Chapter XXIII
_The End of the Coil_
Warriner laid the book on the table, and pulled out his pipe. I think itwas a full five minutes before any of us said a word. But Betty kept herhand close-locked in mine.
"Any particular questions?" said Warriner at length.
"If I've got the hang of it," I began, "the Sigma ray was bound to getthe man or woman who happened to be sitting in that big chair on thespecified dates in June when the sun was in position to shine throughthe bullseye lens."
"Yes."
"Then I escaped through the accident that, when the window was repaired,the lens got mixed up with the ordinary glass bullseyes."
"Precisely. It had been replaced in a new position, an entirely unknownone. As it happened--pure chance, you understand--the ray of sunshinethat fell upon your face at noon that day had passed through a bullseyeof common purple glass, and therefore it was harmless. But the Terrorwas in the room; somewhere it was lying in wait, ready to strike. Do yourecall how I kept close to the wall, so as to avoid getting in the pathof the direct sunlight? You understand now that I realized the danger,and took the obvious precaution. But John Thaneford was unaware that anychange had been made in the position of the death-dealing lens. And sohe walked straight into the line of destructive force; and the Sigmaray, being no respecter of persons, proceeded to strike him down."
"I wonder how much he really knew about the whole affair?" queriedBetty. "You remember that Eunice expressly acquitted John Thaneford ofany actual part in my father's death."
"But he certainly must have been cognizant of the nature of the trap,"answered Warriner. "He was the observer at the time of Mr. Graeme'sdeath, the elder Thaneford being physically unable to take hisaccustomed post on Sugar Loaf. Again, his putting Hugh, bound andhelpless, into the fatal chair is unanswerable evidence that he didpossess a guilty knowledge of his father's secret. It makes no moraldifference that he had no hand in inventing or setting up the instrumentof vengeance. He knew of its existence undoubtedly, and hoped to profitby it. That's enough."
"Have you any theory about the Sigma ray itself?" I asked. "Or ratherits effect upon the physical organism?"
"Do you happen to recall the medical testimony given at the coroner'sinquest by Doctor Williams of John Hopkins? Well, he testified, inbrief, that the autopsy had revealed a most peculiar lesion of thebrain; in unprofessional language, the injury might be characterized asa case of greatly intensified sunstroke."
"Yes, I do remember."
"Now there are unexplained anomalies about even ordinary sunstroke,"continued Warriner. "Just what are the conditions under which exposuresto the rays of the sun may be dangerous?
"In the first place, we may affirm confidently that the peril is notdependent upon the amount of humidity that may be present in theatmosphere. Down in New Orleans, where the air is full of moisture andthe thermometer stands high in the scale for weeks at a time, sunstrokeis virtually unknown; men and beasts seem equally immune. But let aten-day heat wave submerge New York City and the emergency hospitalswill be full up, while the horses will be wearing plaited straw-bonnetsas a protection against the deadly sun.
"Again, there is Fort Yuma in Arizona, the hottest place in the UnitedStates, with the possible exception of Death Valley. Yes, it isabnormally hot at Yuma and the air is furnace-dried; the old-timers willtell you that, on really bad days, a man can't drink water fast enoughto keep from dying of thirst. Of course, men do die from the effects ofthe heat, but it isn't our ordinary form of sunstroke. To sum up, then:
"No sunstroke at New Orleans, where it is abnormally humid and hot; andnone at Fort Yuma, where it is abnormally dry and hot. But plenty ofcases in Paris, Chicago, and New York, where the climate is supposed tobe temperate.
"The inference is logical: under certain conditions, one of theinvisible, high frequency rays, always present in sunlight, is enabledto get in its deadly work. Unfortunately, we don't know what thoseconditions are. Perhaps the proportion of static electricity in theatmosphere may have something to do with it. Anyway, the fact remainsthat men do die of heat stroke in New York and Paris, while Louisianaand Florida are comparatively free from that particular peril to life."
"Then, according to your theory, it is the Sigma ray which is the activelethal agent in sunlight?"
"Yes, and Fielding Thaneford's invention enabled him to isolate the rayin question, at the same time enormously intensifying its action. BothGraeme and John Thaneford died the instant that it touched them."
"And that was Fielding Thaneford's secret," said Betty, just returnedfrom a flying visit to the nursery, where Little Hugh lay sleeping."Such a horrible secret!" She shuddered.
"Just as well that it died with him," assented Warriner soberly.
"Still, in the end, he sought to stop the evil thing that he had set inmotion," persisted Betty. "He told me all he could; all indeed that itwas necessary to know, once I really began to use my wits."
"Which reminds me," I put in, "that you have yet to explain how youfinally managed to read the cypher. What put you back on the track?"
"So simple a thing it was, too," laughed Betty. "And so easy tooverlook."
"I remember years ago," remarked Warriner, "that, on account of certainrare astronomical conditions, it was possible to see the planet Venus atmidday. It took me the longest time to find the star, although I thoughtI knew just where to look; also all my friends were admiring thespectacle. At last I saw it, and then it was an easy matter to locate itagain. I suppose the reason is that I didn't know what to expect; somesort of junior sun, I reckon. In reality, it was only a pin-point oflight, but brilliant as a diamond."
"And there's the game of challenging an opponent to find a word in ageographical map," said Betty. "It isn't the one printed in fine typeand tucked away in a corner that is so hard to discover. The reallyinvisible word is the one stretching in big, widely separated lettersclear across the page."
"Will you _tell_ me?" I asked impatiently.
