The Project Gutenberg eBook ofShuddering castleThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Shuddering castleAuthor: Wilbur Finley FauleyRelease date: October 4, 2023 [eBook #71806]Most recently updated: October 18, 2023Language: EnglishOriginal publication: New York, NY: Green Circle Books, 1936Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHUDDERING CASTLE ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Shuddering castleAuthor: Wilbur Finley FauleyRelease date: October 4, 2023 [eBook #71806]Most recently updated: October 18, 2023Language: EnglishOriginal publication: New York, NY: Green Circle Books, 1936Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)
Title: Shuddering castle
Author: Wilbur Finley Fauley
Author: Wilbur Finley Fauley
Release date: October 4, 2023 [eBook #71806]Most recently updated: October 18, 2023
Language: English
Original publication: New York, NY: Green Circle Books, 1936
Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHUDDERING CASTLE ***
SHUDDERING CASTLEBy Wilbur FawleyGREEN CIRCLE BOOKSNEW YORKCOPYRIGHT, 1936byLEE FURMAN, INC.[Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover anyevidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]Printed in the United States of America
By Wilbur Fawley
GREEN CIRCLE BOOKSNEW YORK
COPYRIGHT, 1936byLEE FURMAN, INC.
[Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover anyevidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Printed in the United States of America
SHUDDERING CASTLE
Shuddering Castleis not a mystery novel in the generally accepted sense. It is a novel with a mystery; a highly imaginative story, with revelations in the field of radio and short-wave broadcasting. None of the strange events recorded oversteps the boundaries of accepted natural laws.
In this novel of exciting action, radio communication is established between Earth and Mars, with a world-girdling hook-up from Radio Center, in New York City, and the reader will be amazed to find that the Martians are human beings like ourselves, subject to the same laws, the same temptations and passions which affect humanity. Into this pulsating picture of tensed American life of the near future, comes another revelation from the sky. This brings the reader to the drama of a frightening but plausible visitor from the jungles of Mars to this world, whose presence in the old spooky castle of an eccentric millionaire-scientist on Long Island causes great fear to its inmates when night falls.
But there is thrilling romance to warm your hearts, the infatuation of a young newspaperman for the alluring debutante niece of the old scientist; a humanly drawn boy and girl who are caught in the violent web of mystery and sudden death.Shuddering Castleis a unique study in the mysterious recesses of the universe.
SHUDDERING CASTLE
I
As a staid and wealthy New York family, of distinguished but remote English ancestry, we moved formally and rather arrogantly within our small, exclusive circle, holding on grimly to the traditions and elegancies of the past. During the winter season, we viewed the outside world placidly, and with the respectful composure of middle-age, from the dignified privacy of our red brick mansion in Washington Square.
On May first, as regular as clockwork, year in and year out, and with all the solemnity of a ritual, we put our elaborate upholstered furniture in linen shrouds, veiled the somber, scowling family portraits in their dull gold frames with fly-netting, boarded up the windows and doors, and went to the country. Our summer home is called The Castle, and it is situated at Sands Cliff, Long Island. As a family we resembled nothing so much as this embattled stone fortress, of old-world design, in which we spent more than half the year.
As long back as I can remember, we had successfully preserved the family's seclusion from the living world. Wherever we happened to be, in town or country, we had protected our privacy with shuttered windows, and massive iron gates that were secured both day and night with heavy chains. Numerous signs of "Private" and "No Trespassing Allowed" dotted our grounds like grave markers.
And then, quite suddenly, our lives became incredibly transformed. A series of weird events brought us out of our privacy and seclusion—brought us plenty of excitement and trouble and even horror.
But that was not to be wondered at, with Henry, my elder brother, suddenly developing a mania for research in scientific matters, especially the science of heavenly bodies and the phenomena of radio. He did not pretend to be a scholar, although he had cultivated scholarly habits most of his life. Inexplicably, this mania had seized him late in life; a sort of bursting out of the abnormal repression which held us all in thrall, no doubt as the result of our long seclusion from the outside world and following the drab and barren routine of our lives with such punctilious rigidity.
Ample means had enabled him to completely outfit an observatory, with a powerful telescope, at our summer residence. Here he would spend hours gazing into the abyss of space. He saw things up there the trained, professional astronomer never saw, or ever hoped to see—colliding suns, formation of temporary stars, the rejuvenescence of dying worlds, and gaseous explosions in the Milky Way.
One of his pet theories was that the planet Mars was inhabited by a race of people like ourselves, and that their men of science had long been trying to establish radio communication with the earth. The static on our radio set which annoyed me intensely, would galvanize Henry with delight and hope, and his eyes would glisten almost frenziedly behind their horn-rimmed spectacles.
"Those are distinctly electro-magnetic waves," he would say, "that come from some point far off in space, and they are not due to any terrestrial disturbance like thunderstorms, local or distant."
There was no opening, no escape, from Henry once he got started on the galactic radio waves as differing from the cosmic rays and from the phenomenon of cosmic radiation.
"I'm telling you, Livingston," he once declared in an excited, high-pitched voice, "that man has only begun his conquest of time and space. There are no limitations to human achievement. The world is on the threshold of things unheard of, undreamed of. I have no doubt that we will soon be able to establish radio communication with Mars, and with my leisure, money and the required taste for science, I feel that I am admirably fitted to make it come true."
And from that day he was changed, secretive. He refused to tell me what he had discovered. Again and again I begged him to explain and always it was the same vague answer, the same shake of the head, and tightened lips.
It all seemed fantastic and visionary then, Henry's theories about Mars and interstellar communication, but when unusual things began to happen and our peaceful and ordered living was suddenly and violently disturbed, I realized, as never before, that visions often come to reality in an unbelievable way.
At the time we were thrown into such turmoil, and the dread spotlight of publicity centered upon us, our family consisted of Henry and myself, both bachelors; Jane, our spinster sister, and Patricia Royce Preston—Pat for short—a very fascinating young person, who had come to live with us at the tender age of fourteen, after the shocking death of her parents, our youngish sister, Virginia Royce Preston, and her husband, Allston, who were killed in an air-liner crash near Paris.
There is something strangely lovable about a young girl in the process of growing up. The advent of Pat meant, of course, less privacy and the trampling down of staid personal habits and family customs which we held virtually sacred. The fact that we were old and queer and our household drab and rather grotesque, in comparison to the modernistic and rather barbaric splendor of our more fashionable friends, scarcely troubled her. Nothing seemed to matter but that this bright-eyed, brown-haired girl should concentrate all her love and devotion on a trio of old fossils. A warm affection grew between us and our pretty niece. As she blossomed into young womanhood our lives became centered in her. She was now eighteen.
Although we were born rich, and received a huge income from the heritage of vast and various real estate holdings on Manhattan Island, both Henry and myself, strangely enough, had never splurged, and never married. I am sure the thought of matrimony never entered Jane's mind. Our natural emotions seemed to be stirred and exalted only by the importance of our family name and our wealth. Romantically, we were strangely neutral, as though, in the pursuit of riches, the family stock had been sort of washed out.
