The Complete Detective Sgt. Elk Series (6 Novels in One Edition). Edgar Wallace
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very gently. “I want you to do something for me; and I must tell you that, although I ask it as a favour, I can enforce my wishes as a right.”
“I will do anything,” said the girl eagerly.
“Very well; you must let me take this book away.”
“But it is not mine; it belongs to Miss Dominguez,” she protested; “and it is to save my brother’s name—”
“Miss Hyatt,” said Van Ingen, “I must take this book which has so providentially come into my hands, not to save your brother’s name, but to bring to justice the men who took his life.” As he spoke there came a knock at the door; and, hastily drying her eyes, the girl opened it.
A porter handed her a telegram, and she came back into the light of the room to open it. She read it, and reread it; then looked at Van Ingen with bewilderment written on her face.
“What does this mean?” she said. He took the telegram from her hand; it had been readressed from Falmouth and ran:
BY WIRELESS FROM PORT SYBIL. DO NOT PART WITH BOOK TO ANYBODY ON ANY ACCOUNT. CATHERINE DOMINGUEZ.
He handed the telegram back.
“It means,” he said, “that our friend is just two minutes too late.”
20. At the Admiralty
“This business is a little too hot to hold,” said the editor in a final interview with T.B., who had persuaded him to keep back his story, until he had bagged the “Nine Men.” “Tonight I must tell the whole of the affair.”
T.B. nodded.
“Tonight,” said T.B., “you can tell what you like. I shall have played my stake for good or ill.
“I have been talking with Escoltier; we have got him lodged in Scotland Yard — though you needn’t mention that fact in your account — and I think we know enough now to trap the ‘Nine Men.’”
“Who are they and what does the ‘ C.’ stand for in ‘ N.H.C.’?”
“I can only guess,” said T.B. cautiously. “Do you know anything about wireless telegraphy?”
he demanded.
“Not much,” admitted the editor.
“Well, you know enough to realise that the further you wish to communicate the more electrical energy you require?”
“That much I understand,” said the journalist.
“The principle is the ‘rings on the pond.’ You throw a stone into still water, and immediately rings grow outward. The bigger the stone, the farther-reaching the rings.”
“At Poldhu,” continued T.B., “Hyatt was in charge of the long-distance instrument. As a matter of fact, the work he was engaged on was merely experimental, but his endeavour seemed to be centred in securing the necessary energy for communicating 900 miles. Of course, wireless telegraphy is practicable up to and beyond 3,000 miles, but few installations are capable of transmitting that distance.”
“So ‘C.’ is, you think, within 900 miles of Cornwall?”
T.B. nodded.
“I have a feeling that I know ‘C.,’” he said.
“I have another feeling that these wireless messages do not come from ‘C.’ at all, but from a place adjacent. However,” — he took from his pocket a flat exercise book filled with closely written columns of words and figures—” we shall see.”
He took a cab from Fleet Street; and, arriving at the block of Government buildings which shelters the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, he entered its gloomy doors.
A messenger came forward to enquire his business, but was forestalled by a keen little man with tanned face and twinkling eyes. “Sailor” was written on every line of his mahogany face.
“Hullo, my noble policeman,” he greeted T.B.
“Who is the victim — the First Sea Lord or the Controller of the Victualling Department?”
“To be precise, Almack,” said T.B., “I have come to arrest Reform, which I gather—”
“No politics,” smiled Captain John Almack, R.N. “What is the game?”
“It is what our mutual friend Napoleon would call a negative problem in strategy,” the Assistant-Commissioner replied. “I want to ask an ethereal friend, who exists somewhere in space, to come in and be killed.”
Captain Almack led the way up a flight of stairs.
“We got a request from your Commissioner; and, of course, the Lords of the Admiralty are only too pleased to put the instrument at your disposal.”
“They are very charming,” murmured T.B.
“They instructed me to keep a watchful eye on you. We have missed things since your last visit.”
“That sounds like a jovial lie,” said T.B. frankly.
In the orderly instrument room they found an operator in attendance, and T.B. lost no time.
“Call N.H.C.,” he said; and, whilst the instrument clicked and snapped obedient to the man’s hand, T.B. opened his little exercise book and composed a message. He had finished his work long before any answer came to the call. For half-an-hour they waited whilst the instrument clicked monotonously. “Dash-dot, dot-dot-dot, dash-dot-dash-dot.”
And over and over again.
“Dash-dot, dot-dot-dot, dash-dot-dash-dot.” Then suddenly the operator stopped, and there came a new sound.
They waited in tense silence.
“Answered,” said the operator.
“Take this.” T.B. handed him a slip of paper.
As the man sent the message out with emphatic tappings, Captain Almack took the translation that T.B. handed to him.
“To N.H.C. There is trouble here. I must see you. Important. Can you meet me in Paris tomorrow?”
After this message had gone through there was a wait of five minutes. Then the answer came, and the man at the instrument wrote down unintelligible words which T.B. translated.
“Impossible. Come to M. Will meet S.E. Have you got the book?”
“Reply ‘Podaba’” instructed T.B., spelling the word. “Now send this.” He handed another slip of paper across the table, and passed the translation back to the man behind him.
“Is Gibraltar intercepting messages?” it ran. Again the wait, and again the staccato reply.
“Unlikely, but will send round tomorrow to make sure. Goodnight.”
As the instrument clicked its farewell, T.B. executed a silent wardance to the scandal of the solemn operator, and the delight of the little captain.
“T.B., you’ll get me hung!” he warned.
“You’ll upset all kinds of delicate instruments, to say nothing of the telegraphist’s sense of decency. Come away.”
“Now,” demanded Captain Almack, when he had led him to his snug little office; “what is the mystery?”
T.B. related as much of the story as was necessary, and the officer whistled.
“The devils!” he swore.
“The discovery I was trying to make,” T.B. went on, “was the exact location of N.H.C. I asked him or them to come to Paris.