Dorothy took command, as Tom and I sat in silence. Suddenly Dorothy’s clear voice rang out. “Look, look!” and she came rushing across the room to us, holding aloft a big brown paper package, followed by Jones. “It’s here, it’s here! Mr. Jones had it in his desk, and forgot to give it to you.”
Tom cast one look of scorn on the apologetic Jones, as he came slowly forward.
“You immortal id—” he began, but Dorothy put her hand over his mouth.
“Never mind, dear, it’s here. Don’t waste time. Open it, and see what it says.”
Scarcely five minutes passed, when Tom cried, “Here it is,” and read rapidly in German to his assistants. “We can have it in shape in an hour. There’s just that one missing part that threw us completely off,” he ended. He looked at his watch. “Five o’clock by London time, and sometime before twelve, if the man does as he said he would, the German battleship will be destroyed, if it’s not gone already. We’ve got to hustle.”
They had worked before eagerly. They worked feverishly now. Even my unskilled labor was called in, and I held and scraped, polished and hammered to the best of my limited ability. Six o’clock, seven, eight, nine, one by one they passed. Tom’s hour had grown to four, and reached almost to five, ere the last connection was made. He stood back and threw the switch that set the belt in motion. As the belt revolved, he glanced at the reflectoscope beside him. “No result there as yet,” he said reflectively. “I guess we are safe.” Ten had passed, eleven come and gone, still we waited. Tom had set his laboratory clock to London time, and as the first stroke of twelve struck he rose, stretching his arms. “First time he’s mis—” As he spoke, the beam flashed from the zero well down the board, fluttered as before, and stood still while the belt stopped. We glanced at the reflectoscopes. Their golden ribbons had sprung apart and stood stiffly separate. Everything was at hand this time. Not a word was spoken, but the three bent to their task, figuring with intense rapidity. Tom and Dorothy finished together. Jones, just behind, ran his computing rule faster than he had ever done anything before in my presence. As they ended, Tom spoke. “The harbor—”
“Of Portsmouth, England,” finished Dorothy, and the other two nodded gravely. I sat beside the telephone. We had made sure that an operator who knew that a call was coming sat at the branch exchange, and without a second’s delay I had the office and had told the news. I held the wire till the word came back. “O. K. Nobody has heard of it yet. If it is true, it is another big beat.”
The real gravity of the situation did not come to me with full force, until I read the accounts in the morning papers. The first news that appeared of the sinking of His Germanic Majesty’s first-class battleship, Kaiser Charlemagne, had come from me. The moment my story was received in the office, they had cabled their London correspondent in cipher. As soon as the other papers saw the story in our special edition, they had likewise rushed cables and wireless messages across. In consequence, a horde of correspondents had descended on Portsmouth before morning dawned. The night before there had lain in the harbor three German battleships, the Kaiser Charlemagne, the flagship, standing farthest out. In the morning there were but two. At first, half incredulous but yet fearful from the past, the officers of the German and of the English fleets refused to believe the story, but the watch on three ships had seen the lights of the German flagship disappear, and hasty search had proved the fact of her disappearance. By early morning they were forced to the conviction that the Kaiser Charlemagne had followed the Alaska, the Dreadnought Number 8 and La Patrie Number 3.
The cumulative effect of this last blow was tremendous. Before this the world had been hoping against hope, but now sudden, unreasoning panic took control. Up to this time the stock markets of the world had been buoyed up by the support of the great capitalists, and by the aid of the governments. But they had been growing steadily weaker and weaker, and the opening of the Exchange in London and of the Bourses on the continent saw stocks tumbling as never before. All America knew of the ruin abroad when our stock markets opened here, and a panic day unparalleled in our financial history began. After a sleepless night one operator remarked to another, as they walked up Wall Street, “The sinking of battleships is bad enough, but how much worse if he should begin to sink merchant vessels.” The market quivered. The next man passed it on. “How terrible if ‘the man’ should sink the transatlantic liners carrying gold.” The market trembled. A brokerage house gave forth the tip. “The man who is stopping all war has declared that he will sink every transatlantic liner carrying gold, as he considers gold the sinews of war.” The market shook to its very foundations. The papers heard the lying news, and published it in scare heads. The market broke utterly and went plunging to utter destruction. Industrials and railroads dropped sixty to two hundred points in an hour. It was one wild scramble, which ended only when no one would buy at any price whatsoever. The day ended with meetings of ruined men sending delegates to the various governments, in a first general appeal for disarmament.