O N the afternoon of Saturday, August 18, 1900, as I was looking over the daily paper after my return from the Blendheim Electric Works, where I am employed, I noticed in the advertising department the following:
IMPORTANT NOTICE TO ENGINEERS AND SCIENTIFIC MEN.
Ten thousand dollars will be paid to the man or woman duplicating an instrument now in the possession of this company——
That was as far as I read. Some cheap advertising scheme, I thought, and immediately forgot all about the paragraph.
When, however, towards the last of the month, I received the regular issue of my pet scientific paper, I saw on the first page the same glaring announcement. The fact of the notice being in that paper was guarantee that the offer was bona fide, and I looked the article over carefully.
[52]In addition to the foregoing, the advertisement went on to state that one of a pair of seismaphones, an invention with patent pending and not yet in the market, had been lost. The inventor was dead, and no one had as yet been able to construct an instrument similar to the one now in the company’s possession.
Further particulars would be sent to any one satisfying the company that his request for the same was not prompted by idle curiosity, but by a desire to aid science in replacing the lost instrument.
Then came the greatest surprise of all; for, signed at the bottom of this interesting statement, as the man representing the company, was the name of Randolph R. Churchill, Patent Office, Washington, D. C.
Now Ranny Churchill and I had been roommates at college, and I had had many a pleasant visit in his comfortable home on Fourteenth Street. He had graduated from a technical school, taken a course in patent law, and soon after secured a position as one of the governmental inspectors of patents in Washington.
My annual vacation was to begin the next week, so I planned a brief trip to Washington to see the wonderful invention which no one had apparently been able to duplicate. I did not write to Churchill, but dropped in on him unexpectedly Saturday night, September 1.
I had seen him two years before down on the[53] Cape; and I could scarcely believe that the tired, careworn man who greeted me on my arrival at the Fourteenth Street house was the same merry, light-hearted Randolph Churchill I had hunted and fished with only a couple of summers ago.
He seemed like a man living in constant expectation of something terrible about to happen, and, even before our first greetings were over, I noticed that he paused two or three times and listened intently.
“I think I can guess to what I owe this visit,” he said as he went up-stairs with me to my room, “and I would to God I thought you would be able to accomplish what has so far proved impossible.”
I told him that it was owing to his advertisement that my present trip had been undertaken, and begged him to tell me more about the wonderful invention.
“Wait till after dinner,” he said, “for it is a long story. We will go to my room, and I will tell you then a tale as strange as it is true.”
That dinner was the most dismal affair I ever attended. Churchill sat like a man in a trance, completely absorbed in his meditations; and twice, after listening as I had seen him on my first arrival, he excused himself and left the table abruptly.
“You and Rannie are such old friends, you mustn’t mind him to-night,” Mrs. Churchill said to me apologetically, while he was out of the[54] room; “this terrible affair of the seismaphone has upset us both completely.”
That was the only mention of the subject during dinner; but after we had sat in the library a little while discussing trivial topics, such as Robert’s progress in school and the new furnishings of the house since my last visit, Churchill and I excused ourselves and went to his private room.
“I may as well start at the very beginning,” he said as he threw himself down languidly in an easy chair, after drawing out from under the table a long, narrow box, which he placed in his lap.
“On the night of the tenth of last June the maid brought me the card of a man who was waiting down-stairs, and who said he wanted to see me on very important private business. I glanced at the name scrawled in red ink on the bit of card-board,‘Martin M. Bradley,’ and wondered vaguely who the man could be, as I did not remember ever having heard of him before.
“I told the maid to show him up here to the den, and a few minutes later she ushered into this room the man who has been the cause of these gray hairs.
“He was short and sallow, about thirty-five years of age, as I afterwards found out, though care and privations had marked him so harshly that he looked to be nearly fifty. He carried in his hand this black, leather-covered box which[55] you see in my lap; and, after seating himself at my invitation, began:
“‘You are no doubt surprised, Mr. Churchill, to have a visit from me, for you probably don’t remember ever having heard of me before; but I’ve come to you because I know you are in the patent office, and used to be a friend of mine back in the seventies, and because, too, I’ve got something so valuable here that I don’t dare to send it up to the office in the usual way.’
“He unstrapped, as he spoke, the box, which he had not let out of his hands since he entered, and took from it two black, galvanized rubber instruments, one of which you see here.”
Churchill lifted from the case a thing which resembled more than anything else the receiver of a telephone, except that both ends were turned out like the one you put to the ear. He unscrewed this outer cap and handed both parts to me to examine.
About two inches in from the bell-shaped end of the cylinder was a diaphragm of peculiar looking metal, which from appearance I judged to be an alloy of copper and zinc, with something else included. Immediately over this, and tightly stretched across at unequal distances apart, were some twenty fine German silver wires.
