Part 14

“I thought as much,” agreed Craig. “Have you heard anything more about the activity of Shelby? He was here at the funeral this afternoon. He’s out on the _Sybarite_ now, and has been very quiet, at least down here.”

“I’ve been making some inquiries,” replied Hastings, slowly. “As nearly as any of the brokers I know can tell, I should say that Shelby must be doing something. There have been several large blocks of stock unloaded and they have all been taken up. In spite of it the price has been maintained. But it’s all underground. I haven’t decided which side Shelby is on, bear or bull. He never was on either side before, so I don’t know what he is up to. You can reason it out either way――and, after all, it is a matter of fact, not reason.”

“It won’t take long to find that out to-morrow, if we want to,” remarked Kennedy. “The trouble to-day was that there were more pressing things that had to be done.”

We had scarcely finished outlining to Hastings what we had discovered at Westport when Riley edged up to report to Burke.

“Miss Walcott’s acting very strangely, sir,” he ventured. “You’d think she hadn’t a friend in the world.”

“How’s that?” cut in Kennedy.

“I saw her coming up from the beach awhile ago alone,” replied Riley. “First she passed Mrs. Maddox and they scarcely spoke, then later I saw her do the same thing with Mrs. Walcott. They’ve been that way, now, for some time.”

“Where is she――in her room?” asked Burke.

Riley nodded. “Yes.”

“I can’t see any reason why she should stay here, if she feels this way about it,” put in Hastings testily. “She doesn’t belong to the family.”

Kennedy glanced covertly at me. I fancied I understood what was in his mind. Winifred Walcott probably would not have admitted, even to herself, why she stayed.

“That little dancer and Miss Walcott are as friendly as Kilkenny cats, too,” added Riley, with a left-handed attempt at humor.

“You have an X-ray eye,” commented Craig, with veiled sarcasm, which quite amused me, for the detective actually took it literally and thanked him. “Paquita is still about, then?”

“Yes, sir. Right after you went up-stairs she had her car brought around and started out for a spin――down the shore road. But she must have seen that one of our men was following, for she turned up-country and was back again in half an hour. If she intended to do anything, she must have been scared off. She’s up-stairs now, dressing for dinner, I suppose. I’ve got her checkmated. She can’t move without my knowing it――and she knows it.”

“Down the shore road,” repeated Kennedy, reflectively. “I wonder what she could have wanted down there. The wireless impulses came from the water side. Walter would you mind going down on the dock and telling that young man of mine he had better get a bite to eat right away and that then he can begin getting the stuff unpacked and set up!”

While Watkins took a hasty dinner at the Lodge, I relieved him of watching the packages he had brought. It was a tiresome wait, for I longed to be with Kennedy.

One thing, however, broke the monotony. Once when I looked up I caught sight of a launch putting out from the _Sybarite_ and feathering over the choppy waves in the direction of the dock. As it came closer I saw that it contained Shelby Maddox, still alone. He came ashore and, as he walked up the dock, saw me and nodded absently. Evidently he was thinking of something else.

I was glad to rejoin Kennedy a few minutes later when Watkins returned and began to unwrap the packages, as Craig had ordered. Fortunately for the sake of my curiosity, nothing had occurred during my absence, except that Craig and Burke had seen Shelby enter, although he had done nothing.

It was the dinner hour and the guests were beginning to enter the dining-room. Shelby had already done so, selecting a table where he was in sight of that usually occupied by the Walcotts. Their table seemed deserted to-night. Johnson Walcott was not yet back, and Irene Maddox now sat at another table, with those of her family who had come to be with her at the funeral. Winifred did not come down to dinner at all, which seemed to vex Shelby, for it looked as though she were avoiding him. The only person at the table was Frances Walcott.

Convinced that no one else was coming in, Shelby glumly hurried through his meal, and finally, unable to stand it any longer, rose, and on the way out stopped to talk with his sister.

What was said we could not guess. But it was more like a parley during an armistice than a talk between brother and sister, and it did not seem to do Shelby much good.

Finally he drifted out aimlessly into the lobby again. As he stood undecided, we caught a glimpse of the petite figure of Paquita flitting from an alcove in his direction. Before he could avoid her she spoke to him.

However unwelcome the meeting might have been to Shelby――and his face showed plainly that it was so――there could be no doubt of Paquita’s eagerness to see him. As I looked at her I could only wonder at the strangeness of life. She whom men had pursued and had found elusive, even when they thought they had her captured, was now herself in the anomalous rôle of pursuer. And the man whom she pursued cared no more for her than she for those who pursued her. Nay more, he was openly, hopelessly in love with another woman, in every respect the antithesis of herself. Much as I disliked Paquita’s type, though realizing her fascination as a study, I could not help seeing the potential tragedy and pathos of the situation.