"Here goes then. You remember that I set down my theoreticalkey-sentence, thus:"
W O N F O R T O O F O R A T E
"The uncoding went along splendidly for eight places, thus:"
W O N F O R T O T H A N E C O U
"The rest was gibberish. It follows then that the running off the trackmust have happened at the ninth substitution and nowhere else."
"Obviously."
"The very morning that your letter about the library windowarrived--that is, on June the twenty-first--I was sitting at my desk;for the ten thousand time, more or less, I printed out those distractingcapitals:"
W O N F O R T O O F O R A T E
"As I looked at the line of letters I suddenly discovered somethingentirely new: the five end ones formed the perfectly good English word,_Orate_.
"There is a game, you know, in which you mix up the letters of a longword, such as _Plenipotentiary_, and then try to recombine them intosubsidiary words, the biggest list winning the prize. Perhaps there wereother esoteric or inside words in my key-sentence, a still deepermeaning and significance to this apparently haphazard collection ofalphabetical symbols. I started experimenting, and almost immediately Idid get another word, _Fort_. Now I'll write out the series again,using vertical lines to divide off the word-groups. Here it is:"
W O N | F O R T | O O F | O R A T E
"The only perplexity was in the third section, for although _OOF_ is aYiddish slang word for money or cash it isn't much in use in our rurallocality; in all probability, old Mr. Thaneford had never even heard ofit. All the other words were good English.
"What was the ninth letter, the alphabetical rock upon which my finetheory had gone to pieces? Why it was none other than the second O inthat very word, _OOF_. Then I saw the solution in a flash. Do you?"
I shook my head.
"There is another English work which corresponds phonetically to thenumber 2 or two. Of course it is _TO_. Let us make the substitution,thus:"
&nb
sp; W O N | F O R T | O F | O R A T E
"A complete English sentence, you see. It doesn't make very good sense,but that is of no consequence, since it is merely what Chalmers callser--er--well, what _do_ you call it, Chalmers?"
"Mnemonic guide," smiled Warriner. "An artificial aid to one's memory.It would be somewhat easier to write down the key-letters correctly ifthis absurd sentence were kept in mind. You have to be absolutelyaccurate in the coding of a cypher message."
"Now then, Hugh, do you see?" demanded my wife.
"Of course I do," I answered eagerly. "The extra O in your originalkey-sentence is not only wrong in itself, but its inclusion in theseries throws everything which follows it into hopeless confusion. Let'stry it out."
Rapidly I wrote down the correct key-letters, and underneath them ascore of the cypher symbols, thus:
W O N F O R T O F O R A T E W O N F O R T Q W O T T U I J X I S V A Z P I H N X J X
Taking up the magic square I asked Betty to repeat the formula foruncoding.
"Find where the first key-letter occurs in the top row," said Bettyglibly. "For example: W. Then follow that vertical column down until youreach the first letter of the cypher message; in this case: Q. Followthat horizontal line to the extreme left, and you will recover theinitial letter of the original message, namely: T. _Da capo adinfinitum. Q. E. D._"
Together we worked out the first line of the cypher in the leather-boundbook. The complete layout ran as follows:
W O N F O R T O F O R A T E W O N F O R T Q W O T T U I J X I S V A Z P I H N X J X T H A N E C O U R T A U G U S T T H I R D
"And so on, world without end," commented Betty. "You can imagine howlike mad I worked once we were on the train and rushing Southward. Fornow I knew _why_ it was necessary to avoid entering that room,especially at this particular time of year."
* * * * *
The clocks were striking nine, and Chalmers wanted to drop in at"Powersthorp" on his way home. So he bade us good night, climbed intohis car, and was off, the red star of his tail-light twinkling throughthe linden trees bordering upon the driveway. And I remained alone withBetty; only, for a long time, we did not speak; it was not necessary.
* * * * *
There is but a word to add. The walls of the library wing had sustainedbut little damage in the fire; consequently, the process of rebuildingand refitting was made so much the easier. The stained glass, ofcourse, had been entirely destroyed, but for that there could be fewregrets; all those Old Testament pictures had been scenes of hatred andviolence and divine wrath. It were better that Little Hugh should neversee them and so have his childish imagination darkened. They have beenreplaced by windows of a softer nature--green pastures and still water,the lilies and poppies of the Parsifal meadows on Good Friday morning,and the peace of the everlasting hills. No chance here for even theunwitting insertion of that terrible purple boss; indeed the grapes ofwrath were no longer in existence, for Chalmers Warriner had taken painsto have every bit of the _disjecta membra_ of the old windows gatheredup and buried in some inaccesible pit, its very location to remainforever hidden from human eyes.
* * * * *
To-day the library at "Hildebrand Hundred," exorcised of its darkspirit, is again our favorite living-room. The teakwood desk and thegreat swivel-chair were destroyed in the fire, and indeed all the oldfittings and hangings have given way to bright and cheerful modernfurnishings. As I sit at my desk, writing the final page of thesememoirs, the sun lies warm and glowing upon the oaken floor, but thereis no hidden menace in its beauty. The scent of roses floats through theopen windows, and I can hear the clip of Betty's garden shears as shecuts off the perfumed coupons of her floral treasures; one by one thegorgeous blooms fall into the waiting basket; our dinner table must beresplendent to-night for Chalmers and Hilda, just back from theirhoneymoon journey, are coming to us for an intimate _partie carree_.
And in the middle distance stands Little Hugh, the breeze roughing uphis sleek, black poll, his legs planted confidently wide apart, and hisgaze traveling outward upon the fair, broad acres that some day will beall his own; my lawful son and heir, a true Hildebrand of "HildebrandHundred."
Truly, God is good and life is sweet.
THE END
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