Hollis Godfrey - The Man Who Ended War

“Read it, Dorothy. What does he say?”

“An Herrn Doktor Thomas Haldane.

“Lieber Professor: – Es geht mir an den tod – ” She had gone thus far in the German, when she glanced up and saw my uncomprehending face. “The German too much for you?” she asked. “I’ll translate.” She went on rapidly in English.

“To Doctor Thomas Haldane.

“Dear Professor:

“I am about to die. My physician tells me that I have less than a month left to work. I have just completed the apparatus which had engaged my attention exclusively for the last six years, – my wave-measuring machine. By means of this machine, any wave of a given intensity may be registered as regards its velocity and power.”

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to break in right there,” I interrupted.

“Go on,” said Tom.

“What kind of waves is he talking about? Is this some sort of a machine for measuring the tides down on the beach, or what is it?”

Tom laughed. “Not exactly,” he said. “Denckel’s machine is to measure waves like those of electrical energy. You know, don’t you, that we believe wireless messages go from one station to another by means of ether waves, as they call them?”

I nodded.

“Well, Denckel means to measure waves of that kind, and waves that would come from an arc lamp or a dynamo or a piece of radium or anything like that. It’s to measure the same sort of wave that charged the reflectoscopes, in short – See?”

“I do,” I answered. “But – ”

“Hold on till we finish the letter, Jim, and we’ll go over it.” I subsided and Dorothy went on.

“More than that, the distance from the point of generation of the wave, and the exact direction from which it comes, can be ascertained. It is, as you may see, the unique discovery of the past five years. In computing and making it, I have used some discoveries made by my late colleague, Professor Mingern. At his death, six years ago, he passed his work on to me. Now that my death approaches, I pass my work on to you. I have had many pupils in my long life, but none so worthy, none so able to carry on the work, as you, my dear friend and pupil. Farewell.

“He was as fine an old chap as ever I knew,” said Tom, with deep feeling. “To think of his sending that to me. But what can have happened to it?”

Dorothy stood with a second sheet in her hand. “Here’s something about it,” she said. “Manuscripts sent under cover to same address, apparatus sent to New York via Hamburg-American line.”

“Then the first thing to do is to find the apparatus,” said Tom. “We can send a trailer after the manuscript, but we can’t bank on getting it. I’ll go down to the custom-house to-morrow morning. What a blow to science, if the whole thing were lost.” “But,” he went on suddenly, “isn’t it extraordinary that this should come along just now? It helps us a whole lot.”

“That is so,” remarked Dorothy reflectively. “We ought to be able to tell just where ‘the man’ is every time.”

“Once more I humbly confess my ignorance,” I remarked, “but will you kindly enlighten me as to the way in which this is to help us in the search for the man?”

“Certainly,” said Dorothy smiling. “We know that the reflectoscopes were charged by a wave which ‘the man’ sent out from some definite spot. Theoretically, that place might be anywhere in the world. Practically, it’s probably somewhere not many miles from the ship he is destroying. But it is somewhere. His waves start from some definite point. There is some single point of generation. Now, with this machine, I ought to be able to find out just where the place is from which the wave starts, and not only within a hundred miles, but within a very brief space. Say, for instance, we had the machine in London, I could tell that ‘the man’ started his waves from Sandy Hook, and not from Hell Gate. That power of fixing the exact position of ‘the man’ gives us a tremendous step.”

“Absolutely tremendous,” I cried, and Tom chimed in, his eyes blazing with enthusiasm. “Here’s to the successful working out of the new clue.”

The announcement of dinner made rather an anti-climax to our discovery.

Tom laughed – “Well, we’ve got to eat, anyway. Come on.”

No feast could equal a dinner with Dorothy as hostess. Never did her sweet face look more charming than when she presided at her own board. The talk soon became confined to technicalities, as Dorothy and Tom discussed the possibilities of the new apparatus, and I sat watching Dorothy’s expressive face, as she talked of velocities and lengths, methods of generation and of control. But her absorption in her subject lasted but a brief time. Dinner over she turned to the piano. Then for two hours her music wafted me through many a lofty old Iberian turret.

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