisis. And even the Jiji Shimpo, of Tokio, put an extra on the streets with a cartoon showing the American Secretary of "Peace" hiding under a glass mountain, with a telescope on his arm, through which he was calmly observing the international commotion caused by his hiding.
These comments, cabled back to Washington almost before they appeared in the foreign capitals, reached the Chief of Secret Service at seven o'clock in the evening, just in time for him to put them into the hands of his man, McBirnie, together with the answer to his telegram to Alice Endicott at Los Angeles:
    If Colbert, who called for father, is Hayden Colbert. New York, have no fear for intentional personal injury to father. R. V. T. is Roland V. Travis. Watch for Frenchman, Henri Racicot. May mean international developments. Am returning Transcontinental Express; reach Washington Monday. Alice Endicott.
"No fear for intentional injury"! She might have told a little more. She knows more." McBirnie twisted his long neck nervously. He returned the telegram to the Chief at the end of a long arm, and crossed his long legs, jerky and excitable. "Hayden Colbert—Roland V. Travis—Henri Racicot! She thinks it's enough just to mention their names. But I don't know them. Guess they don't move in counterfeiting circles."
"There's a Who's Who outside of counterfeiting." The Chief pointed to the volume.
McBirnie pounced upon it. "Hayden Colbert; large holder of real estate; famous collection of paintings; born 1842—— Go on! Don't tell me any man of that age——"
"That's the father," the Chief interrupted. "He died the year that book was printed. This must be the son. I made inquiries this afternoon, after I got Miss Endicott's telegram. The son pitched baseball for Yale, traveled, drove a motor, tried power boats, lost all his money when the New Netherlands Trust Company smashed, and hasn't been heard of for two years—until last night. Try Travis."
McBirnie opened to the letter T.
"'Roland V. Travis, born 1872, Philadelphia; educated at German gymnasia and Heidelberg; multimillionaire; coal and oil properties in Pennsylvania and West Virginia; residence abroad.' Very soft for Roland! 'Son of Edmund Travis, born 1849; mine owner. Grandson of Richard Travis, born 1824, Glasgow, Scotland; immigrant; purchaser of properties in Pennsylvania and the mountains of Virginia.'"
"Here's something more to help you." The Chief tossed toward McBirnie a clipping from a newspaper dated three months before.
    The engagement is rumored of Miss Alice Endicott, daughter of the new Secretary of War. The lucky man is said to be Roland V. Travis, of Philadelphia and Berlin. The romance appears to have been of long standing. Miss Endicott and Mr. Travis first met in Philadelphia six years ago. Mr. Travis, for a number of years, has resided in Germany, and last fall when Miss Endicott accompanied her famous father to the Peace Conference at The Hague the couple met again. Mr. Travis is said to have money enough to support two—about $30,000,000. Miss Endicott has been declared the most beautiful, and is certainly one of the most widely-popular young women of Washington society.
"Engaged—not!" said McBirnie decidedly. "Or he would have known she was in California and telegraphed her there instead of here at Washington."
"Miss Endicott was expected in Washington last Monday," the Chief answered, "but her return was delayed. His telegram shows he was informed of her plans, but not of the change in them."
McBirnie pointed a meaning finger at his Chief. "'May mean international developments,' her wire says. What can this pair of society-seeking, motor-driving, 'haw-haw' boys, Colbert and Travis, have to do with international developments? If there is anything international in it it's this Frenchman that she warns us to watch. Colbert can't be found —sank into the earth at the Observatory. Racicot may still be above ground. Is he in Washington?"
"That's for you to find out," said the Chief impolitely.
"Per hotel registers—first," suggested McBirnie.
And he crammed a broad-brimmed derby on his bald head and went swiftly out into the darkness.
"Could you appoint one"—a liquid voice asked as he separated himself from the stocky form into which he stumbled on his reckless rush from the Treasury building—"could you appoint one to a hotel?"
McBirnie bowed galvanically: though by the construction of his sentence the stranger was a foreigner, by his tones he was a person of education.
"Am on my way to the Arlington," the Secret Service man replied courteously. "Come along, sir, if you want."
"You are most considerate." The man fell in beside McBirnie. But a moment later, glancing at his companion as they passed a street lamp, the detective regretted the politeness which had led him to say "sir": for the stranger wore clothes spotted with grease and oil, a flannel shirt whose turned-up collar showed above the rough suit, and carried a disreputable bundle under his arm.
"What's your trade?" McBirnie demanded brusquely.
"A chauffeur," the man replied a little sadly. "Once I learn' the motor by sport; now I live by him."
"A dago?"
"Italian, signor."
"That's dago. The Arlington's no place for you. Why didn't you look for a room near the railway station? What road did you come in by?"
His companion appeared at a loss.
"Railroad—railroad, of course!" McBirnie explained roughly. "A dago ought to know what a railroad is. Shovel, shovel—ties, iron rails, choo-choo! Railroad!"
"I am perfectly acquaint' with the railroad," said his companion serenely, "from its beginning with Signor Stephenson's Rocket down to Signor Harriman's day, which is present."
"Well, what road was it?" asked McBirnie irritably. "The B. &O.? Here! Don't crowd against me!"
The Italian, close at his side, seemed to consider.
"Yes; the B. & O.," he agreed finally.
"Or the B. & P.?"
"Yes; the B. & P.," the foreigner agreed again.
[Illustration: Their Shots Were Unanswered]
"You'll make a hit as a chauffeur—you will!" McBirnie pushed the man from him. "On your way, Garibaldi—you to the garage!"
"With many gratitudes!" The Italian fell away and lost himself with alacrity—commendable alacrity, McBirnie thought, until he clapped his hand to his pocket a moment later and discovered that the gauntlet and Alice Endicott's telegram, together with the notes he had made of the case, had disappeared.
It did not tend to restore Mr. McBirnie's equanimity after finding at the Shoreham—the next hotel he visited after the Arlington—the name "Henri Racicot, Paris," occupying two lines on the register, to learn that Monsieur Racicot had departed a week before so suddenly that he had left his luggage behind him. And the sweat of perplexity broke out on the detective's brow when, an hour later, he discovered at the cable office that on the day of Racicot's departure the following cablegram had been sent by Colbert to Travis in Germany:
Roland V. Travis,
Hotel Adlon, Berlin.
Perfected.
Colbert.
"Perfected!" McBirnie puzzled over the enigmatical message. "Perfected? Is it cipher? Perfected what?" And he arranged the perplexing incidents he had unearthed as nearly as he could in their sequence:
"A Frenchman leaves the Shoreham without his baggage; Colbert cables Travis 'Perfected'; Travis cables Alice Endicott 'Expect me in a week': Germany gets bumptious; an American calls on the Secretary of War, and the Secretary goes out with him and never comes back: an Italian picks my pocket! Miss Alice Endicott, I beg your pardon; 'international' is the correct word!"
He faced the western darkness where, on the Transcontinental Limited, three thousand miles away, the daughter of the Secretary of War was hastening home—due on Monday. He turned to the east, where the Terrestria, a thousand miles at sea, was steaming toward New York with Roland Travis—on Monday also due in Washington. He took off his mushroom hat and mopped his dripping brow.
"Heaven send Monday!" said McBirnie fervently.
In the mean time Europe, Asia, Australia, the two Americas and part of Africa watched the Bird of Peace, which, with one foot still clinging to the continental soil, fluttered as though to take flight.
As the train of sleepers drew into the Baltimore and Ohio station McBirnie rushed forward, hat in hand.
"Miss Endicott!" He checked the graceful girl as she descended the car steps, and with his long forefinger he pointed to himself: "McBirnie, of the Secret Service. Your motor is waiting—chauffeur with a scar under his right eye—I thought so."
He led her out to the motor, stepped in and closed the door of the limousine behind him.
"Allow me to ride up with you. Saves time! Now, Miss Endicott," he said impressively, "why 'international developments'?"
"Why?" The arched brows puckered perplexedly.
"Plain enough, isn't it? You telegraphed us, 'may mean international developments.' I want to know how you know your father's disappearance may mean 'international developments.' You accompanied him to The Hague last fall. Was it anything at The Hague?"
"No; afterward!" Alice Endicott answered promptly. "But I myself do not understand it, Mr. McBirnie. We met Mr. Travis at Strassburg, and he took us to Basle in his motor. The car was driven by Racicot, who Mr. Travis said was his partner. They were planning something. Monsieur said it would mean worldwide war. Mr. Travis said it would mean for him power and social position. Mr. Colbert said it would mean universal peace."
"Ah!" interrupted McBirnie. "Colbert was with you?"
"No, Mr. McBirnie. Until then we had not seen Mr. Colbert, and Mr. Travis had not told us he was there. Mr. Colbert, too, was Roland's partner. And there was another, a German; and another, an Italian."
"International, sure enough!" said the detective. "And you met Colbert?"
"Mr. Colbert came rushing along the road in the strangest-looking motor car I have ever seen, and all of a sudden the car blew up in every direction. They all seemed very much excited. Mr. Colbert did not even notice me, though I had not seen him for more than two years——"
"You knew Colbert before, Miss Endicott?" asked McBirnie.
"Ever since I was a little girl."
"And they were very much excited? Now, what did they say, Miss Endicott, while they were very much excited?"
The girl reflected. "Mr. Colbert said, 'See, Roland, the control is all right and the cylinders stayed cool!'"
"'The control is all right and the cylinders stayed cool,'" McBirnie repeated blankly. "The control is all right—that's motor; that's not politics! Miss Endicott, anything you tell me will go no further. Beg pardon—are you engaged to Travis?"
The blood rose to Alice Endicott's cheeks, and she hesitated. "Mr. Travis asked me," she admitted finally. "I—I was not sure of my answer. It was at Basle. I told Mr. Travis I liked people who did things, and he has not done very much, you know, except spend money. So Mr. Travis asked me to—to wait before answering him. He showed me how all the peace delegates from The Hague were hastening home to build more warships and raise new regiments, and he said some day soon one of the nations would stop doing this, and he did not want me to answer him until that had happened."
"What!" cried McBirnie. "Now, what d'you think he meant by that?"
"I think," said Alice Endicott straightforwardly, "that he was working on something which would affect the whole world and which he could not tell me about. And when he saw I was doubtful how to answer him he wanted me to wait until he had succeeded in what he was doing; and the proof of his success would be that one of the nations would stop its war preparations——"
"Like Germany," interpolated McBirnie, "which has just suspended the orders for its new Dreadnoughts."
The girl paled suddenly. "Has Germany done that, Mr. McBirnie?" she faltered. "Then that is the explanation of Mr. Travis' telegram. He is coming to me here in Washington for his answer!"
The limousine drew up in front of the Endicott home. McBirnie assisted Alice Endicott up the steps. On a table in the paneled hall lay one of the yellow envelopes of the telegraph company. She seized it and tore it open.
"Mr. Travis is at the Shoreham," she cried. "If you want to see him you may use the motor."
McBirnie turned, dashed down the steps, and slammed shut the door of the limousine.
"Shoreham!" he shouted, "like the devil!" and threw himself back against the cushions. "'The control is all right,'" he repeated Colbert's words as the girl had given them to him, "'and the cylinders'—that has nothing to do with it! Conundrum: What is it that means at the same time worldwide war and universal peace and power and station to Mr. Travis? It's not the Who's Who the Chief ought to have given me to solve this case; it's the libretto of Haverly's Minstrels!"
As McBirnie reached for the register at the Shoreham he found his way unintentionally blocked by a stocky, but distinguished, foreign-looking gentleman. In turning, the foreign-looking gentleman stepped on McBirnie's foot.
"A thousand pardons, Signor Detective!" he murmured liquidly, silk hat in hand, and was gone.
Something of recognition and surprise stirred in McBirnie. He gazed perplexedly until the foreign gentleman had disappeared through the hotel entrance. Suddenly he crammed his hat upon his head and dashed after him. The street was empty. McBirnie ran to the corner. The gentleman was not in sight. Pale with astonishment and chagrin, the detective reëntered the hotel.
"Why the deuce," he said to himself as the page of the register which the foreign-looking gentleman had left open at Travis' name met his eye, "is he looking up Roland V. Travis, too?"
For the immaculate gentleman who had stepped on McBirnie's foot was none other than the greasy Italian chauffeur who, on Pennsylvania Avenue, had picked the detective's pocket of the automobile gauntlet and Alice Endicott's telegram!
The hotel clerk said Travis was in his rooms. McBirnie hurried into the elevator and out again at the floor above. He softly tried Travis' door and found it unlocked. He entered, closed the door behind him, and stood with his back against it.
Travis' pointed beard and flushed face appeared excitedly at the opening to an inner room.
"Now, Mr. Roland V. Travis," said McBirnie, significantly pointing, "nobody is trying to start anything, nobody is trying to make any unnecessary trouble. But I am McBirnie, of the Secret Service, and I want to know where the Secretary of War is, and why he has disappeared."
