The Lost Road Part 16

The aide coughed apologetically. "You might read, sir," he suggested.

"What? Exactly! Quite so!" cried the admiral.

In the fading light he held close to his eyes a piece of paper.

"San Francisco, April 20," he read. "Rueff, first sergeant, shot himself here to-day, leaving written confession theft of regimental funds for which Swanson, captain, lately court-martialled. Money found intact in Rueff's mattress. Innocence of Swanson never questioned, but dissatisfied with findings of court-martial has left army. Brother officers making every effort to find him and persuade return."

The admiral sighed happily. "And my wife," he added, with an impressiveness that was intended to show he had at last arrived at the important part of his message, "says you are to stay to dinner."

Abruptly, rudely, Swanson swung upon his heel and turned his face from the admiral. His head was thrown back, his arms held rigid at his sides. In slow, deep breaths, like one who had been dragged from drowning, he drank in the salt, chill air. After one glance the four men also turned, and in the falling darkness stood staring at nothing, and no one spoke.

The aide was the first to break the silence. In a polite tone, as though he were continuing a conversation which had not been interrupted, he addressed the admiral. "Of course, Rueff's written confession was not needed," he said.

"His shooting himself proved that he was guilty."

Swanson started as though across his naked shoulders the aide had drawn a whip.

In penitence and grat.i.tude he raised his eyes to the stars. High above his head the strands of the wireless, swinging from the towering masts like the strings of a giant Aeolian harp, were swept by the wind from the ocean. To Swanson the sighing and whispering wires sang in praise and thanksgiving.

THE G.o.d OF COINCIDENCE

The G.o.d of Coincidence is fortunate in possessing innumerable press agents. They have made the length of his arm a proverb. How at exactly the right moment he extends it across continents and drags two and two together, thus causing four to result where but for him sixes and sevens would have obtained, they have made known to the readers of all of our best magazines. For instance, Holworthy is leaving for the Congo to find a cure for the sleeping sickness, and for himself any sickness from which one is warranted never to wake up. This is his condition because the beautiful million-heiress who is wintering at the Alexander Young Hotel in Honolulu has refused to answer his letters, cables, and appeals.

He is leaning upon the rail taking his last neck-breaking look at the Woolworth Building. The going-ash.o.r.e bugle has sounded, pocket-handkerchiefs are waving; and Joe Hutton, the last visitor to leave the ship, is at the gangway.

"Good-by, Holworthy!" he calls. "Where do you keep yourself? Haven't seen you at the club in a year!"

"Haven't been there in a year--nor mean to!" is the ungracious reply of our hero.

"Then, for Heaven's sake," exclaims Hutton, "send some one to take your mail out of the H box! Every time I look for letters I wade through yours."

"Tear them up!" calls Holworthy. "They're bills."

Hutton now is half-way down the gangplank.

"Then your creditors," he shouts back, "must all live at the Alexander Young Hotel in Honolulu!"

That night an express train shrieking through the darkness carried with it toward San Francisco--

In this how evident is the fine Italian hand of the G.o.d of Coincidence!

Had Hutton's name begun with an M; had the H in Hutton been silent; had he not carried to the Mauretania a steamer basket for his rich aunt; had he not resented the fact that since Holworthy's election to the Van Sturtevant Club he had ceased to visit the Grill Club--a cure for sleeping sickness might have been discovered; but two loving hearts never would have been reunited and that story would not have been written.

Or, Mrs. Montclair, with a suit-case, is leaving her home forever to join handsome Harry Bellairs, who is at the corner with a racing-car and all the money of the bank of which he has been cashier. As the guilty woman places the farewell letter against the pin-cushion where her husband will be sure to find it, her infant son turns in his sleep and jabs himself with a pin. His howl of anguish resembles that of a puppy on a moonlight night. The mother recognizes her master's voice.

She believes her child dying, flies to the bedside, tears up the letter, unpacks the suit-case. The next morning at breakfast her husband, reading the newspaper, exclaims aloud:

"Harry Bellairs," he cries, "has skipped with the bank's money! I always told you he was not a man you ought to know."

"His manner to me," she says severely, "always was that of a perfect gentleman."

Again coincidence gets the credit. Had not the child tossed--had not at the critical moment the safety pin proved untrue to the man who invented it--that happy family reunion would have been impossible.

Or, it might be told this way:

Old Man McCurdy, the Pig-Iron King, forbids his daughter Gwendolyn even to think of marrying poor but honest Beef Walters, the baseball pitcher, and denies him his house. The lovers plan an elopement. At midnight Beef is to stand at the tradesman's entrance and whistle "Waiting at the Church"; and down the silent stairs Gwendolyn is to steal into his arms. At the very same hour the butler has planned with the policeman on fixed post to steal Mother McCurdy's diamonds and pa.s.s them to a brother of the policeman, who is to wait at the tradesman's entrance and whistle "Waiting for the Robert E. Lee."

This sounds improbable--especially that the policeman would allow even his brother to get the diamonds before he did; but, with the G.o.d of Coincidence on the job, you shall see that it will all come out right.

Beef is first at the door. He whistles. The butler--an English butler--with no ear for music, shoves into his hands tiaras and sunbursts. Honest Beef hands over the butler to the policeman and the tiaras to Mother McCurdy.

"How can I reward you?" exclaims the grateful woman.

"Your daughter's hand!"

Again the G.o.d of Coincidence scores and Beef Walters is credited with an a.s.sist. And for preventing the robbery McCurdy has the peg-post cop made a captain; thus enabling him to wear diamonds of his own and raising him above the need of taking them from others.

