The Man Who Rocked the Earth | Page 3

receiver; but
the sound faded out entirely, and he returned to his original inductance and shunted in his
condenser, upon which the call immediately increased in volume. Evidently the other
chap was using a big wave, bigger than Georgetown.
Hood puckered his brows and looked about him. Lying on a shelf above his instrument
was one of the new ballast coils that Henderson had used with the long waves from
lightning flashes, and he leaned over and connected the heavy spiral of closely wound
wire, throwing it into his circuit. Instantly the telephones spoke so loud that he could hear
the shrill cry of the spark even from where the receivers lay beside him on the table.
Quickly fastening them to his ears he listened. The sound was clear, sharp, and metallic,
and vastly higher in pitch than a ship's call. It couldn't be the Lincoln.

"By gum!" muttered Hood. "That fellow must have a twelve-thousand-metre wave length
with fifty kilowatts behind it, sure! There ain't another station in the world but this can
pick him up!"
"NAA--NAA--NAA," came the call.
Throwing in his rheostat he sent an "O.K" in reply, and waited expectantly, pencil in
hand. A moment more and he dropped his pencil in disgust.
"Just another bug!" he remarked aloud to the thermometer. "Ought to be poisoned! What
a whale of a wave length, though!"
For several minutes he listened intently, for the amateur was sending insistently,
repeating everything twice as if he meant business.
"He's a jolly joker all right," muttered Hood, this time to the clock. "Must be pretty hard
up for something to do!"
Then he laughed out loud and took up the pencil again. This amateur, whoever he was,
was almost as good as his detective story. The "bug" called the Naval Observatory once
more and began repeating his entire message for the third time.
"To all mankind"--he addressed himself modestly--"To all mankind--To all mankind--I
am the dictator--of human destiny--Through the earth's rotation--I control--day and
night--summer and winter--I command the--cessation of hostilities and--the abolition of
war upon the globe--I appoint the--United States--as my agent for this purpose--As
evidence of my power I shall increase the length of the day--from midnight to
midnight--of Thursday, July 22d, by the period of five minutes.--PAX."
The jolly joker, having repeated thus his extraordinary message to all mankind, stopped
sending.
"Well, I'll be hanged!" gasped Bill Hood. Then he wound up his magnetic detector and
sent an answering challenge into the ether.
"Can--the--funny--stuff!" he snapped. "And tune out--or--we'll revoke--your license!"
"What a gall!" he grunted, folding up the yellow sheet of pad paper upon which he had
taken down the message to all mankind and thrusting it into his book for a marker. "All
the fools aren't dead yet!"
Then he picked up the Lincoln and got down to real work. The "bug" and his message
passed from memory.

II
The following Thursday afternoon a perspiring and dusty stranger from St. Louis, who,

with the Metropolitan Art Museum as his objective, was trudging wearily through Central
Park, New York City, at two o'clock, paused to gaze with some interest at the obelisk
known as Cleopatra's Needle. The heat rose in shimmering waves from the asphalt of the
roadway, but the stranger was used to heat and he was conscientiously engaged in the
duty of seeing New York. Opposite the Museum he seated himself upon a bench in the
shade of a faded dogwood and wiped the moisture from his eyes. The glare from the
unprotected boulevards was terrific. Under these somewhat unfavourable conditions he
was occupied in studying the monument of Egypt's past magnificence when he felt a
slight dragging sensation. It was indefinable and had no visual concomitant. But it was as
though the brakes were being gently applied to a Pullman train. He was the only human
being in the neighbourhood; not even a policeman was visible; and the experience gave
him a creepy feeling. Then to his amazement Cleopatra's Needle slowly toppled from its
pedestal and fell with a crash across the roadway. At first he thought it an optical illusion
and wiped his eyes again, but it was nothing of the kind. The monument, which had a
moment before pointed to the zenith, now lay shattered in three pieces upon the softening
concrete of the drive. The stranger arose and examined the fragments of the monolith,
one of which lay squarely across the road, barring all passage. Round the pedestal were
scattered small pieces of broken granite, and from these, after looking about cautiously,
he chose one with care and placed it in his pocket.
"Gosh!" he whispered to himself as he hurried toward Fifth Avenue. "That'll just be
something to tell 'em at home! Eh, Bill?"
The dragging sensation experienced by the tourist from