"It's none of your business!" Travis answered angrily.
"That is as it may be," replied McBirnie.
"I don't know where Mr. Endicott is! I didn't even know that he had disappeared until the Terrestria reached New York this morning!"
"Now, Mr. Roland V. Travis," McBirnie expostulated, "I'll leave it to your good sense. You meet Miss Alice Endicott in Europe, where you've got men of four or five different nationalities working for you, and you tell her something important is going to happen, and you give her a sign so she'll know when it's to be expected. When some nation, you say to her, stops war preparations you'll find Roland V. Travis at the bottom of it. Very good. Germany stops war preparations. Your man Racicot, who was with you in Europe, registers at the Shoreham, Washington, and disappears. Your man Colbert, who was in Europe with you, too, turns up in Washington also, and cables you, and you cable back to Miss Endicott that you'll be in Washington in a week. Then your man Colbert calls on the Secretary of War, and the Secretary disappears, and on the spot where he disappears we find an automobile gauntlet with your initials, bought in Berlin. A dago chauffeur, who may be another of your men, picks my pocket of that automobile gauntlet, and afterward I find him in a silk hat, looking up your name on the Shoreham Hotel register. Now, Mr. Roland V. Travis, do you think it is good sense for you to try to make me believe you know nothing about it? If you were some men, Mr. Travis, I'd lock you up until you told. But a man that's got $30,000,000 is as good as locked up anyway, for you can always find him."
"The automobile gauntlet was an old one given away, thrown away—I do not know what became of it after I was through with it."
"Well, drop the automobile gauntlet."
"Mr. Endicott's disappearance was as great a shock—a greater shock to me than to others," Travis asserted irritably. "For the last two hours, ever since reaching Washington, I have been trying to get into communication with Miss Endicott, but it seems she has not yet arrived from the West——"
"Reached Washington half an hour ago," said McBirnie. "I've got her motor out in front now. If you want me to take you up there, perhaps I'll find that the quickest way of getting at the truth."
"With a detective?" asked Travis, looking him over from head to foot contemptuously.
"I've ridden in the same cab with the President," McBirnie answered tranquilly; "and what's more, I've ridden with Miss Alice Endicott, who didn't seem to think it would damage her social position. I guess it won't hurt you."
"I'll go up in my own car," said Travis shortly. "It's outside—sent on from Philadelphia."
As Travis stepped into his motor in front of the hotel the Secret Service man jumped into Alice Endicott's limousine. "Wise girl!" he commented to himself, "she didn't 'phone him I was coming. I guess, Mr. Roland V. Travis, you don't stand so high in the lady's books as you'd like to; and—well, now, you'll be going some"—Travis' chauffeur had thrown the feed wide open—"if you beat this hooker!"
And, in fact, the limousine beat Travis to the house, and as he scowlingly descended McBirnie was standing on the steps to greet him. Alice Endicott rushed from the open door.
"Roland!" she cried anxiously, "what has become of father?"
"I'm not sure." Travis took her two hands eagerly. "But unless some accident has happened you can be certain he is safe. Colbert would not dare——"
She shrank from him a little. "You need not tell me that. I trust Hayden fully. But I cannot understand."
McBirnie craned his long neck triumphantly, following them into the library.
"Alice, believe me!" Travis cried excitedly. "What has happened was no part of my plans. I have too much respect for your feelings to cause you this anxiety. Something has happened which I do not know about. I am more anxious than any one to know what it means!"
"No more anxious than I am," said McBirnie calmly. "Mr. Travis, you've said a little too much and not quite enough. I wasn't certain of you until you assured Miss Endicott that, barring accident, her father was safe. But now you might as well tell the rest of it. And you're going to tell it, Mr. Travis, or I'll lock you up."
Travis turned on him, savage and astonished.
"Oh, yes, I'll lock you up, Mr. Travis!"
"The devil!" Travis sank into a chair. "Alice, this is ridiculously inopportune! I'll explain," he consented, "but only under promise of secrecy, to some one in Government authority."
"The Secretary of State?" McBirnie glanced at the telephone.
"The President himself," Travis answered promptly.
"I suppose you read in the paper," McBirnie's eyes narrowed, "that the President has gone to Annapolis and will not be back until late this evening. But I don't see what good five hours will do you. Well, now, Mr. Travis, we'll let it go at that. I've got you. You can't get away from me. A man like you can always be found. Besides, I'm going to get a man or two to help me watch you. And I'll make an appointment with the President for you at eleven o'clock tonight when he gets back, and at half-past ten I'll come and get you. I'll give you your own way, you see, if you promise to make a clean breast of it. For, Mr. Roland V. Travis, I've got you! Will I find you here or at the hotel?"
Travis glanced at Alice Endicott. "Here," he answered.
At a quarter-past ten that evening McBirnie, in a rented automobile, turning the corner nearest the Endicott home, saw the lights of Travis' motor standing before the house, and nearer at hand a man apparently repairing a motor-cycle close to the curb. He motioned to his chauffeur, who stopped by the motor-cycle.
"What's he done?" asked the Secret Service operative.
"Nothing!" The man of the motor-cycle arose, wrench in hand. "Went back to his hotel. Came back here. Took dinner with Miss Endicott and the maiden aunt who lives with 'em."
"Speak to any one?"
"Nobody—except a foreign sport that bumped into him as he was going into the hotel. Looked like an Italian."
McBirnie, nodding, took out his watch. "I'm a little early."
But at that instant Travis appeared under the doorlight on the Endicotts' steps, glanced at McBirnie's automobile lamps without being able to recognize the car's occupant, and stepped into his own machine. "Now what?" queried McBirnie as Travis' car started. "It looks as if he wasn't going to wait for me!"
He motioned to the chauffeur to follow. The man of the motor-cycle dropped his wrench into his pocket and leaped to his machine. Travis' car was running easily at half speed. Two hundred feet behind came McBirnie. Close to McBirnie's wheel came the motor-cycle. The leading car turned into Massachusetts Avenue.
"Look out!" shrieked McBirnie. "He's heading for the Observatory grounds! Hit it up, there!"
The car leaped forward. But McBirnie's hired car was no match for Travis', whose speed was at once increased. Two hundred feet ahead it sped down Massachusetts Avenue, Travis' white face now staring back at them under the street lamps. Still two hundred feet ahead, it swung into the Observatory grounds and stopped suddenly. Travis leaped out. A shadow in the darkness, he dashed across the greensward and into a clump of bushes. Before his own car had stopped McBirnie had reached the ground also. His companion dropped the motor-cycle beside the road. Together they dashed through the bushes and out at the other side.
Beyond the bushes there was nothing!
They ran to and fro, beating the bushes and shouting to one another.
"Get a light!" cried McBirnie.
His companion ran back to the motor-cycle and tried to detach the headlight; but, finding it difficult to take off, he wheeled the machine toward McBirnie, turning the light from side to side to illumine the surroundings.
"Here's where he went in," said the Secret Service operative, pointing to the marks of Travis' feet sunk deep in the ground, soft with spring rains. "Now—follow!"
The footprints led them straight through the bushes. Clear and distinct, wholly unmistakable, they extended for fifty feet beyond on to the smooth sward. There they stopped suddenly. For thirty feet around the brilliant lamp lighted every grassblade, but showed no imprint. By the evidence of the footprints Travis should have been still standing in the last marks his feet had made, but he was not. McBirnie lifted his staring eyes in an astounded question: "Can a man jump thirty feet?"
"Mine ain't the only bicycle that's been here tonight," said his companion, pointing out a wheelmark cut deep in the soggy earth. "Perhaps he got away on a bicycle."
For a dozen yards they followed the wheelrut until, in a patch of mud, it stopped suddenly, completely, inexplicably as the footprints.
"Look there!" screamed McBirnie. "If another man told me this I'd say he was crazy!"
He halted suddenly, rushed forward, stooped and picked up what appeared to be a stick with a paper on it such as gardeners use to mark the spot where seeds are sown. He swore; for it was not a stick, but a knife which cut his fingers—a long, thin, wicked knife—an Italian stiletto, whose bright surface showed it had been put there since the rain of the morning. He held the paper to the light—the back torn from an envelope. On it was writing scrawled in English, but with letters of German script:
"What haf Gott wrot!"
"And this," cried McBirnie frantically, crumpling the enigmatic message, "is all I have to take to the President!"
He ran back to the driveway, but Travis' motor was no longer there.
"Find that chauffeur and put him under arrest!" he shouted to his companion. "See the Chief, and give him a description of the Italian that spoke to Travis at the hotel. Tell him to detail half a dozen men to watch the Naval Observatory grounds, and another to watch Alice Endicott." He threw himself into the waiting motor. "White House," he directed, miserably.
But by the time the motor turned into the sweeping drive in front of the Presidential mansion the elongated detective had recovered his self-confidence. A servant showed him at once to the President's study. He recounted rapidly to the Chief Executive all that he had discovered, ending with the startling disappearance of Travis, which had made it impossible for him to bring the young millionaire to see the President as he had promised.
"I admit," the Secret Service officer concluded apologetically, "that all this sounds as if five out of six who are mixed up in this affair would feel at home in an insane asylum. But I am beginning to think that would be a pretty comfortable place myself."
The Chief Executive paced the rug.
"And what do you make of this?" he asked, picking up the Italian stiletto, with its incomprehensible scrap of paper, which McBirnie had laid on the table.
"Nothing," the detective answered promptly. "That's not a message. It's a bluff—an attempt to make the thing seem more scary than it is. I'm not superstitious."
"It is more like a taunt," the President answered. He read the words aloud: "'What haf Gott wrot!' Is the sentence familiar to you?"
"Never heard it, Mr. President."
"It is not original, however. 'What hath God wrought!'" he repeated it in better English. "The words are familiar to every inventor—to every one acquainted with the history of physical science. They are the first words ever publicly sent by electric telegraph. They mark the greatest invention of the nineteenth century. It would not be odd if their present use was intended to mark as great an invention in the twentieth."
"An invention?" McBirnie started up. "Perhaps an invention whose—'control is all right and the cylinders stayed cool!' Now I know I must find the Italian chauffeur who picked my pocket on Pennsylvania Avenue!"
Five minutes later McBirnie rushed from the door of the Executive Mansion and took up personally the search for the Italian. But twenty-three hours passed before any trace was discovered, and the trail was cold when found. Late the previous afternoon, half an hour after Travis and the Italian gentleman had collided at the door of the Shoreham, a man answering the Italian's description had visited the Government wireless station to send a message in Travis' name. The operator, indefatigably signaling under the stranger's direction, had received at last an answer, a code word or signal, which he had now forgotten, and had transmitted the message:
    Eller: Ten-thirty Monday night Naval Observatory grounds without fail. Travis.
With a copy of this message in his pocket McBirnie, at half-past nine in the evening, called on the Chief of the Secret Service to report. He found his superior with a telephone receiver at his ear, and impatiently waited. The Chief hung up the receiver and swung round swiftly.
"Twenty-four hours' work and nothing but this to show for it!" began McBirnie. "Wait!" the Chief commanded. "Miss Endicott has just left her house with a package under her arm, unattended."
"Walking?" cried McBirnie.
"Walking!" the Chief answered.
McBirnie threw the copy of Travis' message toward his Chief. Consider it at your leisure!" he shouted, and dashed into the street. An empty cab was passing. McBirnie leaped into it, crying the Endicotts' house number. The cabman swung the whip over his dejected horse. They turned the Endicotts' corner, almost overturning the man of the motor-cycle.
"Which way?" McBirnie demanded.
The motor-cyclist pointed toward Massachusetts Avenue.
"Toward the Observatory grounds!" cried McBirnie. "How long ago?"
"Ten minutes."
"Then what are you doing here?"
"I'm watching the house. O'Rourke is following her."
"Ride like the devil to the Observatory grounds and warn the men on watch there. Now, sport," McBirnie said to the cabman, "if you kill your horse I'll pay for him."
Six blocks down Massachusetts Avenue the detective came at last within sight of Alice Endicott. He slowed the cab to a snail's pace, creeping along behind her. On the sidewalk, but on the opposite side of the street, a dark figure which was paralleling her movements nodded to McBirnie. Alice Endicott held under her arm a small box; she was walking quickly. "Now, my lady," murmured the Secret Service officer, "is this all a canard, or are you going to lead us to something?" Detective McBirnie did not know what he was expecting, but in desperation he was now neglecting no possible avenue to a solution. Alone and in the darkness, Alice Endicott turned into the Naval Observatory grounds. McBirnie jumped from the cab. The shadowy figure which had been following Alice Endicott joined him. They ran forward and crouched in the bushes. Around them were half a dozen Secret Service agents, but none was visible. They saw only Alice Endicott, indistinct in the darkness, standing in the center of the open grassplot with the little box pressed against her bosom, as though waiting.