After our college days, Henry and I grew into old-fashioned, mellow bachelorhood, aloof from the world and very self-sufficient, and glad to have it so. Henry had just observed his sixty-fifth birthday when our lives became so tempestuous and convulsed. I was two years his junior. Jane had just turned sixty. As progeny, we seemed to have come into this world in swift successiveness, as though the marriage of our revered parents had fulfilled its promise in a bunch.
For an entire summer Henry lived virtually in seclusion in his observatory without any tangible result. Sweeping the sky with his telescope for anything that might happen. But nothing transpired. Yet he persisted. Finally, he detected a tiny comet, apparently on its way to the earth. At first it appeared no larger than a pin-prick of light, with a small, meteoric tail.
The night he made the discovery, he got me out of bed to see it, but I was in no mood or condition for sky gazing. In addition, looking into the eye-piece of the telescope made me a little sick and dizzy. I couldn't see a thing. Deciding that he was suffering from a delusion, I went back to bed.
The odd thing was that Henry was right. He had actually witnessed the phenomenon of impact of two small planets which produced the comet. As he explained it afterwards to a group of eminent scientists, this collision of two celestial bodies had produced a distinct flash of light, out of which had grown a spiral swarm of very brilliant particles, and he had watched them as they took on orbital motion.
The comet soon became the most impressive and magnificent sight I have ever seen, stretching its scimitar-like form half across the heavens. Its wonder and beauty dragged New Yorkers up in the small hours, to gaze at it with fascinating awe. Many regarded it with terror, others with superstitious dread. In churches throughout the land, the people prayed: "Lord save us from the devil, and Royce's comet!"
The comet was not only named after Henry but his discovery was acclaimed by scientists the world over, and he was chosen a fellow of the two leading scientific bodies of America and England. While still rated as an amateur in science, nevertheless, many learned men began to look upon him as the depository of authority and authenticity in matters relating to the mysteries of the solar system.
Having disclosed something to the world in the order of creation, Henry became imbued with an overpowering sense of his own importance as a man of science; his ambitions soared to unsurmountable heights. The discovery of the comet having been far easier than he had dared dream, he now turned with profound intentness to establish radio communication with Mars. He began talking in a familiar and chatty way about the people on Mars, and to hear him talk one would think that he was going there for a week-end of golf.
In this project, he had enlisted the able assistance of Serge Olinski, assistant research engineer of the National Radio Corporation, whose unexceptional qualifications included an honor degree in cosmic ray research, with distinction in astronomy. Their experimental activities, in trying to pick up and decode the galactic radio waves, which both believed constituted some kind of interstellar signaling, were carried on behind locked doors, either at Henry's observatory in the country, or in Olinski's laboratory in the NRC Building, in the new Radio Center Annex.
Olinski was a queer shrinking soul, and any sort of publicity to Henry was equally distasteful. They were two of a kind, in this respect. Notwithstanding all the praise and attention given to Henry by the press during the comet furore, he treated reporters with the utmost contempt, and accused them of being dishonest rogues. One reporter in particular he hated and feared. Just mention to him the name of Robert McGinity of the New York Daily Recorder, and his correctly chiselled and aristocratic features would crinkle up in rage and horrible chuckles would issue from his thin lips like unnamable profanities.
He had never forgotten his first encounter with McGinity on the telephone, nor had he ever forgiven the reporter for what he called an utterly disreputable transaction in news. But the business of reporting is at least an honorable one, and reporters have to get their stories, somehow.
This fellow, McGinity, published the first report of Henry's discovery of the comet, and scored a beat by calling him up and giving the impression that he was one of the assistant astronomers at Harvard University. I had no suspicions then how the information had trickled into the office of the Daily Recorder, but I believe now that our solemn-visaged butler, Orkins, who afterwards turned out to be so mercenary and treacherous, tipped off this morning paper, which paid liberally for exclusive stories.
It was the night following Henry's detection of the comet when he was aroused out of a sound sleep to answer an important telephone call. If I hadn't been up and overheard the conversation, I wouldn't have believed it possible for any man to be so easily deceived. But gullibility is one of Henry's weaknesses. I switched into the conversation from an extension on the second floor.
Henry seemed to have some recollection of the name of the Harvard professor, as it came over the telephone, and at first was a little taken aback and curious that the news of his discovery should have become known. Despite this, he told all about his detection of the new comet, and proudly, omitting no detail. It would have been ungrateful on his part to have distrusted the man at the other end of the wire, after he had gone to the trouble and expense of calling up, obviously from Boston, and it seemed so unlikely that any one outside astronomical circles would be interested in the discovery. Up to that time, Henry had had no dealings with reporters. By exercising extraordinary discretion, he had managed all his life to keep out of the news, except for occasional real estate transactions, and had always avoided any encounter with the press.
After he had answered heaps and heaps of questions, the voice at the other end said: "Thanks, Mr. Royce. Thanks a lot. Darned good of you to tell me all this."
An oppressive silence descended. By that time, Henry must have guessed that he had been gulled. I got his voice but I missed the play of expression on his face.
"Who is this speaking?" he asked again. "Who the devil are you?"
"Bob McGinity of the Daily Recorder," came the prompt reply.
Henry gave a nervous jump. "What?" he gasped angrily. It was evident that he was utterly taken by surprise. "I—I find your action in calling me up quite incomprehensible, Mr. McGinity. I imagined that—that—"
"Pardon me," the reporter retorted with some dignity. "I never said I was an assistant professor of astronomy at Harvard. I simply asked if you knew of such a person, and you said you did, and then you proceeded to tell me exactly what I wanted to know."
"But surely you're not going to publish this," Henry fumed. "It's too immature. You must keep it out of the newspaper."
"I'm sorry but I have no power to do so, Mr. Royce," the reporter replied. "And no inclination, Mr. Royce."
Henry clawed at the telephone instrument with trembling fingers. "If I had you here, young man," he shouted, "I'd break your damned neck."
He hung up with a bang, and I don't think he slept a wink the rest of the night. And it was entirely due to this experience that he and Olinski took every precaution that nothing should leak out concerning their research in interstellar signaling, which, as far as I could learn, at the time, had entered on the final and exciting stage of their experimental work.
Henry's actions indicated that his mind was still working feverishly on this subject; he even raved about it in his sleep, according to his Filipino valet, Niki. But about his and Olinski's doings, not a word to me. When I would ask him if they had found anything worth finding, he would reply: "Just you wait, and see;" a vague term which he refused to make more definite.
In the silent watches of the night, he would sit at his telescope, his eyes trained on that beautiful, reddish planet, Mars. One morning, at four o'clock, I found him there, clad only in his pajamas, and he strongly resented my intrusion. But I had a task to perform, and that was to see that he got his proper rest. I had no wish that any member of our family should become psychopathic.
"Henry!" I exclaimed, rather harshly; "you've only a few hours before breakfast-time. Go to bed and get a bit of sleep."
I think he realized, instinctively, that I was not in sympathy with this business of trying to pick up radio signals from Mars. It all seemed so useless and incredible. His secret experiments had been in progress now for about a year. The tumult aroused by the discovery of the comet seemed a thing long past and forgotten. The memory of the public is short. Newer sensations had taken its place.