She did not accuse or upbraid. On the contrary, she was using every art of which she was a past mistress to fascinate and attract. I did not need prompting from Kennedy to see the strange romance of the situation. The little dancer was subtly matching all the charm and all the knowledge of men and the world which she possessed against the appeal that Winifred had made to a hitherto latent side of Shelby’s nature. The struggle between the two women was no less enthralling than the unraveling of the mystery of Marshall Maddox’s death.

“By Heaven!” I heard Kennedy mutter under his breath, as we watched Paquita and Shelby, “I wonder whether it is right to let events take their course. Yes――it must be. If he cannot go through it now, he’ll never be able to. Yes, Shelby Maddox must fight that out for himself. He shall not ruin the life of Winifred Walcott.”

His remark set me thinking of the responsibility Craig had had thrust on him. It was far more than merely running down the murderer of Marshall Maddox, now.

Shelby himself evidently appreciated what faced him. I could see that he was talking very bluntly and pointedly to her, almost rudely. Now and then she flashed a glance at him which, with her flushed face and the emotion expressed in her very being, could not have failed only three days ago. Shelby seemed to feel it, and took refuge in what looked to be an almost harshness of manner with her.

Kennedy jogged my arm and I followed his eyes. In the alcove from which she had come I was not surprised to see Sanchez, standing and looking at them. His dark eyes seemed riveted on the man as though he hated him with a supernal hate. What would he himself not have given to be where Shelby was? I wondered whether his blinded eyes saw the truth about Shelby’s position. I doubted it, for it was with difficulty that he restrained himself. Black and ominous were the looks that he darted at the younger man. Indeed, I did not envy him.

As I turned to say something to Kennedy I saw that Sanchez and ourselves were not the only ones interested. Frances Maddox had just come out of the dining room, had seen her brother and Paquita, and had drawn back into the shadow of a doorway leading to the porch, where she could see them better without being seen by them. Yet she betrayed nothing of her feelings toward either.

Meanwhile Shelby had been getting more and more vehement as he talked. I could not hear, but it was quite evident now that he was repeating and enforcing the remarks he had made to Paquita the night before during their secret stroll down the beach. And she, instead of getting angry, as he no doubt hoped she would, was keeping her temper and her control of herself in a most dangerous manner.

There was so much to think about that it was not until now that I noticed that the face we had seen in the alcove was gone. Sanchez had disappeared. Had the thing been too much for him? Was it that he could not trust himself to stay? At any rate, he was gone.

Just then Shelby turned on his heel, almost brutally, and deliberately walked away. It was as though he felt it his only escape from temptation.

Paquita took an involuntary step after him, then stopped short. I followed her quick glance to see what it might be that had deterred her. She had caught sight of Frances Walcott, whose interest had betrayed her into letting the light stream through the doorway on her face. Instantly Paquita covered the vexation that was on her face. Least of all would she let this man’s sister see it. Consummate actress that she was, she turned and walked across the lobby, and a moment later was in gay conversation with another of her numerous admirers. But it did not take an eye more trained than mine to see the gaiety was forced, the animation of quite a different character from that she had showed to Shelby.

“Of one thing we can be sure,” remarked Craig. “Miss Walcott will hear all about this. I hope she hears the truth. I’m almost tempted to tell her myself.” He paused, debating. “No,” he decided, finally, “the time hasn’t come yet.”

Shelby had retreated to the porch, where now he was pacing up and down, alone. As he came past the door his abstracted glance fell with a start on his sister. He drew himself together and spoke to her. Evidently he was debating whether she had seen anything, and, if so, how much and how she had interpreted it. At any rate, he was at pains to speak now, hoping that she might carry a message which he dared not send. What was going on in their minds I could not guess, but to outward appearance they were more like brother and sister than I had seen them ever before.

They parted finally and Shelby continued his measured tread about the porch, as though trying to make up his mind on a course of action. For about a quarter of an hour he walked, then, his face set in determined lines, entered the Lodge and went deliberately over to a florist’s stand. There, oblivious to anything else, he selected the handsomest bunch of violets on the stand. He was about to drop his card into their fragrant and reconciling depths when he paused, replaced the card in his case, and directed the man to deliver them anonymously. There was no need for us to inquire where they were sent.

Still oblivious to the gay life of the Lodge and Casino, he strode out into the night and down to the dock, paying no attention to Craig’s student as he passed. He stepped into the tender which was still waiting and we saw him head straight for the _Sybarite_. Ten minutes later the lights in the main saloon flashed up. Shelby was evidently at work over some problem, wrestling it out himself. Was it his relations with Winifred or his stock-market schemes――or both?