Then suddenly there rang out in the darkness the most terrible of all night sounds—the scream of a woman! A huge shape, its outline half indiscernible, had swept down upon them. Even as they looked it tipped backward and came to rest not six feet above the ground, close to Alice Endicott. McBirnie and his companions rushed forward. They were too late. They had not covered half the distance when they beheld the machine rising straight upward, the girl depending from it as though by one hand. While they looked she was drawn up into it.
Shots rang out. But the police dared not fire toward the center of the machine for fear of wounding Alice Endicott.
Having attained a height of some seventy feet, the machine began suddenly to move forward. It came down again in a long slant, like a bird taking flight from a chimney. It lifted slightly to avoid the branches of a tree, it turned ever so little to avoid another. Then it swung in a short circle, exact as if drawn by the dividers of an architect, and, passing to the west in an upward slant, it disappeared.
McBirnie turned and sped back to the cab, shouting directions to the driver. At the top speed of the decrepit horse he returned to the Chief of Secret Service, and, pale with excitement, the tall detective was beginning his story when the Chief put an envelope in his hand.
"Delivered by a messenger just before you came in," the superior explained, "addressed to you in my care."
McBirnie caught Alice Endicott's monogram on the envelope and tore it open. An inclosure and a letter fell out. He opened first the inclosure:
    If Mademoiselle Alice Endicott desire to be of inestimable service to her father and save him, perhaps, from what it would not be well to happen, she will be by herself only in the Naval Observatory ground at ten o'clock the night of Tuesday. Above all, she will not tell any one what is here written, or the worst possible will come of it. And it is assure to Mademoiselle Endicott that no harm will happen to herself out of this, but only good.
McBirnie handed the inclosure to the Chief and struck open the letter:
    Early this morning I received the inclosed note, which, although it is unsigned, I feel certain comes from the M. Racicot of whom I spoke to you. I am going to do as he asks—I cannot do otherwise after what he says in regard to my father. I am very much frightened, for I cannot help fearing that I shall be carried away like my father and Mr. Travis, though I do not know how that is. And because I am afraid, I am taking with me, in a little box, one of the carrier pigeons of which my father is such a fancier. I have left instructions with my aunt that if the carrier returns she is to transmit the message to you without an instant's delay.
Alice Endicott.
McBirnie, with an exclamation of admiration for Alice Endicott, handed the girl's letter also to his superior and turned toward the door.
"Hold on!" said the Chief. "Where are you going?"
"To find that wireless operator and make him remember what the call was he used in sending Travis' message. He's got to remember now!"
A half-hour later McBirnie, in the sending-room of the wireless station, was laboring with the bewildered operator, whom he had aroused from sleep, when the instrument suddenly began registering a call.
"What's that?" the Secret Service agent demanded.
"Nothing!" the operator replied irritably. "It's that crazy man who's been 'jamming' our service and putting in fool calls and jokes on us for two days."
"Answer him now, anyway!"
The operator went to the instrument.
"What does he say?" demanded McBirnie.
"As usual, he's asking if we are the Washington station—that he has a personal message for the President only. He wants us to get the President personally in the wireless room before he'll tell what he wants."
"Where is he? Who is he? Have you any way of knowing?" McBirnie chafed.
"No; absolutely none. You see, all I can tell," the operator explained, "is merely that he is within communication radius for my station—which varies from three hundred to two thousand miles with the weather and—luck. He may be just across the Potomac—he may be across the Mississippi. Maybe in Maine; maybe in the Everglades. But much more probably, as he seems to be able to call us at any time and under all conditions, he is within a few hundred miles."
"Then why don't you tell him that you have the President in the room with you now? Tell him anything—to get his message!" McBirnie directed hotly.
"All right!" the operator acknowledged, and volleyed out a crackling series of electric-blue flashes from his high-power current. "Cras-ash!" the power rasped, and the flying "wireless" waves spread out in every direction for indefinite hundreds of miles all about to catch the aerials of the mysterious calling station and get their message. And "Tap—ta-ap—tap!" the receptors clamped to the operator's ears spoke back at once.
"Tell—the—President—he—can—have—his—Secretary—of—War," the reply slowly registered itself, "for—one—million—dollars!"
"Ask who it is!" commanded McBirnie. "Ask him who, where, and what he is, and how we can communicate with him and know he has the Secretary and will act in good faith if we accept his offer. What is that, now?" the detective demanded impatiently as, after the operator had sent his message, the reply began to tap back.
"He ignores the first part of our message, Mr. McBirnie," the operator replied. "He says merely he has the Secretary; we must take his word for it, trust him to carry out his agreement and—he will communicate with us only by wireless!"
"Which we cannot possibly trace, you say?" McBirnie iterated.
"No; not possibly."
"Then—ask him his best terms!" McBirnie rasped. "Now—what does he say?"
"'As stated—unconditionally,' the operator read obediently. "'C-O-D.' What's C-O-D in the code?" he ruminated absently.
McBirnie seized his shoulder. "That's not code; that's commerce. Cash on delivery—you lobster!" And to McBirnie's continued attempts to parley and get a clew the wireless brought him no other response. Wherever the calling station was situated, it either received McBirnie's pleadings no longer or paid them no attention.
"We have but one clew, then," McBirnie said in reporting to his Chief an hour later. "That is, the general direction the aeroplane took. It started across the Potomac for the Virginia side almost directly west. So I shall follow into Virginia in search of it. I shall keep the department informed of my whereabouts, so you can wire me if we get Miss Alice Endicott's pigeon back."
"Very well," the Chief acquiesced, not knowing anything better to suggest. And the next morning the Chief had just received word from McBirnie that he was in Fauquier and had found no trace, when the metal cylinder from the leg of the carrier pigeon was brought in. He opened it and found a message:
    It is flying machines they have perfected, and they have taken us to Pinetop, Mr. Travis' estate in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Send help—send help! Alice Endicott.
"Pinetop?—Pinetop?" The Chief hastily sorted through a mass of notes that he had already accumulated regarding Travis until he found a page listing the Travis properties. "Eighty miles from Washington! And not so far away but what McBirnie ought to be able to get immediate trace of them!"
And having relayed Alice's message with this additional information to McBirnie, he sank back into his chair with a fervent exclamation of relief, thinking of the five continents, the truculent nations of Europe and the Bird of Peace.
"Thank God they're located!"
Overhead stretched the wide, warped plane of the aeroplane. Close to her right, but not touching her, was a man; to her left, another. No sound attended their breathless rush, as she clutched desperately the straps which kept her from falling from the car, except the rustle of the air against the wings and metal framework. Like a million fluid darts it beat upon her cheeks and temples, blowing the hair back from her forehead. Under- neath sped the night-shrouded landscape, the twinkling lights of farmhouses, a village electrically lighted. As the moon broke from behind clouds, on the gloriously-gilded, hilly country flashed out white lines marking the roads, and thin, bright streaks which denoted steam and electric railways.
The man on her right leaned forward, and under his hand a dim electric spark broke forth, illuminating his features.
"Monsieur Racicot!" cried Alice Endicott.
"That one himself," answered Racicot, his white teeth gleaming in a smile. "Once I operated upon the Bourse of Paris. But alas! mademoiselle—the execrable police! Now, behol'! I navigate the element in which I formerly traded."
He turned the light upon her, his eager eyes wide with admiration, then upon the bearded face of their companion.
"Be at ease, mademoiselle," he assured her; "that one speaks no English. Recall! Since Basle I have not seen you—ages! You remember how, between Strassburg and Basle, I talked of the great war, worldwide, inevitable? It comes now. You and I, flying through the night, are the beginning of it!"
"Monsieur Racicot"—the girl shrank from him—"are you taking me to my father?"
"To where your father is, mademoiselle—and Monsieur Travis and Monsieur Colbert. But they are nothing now. Pah! they are lock' up by me"—he struck his breast—"Henri Racicot! I now am everything!"
"Locked up!" cried Alice Endicott in terror. "Why?"
"Because, mademoiselle, they have ideas that are little, while I have grand ones! Let me ask something. Can you call up when first I saw you?—at the entrance to the Hotel Ritz in Paris, when I was chauffeur to Monsieur Travis? Well, I thought nothing then, but at that moment I was changed unknown to me. Before that my thoughts had been little, like other men's thoughts; but afterward they were big ones. I had contempt for all little things—for Monsieur Travis and Monsieur Colbert; for little Kings and little Presidents and little Parliaments; for little nations like Germany and Russia, and la belle France herself! From chauffeur I move' in one step to become Monsieur Travis' partner; but I did not know the reason of the change in me which made that possible until two years have pass'. Then, behol'! one day at Strassburg I see again the American mademoiselle that I had seen first before the door of Hotel Ritz in Paris, and something inside me cry aloud: 'There is she that is the reason of the change in you! Henri Racicot, you love!'"
"Monsieur Racicot!" Alice Endicott's eyes flashed coldly. "You do not dare——"
"Wait!" And the Frenchman made a sweeping gesture. "As yet you understand nothing! Did I say anything then?—no; for the time was not yet ready. We were working on something—Monsieur Colbert and the German Eller and the Italian Caviale and myself—by aid of Monsieur Travis' money. But at that moment most depended upon Monsieur Colbert. He has ideas—remarkable! But not like mine! Monsieur Colbert had said wisely to himself, 'Two things are the matter with the flying machine. As yet, men fly only by adroitness. By long practice a very few expert men learn to balance themselves for a few moments with the aeroplane, but presently the man forgets to balance himself and the aeroplane comes down. Moreover, the aeroplane can stay up only while it is moving; but presently the engine grows hot, it stops, and the aeroplane comes down also. But now'—it is still Monsieur Colbert who is speaking, mademoiselle—'observe the Whitehead torpedo, which has at its tail a sort of box, so that when once its direction is chosen the Whitehead torpedo, by virtue of this box, goes neither to the one side nor the other, nor up nor down, but keeps automatically its balance. It is necessary,' said Monsieur Colbert, 'to have at the tail of the aeroplane something automatically governing its motion, and it is necessary to have a fuel which will not heat the engine; then men will fly, not as now over mere parade grounds, but from continent to continent if they wish it.'"
The girl started.
"Then, when Mr. Colbert's motor car broke to pieces on the Rhine road——?" she cried excitedly.
"Mademoiselle, he was testing then both the control and the fuel. So near he was to succeeding! Just afterward there was disagreement between Monsieur Travis and Monsieur Colbert—I know not the reason. Everything was packed up and we came to America. Here the work was finished." He gesticulated grandly to the wings of the aeroplane. "Observe! It is more simple than the automobile. A child can run it! Still, I said nothing, but waited. One night monsieur went away and return' with Mr. Endicott. 'Now, Henri Racicot!' cried I to myself, 'is the time—strike!' Everybody is with me except the German, Eller. I seize Monsieur Colbert and Monsieur Endicott and lock' them up——"
Alice Endicott uttered a cry.
"Wait, mademoiselle! No harm has come to them. Presently after comes a message from Monsieur Travis, who has reached Washington, to the German, Eller. The German goes and gets Monsieur Travis. When they come I lock them up also. Now I am everything! Mademoiselle, listen! Tomorrow—in three days—in a week—I shall have one million dollars! With one million dollars forty machines can be build'. With ten machines only, between sunset and sunrise, unseen by any one, I could destroy London. With forty machines, in one night I can destroy London, Paris, Berlin, St. Petersburg! But forty machines is the beginning only. I will get more money, more machines! Men will come to me. Mademoiselle, five hundred thousand men died that Napoleon might go from Paris to Moscow and accomplish nothing; but when I am ready, in one night if I wish it, I can put fifty thousand men before the doors of the Kremlin, and in the morning, their work having been accomplis'—behol', they will be gone again! Since the world began no man has had power like me—Henri Racicot!"
The girl gasped with horror. The Frenchman's face was puffed and purple with excitement, and his eyes shone wildly.
"Said I not, mademoiselle," he cried hoarsely, "now comes the great war, and we two flying through the night are the beginning of it? Mademoiselle, what Antony offered to Cleopatra—that is nothing! What Napoleon offered to Josephine—that is nothing! Mademoiselle, it was gunpowder that made the nations: I, Henri Racicot, with the flying machine will make the great empire. Mademoiselle, I offer you—the world! Since the beginning no man has offered any woman so much. Stretch out your hand to me and take it!"
Alice Endicott screamed in terror as he reached his hand toward her. She turned away with uncontrollable repugnance from his face, bloated with desire, ambition and the sense of power over mankind.
