CHAPTER XIII – A DOSE OF SLEEPING POWDER
Jack rushed out into the hallway. It was not, as he had expected, smoke-filled, nor was there any odor of fire in the air. Somewhere he could hear the voices of officers shouting above the distant hub-bub in the saloon: “Keep your heads! There is no fire.”
Doctor Flynn, the ship’s surgeon, came hurrying by. Jack stopped him and explained what had occurred in Colonel Minturn’s cabin.
“We must send for help and carry them both out of danger at once,” he said.
“Danger? But there is no danger,” exclaimed the doctor.
“But the fire?” gasped the boy.
“There is none. It was either the overwrought nerves of a silly woman that started the panic, or else there was some malicious design underlying the whole thing.”
The thought of what he had seen as he stood in the shadow of the saloon stairway rushed across Jack’s mind: Miss Jarrold’s sudden appearance and then the scream of fire. Could it have been possible that this was the thing that Sam had overheard her and her uncle debating? That, taking advantage of the panic they knew would be caused by such an alarm in the dead of night, Jarrold had schemed a way to enter Colonel Minturn’s cabin?
“Will you come into Colonel Minturn’s cabin with me at once, doctor?” asked Jack.
“Certainly, my boy. But,” and the doctor stared at him in amazement, “what has happened to you? Your face is bruised and marked. Have you been fighting?”
“A little bit,” said Jack grimly.
“With whom?”
“With a man I believe to be a consummate scoundrel. By the merest accident on earth, I happened along here just in time to frustrate what I believe to be a plot against Colonel Minturn.”
All this Jack explained hastily as they retraced their way down the corridor to Colonel Minturn’s cabin. The panic had died down, and the passengers, reassured now, were making their divers ways back to their cabins. Some tried to turn the whole matter into a joke. Others looked sheepish over the panic-stricken way in which they had behaved.
But when the two entered the colonel’s cabin a surprise awaited them.
Jarrold was not there.
Jack rubbed his mental eyes. He could have sworn he had left the man lying across the lounge, to all appearances stunned. Now, in the brief interval that the boy had been out of the cabin, the man had gone.
“He must have been playing ’possum,” said the surgeon, when Jack had briefly explained the circumstances; “but now let us see to Colonel Minturn.”
The doctor bent over the officer’s form as it lay in the bunk. The colonel was breathing heavily, his pulse was slow, his face gray.
“Run to my cabin for my medicine bag,” ordered the doctor to Jack. “You will find it on my lounge. Hurry back.”
Jack waited to ask no questions but sped off. The corridors were still choked with passengers discussing the fire scare. Most of them appeared to think it had been a grim and criminal form of joke on somebody’s part. There was talk of offering a reward for the discovery of the culprit.
But Jack, knowing what he did, placed, as we know, a more sinister construction on the midnight alarm. He was soon back with the doctor’s bag. The surgeon took out of it a small syringe and injected some sort of solution into the unconscious man’s arm.
“What is the matter with him, sir, do you think?” ventured Jack, as the doctor, his hand on Minturn’s pulse, sat by the side of the bunk.
“He has been drugged. That much is plain. Although what the agency was, I cannot guess,” was the rejoinder.
A small glass article lying on the floor caught Jack’s eye. It was an atomizer, such as are used for perfumes. But this was filled with a gray powder. He pressed the rubber bulb and an impalpable cloud of the powder was sprayed into the air. He immediately felt sick and dizzy.
“Look here, sir, what do you make of this?” he cried excitedly, handing it to the doctor. “I found it on the floor. It must have dropped from Jarrold’s pocket while we were struggling. I’m sure that that powder in it is some sort of drug. When I sprayed it out, it made me feel weak and faint.”
The doctor took the glass vessel, unscrewed the top and shook out a small quantity of the powder on his palm.
“This is an important discovery, indeed,” he exclaimed. “It is a sleeping powder used by a certain South African tribe. A sufficient quantity sprayed into the atmosphere would send anyone into a coma. It is not poisonous, merely sleep producing.”
“Then you think that some of it was sprayed into this room, possibly through the transom, by Jarrold before – ”
“We’ll leave Mr. Jarrold’s name out of this for the present,” said the doctor shortly. “Remember, we have no proof against him. For all you know, and for all that appears, he broke in here to try to save the colonel when the cry of fire occurred.”
