“I don’t know what to say, sir. The telegraph instruments are going like one o’clock. I thought you had better know immediately. There’s no one else aboard can read them.”
My rough exclamation astonished them both. Our Marconi instruments had always been a pleasant source of mystery to the crew, and even the Captain regarded them with some little awe. Hitherto we had hardly made use of them at all, exchanging, I think, but a couple of messages—one with a P. & O. steamer and another with a Union boat. And now they spoke for the third time, not from any ocean-going ship, I felt sure, nor from any station ashore, but a voice from the unknown, pregnant of good or ill, it might be, beyond any power of the imagination to say. Be it said that I went below with an anxiety, an excitement of the news baffling words. Was it possible that this implement of steel and brass, of wire and filings, and the simplest electric batteries, would reveal the truth so long concealed? Even that I dared to hope.
Now, the second officer watched the instrument and his curiosity was natural enough. I caught him when I entered the fore cabin where we had set it up, in the act of trying to send some signal in reply, and arrested him with so rough a hand upon his own that he must have believed me bereft suddenly of my senses.
“Good God!” I cried. “Not a word, man—not a word. This may be life or death to us. Leave it alone—let them speak before we answer.”
“The instrument has been going for five minutes, sir. I know something of the Morse code, but I can’t make head or tail of it. She’s not a P. & O. ship, sir.”
“Neither a P. & O. nor any other letters in our alphabet, my lad. Go down now to Mr. Benson, the engineer, and tell him to give an eye to the batteries and the coherer. I will see to this.”
He left me, and I took my stand before the implement, and watched it as a man watches a human face wherein he may read the story of his fate. A message was being ticked out there, but so faintly, so absolutely inaudible, that no skill of mine could write it down. Far away from us, it might be, some hundreds of miles away, an unknown ship flashed its news over the lonely ocean. What ship, then, and whose were the voices? Fascinated beyond expression, I stood a long hour by the instrument and could hear my own heart beating with the excitement of suspense. Would the unknown never speak plainly? Should I risk a question in answer, sent out from our own lofty mast where all had been prepared for such a seeming miracle as this? And if so, what question? Had the Jew a password upon the high seas of which I was not the possessor. I knew not what to think. One man alone upon the yacht might speak at such an hour—young Harry Avenhill, who, silently, willingly, and in gratitude had worked with our engineers during these long weeks of the vain pursuit.
Harry came up to me from the depths of the engine room, his face a little pallid, but his eyes a clearer, healthier blue than when I had taken him from England and given him that second chance which humanity owes to every lad who sins. He told me frankly that there had been a password in use both in England and France.
“We used to have to write the letter ‘A’ five times running from the bottom, left-hand, to the top right-hand of a slip of paper, sir. That was when we wanted to get into any of our houses in London or Paris or Brussels. If we met a friend in the streets, it was the Romany tongue we spoke—Kushto bokh or mero pal, or something of that sort—and when we had said it, one or other asked how old Five A’s was doing. Once I remember the password was ‘Fordibras.’ That was at Blois when we robbed the house of the Count of Sens, who had just bought some of the Empress’s emeralds. I never remember it being used anywhere else but there.”
I smiled, for the Jew’s perspicuity was as evident here as it had been in England and upon the island. The weaker man, Hubert Fordibras, he who by subtle cleverness and canting self-deception tried to believe himself innocent of these crimes, he would be the first prize of the police when detection came. This was obvious—as obvious as the lad’s inability to help me.