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Via Wireless
(PATHE)
By Edwin Balmer
(A Serial Story— Part Four)
SYNOPSIS OF PRECEDING CHAPTERS.
George Durant, the great gunmaker, known as "The American Krupp," is touring the Philippines in his yacht Irvessa, partly for pleasure and partly to advise in the matter of island defense. With him are his daughter Frances and his right-hand man, Etherington Pinckney, who is teaching Frances to use the yacht's "wireless." One morning Pinckney forbids Frances to use the apparatus. He also warns her against Lieutenant Sommers, who is trying to send the yacht a wireless message, telling her that Sommers is a scoundrel. As a joke, Frances talks with Sommers by wireless, but won't tell him where the Irvessa is. Pinckney lands at Bagol, and is attacked by natives. Frances refuses to go below when the yacht is fired on. She uses the wire to summon rescue. Pinckney meets a gun designer named Marsh, who claims to be the inventor of a Rheinstrum gun which Durant has contracted to buy. Pinckney promises to help him. When the yacht lands at a government post, Frances meets Sommers, and is much attracted by him. Sommers has invented a gun whose plans Pinckney studies and declares to Durant are worthless. The steel king asks Pinckney what is the particular weakness in Sommers' gun.
CHAPTER V— (Continued).
A PATRIOTIC PLOT.
\1 7HY, as I told you at Manila, sir, ' * and as Marsh has agreed with me since we started the work upon it here, sir, the basic principle upon which the gun is constructed is hopelessly unsound. I have been glad to agree with you, sir, that in certain showy features this gun of Sommers' appears to be far in advance of any other gun — even of our Rheinstrum, Mr. Durant. But Marsh and I have both agreed that it must fail fatally in the forging. And it must -if either of us knows anything at all about the practical side of gunmaking."
"I haven't come to argue that, Etherington," said the old man kindly. "I know that you already know more about guns than any man I have ever met. The value of Marsh's opinion, too, is beyond question. After what you have both said, if I were not bound to make this gun from my personal obligation to Lieutenant Sommers, I should certainly stop the work where it is. But, as I
have determined to give his gun a trial, and as he himself is to be here soon, I wish to give him the privilege of personally superintending the most important part of the forging. You see, I have
"Then I want his gun ready for that final forging and the bath on Thursday night, when he himself can be here. I shall wire him that it will be ready for him."
'Marsh," Pinckney told the inventor, "I want you to help me 'kill' Sommers' gun — and thereby get the royalties on your own."
just received this telegram from him." He handed over the message. "You consider, don't you, that the forging is the finishing furnace, and the conditions under which it enters the bath afterward, are the vital points?"
"Yes, sir," answered Pinckney absently, as he read the telegram. "I do."
The old man hurried back to his office, and left the young manager alone.
Pinckney picked up the telegram which Mr. Durant had left behind, and read it again carefully. Reaching over and touching one of a row of buttons beside his desk, he rang the bell in the chief designer's room. He sat in silence until Marsh opened the door.