The aeroplane rushed up a mountainside, the treetops murmuring just under them. A wooded peak suddenly lifted itself out of the darkness, shot aloft until it almost touched the car, then sank away again into another valley, where stood a rambling group of buildings—a huge white dwelling overlooking a sloping bluff, sheds ranged on a level plot, a conservatory, stables, and above, dimly discernible, a wireless tower. Alice Endicott recognized it as Travis' West Virginia mountain home. Out of the darkness flashed suddenly the brilliant whiteness of an electric light cutting a radiant bar across the night. Racicot brought the aeroplane down in front of the rambling sheds; it hovered like a lighting bird, and settled softly on a wooden runway. He threw off the straps that bound them to the car.
"Monsieur Racicot," cried the girl in fright, "I demand to see my father!"
"Not yet, mademoiselle," the Frenchman answered, "but after love for me has come to you!"
She followed, perforce, as he led the way toward the house. For an instant more the white searchlight illumined house, sheds and a little cabin with barred windows, and she wondered whether this was to be her prison. Then the light went out, and they turned from the cabin and entered the main building, characteristic of Travis' luxurious tastes. A silent, slender German woman met them, led the girl to a room in the west wing, and closed and locked the door upon her.
When daylight came Alice Endicott wrote her brief note to Detective McBirnie, slipped it into a little metal case and fastened it to the leg of the carrier pigeon. Holding the pigeon to the window she released it. It fluttered dizzily to the nearest shed and alighted. She thought it would not fly. It rose and flapped its way to the cabin, whose barred windows Alice had noted, and perched upon the window-sill, preening its feathers. Then, while she watched, a stealthy hand appeared at the open window of the cabin, seized the bird and drew it in.
Alice Endicott uttered a cry of grief and threw herself on the bed in a tempest of despair.
[ Part II—23 October 1909 ]
LIFTING his head from the table at which he sat in the little cabin that was his prison, Hayden Colbert had caught sight of the metal cylinder on the pigeon's leg and, half rising, had stretched his hand cautiously between the bars and dragged in the bird. He detached the cylinder, shut the pigeon in the drawer of the table, and took from the little metal case Alice Endicott's note to Detective McBirnie. At sight of the signature he uttered an astonished exclamation.
"Alice at Pinetop!"
Then, as the import of the note—with the appeal of its last repeated words, "Send help—send help!" grew clear to him, he leaped to his feet and strode excitedly to the door. But with his hand upon the knob he halted. He had forgotten that he was a prisoner.
He bit his lip and returned to the table. He took the pigeon from the drawer, refastened the message to its leg, and liberated it through the window.
The cabin in which he was confined was about twelve feet square and solidly constructed: its door was locked on the outside, its three small windows were guarded with iron bars. For the tenth time since he had been shut up Colbert tried these iron bars one by one, but found all firm. His glance coursed rapidly over walls and floor for some tool with which to force an exit—a file, axe, chisel, saw; but there were no tools in the cabin. The situation required deliberation. He sat down, crossed one leg of his oil-flecked riding-breeches over the other, and took a short pipe from the pocket of his flannel shirt. But the white flash of the match which he struck on the edge of the table brought him suddenly to his feet, for he recognized in it the tool for which he had been seeking.
The table went first; he overturned it with its four legs against the wall of the cabin farthest from the door. Into the space between the table-legs he piled fragments of his chairs and pieces of paper from the drawer of the table. Over all he poured the contents of his kerosene lamp. He lighted the pile and drew back under the window in the farthest wall.
The cabin caught quickly and filled rapidly with smoke. From the window Colbert saw Racicot rush from the stable door; then others, wildly shouting.
"The key! Mon Dieu, the key!" cried Racicot.
They turned one to another, but the key was not forthcoming.
A man dashed off to get it. The white face of Alice Endicott showed suddenly at a window in the west wing, and was the last sight seen by Colbert before the rapid spread of the flames drove him from his place. Stifled, choking, blinded, he crawled to the center of the cabin, away from the blazing walls. He had miscalculated; for he had expected that when they saw the cabin afire they would unlock the door, and he was ready when the door swung open to make a break for liberty; but the absence of the key had defeated his plan. Suddenly heavy blows sounded on the door, which they were trying to beat in with an improvised battering-ram. But by now the little cabin was a mass of flame, and as the door crashed inward they drew back dismayed. Then Henri Racicot seized suddenly a coat from the nearest man, wrapped it around his head, fell upon his knees and crawled through the blazing doorway: and Colbert's last realization before the eddying smoke stifled all sensation in him was of the Frenchman frantically grasping at his shoulders while the shaking ceiling cascaded sparks upon them.
He came to himself in the open air, a jargon of foreign tongues about him, as the bearded men bent over him. Through his lashes he saw Racicot on his knees at his side.
"He comes awake presently," the Frenchman assured them with a sigh of satisfaction.
Colbert tried his limbs stealthily and found them whole. His fingers closed on Racicot's revolver, and, as the Frenchman rose, it came away and remained in his hand. The group uttered a cry of warning, but in that instant Colbert had regained his feet, swept aside a burly German who blocked his way, and broke for the house.
"Shoot not! Shoot not, Bonnefoi!" screamed Racicot, throwing himself bodily on one of the men who had drawn a revolver, and he forced up the gun, which was discharged in the air.
Colbert reached the steps and halted, turned and swept his pursuers threateningly with his revolver, and brought them to a momentary stand; then he turned again, dashed into the house and locked the door behind him. The silent German woman alone blocked his way; he grasped her keys from the hand she put forth to check him, and he drove open with his foot the door to the west wing and sped down the white-walled corridor toward the room at the end, where he had seen Alice Endicott.
[Illustration: "And Now, Monsieur, Since Your Parole is Terminate', the Pistol in Your Pocket, Please!"]
"Alice! Alice!" he beat loudly upon her door in his excitement. "You are still here? I have come in time? It is I, Hayden."
"Hayden?" he heard her answering cry of relief.
"Yes; I was in the little house where your pigeon stopped, and I read your note."
"That was you, then, and—you sent the letter on?"
"Yes, of course. But you are safe, Alice? I can come in?"
"I am safe; but you, Hayden? Come, of course!" she cried, tugging at the doorknob. "But they have locked me in. I have no key!"
"I have it!" He shot the bolt, entered and relocked the door.
"You are burned!" She caught him as, scorched and blackened, he turned to her.
"Only my clothes." He put her off and glanced quickly about the apartment. "It was the only way I could get out. But you are here alone, Alice?" he pressed quickly. "Where is your father?"
"Oh, I don't know, Hayden! Racicot, who carried me off, would tell me only that he has him locked up. He said he had you locked up, too—and Roland is locked up and the German who got him, Eller. And Racicot will not let me see father until——"
She stopped and shuddered. "Racicot wants me to love him, Hayden!"
"Then he has taken a fine way to make you do it. So Racicot carried you off?" Colbert's face darkened under its soot. "Yet Racicot has just saved my life at the risk of his own—twice saved it, from the fire and when one of the others was going to shoot. Heaven knows why he should risk his life for me, Alice! Knowing his plans, I should think—but here he comes now, and perhaps he will explain!"
He swung from the girl as the door he had locked at the end of the corridor crashed in, there came a rush of steps down the passage and a loud knock at the room door.
"Monsieur Colbert!"
"Yes, Racicot!"
"You are most clever, Monsieur Colbert, and have fooled every one—especially me, who face' death to go into the fire and get you. In return for which you steal my pistol. Is that American gratitude? But I would like well to know how you hope to profit by it?"
"I can discuss gratitude, Racicot, after Miss Endicott is safe," Colbert returned; "and about that we will negotiate."
"Negotiate? No! I will break down the door, Monsieur Colbert—unless you surrender!"
Colbert pushed to one corner the girl, who had come beside him, and, turning the cylinder of the revolver, found the chambers full.
"I'll have three shots through the door while you're breaking it down, and three after it has fallen, Racicot. Think it over!" he called back coolly.
"That is true," the Frenchman admitted after an instant's hesitation. "Well—of negotiation, then! What must I give, Monsieur Colbert?"
"First," Colbert glanced at the girl, "Miss Endicott is to be taken at once to her father. Second, I'm to keep the revolver. Third, I'm to be lodged where I can stand guard over Mr. Endicott and Miss Endicott. That's all!"
"Eh, bien!—and in return?" the Frenchman queried.
"In return," Colbert replied, "I give you my word not to try to escape or to interfere in what you are doing, as long as she is safe, and to use the revolver only in defense of Mr. Endicott and his daughter or—myself."
"You must give me the revolver, Monsieur Colbert."
"You know you can trust me," Colbert objected. "You know I cannot trust you!"
"Ah, well!" the Frenchman said after a considerable pause. "It is my fault always to be too generous. I accept your terms. I leave you your arms and liberty, Monsieur Colbert, upon the promise to employ both in the protection of mademoiselle, and not to interfere with me as long as you are safe." He spoke hastily in French to his comrades. "Open now, monsieur," he called back to Colbert, "and follow with mademoiselle to Monsieur Endicott, the Secretary of War, her father!"
Colbert unlocked the door, revolver in hand, and stepped out into the corridor. The Frenchman, true to his word, had already retreated a little down the passage with his foreign allies, and now returned alone to take the Americans to the other wing of the house.
"I am grateful to you, Racicot," Colbert pocketed the pistol and held out his hand, "for saving my life at that risk. I want you to know it; but—will you satisfy a perhaps pardonable curiosity as to why you did it?"
"It requires not gratitude, Monsieur Colbert!" Racicot grinned and shrugged his shoulders, eying Alice, who had followed Colbert out into the hall. "Recall the first Napoleon, who loved not his own brothers, but who preserved Fouche, who plotted against him. Now. for the same reason that the first Napoleon spared Fouche, his minister of police, I have preserve' you."
"What was that reason, Racicot?" Colbert inquired, half smothering a smile as he followed down the corridor.
"Because he had need of him." The Frenchman dismissed the matter with an airy flourish. "But enter now, mademoiselle!" He unlocked and threw open a door before which a silent foreigner had been standing guard; "enter and find your father!"
Colbert appreciated at once that the long, low, heavy-paneled English breakfast-room into which the Frenchman ushered them had been turned into a temporary prison. The high, narrow, leaded windows, which in the ordinary state would scarcely have permitted a man's body to squeeze through, had been hastily secured on the outside by the nailing across of thick wood slats; and outside the windows a companion to the silent guard in the hall was tramping to and fro. All this Colbert's mind took in mechanically; for the whole of his conscious attention was centered upon the three men at a table, surprised by the hasty opening of the door, at their mid-morning meal.
The one nearest the door, he saw at once, was Travis; the second the German, Eller; the third—and though he sat facing the door Colbert scarcely recognized him as the man he had called upon in Washington five days before—was the American Secretary of War.
"What? Alice! You here!" Travis leaped to his feet, bewildered at the sight of the group in the door. But the girl, as Racicot stood out of her way, sped past him and threw her arms about her father. The bearded German, napkin in hand, stood a moment, then reseated himself and stolidly resumed his eating.
"Alice!" Travis cried. "What are you doing here? How did you get here? This, I suppose"—he swung bitterly now upon Colbert—"is some more of your work!"
"My work? No; Racicot brought her here last night," Colbert returned brusquely, replying as much to the father's glance as to Travis' direct challenge. "And, Mr. Endicott, I hope they told you—or that you could understand it, at least—that immediately after locking you here they locked me up, too, and that I have had no part in this plot against you. I came for you that night and brought you here, as I then told you, believing that—unless you could persuade or prevent them—these foreigners would make off at once to Europe with my machines to sell them for war purposes to the highest bidder. When Racicot betrayed me and seized the machine himself to wage world war, holding you here for ransom to provide funds for his project, I hope I do not have to assure you that I had as little part in that as in bringing Alice here!"
"Racicot himself boasted to me," the Secretary answered over the shoulder of the girl clinging to him, "that he had locked you up."
"And I gave Racicot the opportunity which he used to carry me off," Alice Endicott defended, "because he told me in a letter that you, Father, were in danger!"
"In danger?" The Secretary faced the Frenchman.
"It was a decoy only, monsieur," Racicot shrugged with upheld palms deprecatingly. "Believe me, it would desolate me if harm happen' Monsieur Endicott; so I have endanger' you only in my note for the pleasure of Mademoiselle Alice's presence!"
"Racicot, you are a scoundrel!"
"It may be, monsieur; but I will have much company among the great ones. Is it because I carried off Mademoiselle Alice that I am a scoundrel? All goes in love and—pouf! it is too old a saying! Or is it. because I ask a ransom? Monsieur Endicott, my negotiations go not rapidly enough with your Government; would it not be well if you, in your own name, send them a message asking that the ransom be paid?"
"Never!" cried the Secretary of War promptly.