“But he attacked me,” protested Jack.
“His answer to that would be that you were not at your post, where you should have been.”
Jack colored. This was true. Jarrold had indeed a rejoinder to everything he might say against the man. When it came to a point, the lad had plenty of suspicions and theories, but absolutely no proofs to offer. He couldn’t even state positively that the atomizer full of the sleeping powder was Jarrold’s.
The colonel moved uneasily and opened his eyes. In a few moments he was able to talk.
“Why, what has happened?” he asked drowsily, looking first at the doctor and then at Jack.
“First, will you tell us the last thing you recollect, Colonel?”
“Most assuredly. I came to bed early. Before turning in, I examined certain papers of mine and found they were all in perfect order. This done, I lay down with a book. Suddenly I felt unaccountably drowsy, and – and that’s all. But what has occurred in the meantime? I can tell by your presence in the cabin that something out of the ordinary is up.”
“Will you first oblige me by making sure your papers are safe?” asked the doctor.
“Certainly; they are in this box under my pillow. Ah yes, everything is in perfect order. As you see, this is a combination lock. I could tell in an instant if it had been tampered with.”
“Then, Colonel, I think that you should thank this young man here for saving you from a theft that might have cost you dearly,” said the doctor, indicating Jack.
CHAPTER XIV – THE WINKING EYE
“I – I must confess I don’t understand,” said the colonel, looking bewilderedly from one to the other of his two companions.
“Then let me enlighten you.” And, supplemented from time to time by Jack, the doctor gave a concise account of the incidents leading up to the discovery of Jarrold breaking into the colonel’s cabin.
The officer could hardly believe his ears.
“Of course I have suspected Jarrold all along, and cannot be too grateful to this young man for his vigilance,” he said; “but the diabolical ingenuity of the man is beyond me.”
“He ought to be in irons at this minute,” asserted the doctor, “but so far as I can see, he has covered up his tracks so cleverly that we have nothing upon which to base a complaint against him.”
“At the present time, no, unfortunately,” said the colonel reluctantly. “And if it had not been for Mr. Ready, here, the whole plot might have proved a complete success.”
“I think it is reasonably certain that when you awakened, which might not have been till late to-morrow morning, you would have found your papers gone,” said the doctor.
“But in that case, I should have instantly suspected Jarrold,” was the reply. “And exercising my authority as an officer of the United States army, I could have had him detained under suspicion while his baggage and his person were searched.”
“I am afraid that that would have been very much like looking for a needle in a haystack,” said Dr. Flynn. “A rascal as clever as he is would have found some way to dispose of the papers, where it would be highly improbable that they could be found.”
“You are right,” agreed Colonel Minturn. “Well, gentlemen, I think that for the sake of all concerned, we had better keep this secret among us three and await developments.”
“But Jarrold knows that Ready suspects him,” objected the doctor.
“Oh, well, for that very reason, he won’t do any talking,” was the colonel’s response. “We must watch and wait, and the next time catch him red-handed.”
“Then you think he will make another attempt?” asked Jack.
“I have not the slightest doubt of it. Whatever nation is paying him, it has set a high price on the successful issue of his venture; and he will stop at nothing to put it through, if I have any knowledge of the man,” was the response.
“I think the best thing we can all do now is to turn in,” said Dr. Flynn.
This was generally agreed and good-nights were said; but before Jack sought his cabin, he visited the doctor’s room, where his face was attended to so as to leave hardly any marks of his encounter with Jarrold.
The latter did not appear the next day, but his niece, radiant and smiling, was at breakfast as if nothing had occurred. Jack looked at her wonderingly. He had not the slightest doubt that her part in the plot had been the cry of “Fire”; but she appeared as carefree and debonair as if she had nothing more important on her mind than making a charming appearance.
Jack could not help grinning to himself when Jarrold did not come down.
“I guess I gave him something to think about,” he remarked with a chuckle to Sam, as the two discussed the subject.
Jarrold appeared the next day. A dark mark under his left eye was the only visible sign of the encounter in Colonel Minturn’s cabin. He studiously avoided the other passengers, however, and spent most of his time pacing the deck with his niece.
