Part 5 (1/2)
”Thank you,” she said in her soft tone of dismissal.
”Lest Miss Wellington forget, you might, on your way, remind her, in my name, not to meet Prince Koltsoff until I receive him at luncheon.”
She turned to the ma.s.s of correspondence on her desk and selected for first reading a long telegram from her husband, who, when he sent it, was speeding eastward through the Middle West in his special car. She laid it down with a faraway smile in her eyes. She loved and admired her big husband, who did things, knocked men's heads together, juggled railroads and steams.h.i.+ps in either hand. And this love and admiration, in whatever she had done or wherever placed, had always been as twin flaming angels guarding her with naked swords.
Presently she turned to her secretary and dictated a statement concerning the arrival of Prince Koltsoff, who he was, and a list of several of the entertainments given in his honor.
”You might call Mr. Craft at the Newport _Herald_ office and give him this,” she said.
Half an hour was spent in going over accounts, signing checks, auditing bills, and the like, and then with a sigh she arose and pa.s.sed into her dressing-room. Ordinarily she would have dressed for the beach or the Casino. But to-day she threw herself on a couch in her boudoir and closed her eyes. But she did not sleep.
M. Dumois, hastening to comply with his mistress' command, failed to find the girl in her apartments. At the moment, indeed, that Emilia was informing the tutor that the girl had left for the stables, Miss Wellington from a corner of the hall was gazing interestedly at the Prince, who sat with his profile toward her. He was bending over a table upon which was spread a parchment drawing. The sunlight fell full upon him. He was not at all unprepossessing. Tall and slim, with waist in and well-padded shoulders, his blonde hair and Van Dyck bead, long white eyelashes, darker brows, and glittering blue eyes, he was the very type of the aristocratic Muscovite.
As the girl looked she saw his lips part and his teeth glisten. He half arose, leaned forward, and smote the chart.
Miss Wellington hurried down the hall and out of the house.
”Prince Koltsoff,” she murmured, as she swung down the path to the stable, ”I would give worlds to know what you 're up to. I definitely place you as a rascal. But oh, such a romantically picturesque one!”
CHAPTER IV
THE TAME TORPEDO
That night Lieutenant Armitage, in a marine's drab s.h.i.+rt and overalls, stood among a silent group of mechanics on a pier near the Goat Island lighthouse. A few hundred feet out lay a small practice torpedo boat, with the rays of a searchlight from the bridge of the parent s.h.i.+p of the First Flotilla resting full upon her.
Suddenly Armitage leaned forward. When he straightened there came a dull report, a lurid flash of light, and with a sharp whirring sound a model torpedo about half the regulation size, leaped through the darkness and with a clear parting of the waters disappeared. A green Very star cleaved the night. Intense silence followed. One second, two seconds, elapsed and then from the practice boat out in the harbor a red star reared. Armitage turned to the master mechanic at his side.
”Bully!” he said. ”I aimed at least twenty feet wide of the _Dumont_.
The magnetos fetched her. But wait--”
In the glare of the searchlight he could see they had lowered a boat and were recovering the torpedo. He saw a group of young officers gather about it as it was hauled aboard, and then in a minute or so the red and green Ardois lights began to wink. As Armitage watched with straining eyes he spelled the message as it came, letter by letter.
”A fair hit. But the wrong end struck.”
The _Dumont_ was sufficiently near the pier for the message to have been shouted. But tests of new torpedoes are not to be shouted about.
Armitage discharged a white star from his pistol, the signal to come in for the night, and walked toward the shops.
”You may turn in,” he said to the men. ”I have a good night's work, alone, ahead of me.”
”She should not have struck with her stern, sir,” said a short, squat man, hurrying to Armitage's side. He spoke with a strong accent and pa.s.sed as a Lithuanian. His expert knowledge of electricity as well as his skill in making and mending apparatus had caused Armitage to intrust him with much of the delicate work on the model, as well as on the torpedo of regular size, based on the model, now in course of construction.
His was a position of peculiar importance. As the blue-prints of the invention, from which detailed plans were worked, pa.s.sed into the shops, they came into the hands of this man, who, thus, many times in the course of the day had the working prints of the controlling mechanism in his exclusive possession.
For some reason that he could not explain, all this shot through Armitage's mind as the man spoke.
”No, Yeasky, it should not. But I 'll fix that. By the way, how long--No matter, I shan't need you any more to-night, Yeasky.”
As he entered the shop the storekeeper was leaving. He nodded to the officer.