“Bradley opened one of the instruments, as I have just done,” continued Churchill, “and proceeded to explain to me its construction.
“‘These two instruments,’ said he, ‘which[56] together I call the Martin Bradley Seismaphone, are to the telephone what telegraphy without wires is to the ordinary method of sending messages. Both light and sound, as you know, travel by waves which produce sensation; one by striking against the retina of the eye, the other by striking on the drum of the ear.
“‘The light wave travels with a velocity of something over 185,000 miles a second, while the sound wave moves much slower. This difference, however, is overcome by the mechanical device in the tube-like section in the middle part of the instrument.
“‘As you have seen the sun’s rays collected and focused to one small spot by a reading glass, and the power intensified so that combustion takes place, so in a similar way does the seismaphone collect the sound waves, intensify and bring them to a focus here,’ and he indicated with his finger a point back of the metal diaphragm.
“‘By speaking into one of these instruments the sound passes through the wires, and strikes against the metal disk. This sets in motion a series of waves, which, traveling with the enormous velocity of which I have spoken, produce such rapid vibrations that the ear, unaided, cannot perceive the sound, but by means of the other half of the seismaphone these sound waves are collected and so transformed by the corresponding wires and diaphragm[57] that the voice is reproduced by one instrument in exactly the tone spoken.
“‘By means of the seismaphones, you and I, though separated by thousands of miles, can converse as easily as though we were in the same city, connected by an ordinary metallic current.’
“In a fifteen years’ experience with patent seekers, I have met many inventive freaks, and probably something of what I was thinking of his seismaphone showed in my face, for he stopped describing it abruptly, and handing me one of the instruments, said,—
“‘I see you don’t believe a word I’ve told you, and you probably think I’m crazy; so, before I tell you anything more about the construction or possibilities of my invention, I want to ask you to take this half of the seismaphone, and go up to the top of your house. When you are ready to make the test, put the end marked “voice” to your mouth, and say in a distinct tone, “Ready, Bradley.” Then, when you see this little hammer striking against the bell, and hear a sharp tinkling inside the cylinder, put the other end to your ear and listen. Oh, you may lock me in as you go out, if you are afraid I may remove any of the bric-à-brac,’ he added, as I seemed to hesitate.
“I don’t know why it was, for I am not over credulous, but something told me the man was speaking the truth. And when you stop to[58] think of it, what was there so very improbable about it?
“Who would have believed one hundred years ago that we would ever be able to communicate instantaneously with the inhabitants of another continent by any means whatever? Or, to come nearer to our own time, twenty years ago we would have scoffed at the idea of telegraphing without wires. Why, then, was it so impossible to transmit the tones of the human voice without them? It would be only another step in the march of progress.
“I took the instrument and climbed to the garret without a word. Placing the end he had indicated to my lips, I said loudly, ‘Ready, Bradley.’ Without any special expectation I then put the other end to my ear, and at the result nearly fell over backwards; for, as distinctly as if the man I had left down-stairs had been standing beside me, I heard him say,—
“‘Don’t speak so loud. I can hear you at this distance if you merely whisper. Now press the little button at the end marked “ear,” and wait for the megaphone attachment.’ I did as he said, and again I jumped and nearly dropped the instrument, for the room was filled with a voice which sounded louder than a peal of thunder.
“‘By pressing that button you do for the seismaphone what by putting on the horns you do for the phonograph or graphophone,’ the stentorian[59] voice said. ‘You had better press the button in the other end, for my voice with this attachment is probably too loud for pleasure.’
“I pressed the button obediently as directed, and walked back down-stairs filled with wonder.
“We shall not get to bed any earlier than Martin Bradley and I did that night, if I stop to tell you all of our conversation. I found that he was a man I had known slightly some years ago when I was trying for the patent office position.
“He had in his youth been through a technical school and received a good education; but had been unable to settle down to any steady employment, preferring to devote himself to some great invention. Eight years ago he began working on this instrument, and had been developing and perfecting it ever since.
“The proposition he made me was that I should go into partnership with him to get the seismaphone patented and before the public, he furnishing the device, and I the money and backing.
“We sat and talked for hours, and the morning sun found us still in our chairs discussing the immense possibilities of the invention.
“It would supersede the mails. Speaking-tubes, telephones, telegraphs, and cables would give way to it. In short, the inventor of such an instrument would win for himself a name greater than a Morse or an Edison, and the fortune he could amass would exceed that of all[60] the Vanderbilts, Goulds, and Rockefellers in the country.
“Martin Bradley remained at my house all that week, and had the best of everything that money could buy. I secured a two weeks’ vacation from the patent office, and he and I worked together every hour of that time.
“One day as a test he took one-half of the seismaphone and went down the Potomac a hundred and forty miles to Point Lookout, while I stayed at home with the other instrument. He had by use of the long-distance telephone hired a man down there to keep watch for the arrival of the boat he was coming on, and given him instructions to telephone me when it first hove in sight.