The weather was steadily growing warmer now. Porpoises appeared in rolling, leaping schools, and flying fish were stirred up in whole coveys by the ship’s bow. The officers donned white uniforms, as did our wireless boys, and everything indicated that the steamer was entering the tropics.
It was Jack’s first voyage into such regions, and both he and Sam thrilled with the anticipation of seeing the new sights and people. But all the time, Jack was aware that under their feet was a smoldering volcano. Covered for a time, and blanketed, it was still smoldering, of that he was certain. He caught himself wondering uneasily what form the next attempt would take.
It was his watch one night and he was turning over these things in his mind as the ship plowed steadily onward, when, on going to the door of his cabin for a breath of fresh air, he was surprised to see, not far off, the green starboard and white mast headlights of what, from the distance between the lights on her fore and main masts, appeared to be a fair-sized steamer. She was steaming in the same direction as the Tropic Queen and going quite as fast.
Now, under ordinary circumstances, the sight of another craft on the same course would not have astonished one. But nowadays, when almost every ship is equipped with wireless, the operators of most vessels know precisely what craft are in their vicinity. Even in the case where ships are slow, and not equipped with radio apparatus, they usually signal, by day or night signals, to craft which have wireless, and ask to be reported. So that the sight of this stranger, moving along parallel with the Tropic Queen, gave Jack what was not exactly a thrill, but a sensation of vague uneasiness.
All at once, on her bridge, a red light began to flash. Like a blood-shot eye it winked through the dark night.
“By Jove, signals!” exclaimed Jack.
He got his signal code book and was able to read off, by his knowledge of Morse, the letters and words the strange craft was sending, as distinctly as if they had been printed. But they simply formed a meaningless jumble.
“It’s a code message to someone on board this ship,” muttered Jack to himself, as the crimson eye ceased to wink.
As it stopped transmitting its untranslatable – except to one who held the key – message through the darkness, the strange ship began to drop back under reduced speed. Whatever its mission, it had been accomplished. That much was plain. Jack wished that the jumble of words before him was as clear.
He sat there racking his brains over the matter till almost midnight, when Sam relieved him. The assistant operator looked at the message, over which Jack was knitting his brows, with astonishment.
“What in the world is that?” he asked.
“I wish I knew,” was Jack’s enigmatic reply, “but there’s one man on board this ship who does, and I’m inclined to think that his name is James Jarrold.”
CHAPTER XV – SECRET SIGNALS AT DAWN
The next morning both Jack and Sam were on the qui vive for a sight of the mysterious steamer of the night. But not even a smudge on the horizon gave indication of what had become of her. When Jack went down to breakfast, he met First Officer Metcalf and spoke to him of the strange signals.
“Yes; Muller, the third officer, who had the bridge last night, reported them to me this morning,” was the reply. “He jotted them down as they were flashed, but we can’t make head nor tail of them.”
“Nor can I,” confessed Jack. “It was a code message of some sort.”
“Some would-be funny chump having a joke at our expense, I reckon,” was the way that Mr. Metcalf, who, of course, knew nothing of the suspected machinations of Jarrold, dismissed the subject.
A lingering suspicion was in Jack’s mind that, by some queer chance, the message might have been for Colonel Minturn, so after the morning meal he drew him aside. But when shown the message, Colonel Minturn declared that, although the government used several codes, the one in question was not one of them.
“Then it was for Jarrold,” declared Jack positively, for, knowing what he did, he could not share Mr. Metcalf’s “joker” theory.
“I believe you are right,” responded Colonel Minturn, stroking his mustache thoughtfully. “Jove, this thing is taking some strange turns!”
Their eyes strayed to where Jarrold, sprawled out in a deck chair, was seemingly absorbed in a book. But Jack could have sworn that over the top of it he was covertly watching them.
“It is evident, to my way of thinking,” Jack ventured, “that the strange craft was the Endymion, and that, despairing of getting a wireless to Jarrold, or else on account of a break-down in their wireless, they decided to chance that method of signaling him.”
“That certainly appears plausible,” said Colonel Minturn. “The Endymion, when pressed, can make twenty-five miles an hour. Our speed is about sixteen. Therefore, it would be an easy matter for her to overhaul us at night, slip away in the daytime, and sneak back at night once more.”