In this latest mad, scientific quest, Henry reminded me of one of Jane's goldfish, which swims in its bowl, and swims and swims, thousands of miles, perhaps, and then finds itself a few inches from its starting point. So one day I resolved to bring the matter to an issue. I slipped into his room just after he had disrobed and donned a dressing-gown, preparatory to taking a bath and dressing for dinner.
"Henry," I began, rather abruptly, "study and action are worth while, only when they lead you some place." But I was not destined to finish what was in my mind to say.
"I beg pardon, Livingston, if I disturb you," he interrupted in his meekest accents, and then went into his bathroom, and closed the door.
Determined to have my say, I followed him to the door, and knocked. The door opened, and his face, meek and anxious, looked out at me through a narrow crack.
"Henry!" I implored. "If I could only see you for a few minutes—"
"No!" he said, and shut the door. A second later, I heard the bar shoved into its slot.
There was nothing unusual in Henry locking himself in his bathroom, for he had the distressful habit of sitting in his bath-tub, by the hour, smoking and thinking. His bathroom seemed to be the only quiet retreat in the castle which afforded the complete solitude and privacy necessary for the employment of his brain cells. He felt that here he could relax, just as Napoleon did, after undue fatigue, dictating letters and giving important military orders from his steaming bath-tub.
I have often wondered where Sir Isaac Newton was sitting, at his home in Woolsthorpe, England, when the fall of an apple, so legend tells us, suggested the most magnificent of his discoveries, the law of universal gravitation. There is no evidence to refute that he was sitting in one of those queer, early English bath-tubs, looking out of the bathroom window, at his apple orchard.
I never see Rodin's famous sculpture, "The Thinker," but I am reminded of Henry, sitting in his bath-tub, thinking and thinking, especially during the early part of the eventful summer of which I write.
Evidently some fresh idea had come to him while in his bath on the evening I persisted in assailing his peace of mind. With startling suddenness he donned his bath-robe, rushed to the telephone, and communicated with Olinski. As quickly as possible, the next day, they got to work on Henry's idea. Then problems began to straighten themselves out. As to what they had discovered, they said nothing at the moment.
Soon after, however, an avalanche of adventure, mystery and excitement came thunderously down upon us, throwing our lives into chaos.
II
As I begin my narrative, my mind travels back for a moment to the days of my youth, and I am made more vividly aware of the changes that have taken place in the world. We are living in a new era now—a period marked by a series of strange occurrences, manifestations of the weird powers that lurk in outer space. The New Deal has passed into history. A strangely remote time ago, that was....
The laboratory has supplied us with the basic means of lifting the curtain of space from scenes and activities at a distance. A system of sight transmission and reception, comparable in coverage and service to the world-wide hook-up of sound broadcasting, has brought all nations closer together. In the friendly exchange of ideas and feelings through the medium of television and the radio, the whole civilized world enjoys common participation.
Nationalism no longer endangers the peace of the world. All war debts between nations have been settled, and tariff barriers laid low. Internationalism reigns supreme, to the spirit and benefits of which Henry contributed his share by engaging servants representing seven nationalities. Thus we harbored at the castle of Sands Cliff about every conceivable question of society, politics and religion.
Our summer castle is such a place as you read of, in romances of the Middle Ages. It was built more than half a century ago by a wealthy New York society woman who must have had a strain of poetic romanticism in her veins. When Henry purchased the place, it was almost in ruins.
It is perched on the summit of a precipitous sand cliff, commanding an excellent view of Long Island Sound. From its windows, on a bright day, the majestic towers of New York appear dimly etched against a mauve horizon like the spires of a magical city. There it stands, dark and foreboding, and ivy-clad, in its own grounds, surrounded by a high brick wall. The main entrance gate is approached by a dark avenue which winds through a heavily wooded park. There is no other dwelling within a mile.
There are many mullioned windows in its slim, peaked towers. Inside, a clutter of rooms—endless rooms—some of them in the upper floors unused and smelling dusty and dank. The front door opens on a brick terrace, which has a stone balustrade as a protective measure against a sheer drop of two hundred feet to the rocky base of the cliff. From the east end of the terrace, stone steps wind down to a private yacht landing and a long stretch of beach, fenced in with barbed wire.
An outstanding feature of the castle is its galleried entrance hall, with its darkly gleaming oak panelling and great, stone staircase; a hall so large that when one speaks, the sound is echoed like the whispering of ghosts from the high, oak-timbered ceiling.
There is a queer element of solitude and uncanniness that always cloaks the castle at the twilight hour, before Orkins, in his routine of duty, switches on the lights. I noticed it particularly, one summer evening, about the middle of August, as I walked up and down the terrace, dinner-jacketed and smoking, awaiting the arrival of our two dinner guests, Serge Olinski and His Highness Prince Dmitri Matani.
The sun had gone down in a cloudless, violet sky, and purplish twilight had settled on the Sound and the marshland, stretching westward to a cove, where the lights of the village of Sands Cliff were beginning to twinkle. The silence was more oppressive than the heat. Now and then it was broken by a distant tugboat whistle, like the hoarse croak of a frog, and the faint calling of a thrush for its mate in the thick shrubberies that fringed Jane's flower garden, on the north side of the castle.
Far out in the Sound, two sail-boats were drifting along like tired ghosts. Presently the fringe of the opposite shore became magically outlined by tiny strands of lights. As the gloom of night slowly enveloped the scene, an island lighthouse, a mile away, began to flash its beacon over the dark, graying water with clock-like regularity.
Against this flashing light, the ruins of our own lighthouse showed dark and jagged, on a small, rocky island, rising out of the Sound about a quarter of a mile off our shore, and within easy rowing distance from the yacht landing. Henry had recently purchased the island from the Government, and it was now a part of our Sands Cliff estate. The old beacon tower of stone was built in 1800. In oil-burning days, its light had counted for something, but now it was nothing but a picturesque ruin, and largely populated during the summer by bats.
I had no sooner turned my gaze on the ruined lighthouse when a big bat swooped down at me out of the darkness. Only the night before, one of them had got into my bedroom. I've never been able to overcome my early fear of these nocturnal flying mammals. To my childish imagination, they were the very spirits of evil. I was in no mood this night to be pestered by them. A vague uneasiness possessed me, an uneasiness caused on one hand by Henry's strained and haggard look, and on the other, by his encouraging Prince Matani's attentions to Pat.
Perhaps at the moment, his crazy quest in interstellar communication annoyed me most. I had already suggested to Jane that we send him to a psychoanalyst to be overhauled. This delving into the unknown was too ponderable a matter for a man of his years. It had become fixed on his mind with all the power of an obsession. All that day he had not stirred from his observatory, and now Olinski was coming from town to give a verbal report of his own findings. Much cogitation, much secrecy was, in effect, nothing at all. Unless they now had found the key. Was it possible that Olinski might be bringing a transcribed cipher of a radio message from Mars? His eager acceptance of the invitation to dinner seemed to hold an important significance for Henry.
Desperately bothered by both problems which confronted me, the bats made things more annoying still. Then, sudden-like, in the haunting stillness, I saw something moving towards me from the blackish void of trees and shrubbery bordering the west end of the terrace. At first, I was conscious only of an oncoming shadow, advancing with a rapid, noiseless movement.
