The morning of the second day after the sinking of the Kaiser Charlemagne showed practically but three things in the papers; the account of the panic the day before; futile discussions as to the identity and plans of the man who was trying to stop all war; and stories of deputations entreating the governments of the various powers to disarm. Apparently the last months had raised the numbers of the peace advocates by millions. The papers which had given a few columns a year to such propaganda now gave pages daily. Other factional differences became forgotten. The real need for protecting the lives and property of the nation, the fancied need of protecting commerce, was the theme of every orator at every meeting.
In one place only were these deputations received with no consideration. The German Kaiser, the War Lord, bearded by a single man, stripped of one of his proudest battleships, received all words regarding peace with utter contumely. All papers agreed in considering him the chief stumbling block in the way of a universal peace.
I was running over the morning papers when a card was brought to me. It was that of Ordway, my old Washington friend, who, as private secretary to the Secretary of War, gave me the message!
“Hullo, Malachi, you old prophet of evil!” he remarked, with a cheerful grin, as he entered. “Give me an inside tip on the end of the world, will you? I’ll use it to bear the market.”
“My prophecy shop is closed to-day,” I replied, in his own vein. “What brings you from Washington?”
“I came wholly to see you,” he said seriously. “The President made me a special agent to get a line on what you were doing. The report that came to him from the Attorney General, the time they put you in jail, whetted his curiosity, so he sent me up here to see things for myself. Will you let me see Haldane’s machine?”
“Gladly,” I answered, and we started for the laboratory.
“Between ourselves,” remarked Ordway, as we walked from the car, “and strictly not for publication, there’s the deuce to pay with the Kaiser. He’s mad as hops about his ship’s going down in Portsmouth Harbor. He thinks it’s an invidious distinction to have the Kaiser Charlemagne go down in a foreign port, when the other boats have gone down on their own shores. He’d declare war on England for sixpence. Things were strained enough with the commercial rivalry of the last few years, but they’re at breaking point now. It would take a mighty small straw to break that uneasy camel’s back.”
Tom and Dorothy were both in the laboratory, and they greeted Ordway cordially. The especial interest centred in the wave-measuring apparatus. The polished belt was revolving with regular precision, and the beam stood fixed at zero.
“I wish you could have been here and seen it work, when the Kaiser Charlemagne went down,” said Dorothy.