“I think it would be a good plan to keep a sharp look-out to-night,” said Jack. “I’ve a notion that there may be something in the wind.”
“I agree with you,” was the colonel’s rejoinder. “Although, if it comes down to that, there’s no reason why Jarrold shouldn’t, if he wishes to, exchange messages with any ship. At least, I know of no way of stopping him.”
“That’s just the trouble, sir,” said Jack, turning to go. “He’s too much of a fox to put himself into a position where we can get anything definite on him.”
The day passed uneventfully and the first part of the night was the usual unbroken routine. Jack spoke with two or three vessels in the West Indian and South American trade. But nothing unusual occurred to break the monotony. Midnight found him on the watch. When Sam, as much interested in the strange developments as was Jack, came to relieve him at the wireless key, Jack decided to forego his sleep and do some investigating.
Putting on a pair of light canvas shoes with rubber soles, Jack took up a position on the main deck as soon as the ship was wrapped in sleep, except for the watch and the officer who paced the bridge unceasingly under the blazing tropic stars. His vigil was not rewarded till some time before dawn, when, out of the blackness to port, came the sudden blinking of a scarlet disk, like the leering wink of an ensanguined eye.
It came so suddenly and startlingly that Jack knew that the stranger, the one he was now convinced was the Endymion, had crept up without lights, under cover of darkness. There came a few dots and dashes, indicated by the length of the flash of the red light. Then it ceased.
Then it began again, flashing like a night heliograph.
“By Jove! Somebody answered them from this ship!” exclaimed Jack in high excitement.
But the decks were bare. Not a soul was to be seen. Had it been anyone above, Sam was on the lookout there and would have notified Jack at once.
Suddenly a thought flashed across the boy. A thought that sent him, with a swift, noiseless stride, to the rail. He peered overside. It had just occurred to him that Jarrold’s cabin was an outside one on the port side of the Tropic Queen, which presented that flank to the stranger.
As he gained the side and peered over, he gave vent to what was almost a shout of triumph. He had solved part of the riddle at any rate. After a pause in the signaling from the stranger, there had come from the side of the Tropic Queen a sudden flash of red light. It was reflected ruddily on the smooth water as it gleamed across the sea.
“So that’s it, eh, Mr. Jarrold!” cried Jack in a low undertone. “You’ve got some sort of a flash lantern rigged in your stateroom, connected with the electric light socket, likely, and you’re having a nice little talk with your friends over yonder.”
All at once he slapped his thigh as a thought struck him. He knew that a common switch controlled the lights in each separate corridor of the ship. Thus, the four cabins in the section that Jarrold occupied, while they each had their individual light switches, were also controlled by a switch in the main corridor.
This was so that, in case of accident, the electricians could work more conveniently.
“I don’t know what the skipper would say to this,” exclaimed Jack, “but here goes.”
He darted below and soon reached the point in the main port corridor from which the passage on which the four cabins in Jarrold’s section opened. He fumbled for the switch in the half darkness. First, though, he had looked to see that no other lights were shining in that section except the one he was sure was being used in Jarrold’s room.
Click! The switch was turned.
“Now we’ll see,” exclaimed Jack to himself.
He hastened back on deck. Through the night, off to the port the strange craft was signaling frantically. Jack chuckled.
“Spiked your guns, Mister Jarrold,” he laughed, as the signaling continued. Plainly on the other ship they could not understand why they no longer got flashed replies from Jarrold’s room.
“Oh, I’ll bet the air is blue below,” chuckled Jack, delighted at the success of his plan. “Now I’ll just watch till they get sick of waiting for Mr. Jarrold, and then go below and put that switch on again.”
For half an hour the vain red flashes came out of the night and then they ceased.
“I guess they’ve sneaked off for fear daylight would discover them,” said Jack. “Now to switch the light on again, and then for a snooze. I think I’ve earned it.”
CHAPTER XVI – S. O. S
Dawn showed a smudge of black smoke on the far horizon which might or might not have been the mysterious visitant of the night. At any rate, by noon something occurred which quite put out of Jack’s mind, and those of the ship’s officers, who were considerably exercised over the midnight signals, all thoughts of the secretive craft.
To Jack, seated at his instruments, there had suddenly come a sharp call:
“S.O.S. – S.O.S. – S.O.S.”