I could feel my pulse jumping. Whoever or whatever it was, there was a risk. Rather than face the risk, I moved quietly but swiftly across the terrace towards the front door. But that did not stop the oncoming something; it had suddenly changed its direction and was coming right at me.
Luckily at that moment, the lights were turned on in the lower part of the castle. Then Orkins opened the front door, and gave voice to a surprised exclamation as he saw me making hurriedly for the doorway.
Suddenly I stopped, and turned. The glow of a floor lamp in the entrance hall had spread fanwise across the terrace, and into this arc of light strode—Serge Olinski.
"Oh, hello, Olinski!" I exclaimed, with respectful familiarity, and very cordially, stretching out my hand, and smiling to myself at the start he had given me, coming like an abortive something out of the shadows of the terrace. "That you?"
"Yes; it is I," Olinski replied, shaking my proferred hand, and breathing rather heavily.
I faced a short, dumpy, middle-aged man, with a paunch, and a Russian cast of countenance. Small, intelligent black eyes gleamed through shell-rimmed glasses, from a round face fringed with a short, black beard. He carried his hat, and I observed that his primly sleeked hair was as black as his beard. I had a suspicion that he dyed them.
"I caught an early train from the city, in order to enjoy the benefit of a walk from the village to your beautiful castle," he explained, half breathlessly, "after a most exacting but successful day in the laboratory. A million apologies if I have delayed your dinner."
"Time is infinite in the country, especially on a fine night like this," I remarked lightly, as we entered the hall, and Orkins relieved him of his black top-coat and hat. His dinner jacket, I noticed, was much too small for him, and his waistcoat so short that it came perilously near revealing a section of his middle-age bulge. There were soup stains on his shirt-front, which indicated that his shirt had been out to dinner before.
As I waved him to a chair, I said: "You're really very punctual, even if you avoided our car which was sent to the station to meet you, and walked here. You can depend upon it, Prince Matani will not miss the chance to drive to the castle in state when he steps off the train."
Unconsciously my lips sneered as I spoke the young princeling's name. Olinski nodded and smiled understandingly. "Ah!" he said. "I take it that you do not look with favor on the match your scholarly brother is about to arrange between your charming niece and my noble countryman?"
"To be frank, no," I replied.
"So I gathered. And why?"
"I have very strong reasons for opposing their marriage," I said; "and my sister, Jane, is just as dead set against it as I am. Every one knows that the Prince came to America to make a rich and advantageous marriage. Pat will soon come into a large inheritance from her mother's estate, and we don't want her to throw her fortune and herself away on this—this penniless, titled gigolo."
Olinski chuckled. "Perhaps just a trifle over-perfumed for a man," he said, "and addicted to the habit of biting his fingernails, but such details cannot detract from his royalty. He dances divinely. He seems to be your niece's devoted slave."
"He's been camping on our door-step all summer," I retorted. "Why Henry favors such a nincompoop, I cannot imagine."
"But the charming Patricia seems to have lost her head over him," Olinski rejoined. "So what can you do?"
"It's up to you to do something," I answered, promptly. "You are in a position to know all the discreditable incidents in the Prince's past, and your word carries great weight with Henry. Surely you do not believe that he really loves Pat?"
"Only for her money," Olinski replied. "A make-believe of love. Froth in an empty glass. He needs the money to get his coronet out of pawn, and get the gas and water turned on at the seedy, shabby chateau in France he calls his castle."
"Then you will tell Henry the truth about this threadbare, titled foreigner?"
"Ah, my friend, that will be a great pleasure, although he is the genuine article, you know. I can't disprove his claim to the title."
"After all, I suppose you have a certain fondness for the Prince," I suggested.
"Not at all," Olinski replied, almost wrathfully. "He is the most impudent person I ever met. At the last dinner we attended together, what do you think he said to me? He accused me of smelling of garlic. Did you ever hear of anything quite so low? As God is my witness, I detest that evil-smelling plant, garlic."
He clicked his teeth, and went on with desperate finality.
"I will tell you one thing more, and then I shall have told you enough. Your niece and Prince Matani should never marry, for he has a hereditary malady—sudden and violent attacks which produce unconsciousness. Some great excitement, and, then—pst!—he falls unconscious. At Monte Carlo, he gambled all he had, and lost. Pst!"
"Shocking!" I murmured.
"No doubt about its being hereditary," Olinski continued. "When the Czar of Russia first bestowed the title of prince upon his great-grandfather, Carlos, for his war-like feats, what does his great-grandfather do but get so excited he falls in convulsions at the feet of the emperor."
"What luck!" I reflected as soon as Olinski had finished. An intimate little peep into the private life of a royal personage, if ever there was one! And I was about to voice my appreciation for this absolute proof that the Prince was not a proper person to marry Pat when Henry entered, immaculately swallow-tailed for dinner.
Seizing Olinski's hand, he shook it heartily. "And you walked all the way from the station?" he exclaimed. "How extraordinary! But I'm glad you've come ahead of our Prince Charming. It's very important that we should get together, at once."
Linking his arm in Olinski's, he marched him off to the far end of the hall. Their heads together, whispering excitedly, and putting so much meaning in words that meant nothing to me, because I could not hear what they said, it was easy to assume that they had made some important and startling discovery in their crazy quest of exchanging radio communications with Mars.
I was diplomatic enough to leave them to themselves. A few minutes later, Jane appeared on the scene, and after greeting our guest, I took her to one side, as I was burning to tell her what Olinski had said. Jane is a plump, gushing soul, with soft, silvery hair, and very distinguished in her manner. She had sponsored Pat's formal coming-out the previous winter, and felt her responsibility keenly.
After she had heard all I had to report, she said: "Well, that's something. But things still seem to be against us. The spark of desire to be a princess or duchess burns in every girl's nature, whether she's rich or poor. Pat is just pent up with romance, but she's never had a chance to express it until Prince Matani came along."
"Just a lot of romantic piffle," I said. "What we need is some artful lead to get her mind off the Prince."
"I'm afraid it's too late," she sighed. "Even if Mr. Olinski tells Henry everything that you've just told me, he'll simply turn up his nose. Henry's as obstinate as a mule once his mind gets set on something, and it wouldn't surprise me a bit if he announced their betrothal at dinner, tonight."
Pat's future now appearing to be an unpleasant speculation, and feeling utterly disheartened about the whole situation, for I was enormously fond of her, I was about to go to Henry and speak my mind, when she suddenly appeared in the picture.
I had often thought of having a great artist do a study in oils of Pat coming down our great, stone staircase; she does it so gracefully and with such regal poise. Slim, brown-haired, and blue-eyed, no one could look at her without being enthralled. Her fragility, like a rare piece of Dresden china, was most appealing; she was so intensely feminine. She looked particularly lovely this night in her simple dinner frock, the soft and filmy draperies seeming to envelop her like a pastel-tinted cloud.
As Olinski advanced eagerly to meet her, she favored him with a delightful smile. He bowed low and kissed her hand, not in a perfunctory, European-custom way, but rather warmly and explosively.
"My dear Patricia!" he exclaimed. "You look—adorable."
"And you look hungry," she returned his compliment with a mischievous twinkle.