"Perhaps Monsieur Endicott does not appreciate the need of his presence in Washington. Let me tell, then: I, like other Governments, have in Washington my representative—not recognized, it is true, by the American Government, but very useful for all that; for he sends me messages—the Italian, Caviale. I will tell you the message he sent this morning: Yesterday, in the German Reichstag a test vote was taken. It was on some matter unimportant, insignificant!—it concerned, if I recall, farm lands—but, the German Government having introduce' the measure, it serve' to test the popularity of the Government. The vote is—how do you say?—overwhelming; never has the German Government been so popular as now, when it has almost forced England into war. And it is expect' now everywhere—in Europe, in America, in Asia—that tomorrow or the next day Germany will declare war upon England."
"Racicot! Racicot!" a cry arose suddenly without.
"It is Bonnefoi!" the Frenchman interrupted himself. "Think well, Monsieur Endicott, whether you will not send that message to your Government advising them to pay the ransom!" He saluted them hastily and went out. Through the leaded, barred windows Colbert watched him curiously, running after Bonnefoi up the rocky path that led, he knew, toward the "wireless" tower. Then the young American swung back to the girl and her father.
"My personal danger in this is nothing, I suppose you understand," the Secretary of War said to him sternly, "compared to the national peril—I might better say, international peril to peace, Colbert, which my absence from Washington involves at this crisis. I can pardon freely and gladly, Hayden," he tried to add more kindly, "all the personal indignities. But I cannot acquit you, as the President cannot acquit me, of the public results of my detention here. Today my note in reply to the German-English dispute was to be made public!"
"A pretty mess you have got me into, too, Hayden!" Travis turned fiercely upon Colbert also.
"I got you into a mess, Travis?" Colbert shot back to him, clenching his fist.
[Illustration: "Its Terrible Power Must be Confined to a Safe Hand, and There is None Safer Than That of the United States"]
"Yes, you!" Travis returned even more hotly, while the German beside him arose again and stood as though on the watch for a physical encounter; but the young millionaire turned to the Secretary of War. "I have spent the last three years and more than eight hundred thousand dollars, Mr. Endicott, in experiments and in assembling to work together all the men from all countries who have had part in the development of flying machines. I engage Bonnefoi, who assisted Wright in France; Meldazis, who was one of Santos Dumont's assistants; Eller, here, of Berlin; Pocrass; Loderbauer; Caviale; Racicot; and—I hire and pay him, too—you, Colbert. And I keep you all working together under my pay until at last I take the aeroplane out of the class of proving-ground experiments and the flying machine, made by my money, is as safe as the railroad, simpler than the automobile, and faster and good for better distances than either; and then you——"
"You take the aeroplane out of the experimental class!" Colbert burst in upon him. "I beg your pardon, Alice—Mr. Endicott," he cried. "But you, Travis—ah, yes, I grant," he conceded, "that the machines were made by your money; but by whose ideas and designs?"
"By whose?" Travis took him back again as bitterly. "By the ideas and designs of you all together—you with the rest—I included you!"
"No; not with the rest, as you very well know, Travis!" Colbert returned. "Rather against all the rest and in spite of their ideas; the ideas which I alone represented made these machines possible."
"You? And what were you? You were broke when the New Netherlands Trust busted! You didn't know where your next meal was coming from! I took you out of the gutter——"
"You got your money's worth, wherever you took me from! If it were not so, or if any of the others or all of them together were promising practical results, why did you pack them all over here after me when I decided to finish the work this side of the water? When Caviale wanted the final work to be done outside of Rome, when Racicot wanted it brought nearer Paris, and your own Eller wanted the first perfected machine to be tried over the parade grounds about Berlin—why did you move your foreigners after me when I said I would turn out the finished machine near no capital but Washington? Because you knew that the automatic control—which I was able to perfect—was the essential secret of keeping the aeroplane balanced in the air, and that the internal-combustion fuel—my secret formula—was the only thing which could keep the motors running steadily without missing or heating and keep the machines safely in the air over long distances. I demanded to finish the work near Washington, as I began it in Alsace, under the distinct understanding that the aeroplane—if we perfected it—would be given to no Government before our own!"
"I appreciate all that, Colbert!" Travis put in hastily, flushing strangely. "But, having given in to you as you have wanted things, it only makes it worse for you for letting this crazy Frenchman get it away from you and make monkeys of us all!"
"I would a hundred times rather have it stolen than sold from me, Travis!"
"Why do you look at me when you say that, Colbert?"
"Do you dare to ask an explanation? Mr. Endicott"—Colbert turned to make his reply to the Secretary of War—"you remember, five days ago when I came for you, I told you how—when I saw that my fuel formula held the secret of the really successful flying machine—I kept it a secret to myself. I told you that night how the German, Eller, had stolen that secret from me and Racicot had taken it again from him, and that only by at once preventing these men from taking that secret abroad could the aeroplane be saved! I told you that the formula was stolen by Eller from the safe, in some inexplicable way; for I did not know then, as I have found out since I have been locked up here, that Eller was all the time the secret confidant and merely the agent for Travis: that at the same time Travis gave me the keys to the strong-boxes here—in which to keep my secrets—he gave duplicates—as I know now—to Eller to steal them and take them to sell to Germany! And but for Racicot capturing Eller with them and locking him up here they would surely be so sold today!"
"To sell to Germany!" Alice Endicott was the first to cry out as Colbert swung back to face the man against whom he raised this charge. "Oh, Roland, can it be true—you meant to—to sell the machines to Germany—for war?"
"Only such a fool as Colbert would think it," Travis denied indignantly. "But if you mean, did I mean to give the aeroplane to the Government that would use it for real power and give to me part of the power which comes from it—to Germany? Yes. Why should I, Alice, give this to the raw United States? Fulton gave it his steamship; and what honor did this Government do him? Morse gave it the telegraph; and what power or position did this Government give him? Ericsson gave the United States the Monitor and turret and—when he died they returned his body to Sweden. Even the Wrights, when they were the first to fly even for a few moments, had to go abroad for their real reward and recognition. Did you think, Alice, when I told you last fall of the power and position I meant to win for you from my work I was crazy enough to think this ungrateful republic would ever give us either, no matter what I gave them? No; but I have both already promised for us in Germany, where, if it interests you"—he swung now in prouder defiance from the girl to the others—"I have put the Government in possession of the working models and every principle of my aeroplane, except those which my employee, Colbert, has kept secret not only from his fellow-workmen but dishonestly kept from me, also!"
"I knew"—Colbert clenched his hands—"that up to the time we left Alsace you had kept the German Government informed of what we were doing; but I did not know, though I took the precaution of transferring the work to America and of keeping secret the most important part of what I had discovered—I did not know, until I discovered that Eller was your agent, that, in spite of our original agreement and your repeated promises to me, you were continuing to furnish information to Germany!"
"Germany is a goot country," Eller put in phlegmatically.
"There is no difference, ethically," Travis asserted, "between giving the aeroplane to Germany or to the United States; and I did not know," his lip curled contemptuously, "when I got Colbert into this affair, that he was such a patriot."
"Patriot? Call it patriotism, if you wish, but it is not blind patriotism! Mr. Endicott!"—Colbert swung again to the Secretary of War—"you, as American delegate more than once to the Peace Conference at The Hague, know that ninety per cent of the claims arbitrated there concern, as at least one party to the dispute, the English-speaking nations. Most of all, the people of the United States stand for the settlement of international difficulties by arbitration. They stand for peace; while the peoples of continental Europe are still unable to shake themselves free of the ever-present idea of an appeal to war, which their huge standing armies indicate. I am not willing, Mr. Endicott—yes, I would go to any lengths to prevent the aeroplane which my ideas have made perfect from becoming the war engine that it must become in European hands. No, no!" he stretched out his arms toward the Secretary passionately, "it must put an end to the struggles of the nations, not serve to make them still more horrible! Its terrible power must be confined to a safe hand, and there is none safer than that of the United States—this broad land in which the immigrant men of Europe have laid aside their Old World hates and ancient rancors to build together a nation whose ideal is peace and whose conquests are social, commercial and pacific!"
"I appreciate your position, Colbert," the Secretary of War answered with quick sympathy.
"And I, too, Hayden!" the girl cried, turning on the young American a shining face. "Your ideas are true and beautiful—are they not, Father?"
But the American Secretary of War was pacing the room nervously now, his high-bred, kindly face drawn and white with a fuller realization of his responsibilities and the terrible consciousness that—due to his detention—his Government must be acting through one of the most critical international complications of its history without knowledge of the circumstances.
"That accounts for everything!" He turned back to them almost terribly. "Germany has stopped its other war preparations, of course, to devote all its armories to making these engines of war, so dreadful that a single one could destroy a hostile capital. It lacks only the secrets Colbert has retained to make it the invincible war lord of Europe, of the world—and it is in hourly expectation of receiving these from Travis!" He whitened at the realization and—disregarding Travis as though he were not present—he caught Colbert's arm. "Racicot was right! I must get back to Washington at once—in any way—at any cost, Colbert!" he cried tensely.
He had swung back to the window and, in excitement, was gazing out through the slats over the Virginia mountains toward Washington. Suddenly, with a swift shudder of hope, his fingers bore deeper into the young man's arm.
"Look!" He pointed to the now unsentineled space beneath the window. "Pocrass, the Pole, who was set to guard us, is gone. See, there is some excitement in the wireless tower, and he has gone there after Racicot. Without him here," the Secretary put his hand upon the back of a heavy chair and caught it toward him, "we can beat out these slats and escape! And once out," his eyes caught the pistol in Colbert's pocket, "you are armed! Somehow you can stop them—hold them back so that I can get to Washington! Quick—quick!" The Secretary himself had picked up the chair as he spoke and crashed it through the window.
The leads and glass burst out in flying fragments; but the square legs of the chair bruised themselves, scarcely shaking the beams that barred the opening. Again he raised the chair and beat it through the wrecked window, with only the same effect.
"Here, Hayden!"—with tingling hands he thrust the heavy chair toward the young man—"strike now—strike! You have the strength!"
"And break the way for the two behind us to escape and communicate with Berlin while you are getting to Washington?" Colbert caught the elder man in his grasp. "What gain would it be to get your information to Washington if at the same time Travis could send Berlin the last secret of the machines? Besides, I am on parole," he confessed, "neither to try to escape nor aid you in escaping. It is the only way I could protect Alice."
"You mean you cannot help me? Quickly—quickly, Hayden! What else can we do? In another moment our chance must be gone. Oh, see!" he sank back hopelessly, "they send another guard already!" He pointed out the window to a man with a gun who was coming on the run to replace Pocrass.
"Loderbauer! It is Loderbauer! Py Gott! and all the rest are away!" Eller, the German, sprang suddenly toward the window, but Travis pulled him back.
"It is the Spaniard—Meldazis, you fool!" Travis checked his ally angrily.
"So Loderbauer, being a German, is also on your side—secretly, Travis?" Colbert searched their faces with a quick glance. "I might have guessed: and it is worth while to know that! But, Mr. Endicott, since it is the Spaniard and not Loderbauer who is coming, perhaps we can do something yet! Racicot asked you half an hour ago to send a message to Washington. If you will write to the President a warning of what you have learned here perhaps Racicot, in his eagerness for the ransom, may be prevailed upon to send it, if only as an evidence to the Government that he holds you here. At least, I can urge him to send it without breaking my parole."
"Your parole, señor?" The Spaniard outside echoed the word as he stuck his rifle through the window. "Is it in this way you keep your parole?—breaking windows, trying to escape!"
"You are wrong, Meldazis," Colbert answered curtly. "I did not break the window; and I have just prevailed upon Mr. Endicott to send a message to Washington, as Racicot asked him to this morning."
"Ah! The message!" The Spaniard's face lighted eagerly. "Racicot will be glad to get that message. Give it to me through the window."
"We must see Racicot first."
"He is busy in the wireless tower. I will take the Secretary Endicott to him with the message."
"And leave his daughter here—without him? It is impossible, Meldazis."
"How then?" asked the Spaniard, frowning. "Come! Arrange it!"
"Mr. Endicott will give me the message, and I will go with you to Racicot. Write, Mr. Endicott, write at once." Colbert spun quickly back to the Secretary, who took a pencil from his pocket and wrote speedily upon the back of an envelope.
"Muchas gracias, Señor Colbert." The Spaniard examined carefully the condition of the window-bars, and made for the door of the hallway leading to the room.
"Even if Racicot will not send the message," Colbert stepped to Alice's side and whispered rapidly, "it will gain time. Before now your pigeon—which I have not forgotten—must have reached Washington, and help must be on the way. Tell your father that when you get a chance."
The girl raised her eyes steadily to his and nodded. He touched her hand for the fraction of an instant, then turned; but Travis, who had stood back unwillingly while Colbert was speaking to the girl, now came forward boldly as Endicott handed him the paper.
