“I’ve been thinking,” said Evans, still following his previous train of thought, “that an old friend of mine in England would be the ideal person for that job; I mean, to undertake to keep us posted from enemy headquarters. He’s an archaeologist by profession, and the most versatile man I know. He has spent a lot of time in Greece and Asia Minor, knows Constantinople and the Balkans like a book; he’s a wonderful linguist, and the best actor you ever saw. His name is Heringham. I used to play chess with him when I was studying in the Cavendish in Cambridge, and I never knew a man who could fool you more adroitly as to his real plan of campaign. He used to take every kind of part in student theatricals, from a Buddhist to a buffoon, and to realize that the same man did them all would tax your powers of belief to the limit. I don’t think he knows much radio, but he has a good scientific foundation, and he’s so confoundedly clever that he’d learn what he needed for that job in no time. I’d give a lot to have him in Constantinople and to have had a chance to plan things a bit with him first.”
“What’s he doing now?” asked Mortimer.
“Nothing important,” was the answer. “I got a letter from him saying he offered his services to the army, and was rejected because of his age and a slight defect in his eyes; he’s forty-one or forty-two. He’s still living at his rooms in Trinity, trying to make himself useful at odd jobs.”
“Do you suppose there’s any way of getting your wish realized?”
“I don’t know. I’d like to get over there and see what can be done.”
“I’ll give you letters to any one you want,” said Mortimer.
“I think I’d better keep away from the mighty men at the top, and have my business talks with their technical radio men. Send over Barton who is right-hand man to the Chief of Naval Intelligence, and the real brains of the Bureau, and tell him how much you want me to dip into his line of business; he’s no red-tape artist. Between us we may find a way to the sort of collaboration we want.”
A few days later a scout cruiser capable of forty knots slipped out of the Navy Yard at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and headed south, passing between the Isles of Shoals and Cape Ann; but when well out of sight of land she changed her course to east, and sped rapidly out to sea, making several knots better than her economical cruising speed. On board of her was a group of liaison officers of high rank. Commander Barton, of the Bureau of Naval Intelligence, and a number of experts on naval specialties—ordnance, aircraft, and the like, including Evans and a certain Lieutenant Brown representing the Director of Naval Communications.
The ocean passage lasted four days. Evans spent much of his time in the radio room at the congenial pastime of discussing problems with the chief radio electrician and his operators, and helping them tinker with apparatus. A radio chief likes to discuss his set with any one who has a genuine interest, and it wasn’t long before the chief and all the operators were picking up innumerable hints on the newest engineering developments. The radio officer of the ship was an ensign named Lindsay, a youngster just out of Annapolis with a sunny disposition and a wholesome boyishness about him that won Evans’s heart. He was also free from the conceit of rank which constrains some ensigns to treat a warrant officer with a forced superiority. He had little knowledge of radio, and, as is usually the case, relied in technical matters on the chief radio electrician. He soon found in Evans one from whom he could learn what he needed to know of radio methods, without the sense of losing prestige which some officers feel to be associated with acquiring information from one of subordinate rank. Before the voyage was over, Lindsay had acquired a new outlook on the significance of communications and the possibilities which lay in the various methods a ship may use for picking up and transmitting information concerning the enemy, such as hydrophones, radio direction-finders, amplifiers, selective devices to avoid interference, and secret methods of signaling. With this enlarged vision there was born in him a new enthusiasm for his task.
On a cold, gray autumn day the cruiser passed the Lizard, rounded Rame Head and Penlee Point, and dropped anchor in Plymouth Sound. In another hour the party was speeding through the mellow green hills of Devonshire on its way to London. The next day found Evans at the great National Physical Laboratory at Teddington where some of the best brains in the world were engaged in coördinated research to solve the many problems of physical science and technology which the peril of the Empire had rendered vital.