“I have been talking with Escoltier; we have got him lodged in Scotland Yard — though you needn’t mention that fact in your account — and I think we know enough now to trap the Nine Men.”
“Who are they and what does the ‘C’ stand for in’N.H.C.’?”
“I can only guess,” said T.B. cautiously. “Do you know anything about wireless telegraphy!” he demanded.
“Not much,” admitted the editor.
“Well, you know enough to realize that the further you wish to communicate the more electrical energy you require?”
“That much I understand,” said the journalist. “The principle is the ‘rings on the pond.’ You throw a stone into still water, and immediately rings grow outward. The bigger the stone, the farther reaching the rings.”
“At Poldhu,” continued T.B., “Hyatt was in charge of the long-distance instrument. As a matter of fact, the work he was engaged on was merely experimental, but his endeavour seemed to be centred in securing the necessary energy for communicating nine hundred miles. Of course, wireless telegraphy is practicable up to and beyond 3,000 miles, but few installations are capable of transmitting that distance.
“So ‘C’ is, you think, within 900 miles of Cornwall!”
T.B. nodded.
“I have a feeling that I know ‘C’,” he said. “I have another feeling that these wireless messages do not come from ‘C’ at all, but from a place adjacent. However,” — he took from his pocket a flat exercise book filled with closely-written columns of words and figures— “we shall see.”
He took a cab from Fleet Street; and, arriving at the block of Government buildings which sheltered the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, he entered its gloomy doors.
A messenger came forward to inquire his business, but was forestalled by a keen little man with tanned face and twinkling eyes. “Sailor” was written on every line of his mahogany face. “Hullo, my noble policeman!” he greeted T.B. “Who is the victim — the First Sea Lord or the Controller of the Victualling Department?”
“To be precise, Almack,” said T.B. “I have come to arrest Reform, which I gather—”
“No politics,” smiled Captain John Almack, R.N. “What is the game?”
“It is what our mutual friend Napoleon would call a negative problem in strategy,” the Assistant-Commissioner replied. “I want to ask an ethereal friend, who exists somewhere in space, to come in and be killed.”
Captain Almack led the way up a flight of stairs.
“We got a request from your Commissioner; and, of course, the Lords of Admiralty are only too pleased to put the instrument at your disposal.”
“They are very charming,” murmured T.B.
“They instructed me to keep a watchful eye on you. We have missed things since your last visit.
“That sounds like a jovial lie,” said T.B. frankly.
In the orderly instrument room they found an operator in attendance, and T.B. lost no time.
“Call N.C.H.,” he said; and, whilst the instrument clicked and snapped obedient to the man’s hand, T.B. opened his little exercise book and composed a message. He had finished his work long before any answer came to the call. For half an hour they waited whilst the instrument clicked monotonously. “Dash-dot, dot-dot-dot, dash-dot-dash-dot.”
And over and over again.
“Dash-dot, dot-dot-dot, dash-dot-dash-dot.”
Then suddenly the operator stopped, and there came a new sound.
They waited in tense silence.
“Answered,” said the operator.
“Take this.” T.B. handed him a slip of paper.
As the man sent the message out with emphatic tappings, Captain Almack took the translation that T.B. handed him.
“To N.C.H.. There is trouble here. I must see you. Important. Can you meet me in Paris tomorrow?”
After this message had gone through there was a wait of five minutes. Then the answer came, and the man at the instrument wrote down unintelligible words which T.B. translated.
“Impossible. Come to M. Will meet S.E. Have you got the book?”
“Reply ‘Podaba’,” instructed T.B., spelling the word. “Now send this.” He handed another slip of paper across the table, and passed the translation back to the man behind him.
“Is Gibraltar intercepting messages?” it ran. Again the wait, and again the staccato reply.
“Unlikely, but will send round tomorrow to make sure. Goodnight.”
As the instrument clicked its farewell, T.B. executed a silent wardance to the scandal of the solemn operator, and the delight of the little captain.
“T.B., you’ll get me hung!” he warned. “You’ll upset all kinds of delicate instruments, to say nothing of the telegraphist’s sense of decency. Come away.”
“Now,” demanded Captain Almack, when he had led him to his snug little office; “what is the mystery!”
T.B. related as much of the story as was necessary, and the officer whistled.
“The devils!” he swore. “And so that’s the explanation of the poor old Castilia’s sinking is it?”
“The discovery I was trying to make,” T.B. went on, “was the exact location of N.C.H.. I asked him or them to come to Paris. As a matter of fact, I wanted to know if they were within twentyfour hours’ distance of Paris. ‘Impossible,’ they reply. But they will come to Madrid, and offer to meet the Sud Express. So they must be in Spain and south of Madrid, otherwise there would be no impossibility about meeting me in Paris tomorrow. “Where are they? within reach of Gibraltar apparently, because they talk of sending round tomorrow. Now, that phrase ‘sending round’ is significant, for it proves beyond the shadow of a doubt exactly in what part of Andalusia they live.”
“How?”
“When people who live within reach of the fortress talk of going to Gibraltar, as you know, they either say that they are ‘going across to Gibraltar’ or that they are ‘going round.’ By the jfirst, they indicate the route via Algeciras and across the bay; by the latter, they refer to the journey by way of Cadiz and Tangier—”
“Cadiz!”
The exclamation came from his hearers.
“Cadiz,” repeated T.B. He bent his head forward and rested it for a moment in his hands. When he lifted it, they saw that his face was grave.
“It’s worth trying,” he muttered. “And,” he continued aloud, “it will be bringing down two birds with one stone.”
“May I use the instrument again?” he asked.
“Certainly,” said the officer readily.
T.B. rose.
“I’m going to Scotland Yard, and I shall not be away for more than ten minutes,” he said; and in a few seconds he was crossing Whitehall at a run.
He passed through the entrance and made straight for the big bureau, where day in and day out the silent recorder sat with his pen, his cabinets and his everlasting dossier.
T.B. knew he would be there, because there was a heavy calendar at the Old Bailey, and the silent man was working far into the night — arranging, sorting, and rearranging.
The detective was back at the Admiralty