"I must see that message, Colbert!" he commanded tensely. "This is no personal matter of Mr. Endicott's or Alice's; it is political—and it concerns me! You won't? Then I must take it! Eller!" he called the burly German to his aid as he sprang toward Colbert.
But while Endicott, at the same moment that the German leaped forward, moved toward the belligerents, too, the Spaniard shot back the bolts of the door and, entering, pushed his rifle-barrel between the men. He parted them with an astonished succession of oaths, dragged Colbert not unwillingly from the room, and hastened to bolt and secure the door, at the other side of which Travis and his ally beat loudly.
[Illustration: So Great That No Man Has the Mind to Grasp the Thought of it Except Napoleon and Me!"]
"So, senor, you are not the happy family in your captivity, I see!" the Spaniard panted. "I must return quickly —quickly, senor!" He pointed Colbert down the corridor, dashed open the outer door and hurried him up the rocky path to the wireless tower, where Racicot and two of the other confederates had disappeared.
The three men within, as Colbert made out even before they came to the steps leading up to the operating-room of the tower, were engaged in angry discussion. As the Spaniard pushed his prisoner into the room, trying to make his explanation heard over the recriminations of the others, all three—Racicot, Bonnefoi and Pocrass, the giant Pole—whirled to them with faces distorted by the rage and disappointment each had been trying to unload upon the other.
"What! again I see you, Monsieur Colbert!" Racicot, the first to turn, screamed with exasperation. "I sicken at the sight of you. You have break your parole!"
"No; he comes with the message from Endicott to his Government," Meldazis interposed.
"To his Government? Pouf! to the devil with such Government! Of what use is the message now?" the Frenchman shrieked. "But let us see!" He seized the message, scanned it with bloodshot eyes, tore it across, crumpled it in his hand and hurled it from him. "As I thought, words only—words—words! Diable! Sacré!" He seized Colbert by the arm. "Figure to yourself. By courage I obtain to your Secretary of War. Who but I could have done it? Therefore, I ask a ransom—one million dollars—one little, insignificant million! What is that to so great a country?—a bagatelle! On my word, I had thought first to ask fifty million! Yesterday, the day before—even earlier this morning, they were ready enough to consider and question of it. But now, all at once, they have thrown over—refuse' all by wireless message! Monsieur Endicott is so quickly worth nothing to the American Government that they will send not one cent now for their Secretary of War!"
"Not one cent to us now, Racicot!" the giant Pocrass sneered bitterly, "but many soldiers since you have so fool and betray us!"
"Betray, Pocrass?"
"Betray; exactement!" Bonnefoi, at the wireless key, now sprang up to reënforce Pocrass excitedly. "It is from your expedition for the daughter Endicott that we are discover'! What a fool! She comes, he have boasted, for love of him; but it was to betray him and discover us that she come! For, as we have just heard from Caviale, at this instant trains full of soldiers make for us here, summoned by a pigeon voyageur which she carried and loosed! Sol!"
"Sol!" The Pole also clenched his fists angrily.
"It cannot be so!" Racicot denied hotly; but as Bonnefoi continued to point to the recording tape of the wireless instrument, with its communication from Caviale, he swung in apparent appeal to Colbert.
"Tell me, monsieur," he demanded, "is it true that mademoiselle came carrying a pigeon to loose upon arrival and betray me?"
"The bird was loosed at seven o'clock this morning," Colbert replied. "As it is now well after ten," he led their eyes to the clock, "it is time the soldiers would be starting in answer to its summons."
Meldazis and the other two glanced swiftly at each other; but, before their eyes could catch the glint of a new leader or a plan, Racicot astounded them.
"Felicitate me! What a woman to win with an empire!" His instantaneous delight aroused their admiration against their will. "What a one to hold with us the capitals of the world under the ransom of the aeroplane! Meldazis, Pocrass, Bonnefoi! you have forgot yourselves for a moment. We have, at the smallest, two hours before troops can reach us," he clapped them on the chests with a self-confidence which carried no conviction to Colbert, though it impressed the others. "With our two aeroplanes can we not in two hours be two hundred miles from here if we wish it?"
"With two aeroplanes, each carrying three, six can go," Bonnefoi assented pointedly.
"Is it that we four shall not be among those six?" Racicot completed his audacity. "Come, messieurs, to your places!" He threw open the door before they could protest, and dismissed them in a body.
"So, Racicot"—Colbert watched the three at the foot of the steps, after a backward glance, separate obediently and hasten to their places—"six can go! What six?"
"Besides Meldazis, with me shall go Mademoiselle Alice; with Bonnefoi and Pocrass one more. Shall it be Eller, who shares with me the secret of the aeroplane? There is but one way to leave behind one who knows our secret so well and how to turn it against us." He drew his pistol and played with it. "You, too, know the secret, Monsieur Colbert," he added significantly.
"I see," Colbert nodded; "so the one who is left behind must be shot, Racicot?" He looked down to the table before him where the wireless instruments lay, as if considering the fate in store for him, and noted suddenly that the recording tape was unrolling slowly, silently. A message, either from some far-off station or from some weak instrument nearer, was flying by, picked up by the aerials and registering upon the tape. Enough had already unrolled so that he could read the purport of the message. It was not, he saw at once, a continuation of the message of the moment before from Caviale, or even meant for Travis' station. It was something very different, he saw now with a hot start within him which he had difficulty in restraining. He raised his eyes stealthily to the Frenchman's.
"Mon Dieu! it desolates me—but what other course? Meanwhile," the Frenchman was glancing rapidly about the brick wall of the operating-room, with its narrow, impassable windows, "since this will not burn, monsieur, I may lock you here—except Sapristi!" his eyes had dropped suddenly and caught Colbert's glance upon the wireless instruments. "I had forgotten you know the wireless. Still," he plucked off the four little copper caps essential for the connection with the power current, "taking these I think you will be safe enough. And now, monsieur, since your parole is terminate'," he commanded more sternly, "the pistol in your pocket, please!" He cocked his own revolver as he asked it.
"Since my parole is terminated!" Colbert's hand closed impulsively over the revolver, but instead of recklessly drawing it forth, as he caught sight again of the little copper caps which Racicot was dropping into his pocket, he acquiesced with sudden forced acceptance of the situation. Drawing the gun from his pocket he ejected its six cartridges upon the floor and tossed it over.
Racicot caught it and, still covering Colbert, backed out, locking the heavy door on the outside, and hurried down the hill.
But his footsteps had not died away before Colbert stooped to the floor and, sweeping up the cartridges ejected from his surrendered revolver—he could find only four—he tore at the first bullet with his teeth. The lead came away and, pouring out the powder, he clapped the empty copper shell over the place where Racicot had taken off the last contact cap. He swore excitedly to himself as he saw that, by the chance he had figured on, it fitted—holding the connection loosely and insecurely, but still holding the connection. He quickly fitted the three others and sprang to the little window overlooking the house.
Racicot was out of earshot, hastening toward the door of the wing where Alice and her father were locked. Hayden swung back to the wireless instruments and snapped down the sending key.
"Psst—tsssh!" the current supplied under the shaking cartridge caps hissed softly at him. He could get far less than the full current, he knew, as he pressed his caps down tighter, but enough at least to be heard where the messages which he had taken were being exchanged.
"Signal officer, Wever's Valley!" he dispatched his call quickly in copy of the call he had seen registering upon the tape a few minutes before. "Who are you—what force?" he followed almost without a break as, after the second repetition of his call, he got an acknowledgment.
"Field wireless signal station, Virginia militia manœuvers in Wever's Valley!" the answer came back unsteadily through the trembling caps. "Who are you?"
"What force, what part of valley?" Colbert's fingers sweated with excitement.
"Regiment infantry, two troops of cavalry at Wever's Forks. Who are you?" the reply came back curiously again.
"Private wireless station at Pinetop, R. V. Travis' estate. John Endicott is a prisoner here, held by foreign adventurers. Troops summoned from Washington are on the way," he volleyed on without a break or giving the other end time to comment, "but will arrive too late to prevent escape of all concerned. To take them and, perhaps, save Endicott's life you must surprise and capture all in this place at once! Do you get this?"
He checked himself and held tensely over his instruments while the reply ticked back unevenly.
"Who is held prisoner?" came the incredulous response.
"John Endicott, Secretary of War—Endicott—Endicott!" Colbert repeated desperately.
Through the little window before him he saw suddenly the taut, white-cloth planes of his first aeroplane slant swiftly into the sky. Jumping up to watch it better and standing at his key while he still sent, he recognized Bonnefoi and Pocrass in the machine before it swept swiftly past him and high up the hill. He stopped sending an instant and stood watching them; but after reaching its height the machine did not waver or circle again, and neither of the occupants even seemed to glance back. It kept straight on to the east till it stopped to stand sentinel over the second valley, where the trains from Washington were expected.
"Approach Pinetop from the west," Colbert snapped quickly upon his key, "as the east is sentineled. Use utmost secrecy, as surprise is essential. Do you get this—do you understand?"
"Understand perfectly," was the reply, "but don't know Pinetop. Where is it?"
"Pinetop one and one-half miles——" A flash of blue flame from his instrument interrupted his directions, and he saw that one of his makeshift copper caps had burned out. With an oath of exasperation he threw himself on his knees to search for the remaining cartridges, and he was still searching when a shot—two shots together—then two more, followed by a girl's cry, came too clearly from the near wing of the house where the prisoners were confined.
"Racicot—the madman! He is murdering them!" Colbert cried, paling helplessly as he dashed to the window. He stood staring, more relieved for the prisoners, but more startled at what he saw, as Racicot, dragging Meldazis—wounded—came running out of the house in full flight.
"So Loderbauer has armed them and got them out already!" Colbert comprehended excitedly, as the powder smoke in the doorway cleared and he made out Travis and Eller and, behind them, Loderbauer reloading their revolvers. Then the three in the doorway after reloading, broke for the shed where the second aeroplane was sheltered. As they ran Racicot turned and started from Meldazis, as though to intercept the others, but suddenly checked himself, as he saw he was too late, and fired after them. The three reached the shed unhurt, and rushed in.
"Travis will be off at once!" Hayden collected himself quickly. He stared hopelessly for the fraction of an instant toward the valley on the east, which the troops from Washington could not possibly reach until far too late; then his gaze shifted to the hill to the west, beyond which were the state troops that, except for his useless wireless, he might have directed to his aid. He glanced again at the shed sheltering the aeroplane and the three who had captured it; at the windows in the near wing of the house, where he saw Alice and the Secretary of War were still confined; at the Frenchman and his single wounded companion, who had sought shelter behind an outbuilding nearer still; and Colbert was about to call out to these last when he caught sudden sight of a strange man—a long-necked, long-legged, conspicuously-curious individual, staring back at him through binoculars from a tree not fifty yards from his window—a city-dressed man in a derby hat, who, when he realized that he was seen, calmly signaled silence to the prisoner in the tower by pressing a forefinger to his lips, and slipped down the trunk of the tree, stealing toward the rear of the tower.
"Who the devil is that?" Colbert smiled in spite of the seriousness of the situation, as the stranger, with his binoculars—which he had slipped into a leather case dangling free from his shoulders—picked his skillful way toward him, hiding behind the larger bushes and stepping over the small ones; and when the other had come under the window of the tower he repeated his question aloud: "Who the devil are you?"
"McBirnie—Peter McBirnie, of the United States Secret Service. Now, which"—McBirnie's long forefinger, pointing first at himself as he gave his name, pointed next to the outhouse behind which Racicot and Meldazis were concealed, and then to the aeroplane shed hiding Travis and his companions—"Now, which of those two parties is on the side of the United States?"
"Neither," Colbert answered curtly. "I am."
"And you, I take it, are Mr. Hayden Colbert."
"You take it right."
"Locked up? The side of the United States seems to be in a bad way here"—McBirnie, ruminatingly, took off his derby hat and wiped the sweatband with his elbow—"and it looks like I had entered upon this scene of festivity and dalliance at the correct and psychological moment. Now, that first party over there," his finger directed Colbert's gaze, "who's he—and what does he want?"
"That's Henri Racicot, a Frenchman," Colbert answered quickly, recognizing, in spite of the oddity of the detective's appearance, the advantage of having an ally outside his prison. "He carried off the Secretary of War, and he plans to hold the capitals of the world one by one for ransom."
"A nice party—that Racicot!" McBirnie commented, "but he seems to have ideas. And that other party, that gentleman hiding in the long shed over there—Mr. Roland V. Travis, of Philadelphia and Berlin—what does he want?"
"To sell the aeroplanes to the German Government."
"A clever idea, too—for R. V. T.—his ideas come less frequent than Racicot's, I guess. And the Secretary is over there in that wing, where I saw him through the window with my binoculars. I see, I see!" McBirnie, already acquainted with much that had gone before, had been able from these few questions to grasp the situation in all its important particulars. "International hell to pay and no pitch hot! Germany must be getting pretty anxious to hear from Mr. Roland V. Travis about now!"