"And so I am," Olinski replied.
"As soon as I knew you were coming for dinner, I asked Aunt Jane to have one of your favorite desserts prepared—steamed peach roly-poly, with cream sauce," Pat informed him.
"Thank you for being so thoughtful and nice," he said under his breath.
"Of course, I never allow Pat to touch sweets," said Jane. "Girls of her age should keep their angles as long as possible."
"Speaking of angles," Olinski remarked, good-humoredly, "I've often wondered how Prince Matani, who dines out so much, manages to keep his angles."
"Oh, the Prince!" said Jane, taken a little unawares. "He is very slender, isn't he?"
"And very handsome and distinguished looking," Pat interjected, softly but emphatically.
Jane gave a little snort. "I hadn't noticed that particularly," she said, rather coldly, and walked away.
It was so unlike Jane's usual tone and manner that Pat looked after her in surprise, and then her anxious eyes met Olinski's.
"What is the trouble?" he asked, obviously to draw her out. "Is it possible that your Aunt is unfriendly to the young man with whom you're in love?"
She looked at him and laughed softly. "In love with Prince Matani? How amusing."
"But he seems to be very much interested in you," said Olinski. "Most girls would consider his attentions a supreme compliment. Is it possible that you're not in love with him?"
"I'm almost tempted to tell you," she answered with calm, amused eyes, "but I think I'd better leave you to make your own discoveries, just as you and Uncle Henry are doing about Mars—perhaps you'll get more fun out of it!"
And then Orkins announced: "His Highness Prince Matani."
III
Prince Matani was certainly good-looking anddistingué; slender and dark, with an absurdly small black mustache plastered over his rather thick and sensuous lips. Scrupulously dressed for dinner, every detail of him indicated the care he devoted to his person.
Bowing formally and stiffly on entering the hall, he looked past us and made a swift movement forward to Pat's side. He kissed her hand with dazzling grace. Then he turned his brilliant smile upon her, and beneath that smile, greatly to my alarm, she seemed as wax.
The cocktail prelude to dinner was unavoidably lengthened to a quarter of an hour, for Jane was called unexpectedly to the telephone. Her absence left Henry and Olinski still conversing earnestly at one end of the hall, while I sat patiently at the other end, under the staircase, fidgeting with my glass, and glancing around anxiously from time to time at Pat and the Prince, who were sitting informally, but luxuriously, on some cushions the Prince had placed on the lower steps of the stairs. Sipping at her cocktail Pat seemed to become more and more responsive to the young nobleman's flatteries.
Presently my position grew to be a most embarrassing one. While their voices came to me at first only in murmured undertones, I became suddenly conscious of hearing every word they said. Any attempt at eavesdropping is beneath my dignity, but confronting a situation so fateful and momentous in Pat's life, with the Prince exercising his fascinations upon her, I cast aside my principles and listened. And of all the fatuous, syrupy conversations, I had never heard the like before.
"It was so awfully, awfully sweet of you to ask me to dinner tonight," the Prince was saying in a low, rapturous voice.
"But I didn't invite you," Pat countered. "Uncle Henry did, for some reason or other."
"Some excellent reason, I hope," said the Prince. "He seems to appreciate my chivalrous devotion to you, my unselfishness and utter trustworthiness. And a truer help-mate I could never find. You are such a sweet-natured and lovable girl."
"You have said that before, Your Highness," Pat gently reminded him.
"And I shall say it a thousand times again," he answered. "True, I am well-born but penniless. But, please—please don't say that your regard for me is compounded more of pity than of love."
"We'll talk about that, after dinner, shall we?" Pat suggested artfully.
"Your pleasure is my pleasure," he said. "Yes; we'll talk about that after dinner. We'll take a stroll in the garden, where the night air is intoxicating with its rich aroma of flowers. Or on the terrace, whichever you like. It's such a terribly sweet night, we mustn't miss it."
"I love sweet nights, don't you?" Pat cooed.
"They are very useful at times," the Prince rejoined. "What would you say if, in the sweet darkness, I found a pair of sweet lips."
"Oh, Your Highness! You wouldn't dare!" Pat exclaimed, in a disturbed voice. "I've always found you so—so perfectly trustworthy in the dark. Besides, taking undue advantage of a helpless young lady is only done by bores of the lower classes."
"Oh dear, no!" the Prince responded. "You're quite wrong there. The most extraordinary things happen to people in our class. Sort of dignified things, you know." Then he laid his hand on hers. "My dear," he went on, "I think you have offered every excuse there is. What I want now is to be told exactly what you think of me."
"I will also tell you that, tonight—after dinner," Pat replied, evasively.
"But I cannot—I cannot possess my soul in patience," he said. "I must know now—at this very moment. But if you are cruel, and spurn me—you, so gentle-souled, who would never intentionally hurt a fly, I know,—I will leap off the cliff. Men of my race, in love or in war, always act on the spur of the moment. You don't want me to jump off your cliff?"
"Listen, Your Highness," answered Pat. "This is what I want you to do for me. Just nothing at all."
"I'm afraid you'll have to grin and bear it—this deed of violence. But it will be a happy death."
"It'll put us all to a lot of trouble," Pat sighed.
"That's true. I hadn't thought of that. You'll have to buy orchids and go to my funeral."
"No; I'll have to go to the autopsy, first," she corrected him.
To my great astonishment, she seemed perfectly informed on that subject, probably from reading so many murder mystery stories.
"Very well," the Prince concurred; "perhaps it would be foolish for me to jump off your cliff. Some perfectly innocent person, like—well, like your Uncle Livingston—might be accused of pushing me off, and there would be a murder trial, and all those horrid newspaper reporters and photographers would make your life miserable. No; I cannot let the innocent suffer."
At this juncture, their voices trailed off again into indistinctness, leaving me in a mood to give the Prince all the encouragement he needed in his threat to jump off our cliff. Most unjust of me, but most human, I fear. At any rate, their tête-à-tête was soon interrupted by the return of Jane, and, a few minutes later, by Orkins' dignified announcement that dinner was served.
I was further agitated in mind when Henry linked arms with Pat and the Prince, and, walking between them, escorted the romantic pair to the dining room. The definite warmth with which he treated the Prince seemed to settle the matter. The announcement of their engagement seemed an assured thing. When we were finally seated at the candle-lit table, I began to pray silently, though desperately, that something might happen to stay Pat's unfortunate romance with the Prince, in what I felt to be its penultimate stage.
Luckily something did happen. Altogether, it was an extraordinary meal. We had just passed from soup to fish, when the telephone in the library, adjoining the dining room, began to trill, and what occurred after that, so disturbed Henry's peace of mind that the affair between Pat and the Prince became of secondary importance to him.
Niki, Henry's slim but powerfully muscled valet and bodyguard, was relieving Orkins and the second man during the serving of dinner. From my place at the table, I watched him through the wide connecting doorway as he answered the persistent telephone calls in the library, and curtly dismissed them with a quick hang-up of the receiver. Finally, when the bell began to trill at five minute intervals, he left the hook off the receiver, and stepped into the dining room and approached Henry.
"Pardon," he said, in his smooth, suave manner, and bowing low, "but there have been many telephone calls for you. The same voice in each case. The gentleman says it is veree important, but he will not give his name."
