I nodded.
“Well, from the way Heidenmuller’s room looked, and the way the things in his pockets were left, I’ve wondered if the man had not his secrets. Do you know,” he said, leaning forward, “there were no eyelets in his shoes when he was found. The crimps were in the leather of the strings, but the metal ends were gone. The lenses of his spectacles, without any mounting, were lying on the floor. The very filling of his teeth had gone. Why couldn’t a battleship disappear into its elemental parts the same way, all its living contents paralyzed by the shock, dying instantly and sinking below the waves. I’ve wondered more than once if the government sent down divers in Portsmouth harbor and if they did, what they found.”
There was just one thing to do. He held as much as we did of the secret. Perhaps he knew more. From beginning to end, I told the whole story of our search. As I went on, he grew more and more excited. As I paused towards the end, he broke in.
“The second thing fits in here, the reason why I believe the secret might not be lost. One day as I went into the laboratory, the Doctor’s assistant told me that he was in the inner room, but had left word for me to wait. I was extremely curious for no one had ever entered that inner room to my knowledge. The door opened at last, and a tall, dark man, an American I should say, came out of that closed room with the doctor. I never saw him before or since. Now, is he the man who got the secret, and with it is trying to stop all war?”
I was out of my seat with excitement. “I believe he is. Would you know him if you saw his photograph?”
“Surely,” said Hamerly.
I rose to go.
“Hold on,” exclaimed Hamerly, “I haven’t told you half yet.”
“Go on,” I said eagerly, seating myself once more.
“That first day, after I had made a rough examination, I started to go over the inner room inch by inch. At first I thought it was perfectly insulated by wood. There wasn’t a piece of metal nor even a piece of glass in it. Where the incandescent light came down, hung a bit of twisted cord, without a scrap of metal remaining. There was a length of insulating cloth, minus the wire it covered, lying on the floor. I went round and round, hunting for metal, but I could find none. There was a wooden shutter over the window, and no glass. I closed the door and walked over every inch of the room, trying to find any break whatsoever in the insulation. The only thing I could find was a faint glimmer, where the wooden window shutter did not quite join. I went outside and studied the place from the street. There was no appearance of anything unusual on the wall of the laboratory, excepting that the boarded window of the wooden room looked out like a rectangular unseeing eye. I crossed to the sidewalk just before the laboratory, and looked up and down the opposite wall. There was nothing unusual on that side, save two square places, side by side on the painted wall, which looked fresher than the wall around. I examined them more carefully, crossed and recrossed. The two spots were almost exactly opposite the lower end of the shuttered window where I had seen a slight chink of light, the only place where the insulation of wood was broken. I went up the stairs of the house opposite. It was a little tea shop. A wooden sign leaned against the wall beside the door. I picked it up. The screw holes and the whiter paint where the hinges had lain showed clear, but there was no metal about it. The proprietress bustled up to take my order and, as she saw me looking at the sign, broke into voluble explanation. ‘I should have put the sign back in its place, sir, but fairly didn’t dare to. It was a week come Tuesday when it fell. It’s God’s own mercy there wasn’t somebody killed, sir. And the strangest thing, too. I couldn’t find sight nor smell of the hinges and the rod where it hung. It must have pulled out of the wall, and somebody have picked up the iron, before I could get down, sir. Now isn’t that strange, sir?’