"And will hear from him before the day is over"—Colbert in his excitement pushed his head still further through the narrow window, trying to see, while still watching the Secret Service man, whether there was any evidence of movement in the aeroplane shed—"unless he is interfered with. You cannot liberate me, and you would not be able, without help, to prevent Travis' departure by force; but a mile and a half west of here in Wever's Valley are a regiment of infantry and two troops of cavalry, and if by any chance Travis does not start immediately there may still be time to guide them here if you go for them at once."
"What's happening, Mr. Hayden Colbert," said McBirnie, calmly glancing around the little rocky square that had for its four sides the sheds and the house and the wireless tower and the little round-topped hill to the west, "ain't happening in Wever's Valley. It's happening right here. And I ain't here to care whether Roland V. Travis goes to Germany in an airship or not, but to look after the safety of the Secretary of War——"
"You don't understand!" Colbert burst in bitterly; "there are many questions of the hugest international importance involved!"
"Oh, I understand that," McBirnie gestured reassuringly, "but the personal safety of the Secretary is more the business of Peter McBirnie—your Uncle Peter, if I may say so—and he is going to sit down side by side with the Secretary of War——"
"Then throw me a cartridge from your revolver!" commanded Colbert, with an oath at the exasperating obstinacy of his ally. He caught in his outstretched hand the cartridge which McBirnie willingly tossed up to him, and tore out the lead with his teeth. He swung back excitedly to the wireless instrument and fitted the empty shell in the place of the other which had burned out. Then, as the soft hiss of the current again answered his pressure on the sending key, he began once more, frantically, his call.
There was no answer.
"He has gone—closed communication!" Colbert muttered hopelessly.
But fiercely aware that it was only a matter of minutes now before the aeroplane shed, which he could see from his position at the instrument, must open and send forth, under Travis' guiding hand, the agent which would hurl the belligerent Powers of Europe into a war gulf whose bottom no man could see, he still continued despairingly to call—"Signal officer, Wever's Valley! Signal officer. Wever's Valley!"—though no answer came.
Detective McBirnie, since his wire from Washington at nine o'clock that morning, had traveled thirty miles by train, six by wagon, had walked three, and had spent half an hour uncomfortably perched in a treetop. He was considering, therefore, as he straightened the dents in his derby hat and stretched the cramps out of his long legs behind the shelter of the wireless tower, that he at least was in a position to appreciate a mode of travel which, like the aeroplane, took no account of hills and valleys, and attained altitudes without tearing the trousers, when his gaze fell upon a man who had suddenly emerged from the aeroplane shed.
"Now, my German friend," said McBirnie to himself, with a start of interest—"as German you are by your beard and breadth of beam and general bearing—what are you up to?"
For the man, without an instant's pause, had slipped around the corner of the shed and vanished. He reappeared presently from behind the other end of the shed and vanished among bushes; he reappeared from among bushes and vanished behind a tree; and his course having brought him by extensive circuits continually nearer to the wireless tower, he reappeared finally and for the last time not fifty yards from the detective himself. McBirnie, by a single backward impulsion like that of the lobster, removed himself promptly out of sight behind a corner of the tower, quietly observant. The man, having by his détour brought the tower between himself and Racicot to conceal him, now advanced directly to the foot of the high steps, carrying in his right hand, McBirnie saw, a revolver, and in his left a key. McBirnie, as the man commenced to ascend the steps, came out from his place of concealment and followed. It resulted, therefore, that when the man reached the top step McBirnie had reached and was standing on the lowest; but the German, evidently feeling now greater necessity for haste than concealment, did not look around. He inserted and turned the key in the lock, crashed open the door with his foot, and at the same moment covered with his pistol Colbert, who, still frantically snapping down the sending key, whirled toward him a startled face of amazement.
"Ach! Herr Colpert! You are wirelessing?" the stolid German grinned in his beard.
"What, Eller!" Colbert conquered his astonishment.
"Exactly so. You thought, no doubt, Herr Colpert, we would be off so quick as bossible. That is imbortant, too; but it is yet more imbortant, Herr Colpert, that we get into gommunication with Chermany, or with friends of Chermany in this gountry. So, having a key, I have gome to do that, Herr Colpert; and afterward we will be away before the wirelessing you haf done can bring help to you."
"The instrument is out of order," Colbert answered shortly. "You cannot send more than two or three miles. Racicot has taken the caps."
"So? We will see if you speak truth or are lying. Walk backward, Herr Colpert, until the wall does stop you."
Colbert obediently retreated toward the wall, and as he did so the German advanced to the wireless instrument, dropped into the chair and, still covering the American with his revolver, laid his left hand on the sending key. "Prut! you are a genius of invention!" he said admiringly, as the current purred softly through Colbert's improvised caps.
Detective McBirnie, having seen part and overheard all of what was going on in the wireless tower, glanced quickly about to assure himself that he would be uninterrupted, saw Racicot peering at him, startled but helpless, around the corner of the little protecting shed, and at the same instant reached the top step.
"At what are you looking, Herr Colpert?" the German asked with a start, as Colbert's face, which was turned toward the door, flashed suddenly with relief. "Ach! that is unworthy of you—so old a game: to make me turn my head away from you an instant and see—nothing!"
"Very little, perhaps, my German friend," said Detective McBirnie with modest deprecation; "but certainly not—nothing!"
At the unexpected sound Eller twisted his head involuntarily and spasmodically, though he still continued to hold the revolver on Colbert; and he grew livid as his eyes met those of the gangling detective, at the unseasonable interference of this unlooked-for stranger.
"So! Don't press that key down; hold just as you are!" and his own words reminding Detective McBirnie in some way of the formula of the professional photographer, he continued with a pleasant facetiousness to imitate the professionally-photographic manner: "Chin a little higher, please; smile a little more; thank you! Now, see the birdie?"—the "birdie" in this case being McBirnie's blue steel .44, which, it was evident, Eller saw plainly. "Now, if you'll turn that gun around and hand it, other end to, to Mr. Hayden Colbert, we'll have what in the dramatic criticisms of the stage, as I've read 'em in the daily papers, is called a situation! For, Mr. Eller—say! I don't know your first name, so I'll call it Otto—for, Mr. Otto Eller," the detective repeated, "this squares us for that 'What-haf-Gott-wrot' joke you put up on me!"
"Bonnefoi! Bonnefoi!" a cry of warning arose outside, even as the detective spoke and while Colbert still stood holding the pistol which he had taken from Eller's unwilling hand.
McBirnie, rushing to the nearest window, saw Racicot in the shelter of the outhouse, with a signal flag in his hand, which he had used to recall the sentinel aeroplane, and nearer still a quick-shooting shadow above which the aeroplane itself was sweeping downward to alight.
"Eh! Reinforcements?" asked the detective.
"Bonnefoi and Pocrass—Racicot's allies!" Colbert cried sharply in explanation. "They will cut us off from Alice. Come! The house!" He spun on his heel, dashed down the steps and was crossing the broken ground toward the house before McBirnie could restrain him. The detective, saving his breath as he followed, saw behind him the stout German half stumble half roll down the high steps and hasten toward his own party; and saw, too, that before even Colbert, leading, could gain the path at the base of the little hill, the men in the aeroplane had blocked it and Racicot joined them.
"Not so fast at this juncture, Mr. Hayden Colbert!" McBirnie coolly caught that young man's arm, as, after halting, he seemed ready to continue his rush toward the window where the detective could now see Alice and her father watching them. "This French party is three revolvers to two—even if I was crazy enough to charge them with you—which I ain't! Miss Alice Endicott ain't in any greater danger than she has been, and if she was the suicide of you and me wouldn't help her; and we'll have fewer holes in our skins"—the cautious McBirnie tugged his hot-headed companion back into retreat as a wanton revolver-shot sang past them—"if we do our plotting back in the tower. Those French gentlemen who have just arrived seem a trifle worried, and if, as I rather suspect, they've seen the troops from Washington, we'll let them keep on worrying!"
"But not only Racicot, but Travis, too, can escape with a machine at any moment—and either of them get rid of Mr. Endicott and take Alice as he pleases!" Colbert resisted.
"Now, Mr. Hayden Colbert"—McBirnie's confident, compelling hand still forced the young man back up the steps of the tower—"we'll form a Don't Worry Club right in this tower and elect you presiding officer. I'm new to the inside of this case, but I think I begin to see through it pretty thoroughly; and as I see it neither of those parties can do anything just as he pleases, which is why I ain't worrying about the Secretary of War as much as I was. Things are threatening to go fast now, and the faster the better, I say, because the sooner they'll get somewhere! But nothing will be too instantaneous! See—as I said," McBirnie's long finger pointed somewhat after the manner of a school-teacher to the Frenchman's party about the shed, where the leader was waving a bit of white cloth. "There is Mr. Henry Racicot himself offering truce"—the detective took his handkerchief from his pocket and replied—"and coming to confer with us."
"You are right," Colbert acknowledged curiously, as at McBirnie's reply Racicot left the others and advanced to the tower, into which the two had now retreated. "What is it, Racicot?" he called down a little suspiciously.
"Monsieur Colbert! Monsieur Colbert!" Racicot called back confidently and cheerfully. "Pocrass and Bonnefoi have seen the troops from the train from Washington; so I go now! I go, Monsieur Colbert, at last to found my empire-worldwide, so great that no man has the mind to grasp the thought of it except Napoleon and me! And I take with me the woman most fit to rule as Empress-Mademoiselle Endicott! But before I go I come to offer you the favor to go with me!"
"What? You want me to go with you?" Colbert cried, astounded.
"Oui—yes; monsieur. Think quickly, for I am in haste!"
"Now, what do you suppose is behind that?" Detective McBirnie muttered perplexedly, at the same instant that Colbert asked the question aloud: "What is behind this, Racicot?"
"Ah! Monsieur, you think matters have not gone well with me here. A mistake was made—yes, I admit it—in holding for ransom Monsieur the American Secretary of War; for I observe now that Americans do not venerate their rulers or care what happens to them. But in Europe it is different; so now, as a beginning, I will carry off—perhaps the Czar of Russia, perhaps the Emperor of Germany; for one of these the Russian or the German nation would give many millions. Then I will have money, and that will be the beginning——"
"It begins well," interpolated Detective McBirnie interestedly. "Let's hear the finish!"
"With money all else follows," Racicot went on without heeding him. "Is it power you want, Monsieur Colbert—riches? Behol'! the world is spread out before you," he gestured dramatically and anxiously; " for since we have the secret of the long-distance aeroplane none can oppose us. Name to me the countries over which you would wish to be ruler, and I will give you promise—the promise of Henri Racicot—that these shall be the first countries conquered. Kings shall wait in your antechamber, as they will wait in mine—as they once waited in the antechamber of the greatest Frenchman—if we go away, we three—for the aeroplane carries only three—to become the world- conquerors—I, Henri Racicot, and you, and Mademoiselle Alice Endicott!"
"Alice? What do you mean to do with Alice?" Colbert demanded excitedly. "Tell me! You know it is only because she is partly in your power that I parley with you at all!"
"And how about those two parties over there—Bonnefoi and Pocrass, I believe they're called," McBirnie's calm voice continued the question, "and that other gentleman with a hole in him, who is lying over behind the shed—how about them, since you say your aeroplane carries but three?"
"They of themselves may capture the other and follow—if they wish position with me," the Frenchman spread his palms and shrugged. "If not——"
"You mean to betray them for your love of Mr. Hayden Colbert and Miss Alice Endicott?" The detective considered. "It's easy enough for me to understand your affection for the lady, Mr. Henry Racicot, feeling as I do toward her—and I'll admit it—but this partiality to my friend here——"
"Mademoiselle Alice," Racicot replied confidently, "loves. It would be so, I knew, when time had been given her to think about me. But for sake of old times she has a liking for Monsieur Colbert, and likes not that ill should happen to him. It is for her sake that I offer to take Monsieur Colbert with us!"
"Of course I know you're lying in what you say of Miss Endicott, Racicot," Colbert returned hotly. "And there's something at the bottom of this that I don't understand any more than I understand what made you save me twice this morning."
"What? He saved you twice before this morning?" McBirnie's interest increased immensely. "I should say you ought to ask what's at the bottom of this, Mr. Hayden Colbert."
"What I have told you—that alone!" the Frenchman replied, growing angry with his impatience. "But I hold open my offer no longer. I take my aeroplane and take mademoiselle—and go!"
"You'll have just the time it takes for you to get back to where you waved that cloth for truce, if I judge right by the way Mr. Hayden Colbert is turning the cylinder of his revolver," commented the detective.
"And after that, if you make a move nearer the house," said Colbert sternly, "I'll get you—if your men kill me with the next shot! And Travis, I think, will be with me against you in that, at least!"
