“Let’s shift the wave strength,” said Tom, and they made a hurried series of adjustments. Once more I took up my task, and at five minute intervals for three hours sent out my call. Again and again we changed the strength of the wave. We struggled with the insensate metal till our heads reeled. At last, about ten o’clock, we gave up for the day. Dorothy and Tom both were worn out, and both went to their rooms. My head felt too feverish to sleep, so I wandered out for a final pipe along the shore, struggling with the old problem which had been the theme of my thoughts for so long,—who was “the man,” and how could I find him? Again and again Regnier came to my mind, as I debated the pros and cons of the ever vexing question. Along the sand, beside the black water, over dune, and through the long wiry grass of the hollows I tramped, till the lights of Scheveningen were just ahead. Neither moon nor stars shone forth, and my feet fell noiselessly on the yielding sand. As I crossed the summit of a dune, I stumbled on the prostrate body of a man lying there looking out to sea. I hastened to utter apologies in French, English and German, but the unknown simply bowed courteously, and started back in the direction from which I had come. “Some smuggler, I presume,” I said to myself. “For want of anything better to do, I may as well dog his steps.” On and on in the blackness went my stranger, his head bowed as if in deep thought. By beach and road I followed, till, to my surprise, as we came up to the door of the inn, the man ahead entered without once turning round. I hurried after him, but the only occupant of the wide hall was the proprietor. Mustering my best French, I asked news of the man who had entered.
“An Englishman,” said my host, “mad, a little touched here;” he laid an expressive finger beside his head. “He has been with me for two months. He eats and stays all day in his room. He goes at night and looks at the sea.”
An Englishman! Strange he had not replied to me. But weightier matters oppressed me, and I went to bed, only to pass a troubled night, haunted strangely by my chance acquaintance. Throughout the night he led me in a mad chase, always seeming about to turn into some one I knew and wished to see, but always at the moment of recognition, when I was about to cry his name, he faded, changing into a gigantic, cloudy, unfamiliar form.
The morning brought a messenger from the city with our mail, and we each found a package of letters beside our plate at breakfast. One postmarked London and addressed to me in my own handwriting, I seized and opened eagerly. It was from Hamerly. I had sent him a photograph of Regnier, which I had received only a week before.
“Dorothy,” I said, “here is a letter from Hamerly about Regnier. As you know, I sent him that picture.”
“Read it, please,” requested Dorothy.
I obeyed.
“Half Moon Street,
”London, Nov. 2d, 19—.“Dear Orrington:—The man who came out of Dr. Heidenmuller’s locked room is not the man of your picture. Both are tall and dark, but there the resemblance ends. No allowance for the changes of a year could make them the same. I am sorry that the clue from which you hoped so much should have ended in a cul de sac. I see by the papers that the possessor of this dread power has not ceased his awful work. The country here is in a state of wild excitement and fear over the sinking of the Japanese battleship. I sincerely trust that you may soon be successful in your quest.
“Yours fraternally,
“Edgar Hamerly.”
“I knew it,” said Dorothy, with conviction. “I’ve told you he wasn’t ‘the man,’ from the very first.”