Henry nodded thoughtfully, and said: "And what does the gentleman require of me, Niki?"
"An appointment for an interview, sir, if you would be so kind," said Niki. "A very agitated gentleman, I gathered, sir."
"Very good, Niki," said Henry. "Tell the agitated gentleman that I will make an appointment to see him at nine o'clock tonight. Say that I am at dinner and cannot be disturbed at present."
Niki bowed, and started to withdraw.
"On second thought, Niki," Henry called after him, "tell the gentleman that I will make the appointment only on condition that he identifies himself—now."
Returning in a few moments, Niki said: "The gentleman says to tell you his name is Meester Robert McGinity."
Henry looked at him in quick astonishment, and then made a face expressive of extreme displeasure. "Is Mr. McGinity still on the wire? Yes; well, then, go back and tell him that under no consideration will I grant him an interview. You understand?"
Niki bowed understandingly, and re-entered the library, where he delivered Henry's ultimatum, which silenced the telephone during the remainder of the dinner.
Although Henry strove mightily to pretend unconcern, I could easily see that McGinity's telephone call had upset him terribly. His face became more drawn and whiter than it had been. I sensed at once that he had been thrown into a state of perturbation and dismay, in the belief that the reporter had somehow obtained inside information on the result of his and Olinski's research work in interplanetary radio communication, as he had on the comet.
Olinski seemed equally perturbed. "McGinity! The reporter?" he gasped. "Do you think he's found out anything?"
Henry smiled grimly, and replied: "He must have some knowledge of our discovery or he wouldn't have called up. As our first move, we must find out where the leak is, and stop it."
As he finished speaking, he glanced over his shoulder at Orkins, who was standing at his side with a bottle of sherry in his hand. Orkins, whom I had always regarded as a secretive, suspicious person, despite his dignified appearance as a well-trained butler, leaned over and spoke to Henry, which was an unusual proceeding on his part.
As he refilled Henry's glass with sherry, I heard him mutter: "If you've any suspicions about any of the servants in the house, sir, it's your plain duty to say so."
Henry looked coldly at the butler out of the corner of his eye, and replied, in a low voice: "I have no suspicions at all, Orkins, in that direction." Then his attention was attracted to Olinski, who said: "Your best move will be to continue to exercise the utmost caution, and to prevent any possible personal contact with this reporter."
Henry wagged his head defiantly. "He's certainly a mono-maniac on the subject of news, but I've got my eye on him now, and I'll give him something to try his teeth on. He'll never get the best of me again—never!"
At that point, Pat chimed in. "What's all this fuss about a reporter?" she asked. "Is this Mr. McGinity, who just called, the same reporter who got the first news about the comet?"
"The same cheeky rascal," Olinski replied; "and now, apparently, he's bent on getting some advance information about our experiments in interplanetary radio communication."
"And aren't you going to oblige him, Uncle Henry?" Pat inquired.
Henry's eyebrows went up. "Oblige him? Certainly not."
"It will be the perfect imbecility on this reporter's part to try and get anything out of your Uncle, or me, on our latest discovery," Olinski explained. "The time is not yet ripe for any sort of public announcement."
"If he's a live-wire reporter," I offered, "and he seems to be just that, I'm afraid he'll go the limit in getting what he's after."
"Of course he will," Pat smiled. "Now that Uncle Henry has refused to be interviewed, he'll try some other means to get at him. Oh, the life of a reporter must be terribly thrilling! One reads so much about them in detective and mystery stories." She paused for a moment, and then continued, half musingly. "I wonder what he's like—this Mr. McGinity—this mono-maniac on the subject of news. Did you ever meet him, personally, Uncle Henry?"
Henry nodded, and replied grudgingly: "I met him personally, not long after he had tricked me into giving him the news of the comet. I was acting as toastmaster at the annual banquet of the Colonial Lords of Manors, and he was reporting the dinner. He tried to be friendly, but I squelched him good and plenty."
"Oh, how interesting!" Pat enthused. "Tell me, please! Is he young and good-looking?"
Henry's head jerked up. He did some rapid thinking, and then he lied firmly: "He's an oldish person, fat and awkward, and almost bald."
Pat smiled faintly, and did not have much to say after that. I divined that her little bubble of romantic anticipation had been pricked, but as she had no suspicions then, and had accepted Henry's description of the reporter as truthful, I passed it up. Considering Henry's position at the moment, I could not very well cross purposes with him and enlighten her. I happened to have been present at the same banquet, and I could have offered her a vastly different picture of the reporter from the fraudulent one Henry had painted.
An uncomfortable silence followed. The Prince was looking at Pat quizzically. "Well, what about it?" he said suddenly.
"About what?" she replied.
"I should have thought you almost the last person in the world to become interested in a news writer," he said. "To me, the most repugnant of persons is a nosey newspaper reporter."
"Reporters are not repugnant to me," Pat replied quickly. "I've never met one in my life, so why should I feel any contempt for them?"
"Thanks," said the Prince. "That's what I wanted to know."
"Don't be a cad," Pat retorted. "There is no more harm in my knowing a reporter than in knowing you."
"Well," said the Prince, "it's like this. If I ever caught you talking to a reporter, I'd lead you away by the ear."
"Really," Pat smiled dryly, as the color mounted her cheeks. "If any one but you, Prince Matani, had made such a threat, I should refuse to have anything more to do with him. As it is—oh, why be so fussed over something that hasn't happened, and may never occur?"
I wondered why the Prince should make such a silly and indiscreet remark. I could see that this little flash of petty jealousy and cruelty that lay hidden under his formal and polite exterior had annoyed Henry, although his voice was very kind as he continued to exchange pleasantries with the princeling. In fact, Henry conversed on every topic save that nearest his heart. It was only with the entry of dessert and the departure of Orkins that he came back to realities.
"Now, listen, everyone," he said. "Olinski and I have kept something to ourselves as long as possible, and now, assuming that some ungrateful, treacherous culprit has betrayed our secret to the Daily Recorder, we have decided to announce our discovery privately tonight."
"I see," the Prince commented, with a disdainful edge to his voice; "you are going to tell us something important, and we are supposed to know nothing until, of course, this McGinity, the reporter, gets the story, and his paper is adorned with your portraits."
Henry fixed a cold and disparaging gaze on the Prince for a moment, and then continued, with an even voice. "The servants are to know nothing, and no one present here must breathe a word of it." He paused a moment. "No one has anything to say? Very well. Instead of having coffee served in the library, we shall dispense with that formality and proceed at once to the observatory."
It was not long before we were gathered in the dome-ceilinged room in one of the peaked towers, where Henry carried on his astronomical observations. I was in an exultant mood, not because we were to be let in on a great secret, but rather on account of Pat. My heart sang with glee, and I suppressed a desire to whistle and whoop; and I thanked my stars that McGinity was up to his favorite tricks again. Unwittingly, by his telephone call, I felt sure he had forestalled the announcement of Pat's engagement to the Prince.
Henry constituted himself both host and lecturer. Pat and the Prince seemed quite happy together again, their little tilt at the dinner table apparently forgotten. But the evening had not progressed very far before I was again struck by the curious mixture of impudence and rashness in the Prince. I wondered if all men of his social caste possessed this overbearing consciousness of superiority.
