But it was the third sentence which proved to be the most startling of all. It was very brief, containing only eight words, of which part of the first and the last four were all that the secretary could read. But they were quite sufficient to make him gasp. "Communi---- ---- signals on the tape." The letters, pregnant with meaning, stared him in the face, and made his breath come quick and fast as he threw an apprehensive glance into the darkness behind him, as though dreading the wrath and vengeance of some ghost from another world.
Almost beside himself with excitement, he toiled on. But the fourth sentence, with its missing fragment, told him little, for while the words were clear enough to the eye, they conveyed no message to his brain. On the upper line were the words, "On the watch," and directly beneath them, "for these signals," but the loss of the left hand paper, and the absolute impossibility of conjecturing what other words completed the sentence, made this portion of the message apparently valueless.
Equally tantalizing was the message under the figure five. The sentence began clearly enough, "The basis will be 1/4 3/8 1/4 if ----" and then came the blank occasioned by the second missing fragment of paper; while the sentence, resumed on the left-hand portion of the document, continued, "5/8 1/2 5/8 if down. Buying and selling ----" then once more the inevitable hiatus, and finally the three words, "on a scale." And this was the end.
The secretary sat gazing straight before him, his brain in a tumult. Coincidence well nigh incredible had led to this discovery, and now left no doubt in his mind that rumors which had been current in the Street for years, but always laughed to scorn by the whole fraternity of brokers, were true, after all. And suddenly, with irresistible conviction, facts, remarks, events, never before understood, now crowded to his mind, clear as crystal in the light of his present knowledge. Signals on the tape. More than once he had heard the story, told with bated breath under pledge of strictest secrecy. But here was proof. And for him, individually, this ancient document revealed all the glories of a new world. And thus, bending once more over the paper, Bellingham toiled until the first light of the dawn crept in at the windows, and rising unsteadily from his desk, he saw staring at him from the mirror a worn and haggard face which he could scarcely recognize as his own.
CHAPTER X
[The Adventure of Atherton]
Atherton stood on the steps of the café watching Mills' departure until his friend's broad back and sturdy shoulders were swallowed up in the crowd; then, descending to the street, he strolled leisurely away in the opposite direction. But although, as he had just said to Mills, Blagden's enthusiasm had inspired him, he now concluded that it was not at this particular moment that he desired adventure, for there is a limit to human endurance, and the experiences of the day had left him exhausted both in body and mind. So that in spite of Blagden's counsel as to keeping constantly on the alert, he threaded his way through the throng absent-mindedly, his thoughts, through force of long habit, reverting instinctively to the ticker, whose sudden plunge downward had proved so ruinous to all his hopes and plans.
At length, however, as he turned aside from the main thoroughfare, he was roused from his abstraction by the sight of an automobile standing motionless at the curb, while the chauffeur cranked away manfully, but without result, and a tall, well-built man of middle age, evidently the owner of the car, stood looking on with a frown upon his brow. The whole affair was commonplace enough, and presumably Atherton would not have given it a second thought, if it had not been for the girl who stood at the man's side; but at the sight of her, her beauty and the charm of her radiant youth suddenly made him forget everything else in the world, and under the pretense of looking into a neighboring window, he lingered for the pure delight of stealing an occasional glance at her, already determined that as soon as the car took its departure he would contrive to note its number, so that he might learn its owner's name.
But a still better opportunity was to present itself, for presently there came an explosion, not from the car but from its owner. "That will do," he said crisply. "You can't run an automobile, and never could. You're discharged. Go to the garage and tell them to send for the car, and come out to-morrow for your pay and your clothes."
Without protest, and almost as if glad to escape thus easily, the chauffeur vanished around the corner, and immediately Atherton, lover and master of motors, saw the Goddess of Adventure beckoning to him alluringly. At once he stepped forward, and asked, "Beg pardon, but may I help you?"