He began to listen again for the elusive message. I turned to Platts.
"Where is it being sent from?" I asked.
Platts shook his head.
"That's the mystery," he declared. "Look!"--and he pointed to the table;
"according to the Marconi chart, there's a Messagerie boat due west
between us and Marseilles, and the homeward-bound P. & O. which we
passed this morning must be getting on that way also, by now. The Isis
is somewhere ahead, but I've spoken to all these, and the message comes
from none of them."
"Then it may come from Messina."
"It doesn't come from Messina," replied the man at the table, beginning
to write rapidly.
Platts stepped forward and bent over the message which the other was
writing.
"Here it is!" he cried, excitedly; "we're getting it."
Stepping in turn to the table, I leaned over between the two and read
these words as the operator wrote them down:
Dr. Petrie--my shadow...
I drew a quick breath and gripped Platts' shoulder harshly. His
assistant began fingering the instrument with irritation.
"Lost it again!" he muttered.
"This message," I began...
But again the pencil was traveling over the paper:--lies upon you
all... end of message.
The operator stood up and unclasped the receivers from his ears. There,
high above the sleeping ship's company, with the carpet of the blue
Mediterranean stretched indefinitely about us, we three stood looking at
one another. By virtue of a miracle of modern science, some one, divided
from me by mile upon mile of boundless ocean, had spoken--and had been
heard.
"Is there no means of learning," I said, "from whence this message
emanated?"
Platts shook his head, perplexedly.
"They gave no code word," he said. "God knows who they were. It's a
strange business and a strange message. Have you any sort of idea, Dr.
Petrie, respecting the identity of the sender?"
I stared him hard in the face; an idea had mechanically entered my mind,
but one of which I did not choose to speak, since it was opposed to
human possibility.
But, had I not seen with my own eyes the bloody streak across his
forehead as the shot fired by Karamaneh entered his high skull, had I
not known, so certainly as it is given to man to know, that the giant
intellect was no more, the mighty will impotent, I should have replied:
"The message is from Dr. Fu-Manchu!"
My reflections were rudely terminated and my sinister thoughts given new
stimulus, by a loud though muff
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