After we were comfortably grouped about the room, Henry touched a button in the wall, and a section of the dome-shaped glass roof slid back. Simultaneously, the electrically propelled telescope moved majestically into place. A click of an electric switch and the room was partially darkened. We gazed upward into a bright field of twinkling planets, stretching above us like a dark blue velvet canopy, studded with gilt paper stars.
At Henry's invitation, Pat and the Prince viewed the ruddy-hued planet Mars through the telescope. As they enjoyed the close-up of this most famous of faraway planets, he grew discoursive.
"Mars is now at the nearest point to the earth for the first time in one hundred years," he said, "and its south-pole is turned towards us. It is one-half the diameter of the earth, and its day is but half an hour longer than our own."
"And you really think the planet is inhabited by people like ourselves?" Pat said, her imagination seemingly enthralled by the gorgeous night spectacle of the planet.
"Why not?" Henry smiled. "Mars has oxygen, the breath of life, diluted with nitrogen, the same as the air of the earth. Its physical conditions for life closely resemble our own."
"Do I understand you to say that you believe life on Mars is similar to our own, and as far advanced as our own civilization?" the Prince interrogated.
"First, let me explain more fully the physical conditions on the planet," Henry said. "Mars has its seasons, which essentially resemble the earth's. That white spot you observed in the neighborhood of its south-pole is a polar cap of ice and snow, just now reforming after shrinking and melting away during the summer. Those greenish-blue areas you saw in the planet's southern hemisphere, parallel to the equator, are the vegetated sections—the tropical jungles."
"And what's all this tommyrot about canals being distributed like a network over the planet's surface, and supplying water from the melting polar snow-caps for the vegetation of Mars?" the Prince asked, a little impudently.
"Dr. Percival Lowell made the first study of these strange geometric tracings, on the regularity of the 'canal' patterns," Henry responded quietly. "On his studies was based largely the theory that the planet is inhabited.
"If your little country of Georgia, in southern Russia," he continued, "was slowly drying up and there were available large quantities of water from melting snow and ice at certain locations in your northern and southern boundaries, you would soon build canals, or ditches, for irrigation purposes, wouldn't you? You would—if you had any brains."
The Prince eyed him speculatively, and replied, "But I have failed to see any markings of these so-called canals on Mars, through your telescope. Why is that?"
"Objects on Mars less than ten miles in size cannot be seen clearly except through the largest telescopes," he answered. "These patterns follow the curves of great circles. Several of them appear to pass through the same point. At these spots 'lakes' are observed."
"Isn't there the possibility of an optical illusion about all this?" the Prince persisted. "Isn't it possible that you and other astronomers let your imagination run riot, and create in your mind these conditions on Mars necessary to sustain life, patterned after those existing on earth?"
"Nothing of the sort," Henry replied in exasperation. "The existence of life there is evidenced by the presence of free oxygen in the atmosphere."
"Do you mean to say that men and women of flesh and blood, with brains, like those who walk the earth, populate this dried-up planet?" the Prince said. "Ah, it is too impossible!"
"Yes, Uncle Henry, it does seem almost beyond human conception," Pat interjected.
"Furthermore," the Prince went on, "authoritative sources claim that no creature with warm blood could survive there, with the temperature ranging between 150 and 250 degrees. A cold-blooded creature might freeze and then thaw out, but a warm-blooded one would freeze and remain dead as a door nail. The indications, I fear, are that your inhabitants of Mars are in the order of—of sublimated lobsters."
"Lobsters!" Pat repeated, laughing.
"Don't be an ass, Your Highness," Olinski interposed at that point. "Or, at any rate, try not to be an ass."
"But it all sounds so deuced silly," exclaimed the Prince, in some heat. "You know yourself, Mr. Olinski, that science has definitely proved that Mars cannot support life as we know it. You may as well admit," he continued, turning again to Henry, "that you really have no proof except your own imagination that there is life on Mars. Providing there is some sort of living organisms there, it is utterly absurd and preposterous to claim that life is as much advanced, physically and intellectually, as our own."
"But I have proof," Henry announced firmly. "Mr. Olinski and I have demonstrated that fact."
"I don't catch the point, really," said the Prince.
"Then listen attentively, Your Highness," said Olinski, "and you'll get an earful." Motioning to Henry, he added: "Let's have it."
"Yes," said Henry, in a deeply serious voice, "we have completely proved that life not only exists on Mars, but that in some respects civilization there is more advanced, especially in the sciences, than on earth."
"Life as we know it here on this sphere?" Jane inquired. "How extraordinary."
Henry nodded, and said: "It is information on our discovery, which has leaked out in some mysterious way, that this reporter, McGinity, apparently, is seeking. But we are not yet ready to divulge our secret findings until we have arranged to give a public demonstration."
"Oh, how thrilling!" Pat ejaculated. "And when will that be?"
"Probably within a week," Henry replied.
The Prince whistled. "Well, somebody's going dotty," he said. "That's all I've got to say. It's too utterly absurd—impossible."
"But it is possible," Henry said. "Radio has made it technically possible. Radio has successfully bridged the hitherto impassable sidereal abyss between earth and Mars—annihilated space."
"I'm not an authority on radio," the Prince grumbled.
"Every American schoolboy knows with what tremendous velocity radio spins round the earth, seven and one-half times in one second," Henry went on. "Now, we know it jumps from planet to planet. Its echo actually has come back to us from outside the orbit of the moon."
"I dare say the Martians have been listening in to our short wave broadcasts, symphony orchestras and jazz?" the Prince remarked. "Am I right?"
"Quite," answered Henry.
"Nevertheless," said the Prince, "I've read on good authority that our short waves can't possibly penetrate the outer layer of the earth's atmosphere, and so reach outer space. However, tell us what you and Mr. Olinski have discovered."
"And remember," Olinski broke in, "no one is to breathe a word of this to any one but the five of us who already know of it."
"Except to this reporter, McGinity, of course," the Prince added, with a sarcastic note.
"Keep calm, Your Highness," Olinski murmured, impatiently.
"H'm," said Henry, and then he began. "After many months of intense application, we have at last established direct radio communication with Mars by the use of short, high frequency waves, with which, as I said before, there is no limit to distance.
"The registering of mysterious galactic radio waves from outer space has long been puzzling the scientific world. As the intensity of these waves is very low, we constructed a very delicately-strung apparatus for their reception. At first, we got a strange group of sounds which baffled us completely. Less than a month ago, however, one night, about ten o'clock, our apparatus began to register a series of distinct dots and dashes. But these signals were in no known code, beginning on a low note and ending with a sort of 'zipp.'
"Outstanding were four distinct groups of four dashes, which convinced us that some form of intelligence in the upper atmosphere was striving for inter-galactic communication. They registered regularly, night after night, about the same time, ten o'clock. Now, here comes the amazing part. While I was busily engaged making measurements, and taking photographs, Mars, at present, being on its periodic parade past the earth, Mr. Olinski succeeded in decoding these four dashes. They turned out to be the signal of the transmitting station on Mars. We could not very well be mistaken, because when we replied, giving our station signal, in the same code, we got an answer.