"Which we might ask Mr. Roland V. Travis himself about, as he seems coming to us now." McBirnie pointed curiously to the ambassador from the second aeroplane shed advancing toward the tower with empty hands lifted in sign of amity.
"What—Travis!" cried Colbert startled.
"Yes, I, Hayden!" Travis answered pacificatingly from the side to which McBirnie had pointed. "We are going now," he almost paraphrased the Frenchman's words. "But before going I want to tell you that—for the sake of our old friendship—I will overlook what you have said and done here recently, and take you with me and give you your fair share in what is coming to us from our work together."
The eyes of Detective McBirnie bulged from his head in astonishment.
"Travis," Colbert returned sternly, controlling himself, "I don't want to have any further fight with you now—for if these crazy Frenchmen try to carry off Alice, as they threaten, I may need you to help me prevent them. But if you are trying me to see if I will let you get off with the aeroplane to sell it to Germany—I tell you right now I am with Racicot against you on that!"
"You can't be against me in that and not be against Alice, too, Hayden," Travis returned, "for, though your fine Fourth-of-July oration in the breakfast-room this morning swung Alice for a moment, she came to her senses afterward: and when I told her what Germany had promised us she gave me her final answer at last and promised to go to Germany with me! And to get out of here now, away from those soldiers which, she says, you have called here, she goes on the aeroplane with me till we are safe. Eller and Loderbauer have given up their places for her and—for you, if you have come to your senses!"
"You, too?" McBirnie interrupted, perplexed and introspective, before Colbert could reply. "Both you and your old friend, Mr. Henry Racicot, so loving with Mr. Hayden Colbert, and so anxious to take him away with you that you're sacrificing your friends right and left to do it. Mr. Hayden Colbert, you're tall and wide"—he glanced over his companion curiously—"and you're handsome: but you ain't so tall and wide and you ain't so handsome that it's for your good looks these parties both want you!"
But Colbert's firm grasp on his revolver had loosened; he paled and did not hear.
"You've lied to me more than once, Travis," he said in a voice which he seemed to have difficulty in keeping steady as he studied his former friend's face, "but I do not believe even you would lie in the name of Alice Endicott. I knew, of course, that you had been half engaged for a long time: but I thought—— However," he checked himself bitterly, "I congratulate you, Roland. And if the real reason of your coming here was to find out whether I'd shoot at you if you took Alice with you—my answer is, No, if you take her; but—I'll beat you some other way."
"You are not coming with us, then?" Travis persisted strangely.
"Mr. Colbert gave Racicot time to get to his shed; perhaps he'll give you the same," the detective suggested.
"Yes; I give you the same! Now!" Colbert turned to McBirnie recklessly as Travis ran. "No matter if his men shoot me full of holes, I am going to wreck his machine before he gets Alice to it and afterward Racicot's!"
But the perplexity had vanished from McBirnie's face, and his eyes were shining with comprehension.
"No, Mr. Hayden Colbert!" He wound both his long arms quietly but very firmly about Hayden's body, rolling compactly upon the floor with him. You're not going to take the slightest chance of being hurt!"
"Let me up! Are you crazy, man—are you crazy?" Colbert spluttered, trying to break the detective's wiry hold, as he could see through the window the first aeroplane, which Racicot had retained, slanting up again swiftly into the sky. "See—Racicot is escaping; and the troops are too late. We must do it at any cost!"
"Not at your cost, Mr. Hayden Colbert!" McBirnie tightened his hold. "And don't worry," he continued calmly, as he rolled for an instant on top of the other and he could see the rising aeroplane out of the window. "Racicot has his two foreign pals—not Miss Alice—with him; it's plain they ain't been so altruistic about giving up their places as he promised for them."
"But there is Travis—with Alice!" Colbert cried, fighting more desperately against the skillful hold of his lanky antag- onist as their struggles brought them back to the door, and he could see down the hill. "And Eller and Loderbauer have out the second machine. They will all get away! Listen!" he cried, as a clear but far-off tone of a cavalry bugle rang up the valley from the hills toward Washington. "Your troops which Bonnefoi saw cannot get here! Once in the air they can escape clear. We must stop them, I say—at any cost, you madman!"
"Not at your cost, I tell you!" McBirnie iterated with difficulty now, but merely from lack of breath. "Besides—say, Mr. Hayden Colbert, I'll punch if you do, but I'll hold on—well, besides, I was saying, Racicot isn't getting away, though he's in the air; and Mr. Roland Travis isn't in the air—or getting there; for if my troops from Washington are late, if I ain't mistaken those are the Wever's Valley fellows you've been wirelessing to, coming about the back of the house—without playing the Campbells are Comin' first."
"What?" Colbert gasped; and as McBirnie now half released him, while he watched a dozen men in the uniform of the Virginia state troops rush about from the rear of the house and—when they saw their surprise was complete—pounce upon the men about the aeroplane upon the ground with a high-pitched yell of triumph, the younger man broke from the detective's grasp. McBirnie leaped again to seize him, but, seeing the hopelessness of pursuit, stopped quietly to watch what was going on. Eller and Loderbauer, having already started the engine of the aeroplane, were trying to manœuver it free from the ground, when the first of the militiamen caught them. Travis, in the bare hope of getting the machine free before the others could come to overpower them, dropped Alice's arm and left her alone for an instant on the lawn before the house, and ran to assist his German allies; but at the same instant Colbert sprang upon Travis and held him back till the soldiers surrounded the foreigners and the machine was captured.
Grabbing a rifle from the nearest soldier Colbert raised his head to where, the moment before, the first aeroplane with Racicot and his two companions had been circling overhead; and as he raised his rifle to threaten them and summon them down a boy of the militia beside him raised his rifle, too, and without warning fired. Pocrass, the giant Pole in the side seat, dropped an arm; and then, almost before the militiaman who shot had ejected his cartridge, Racicot's last desperate plan was made. Swiftly, so swiftly that the rifle could scarcely follow it, the aeroplane swooped down, and when it was scarcely skimming the ground the wounded Pole dropped from it. While Colbert and the soldiers watched for it then to rise so they could fire again without wounding the other men now coming in from all about, Racicot quickly swerved the machine again till its propeller almost swept the ground, and before even Colbert's cry of alarm and warning could reach her the aeroplane was upon Alice, still standing apart by the house. Checking its flight short for the fraction of the instant that it stood over the girl's head, Racicot reached down and grasped her. Then with a defiant, almost a pitying cry, which carried clearly in the silence back to the men lowering their now useless rifles, Racicot guided the machine up in a long slant again and steered for the southward.
Almost as quickly, however, Colbert was beating his way to the group about the captured aeroplane.
"After them! After them! After them!" he cried wildly as he tried again to start the engine, which, while the soldiers had been standing about, had stopped its whirring. "After them!" he repeated, as he turned all the cocks again. But McBirnie, again beside him, tapped more loudly on the resounding tank behind the engine.
"It's no use turning the cocks, Mr. Hayden Colbert," he advised calmly. "It's the fuel that's gone. The tank's empty. See? And besides, it won't be necessary!" He pointed to a slender stream which, like a silver cord in the bright sunlight, seemed hanging from the aeroplane above them. "For their own fuel is going! The shot which hit Pocrass must have gone through their tank."
"No," corrected the boy who had shot. "It was the girl—she opened the vent—I saw her do it!"
"But the tank holds gallons—enough for two thousand miles."
"About enough to bring them safely to the ground, if I guess right," McBirnie again corrected calmly; "and Racicot sees it!"
And, indeed, the aeroplane, after making a wide, sweeping circle, dropped downward again almost to the point where the other stood; and as the soldiers sprang for it Racicot stepped out.
"Messieurs—gentlemen!" he stopped them with a grandiose gesture and they waited in a circle till Colbert and Travis and the Secretary of War and all the rest were about him. "All fails! It is my fate! I am like the Marshal Ney: I am like the Roman Antony—eh, bien! It matters nothing; for I am no longer the great man, but have again become one of a million; for I have been ruined by a woman! Ah, messieurs, and such a woman! Mademoiselle," he turned to the girl in his magnificent audacity, "believe, if I cannot be loved by you, then the thing that above all in life I would most desire is this—that you should have been my ruin! That is what it is to love as a Frenchman! But I do not hope, since you would not love me when I had the whole worl' to lay at your feet, that you can love now that I have nothing; to what one, therefore, shall I resign you?" His eyes, sweeping rapidly the group about him, rested mockingly an instant first on the white and angry face of Travis, then on the flushed, excited face of Colbert. "None apply, Mademoiselle Endicott," he concluded in mocking accents which matched his look, "so I am forced to return you to your father!" And before any one, even the girl, was aware what he was doing, he had taken her hand in his and laid it on the arm of the Secretary of War.
But the Secretary, after the first emotion of seeing his daughter so suddenly in danger and so unexpectedly safe again, recollected himself and turned abruptly to Colbert.
"Hayden," he demanded, "you got my message through?"
"No, sir. I could not!"
"Then we must put a message through now—and it must be done immediately—quickly—with all speed! This madman, Racicot, we have no further fear of, as we have sufficient grounds for locking him up. But, so far as I can see, we have no legal right to interfere with Travis. We must put all particulars in the hands of the President at once, and let the Government decide what immediate steps are to be taken to check Germany and preserve the peace of Europe. For we cannot hope for more than a day's delay, as we are unable to prevent Travis putting the secret of the perfected aeroplane in the hands of the German Government."
"Unless it happens, Mr. John Endicott," Detective McBirnie interposed suddenly, "that Mr. Roland V. Travis, of Philadelphia and Berlin, here, ain't got the goods to deliver—ain't got the secret—as I am sure now he hasn't!"
"Not got it!" Colbert and the Secretary of War cried together.
"If either of them had it, as they made you think, Mr. Hayden Colbert," the detective returned, "why did they have only a flaskful of the stuff in this machine and about a bottleful in the other? Or did you really think it was for your looks that neither of them felt they could leave without you? Or did you also think it was to save your looks that I didn't let you get shot up when unnecessary? No, sir! It was because they knew, and I knew by that time, that you were the only man who had the secret they needed—the secret, we have just found out, of the fuel for the perfect aeroplane."
"But the formula was stolen from me by Eller, and Racicot took it from him—I had worked it out and written it down, like a fool! And they stole it!"
"Not so fast, please, Mr. Hayden Colbert—wrote down. All right! But there ain't one but several things that can happen to a piece of even stolen paper—it gets burned, it gets torn, it gets wet, and you can't read what's on it. Ain't I right, Mr. Henry Racicot?"
"Why lie?" the Frenchman shrugged indifferently. "With me it is—as you say—all up! So to lie is too much trouble, and I tell the truth. Herr Eller, it is true, stole the papers from the strong-box. But I was watching—seize him! Behol'! we struggle for the paper! Sacre! It is torn between us! It is mangle', it is no longer to be read! But already we have gone too far to go back again! We go forward, therefore, on our own ways! I have already imprison' Monsieur Colbert! I trust that in the good time the secret will still be got from him. But all happens too quick—I have not time—instead, I am everywhere disappoint', defeat', ruin'!"
"Then the aeroplane is still mine!" Colbert, in sudden comprehension, cried triumphantly. "Mine, to be used only for peace, its secret to be given only to the Government which will guarantee its peaceful usage!"
"Or else," Endicott supplemented, "to be conveyed simultaneously to all Governments of the world under conditions which will make the abolition of war a necessity! Hayden—Hayden, I must get back to Washington without the delay of an instant, and you must go with me! We must find at once some means of conveyance!"
"Give me fifteen minutes for making the fuel, and I can put you and Alice in Washington within the hour, Mr. Endicott, if I can use the aeroplane which remains uninjured!"
And, as the Secretary of War started at this reminder of the instrument whose powers were so new that in the first moment of possession he had even forgotten to make use of them, Colbert turned to the girl.
"Alice," he said in a voice too low to be overheard by the others, "almost six months ago, on the Rhine road in Alsace, there were three men on whose lips the same question was trembling. Racicot, of course, need never have been considered. But Travis told me today that he had asked you that question, and that you had answered him favorably; yet I feel sure, from what has happened since, that in even this he was not telling the truth to me."
"He was not, Hayden," the girl answered, flushing. "But the third lips?" she asked softly.
"They were mine," Colbert answered. "But I hesitate now, as I did then, to ask for what means so much to me!"
"You might have had it even then, I think," the girl's eyes met his frankly, trustfully, answering the light within his own. "But much more is it yours since I have learned today to know the aims and hopes that guide you."
And a quarter of an hour later the aeroplane, with Hayden Colbert in its middle seat, and on one side of him the Secretary of War, on the other his daughter, rising, took its steady way, more rapid than the birds, directly eastward toward the National Capital.
(THE END)
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1959, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 64 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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