“I sent Nellie and the children out to Chevy Chase for the day, and sat all the afternoon in front of the telephone, with the seismaphone on my knee. Several times I called to Bradley, but he did not answer.
“About three o’clock, however, the ’phone rang; and, just as I had got connection, and began talking with the man down at the Point, I saw the little hammer of the seismaphone vibrating, and, putting the instrument to my ear, heard Martin Bradley say distinctly: ‘Have just sighted the lighthouse, so get down to the telephone for a message.’
“I turned to the telephone, and, sure enough, the man at the other end of the wire was telling[61] me that the Petrel was in sight. As the boat neared the shore, Bradley kept up a running comment on events that took place.
“‘We’re just pulling up the flag and firing a salute,’ he called; and scarcely did I catch his words when from the telephone at my ear, as if in echo, came the message, ‘They have just run up a flag and are firing a salute.’
“During the next week we tried every kind of test imaginable with the seismaphone, and there was not a flaw in its workings.
“I was perfectly satisfied, and had started proceedings to secure a patent, when the first news of the recent trouble in China came; and then, for two weeks, as you know, the various legations were regularly slaughtered one day and reported safe on the following.
“Martin Bradley was so excited that he nearly forgot his seismaphone. In the course of his wanderings he had lived for two years in Northern China, and could talk the lingo like a native, and was wild to go out there as a newspaper correspondent.
“One day he came rushing to my room with a copy of a morning paper in his hand.
“‘See that,’ he cried excitedly, ‘this paper says that Minister Conger was butchered in cold blood June 24, and all the others of the legation tortured to death by those yellow devils. To-morrow if you buy a paper you will read that they are safe and well. I tell you, I[62] am going to China to find out for myself the truth of this matter, and when I do the world shall know what is true and what is false. They can put restrictions on the press, the telegraph, and the cables, but they can’t restrict Martin Bradley’s seismaphone.
“‘Just think of the advertisement for the invention, too,’ he continued, getting more and more excited. ‘Every reading person in the world will know that the truth was finally obtained through Martin Bradley, by means of his greatest of all inventions, the seismaphone.’
“I tried to dissuade him, telling him of the terrible risk he would run, but he would not listen. He had lived in Peking for two years, he said, and knew the city perfectly and the customs and language of the people.
“He scraped together three hundred dollars some way, the Lord only knows how, engaged a berth for San Francisco, and inside three days had made all preparations for the trip. When I found that nothing I could say or do made any difference, I gave up arguing and helped him all I could.
“He knew what he wanted, though, so much better than I that the only practical assistance I gave him was of the financial kind. I arranged credit for him at the British bank of Hong Kong and Shanghai, and furnished all the money needed for his traveling expenses.
“He purchased a complete Chinese disguise[63] from a Washington costumer, and when one night, before leaving, he appeared before me, a long black cue hanging down his back, his face stained, and chattering the disjointed dialect he had learned during his two years’ stay in Peking, I felt a little hope that his scheme, daring as it was, might succeed.
“I heard from him several times each day, all along the journey to San Francisco. Every time he grew tired or lonesome he called me up and told me of the country he was passing through, while I kept him informed of what was going on back here in Washington.
“For a whole week after he left San Francisco I didn’t hear a word from him, though I kept the seismaphone with me all the time, and I was growing terribly worried, when one night he signaled and I heard a weak voice saying, ‘Oh, Lord, I’ve been so seasick, I didn’t care for one while whether there was any such place as China or not, and the thought of the seismaphone never entered my head.’
“After landing at Hong Kong he had to wait two days before starting for Shanghai, but he had to be resigned, and I never spent a pleasanter afternoon in my life than that day when I sat in the patent office and heard him describing his trip about Victoria, that beautiful possession of the British crown.
“He put on the megaphone attachment while he was being wheeled about in a little jinrikisha,[64] and I could hear him talking to the coolie who pulled it, and the squeaking of the wheels, as plainly as the scratching of the pens over where the clerks sat writing in my office.
“All the men at the office thought me crazy, and I don’t know as I blame them, for of course I hadn’t taken any of them into my confidence, and it is rather an unusual sight to see a man stop in the midst of a conversation with you, put an unconnected receiver up to his ear, then start talking apparently with the empty air.
“I had to take Nellie into the secret after a while, though, for she, too, thought I must be insane, and smuggled a couple of doctors up to the house to dinner one night to watch me. I told Bradley, and he submitted to the necessary evil, as he called it.
“So, while he was in Shanghai, describing one of the Chinese pagodas to me (at twelve o’clock at night, mind you) I awakened her and let her take the seismaphone, and you never saw a more excited woman. She sat up all the rest of the night, listening to Bradley and asking him questions.