“Well, I’ve been looking all over for you. Where have you been?” sounded Burke’s voice back of us, as Kennedy and I were silently looking out over the dark waters at the yacht.

Without waiting for us to reply Burke hurried on. “You remember that operator, Steel, that was here from Seaville?”

“Yes,” encouraged Kennedy. “What of him?”

“He went back to the station and has done his trick. He has just crossed over again with a message to me. That wireless power, whatever it is, is jamming the air again. I thought you’d like to know of it.”

For just a second Kennedy looked at Burke in silence, then without further inquiry turned and almost ran down the length of the dock to the float at the end.

There Watkins had already set up on the float a large affair which looked for all the world like a mortar. We watched as Craig fussed with it to make sure that everything was all right. Meanwhile the student continued adjusting something else that had been let down over the edge of the float into the water. It seemed to be a peculiar disk, heavy and suspended by a stout wire which allowed it to be submerged eight or ten feet.

“What’s this thing?” inquired Burke, looking at the mortar over which Craig was bending. “Fireworks, or are you going to bombard somebody?”

“It’s a light-weight rocket mortar,” explained Kennedy, ramming something into it. “You’ll see in a moment. Stand back, all of you――off the float――on the dock.”

Suddenly there came a deep detonation from the mortar and a rocket shot out and up in a long, low parabola. Kennedy rushed forward, and another detonation sent a second far out in a different angle.

“What is it?” gasped Burke, in amazement.

“Look!” called Kennedy, elated.

Another instant, and from every quarter of the harbor there seemed to rise, as if from the waves, huge balls of fire, a brilliant and luminous series of flames literally from the water itself. It was a moonless night but these fires seemed literally to roll back the Cimmerian darkness.

“A recent invention,” explained Craig, “light-bombs, for use at night against torpedo-boat and aeroplane attacks.”

“Light-bombs!” Burke repeated.

“Yes, made of phosphide of calcium. The mortar hurls them out, and they are so constructed that they float after a short plunge in the water. You see, the action of the salt water automatically ignites them merely by contact and the chemical action of the phosphide and the salt water keeps them phosphorescing for several minutes.”

As he talked he shot off some more.

“Kennedy, you’re a genius,” gasped Burke. “You’re always ready for anything.”

The sight before us was indeed a beautiful pyrotechnic display. The bombs lighted up the shores and the low-lying hills, making everything stand forth and cast long spectral shadows. Cottages hidden among trees or in coves along the wide sweep of the shore line stood out as if in an unearthly flare.

What people on the shore thought we had no time even to wonder. They crowded out on the porches, in consternation. The music at the Casino stopped. No one had ever seen anything like it before. It was fire on water!

As yet none of us had even an inkling of what it was that Kennedy expected to discover. But every craft in the harbor now stood out distinct――in the glare of a miniature sun. We could see that, naturally, excitement on the boats was greater than it was on shore, for they were closer to the flares and therefore it seemed more amazing.

Craig was scanning the water carefully, seeking any sign of something suspicious.

“There it is!” he exclaimed, bending forward and pointing.

We strained our eyes. A mile or two out I could distinguish a power-boat of good size, moving swiftly away, as though trying to round the shelter of a point of land, out of the light. With a glass some one made out a stubby wireless mast on her.

Kennedy’s surmise when we had first studied the wireless interference had proved correct.

Sure enough, in the blackness of the night, there was a fast express cruiser, of the new scout type, not large, almost possible for one man to control, the latest thing in small power-boats and a perfect demon for speed!

Was that the source of the strange wireless impulses? Whose was it, and why was it there?

XXI

THE SUBMARINE EAR

Almost before we knew it the speed demon had disappeared beyond the circle of the flares.

“Suspiciously near the _Sybarite_,” remarked Kennedy, under his breath, watching the scout cruiser to the last moment as she ran away.

I wondered whether he meant that the swift little motor-boat might have some connection with Shelby Maddox and his new activities, but I said nothing, for Kennedy’s attention was riveted on the wake left by the boat. I looked, too, and could have sworn that there was something moving in the opposite direction to that taken by the boat. What could it be?

On the end of the dock was an incandescent lamp. Craig unscrewed the bulb and inserted another connection in the bulb socket, an insulated cable that led down to the apparatus on the float over which his assistant was still working.

By this time quite a crowd had collected on the dock, and on the float, watching us.

“Burke,” ordered Kennedy, “will you and Jameson make the people stand back? We can’t do anything with so many around.”