"Last night, at the same hour, we established definite connection with this station on Mars, after considerable difficulty in making ourselves known to them. You see, the Martians do not know this planet by the name of 'Earth,' as we call it. They have given this world the appellation of the 'Blue Sphere,' which is quite natural, as the earth to Mars appears to be veiled in blue.
"On the other hand, we made the mistake of calling their planet, 'Mars.' Apparently, by their signaling, they were curious as to the meaning of the word. This gave us cause to think that it might be known to its inhabitants under an entirely different name. Later, it was proved that we were right, because the Martian station said so. They call their own planet, the 'Red Sphere.'"
At that point, Henry brought his startling disclosures to an abrupt conclusion. A sort of awe fell among us. The news of this wonderful scientific achievement had petrified us all in complete silence.
IV
As we sat in silence, my brain seemed somewhat numbed and dulled after the exaltation and excitement of the strange revelation. My mental condition was such that I wanted to believe that Henry and his co-worker, Olinski, had done this extraordinary thing, and yet I was unable, somehow, to believe that they had. How could it be possible? And yet it was certainly as possible as it was utterly improbable.
I wondered if the reaction of the others to this tremendous discovery had been similar to mine. As far as the Prince was concerned, it struck me that it had. I had never known him to be so daring, assured, and insolent before, and I felt quite sure that he had shown himself to Henry in such an unfavorable light that his chances for winning Pat's hand had already passed outside the realm of the possible.
Thank God the wretched business was going to end—and yet, and yet ... my mind was just going off on a new tack when, without warning, a thunder-storm broke over our heads. A summer squall, which so often sweeps down on the Sound, playing havoc with all sailing-craft.
Scarcely half an hour before, the sky over us had been serenely starlit and cloudless. Now it had become black as ink and streaked with lightning. The wind howled and the tower seemed to tremble under the heavy assault of the elements.
Before Henry could get the sectional glass roof closed, the rain poured in, collecting in little pools on the floor. Jane climbed up on her chair, fearful of getting her feet wet. Alarmed in the semi-darkness, I managed to find the switch, and turned on all the lights.
To my great dismay, the sudden illumination disclosed that Pat was quite under the Prince's spell again. They were discovered, snuggled together on a divan, the Prince's arm encircling her waist. She extricated herself gracefully, with a half-nervous laugh, and then went back again to his protecting embrace with a little squeal of fright, when a flash of lightning showed through the glass dome like red fire, followed instantly by a deafening crash of thunder that seemed to rend the castle in twain.
"What a relief it would be," said Jane, as she climbed down from her chair, "if the Creator had given us thunderless lightning."
Her feet had no sooner touched the floor when we all, with one accord, stared inquiringly at each other. In the lull that so often follows a thunder-clap, we heard from the outside a distant, muffled cry of distress. A few moments later, in the renewed rush and beat of the wind and rain, we heard it again. This time it was a distinct cry of "Help! Help!"
Visions of the angry sea taking its toll raced through my mind, while I thought: "Oh, God! Pity the poor sailor that has to be out on a night like this!" And while these things were going through my mind, Henry was taking action. He had jumped to the house telephone, and was giving orders downstairs for our two strong-armed chauffeurs, George and William, to get their flashlights, and seek out and save the person in distress.
While Henry was searching frantically in a wardrobe for his rain-coat, which he always kept conveniently near him for emergencies, the dark, excited face of Niki, the valet, suddenly appeared at the stairs, just showing above the floor level like a head without a body.
"Oh, Meester Royce!" cried Niki, in a high-pitched, nervous voice. "Come—queeck! A man he has been washed ashore. He call for—help."
Niki's head disappeared, and there was a general and excited rush from the observatory. Pat led the way. She was down the narrow stairs, and flying along the dark corridor to the elevator before Henry could get into his rain-coat. Some minutes passed before we found ourselves assembled in the entrance hall on the main floor.
Henry stood just outside the front door, shouting instructions to the two chauffeurs. Pat and the Prince stood at a French window, which opened on the terrace, peering out into the black and tempestuous night.
Greatly to Henry's annoyance, I kept the front door open just a crack. I felt it my duty to see what was going on, and to impart such information to those inside. Presently, I heard one of the chauffeurs calling to Henry. "There's a man lying on the sand near the dock," he shouted.
Henry cupped his mouth with his hands, megaphone fashion, and called back: "Do you think he fell off the cliff?"
"No," came the reply, to a very foolish question, I thought.
"Who is he?" Henry shouted again; really a more foolish question than the first one. "Anybody you know?"
"A stranger," was the chauffeur's reply.
Ten minutes later, the two husky chauffeurs came slowly across the terrace, supporting between them a bedraggled, hatless young man, who seemed to have some difficulty in walking. The stranger's fortunate rescue—from what cruel fate, of course, we did not know at the time—was a signal for Pat to let out a cry of mingled thankfulness and relief. "Oh, goody! He's alive!" she exclaimed. Then, pressing her face closer to the rain-washed window, she added: "I—I wonder who he is?"
One glance was sufficient to show Henry who he was. But I'm sure I gave a far louder exclamation of astonishment than my brother.
"God bless my life and soul!" I exclaimed. "It's Bob McGinity, the Daily Recorder reporter!"
Just as suddenly as the recognition had come, the reporter shook himself free of the two chauffeurs, and rushed up to Henry.
"Mr. Royce!" he said, excitedly. "Will—will you please confirm the report that—er—that you and Serge Olinski have established radio connection with Mars?"
Henry for a moment remained perfectly still and mute. His face looked as dark as the thunder-clouds that were sweeping over the castle. I saw the whole thing now, clearly enough. The reporter's predicament had been self-imposed; a ruse to gain personal contact with Henry which had been denied him by telephone. Anxiously, and puzzled, I watched closely the two of them.
"Can't I have a word with you—inside?" the reporter pleaded desperately. The rain ran in little rivers down his face; his dark, disheveled, kinky hair fringed his brow like the little, curled, rat-tail bangs that were fashionable when my grandmother was a girl. "I'm sorry, sir, if I've put you to so much inconvenience," he went on, "but in a case like this—momentous discovery—well, I've got—"
He got no further. "Not another word!" Henry interrupted sternly, raising his hand as though to command silence. Turning to the chauffeurs, he ordered, in a low, harsh voice: "Take him round to the garage, and dry him out. Then turn him loose—and—be damned with him!"
Just then, I heard a slight sound at my elbow. Pat, somehow, had wedged her pretty head under my arm, and was peering through the crack of the door. I had been so engrossed in the unhappy but thrilling scene outside, I hadn't noticed her presence. Apparently she had seen and heard everything. As the two chauffeurs, with a firm grip on the reporter, marched him off to the garage, she spoke. But what she said was inarticulate. It sounded to me like a heart-cry.
And then, suddenly, an idea came to me. Under her little harmless affectations and artificialities, Pat was very human. She had contacted very few young men outside her own exclusive social set; she knew very little of the outside world. Since childhood, she had been guarded and protected from the world's disillusions and ugliness, a protection which only great wealth like ours can give; and she still had the sweet and tender heart of a child.