“Towards morning I told her to throw in the megaphone attachment, and the instrument was laid up for four days, for she was so frightened at the loudness of the voice that she dropped the seismaphone, and two of the German silver wires snapped. I was nearly crazy in fact for[65] the next few days, for I thought that the instrument was ruined.
“I couldn’t tell whether Bradley was getting my messages all right or not, and not a word did I hear from him during all that time.
“After working all one night, however, I succeeded in getting the wires fixed in the right position and signaled to Bradley. Almost immediately he answered and I heard him shouting:—
“‘What the devil has happened to you? Have you been seasick too? I haven’t heard a word from you for four days, and here I’ve been sending you the most exciting kind of messages. The disguise is working fine, and I shall soon be in the city of Peking.’
“That day I received a note from the head of my department, telling me I was granted an indefinite leave of absence, and I haven’t been in the office since. They think me a lunatic, and God knows I’ve been through enough to make a maniac of any man.
“For three days more I didn’t get a message from Bradley, and I had begun to fear that the wires I had fixed weren’t right, when the bell started to tinkle and I heard him signaling faintly.
“‘This is the last time you will ever hear from me,’ he said, and I noticed that he spoke as if in great pain. ‘I worked my way into the city last night, but got mixed up in a street fight[66] between the imperial troops and a crowd of ruffians and was captured by the latter, who found out my disguise.
“‘Don’t interrupt me,’ he called faintly, for I had uttered an exclamation of horror, and he, seeing the hammer striking, thought I was trying to speak to him, ‘for I can’t hear if you do. They cut my ears off this morning, and filled up the holes with hot wax.
“‘There are three Englishmen and a Russian here also, all of whom were captured and brought in to-day.’
“He stopped for a few minutes, and I stood cursing the helplessness of the whole thing. There he was, thousands of miles away, being tortured to death in some filthy Chinese den, and I had to stand and listen calmly to his voice, not able to raise a hand to aid him.
“‘I give you my share in the seismaphone,’ he continued after a while, ‘and I pray you may be able to duplicate the half you now have, for you will never see this one again. The two instruments are exactly alike, except for the wiring, and that you will have to get by experiment, for all my data have been destroyed.’
“Then he must have fainted, for he stopped suddenly, and I heard a voice, probably that of one of the Englishmen, saying, ‘Poor devil, I wish I could get to him; but they’ve tied me to this ring in the wall, and I can’t move a foot.’
“I didn’t hear another word till late that[67] night, when I woke up to find Nellie by my bed, pale and trembling.
“‘Don’t you hear him calling you?’ she gasped.
“I seized the seismaphone, pressed the button, and, in the silence of the night, I heard Martin Bradley wailing, ‘Churchill—Churchill.’
“I spoke into the thing, so that his bell would ring, and he would know that I was listening.
“‘Good-by,’ he called. ‘They are killing us off one by one. The Russian, and two of the Englishmen are dead now, and it’s my turn next. They’ve just brought in an American, and he told me on his fingers that the legations——’
“That was as far as he got. I heard a terrible screeching, which drowned out his voice; and suddenly all was quiet.
“Three times since that some of those heathen have got hold of the thing; but that death message of Bradley’s is the last English word that has come over the seismaphone.
“The third time I heard them at it, I threw in the megaphone attachment, and shouted as loud as I could. Since then not a sound has come from the instrument.
“I put the advertisement you saw in the papers; but though hundreds of men have tried, no one has been able to duplicate the part of the seismaphone I now have. Some have refused[68] even to try, when I explained what was wanted, for they thought me either crazy or a fool.
“I hoped at first that some one might be able to replace the loss, but now I know it cannot be done. Bradley told me that it took him three years to determine the distances at which the wires had to be placed, and he alone knew the principle on which the whole mechanism depends.
“No one has ever been able to duplicate the diaphragm. It is a curious alloy of copper, zinc, and some other metal; but what that third metal is, no one can determine.”
Churchill had finished his strange story; and now he leaned back in his chair, his face gray and set. Outside the noise of a great city waking to another day’s life could be heard, and somewhere in the house I heard a clock slowly strike five.
I picked up the seismaphone from the table and brought it over to the light. Then, even as I held it in my hand, I saw the little hammer begin vibrating rapidly, and heard the tinkling of the bell.
But Randolph Churchill had heard that signal too, and starting from his chair, he snatched the instrument from my hands, and held it to his ear.
“It’s only those damned heathen at it again,” he groaned, and threw the thing on the table.
[69]In falling it must have pressed the tiny button, which threw on the megaphone attachment. The little bell began ringing again, and I started back, trembling with a strange mixture of fear and awe.
For, above the clatter of the wagons, and the grinding of the cars as they climbed Fourteenth Street hill, there, in that little room, fifteen thousand miles from the Celestial Empire, I heard a confused bable of many voices, howling and cursing in the Chinese tongue.