As we pressed the new-comers back I saw that among them was Paquita. Though I looked, I could not discover Sanchez, but thought nothing of it, for there were so many about that it would have been hard to find any particular person.

“If you will please stand back,” I implored, trying to keep the curious from almost swamping the float, “you will all be able to see what is going on just as well and, besides, it will be a great deal safer――providing there is an explosion,” I added as a happy afterthought, although I had almost as vague an idea what Kennedy was up to as any of them.

The words had the effect I intended. The crowd gave way, not only willing, but almost in panic.

As they pressed back, however, Paquita pressed forward until she was standing beside me.

“Is――Mr. Maddox――out there?” she asked, pointing out at the _Sybarite_ anxiously.

“Why?” I demanded, hoping in her anxiety to catch her off guard.

She shot a quick glance at me. There was no denying that the woman was clever and quick of perception.

“Oh, I just wondered,” she murmured. “I wanted to see him, so much――that is all. And it’s very urgent.”

She glanced about, as though hoping to discover some means of communicating with the yacht, even of getting out to it. But there did not seem to be any offered.

I determined to watch her, and for that reason did not insist that she get back as far as the rest of the crowd. All the time I saw that she was looking constantly out at the _Sybarite_. Did she know something about Shelby Maddox that we did not know? I wondered if, indeed, there might be some valid reason why she should get out there. What did she suspect?

Again she came forward, inquiring whether there was not some way of communicating with the _Sybarite_, and again, when I tried to question her, she refused to give me any satisfaction. However, I could not help noticing that in spite of the cold manner in which Shelby had treated her, she seemed now to be actuated more by the most intense fear for him than by any malice against him.

What it meant I had the greatest curiosity to know, especially when I noticed that Paquita was glancing nervously about as though in great fear that some one might be present and see her. Nor did she seem to be deterred from showing her feelings by the fact that she knew that I, Kennedy’s closest friend, was watching and would undoubtedly report to him. It was as though she had abandoned discretion and cast fear to the winds.

As the minutes passed and nothing happened, Paquita became a trifle calmer and managed to take refuge in the crowd.

I took the opportunity again to run my eye over them. Nowhere in the crowd could I discover Winifred, or, in fact, any of the Maddox family. They seemed to be studiously avoiding appearance in public just now, and I could not blame them, for in a summer colony like that at Westport facts never troubled gossipers.

“What do you suppose Kennedy is afraid of?” whispered Hastings in my ear, nervously. “Your friend is positively uncanny, and I can almost feel that he fears something.”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” I confessed, “but I’ve seen enough of him to be sure that no one is going to catch him napping. Here’s Riley. Perhaps he has some news.”

The Secret Service operative had shouldered his way through the throng, looking for Burke, who was right behind me.

“What’s the matter,” demanded his chief.

“There’s another message, by telephone from the Seaville Station,” Riley reported. “They say they are having the same trouble again――only more of it.”

“That operator, Steel, came back again,” considered Burke. “Where is he?”

“As soon as I got the message, I hunted him up and took the liberty of sending him up to Mr. Kennedy’s room to look at that arrangement there. I couldn’t make anything out of it myself, I knew, and I thought that he could.”

“Did he?” inquired Burke.

“Yes. Of course he hadn’t seen it work before. But I told him as nearly as I could what you had told me, and it didn’t take him very long to catch on to the thing. After that he said that what was being recorded now must be just the same as it had been before when Mr. Kennedy was there――not messages, but just impulses.”

“Where is he――down here?”

“No, I left him up there. I thought it might be best to have some one there. Did you want to speak to him? There’s a telephone down here in the boat-house up to the switchboard at the Lodge.”

Riley jerked his thumb back over his shoulder at a little shelter built on the end of the dock.

“N-no,” considered Burke. “I wouldn’t know what to tell him.”

“But I think you ought to tell Kennedy that,” I interrupted. “He might know what to do.”

Together Riley and I walked across the float to where Craig was at work, and briefly I told him what had happened.

He looked grave, but did not pause in his adjustment of the machine, whatever it was.

“That’s all right,” he approved. “Yes, get the operator on the wire. Tell him to stay up there. And――yes――tell him to detach that phonograph recording device and go back to straight wireless. He might try to wake up the operator on the _Sybarite_, if he can. I guess he must know the call. Have him do that and then have that telephone girl keep the line clear and connected from the boat-house up to my room. I want to keep in touch with Steel.”

Riley and I pushed through the crowd and finally managed to deliver Kennedy’s message, in spite of the excitement at the Lodge, which had extended by this time to the switchboard operator. I left Riley in the boat-house to hold the wire up to our room, and rejoined Burke and Hastings on the float.