These examples of what the G.o.d can do are mere fiction; the story that comes now really happened. It also is a story of coincidence. It shows how this time the long arm was stretched out to make two young people happy; it again ill.u.s.trates that, in the instruments he chooses, the G.o.d of Coincidence works in a mysterious way his wonders to perform.

This time the tool he used was a hat of green felt.

The story really should be called "The Man in the Green Hat."

At St. James's Palace the plenipotentiaries of the Allies and of Turkey were trying to bring peace to Europe; in Russell Square, Bloomsbury, Sam Lowell was trying to arrange a peace with Mrs. Wroxton, his landlady. The ultimatum of the Allies was: "Adrianople or fight!" The last words of Mrs. Wroxton were: "Five pounds or move out!"

Sam did not have five pounds. He was a stranger in London; he had lost his position in New York and that very morning had refused to marry the girl he loved--Polly Seward, the young woman the Sunday papers called "The Richest Girl in America."

For any man--for one day--that would seem to be trouble enough; but to the Sultan of Turkey that day brought troubles far more serious. And, as his losses were Sam's gain, we must follow the troubles of the Sultan. Until, with the aid of a green felt hat, the G.o.d of Coincidence turns the misfortunes of the Sultan into a fortune for Sam, Sam must wait.

From the first days of the peace conference it was evident there was a leak. The negotiations had been opened under a most solemn oath of secrecy. As to the progress of the conference, only such information or misinformation--if the diplomats considered it better--as was mutually agreed upon by the plenipotentiaries was given to a waiting world. But each morning, in addition to the official report of the proceedings of the day previous, one newspaper, the Times, published an account which differed from that in every other paper, and which undoubtedly came from the inside. In details it was far more generous than the official report; it gave names, speeches, arguments; it described the wordy battles of the diplomats, the concessions, bluffs, bargains.

After three days the matter became public scandal. At first, the plenipotentiaries declared the events described in the Times were invented each evening in the office of the Times; but the proceedings of the day following showed the public this was not so.

Some one actually present at the conference was telling tales out of school. These tales were cabled to Belgrade, Sofia, Athens, Constantinople; and hourly from those capitals the plenipotentiaries were a.s.sailed by advice, abuse, and threats. The whole world began to take part in their negotiations; from every side they were attacked; from home by the Young Turks, or the On to Constantinople Party; and from abroad by peace societies, religious bodies, and chambers of commerce. Even the armies in the field, instead of waiting for the result of their deliberations, told them what to do, and that unless they did it they would better remain in exile. To make matters worse, in every stock exchange gambling on the news furnished by the Times threatened the financial peace of Europe. To work under such conditions of publicity was impossible. The delegates appealed to their hosts of the British Foreign Office.

Unless the chiel amang them takin' notes was discovered and the leak stopped, they declared the conference must end. Spurred on by questions in Parliament, by appeals from the great banking world, by criticisms not altogether unselfish from the other newspapers, the Foreign Office surrounded St. James's Palace and the office of the Times with an army of spies. Every secretary, stenographer, and attendant at the conference was under surveillance, his past record looked into, his present comings and goings noted. Even the plenipotentiaries themselves were watched; and employees of the Times were secretly urged to sell the government the man who was selling secrets to them. But those who were willing to be "urged" did not know the man; those who did know him refused to be bought.

By a process of elimination suspicion finally rested upon one Adolf Hertz, a young Hungarian scholar who spoke and wrote all the mongrel languages of the Balkans; who for years, as a copying clerk and translator, had been employed by the Foreign Office, and who now by it had been lent to the conference. For the reason that when he lived in Budapest he was a correspondent of the Times, the police, in seeking for the leak, centred their attention upon Hertz. But, though every moment he was watched, and though Hertz knew he was watched, no present link between him and the Times had been established--and this in spite of the fact that the hours during which it was necessary to keep him under closest observation were few. Those were the hours between the closing of the conference, and midnight, when the provincial edition of the Times went to press. For the remainder of the day, so far as the police cared, Hertz could go to the devil! But for those hours, except when on his return from the conference he locked himself in his lodgings in Jermyn Street, detectives were always at his elbow.

It was supposed that it was during this brief period when he was locked in his room that he wrote his report; but how, later, he conveyed it to the Times no one could discover. In his rooms there was no telephone; his doors and windows were openly watched; and after leaving his rooms his movements were--as they always had been--methodical, following a routine open to observation. His programme was invariably the same.

Each night at seven from his front door he walked west. At Regent Street he stopped to buy an evening paper from the aged news-vender at the corner; he then crossed Piccadilly Circus into Coventry Street, skirted Leicester Square, and at the end of Green Street entered Pavoni's Italian restaurant. There he took his seat always at the same table, hung his hat always on the same bra.s.s peg, ordered the same Hungarian wine, and read the same evening paper. He spoke to no one; no one spoke to him.

When he had finished his coffee and his cigarette he returned to his lodgings, and there he remained until he rang for breakfast. From the time at which he left his home until his return to it he spoke to only two persons--the news-vender to whom he handed a halfpenny; the waiter who served him the regular table d'hote dinner--between whom and Hertz nothing pa.s.sed but three and six for the dinner and sixpence for the waiter himself.

Each evening, the moment he moved into the street a plain-clothes man fell into step beside him; another followed at his heels; and from across the street more plain-clothes men kept their eyes on every one approaching him in front or from the rear. When he bought his evening paper six pairs of eyes watched him place a halfpenny in the hand of the news-vender, and during the entire time of his stay in Pavoni's every mouthful he ate was noted--every direction he gave the waiter was overheard.

Of this surveillance Hertz was well aware. To have been ignorant of it would have argued him blind and imbecile. But he showed no resentment.