“Hullo, Malachi, you old prophet of evil!” he remarked, with a cheerful grin, as he entered. “Give me an inside tip on the end of the world, will you? I’ll use it to bear the market.” “My prophecy shop is closed to-day,” I replied, in his own vein. “What brings you from Washington?” “I came wholly to see you,” he said seriously. “The President made me a special agent to get a line on what you were doing. The report that came to him from the Attorney General, the time they put you in jail, whetted his curiosity, so he sent me up here to see things for myself. Will you let me see Haldane’s machine?” “Gladly,” I answered, and we started for the laboratory. “Between ourselves,” remarked Ordway, as we walked from the car, “and strictly not for publication, there’s the deuce to pay with the Kaiser. He’s mad as hops about his ship’s going down in Portsmouth Harbor. He thinks it’s an invidious distinction to have the Kaiser Charlemagne go down in a foreign port, when the other boats have gone down on their own shores. He’d declare war on England for sixpence. Things were strained enough with the commercial rivalry of the last few years, but they’re at breaking point now. It would take a mighty small straw to break that uneasy camel’s back.” Tom and Dorothy were both in the laboratory, and they greeted Ordway cordially. The especial interest centred in the wave-measuring apparatus. The polished belt was revolving with regular precision, and the beam stood fixed at zero. “I wish you could have been here and seen it work, when the Kaiser Charlemagne went down,” said Dorothy. “I wish I might,” answered Ordway. Scarcely were the words out of his mouth, when the click and the springing beam sent my heart into my mouth. Dorothy and Tom sprang for paper and their data. Ordway looked on in amazement. “What’s up, Orrington?” he asked. “What did the thing stop for?” “Another ship has gone down,” I answered; “but of what nation I know no more than you.” We waited silently till the computation was ended. Dorothy looked up with knotted brow. “I make it Portsmouth again. Do you, Tom?” “So do I,” said Tom. “There must be some mistake. Let’s go over the figures again.” Again they obtained the same result, and an hour passed before they gave up searching for possible errors. “What are you going to do about it, Orrington?” asked Ordway finally. “I’m not going to do anything. It must be a mistake.” “Why not telephone your office and see if they’ve heard anything?” “I did so. They heard nothing, but promised to telephone me as soon as they did.” We had sat for a couple of hours talking when the bell rang, and I answered. It was the office. “You slipped up this time, Orrington,” said the man at the other end. “A German battleship, the Kaiserin Luisa, has just disappeared off Portsmouth.” I passed the word to the eager trio. “That means war between England and Germany,” cried Ordway.