Coming as it did, like a bolt from the blue, the urgent call thrilled the young operator. He galvanized into action instantly and sent Sam scurrying to the bridge with word that the most urgent call that can assail a wireless man’s ears had just come to him.
It was faint and far away, but that very fact made it evident to Jack’s experienced mind that whoever was sending the message, was in dire straits and running out of current.
He pressed his key and sent thundering out with all the volleying force of his powerful dynamos, an answer.
“What ship are you?” he demanded.
The answer that came back almost knocked him out of his chair.
“The airship Adventurer, from New Orleans to Havana. We are on the surface of the water and sinking rapidly.”
“Your position, quick!” demanded Jack.
Back through space, in a slowly dying wireless voice, came the latitude and longitude of the luckless craft.
“You are on our course. Stand by and we will pick you up,” said Jack, whom a rapid glance at the wall map had shown that, roughly, the sinking air-craft was not more than twenty miles to the southwest of the Tropic Queen’s position.
“What has happened?” asked Jack.
“No time explain details. Hurry! Hurry! – ”
Jack tried to get the unseen operator once more, but a silence that was far more eloquent than words alone greeted his efforts. He turned to see the captain, in his white uniform and gold-laced cap, standing behind him.
“What is this S.O.S., Ready?” he demanded. “What craft is in distress?”
“An airship, sir. The Adventurer, bound from New Orleans for Havana, Cuba.”
“By Neptune! I recall now reading that two aviators were going to make such a foolhardy attempt.”
“What kind of an air-craft is she, sir? Do you recall?”
“Why, one of those flying-boats, as they are called, I believe.”
“A big aëroplane fitted with a boat’s hull?”
“That’s the idea. But did they give you their position?”
Jack handed over the figures.
“Here they are, sir. But the current from the drifting airship was so weak that I cannot be absolutely certain as to their accuracy.”
“Well, we’ll have to take them for what they are worth,” said the captain, scanning them.
“Roughly, they are on our course, sir,” ventured Jack.
“Yes, we can almost make a landfall on them if you got the positions right. I’ll have full speed ahead signaled. Poor fellows, their plight must be desperate!”
He hastened off to give the necessary orders, while Jack went back to his instruments; but, although he tried with all his might to get another whisper, he could hear nothing.
Either the wrecked airship had gone to the bottom, or else, water having reached her storage batteries, she could no longer send out word.
But Jack raised another ship, – the City of Mexico of the Vera Cruz line.
“What’s biting you?” the flippant operator inquired.
“Just got word that a wrecked airship is floating about on the sea,” flashed back Jack, and gave the latitude and longitude.
“Why, we’ll be there almost as soon as you,” was the reply.
“All right, let’s make it a race,” called Jack. “It is one for a good cause.”
“Surest thing you know. See you later.”
The City of Mexico’s wireless man cut off. The third officer came into the wireless room.
“Ready, the old man wants you to make out a bulletin for the passengers. They’ll go wild over this.”
Jack quickly typed off a bulletin.
“Shortly before noon, in communication with wrecked and drifting flying-boat Adventurer. She is about twenty miles to the Southwest. We are hurrying at top speed to her assistance and should be there in a little over an hour’s time.
“Ready, Chief Operator, S. S. Tropic Queen.”
The excitement that followed the posting of this notice on the bulletin board at the head of the saloon stairs may be imagined by those who have passed long, dreamy, uneventful days at sea, when even the sight of a distant sail provides all manner of topics of conversation.
But now they were steaming at top speed toward the hulk of a flying-boat – that is, provided she was still on the surface. The ship buzzed and hummed with vibrant excitement. Passengers lined the rails, and some of the more excitable even tried to swarm into the rigging, from which exalted positions they were swiftly ejected.
Black smoke poured from the Tropic Queen’s funnels, and the speed of her accelerated engines caused a humming vibration to run through her frame like the twanging of a taut fiddle string. On the bridge, white-uniformed officers stood, with glasses in hand, all on the alert to catch the first black speck on the sparkling sea which might reveal the location of the wrecked air adventurers.
Forward, on the forepeak and in the crow’s nest, lookouts had been doubled. And excitement was added to the race to the rescue when it became known that the City of Mexico was speeding from the southward on the same errand of mercy.