Phantom Wires

Phantom Wires, by Arthur
Stringer

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Title: Phantom Wires A Novel
Author: Arthur Stringer
Illustrator: Arthur William Brown
Release Date: November 7, 2006 [EBook #19735]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PHANTOM
WIRES ***

Produced by Al Haines

[Frontispiece: "She turned with a start, though her loss of
self-possession lasted but a moment."]

PHANTOM WIRES
A Novel
BY
ARTHUR STRINGER

Author of "The Wire Tappers," "The Loom of Destiny," etc.

ILLUSTRATED BY
ARTHUR WILLIAM BROWN

BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY

Copyright, 1908,
BY ARTHUR STRINGER.
Copyright, 1907,
BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.
All Rights Reserved.

I
It's the bad that's in the best of us Leaves the saint so like the rest of us:

It's the good in the darkest curst of us Redeems and saves the worst of
us.
II
It's the muddle of hope and madness, It's the tangle of good and
badness, It's the lunacy linked with sanity, Makes up and mocks
Humanity!
A. S.

CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I.
THE END OF THE TETHER II. THE AZURE COAST III. THE
SHADOWING PAST IV. THE WIDENING ROAD V. THE GREAT
DIVIDE VI. THE WOMAN SPEAKS VII. OUR FRIEND THE
ENEMY VIII. "FOREIGNERS ARE FOOLS" IX. THE LARK IN
THE RUINS X. THE TIGHTENING COIL XI. THE INTOXICATION
OF WAR XII. THE DOORWAY OF SURPRISE XIII. "THE FOLLY
OF GRANDEUR" XIV. AWAKENING VOICES XV. WIRELESS
MESSAGES XVI. BROKEN INSULATION XVII. THE TANGLED
SKEIN XVIII. THE SEVERED KNOT XIX. THE ULTIMATE
OUTCAST XX. THE SPIDER AND THE FLY XXI. THE PIT OF
DESPAIR XXII. THE ENTERING WEDGE XXIII. THE WAKING
CIRCUIT XXIV. THE GHOSTS OF THOUGHT XXV. THE
RULING PASSION XXVI. THE CROWN OF IRON XXVII. THE
STRAITS OF CHANCE XXVIII. THE HUMAN ELEMENT XXIX.
THE LAST DITCH XXX. ONE YEAR LATER--AN EPILOGUE

PHANTOM WIRES

CHAPTER I
THE END OF THE TETHER
Durkin folded the printed pages of the newspaper with no outward sign
of excitement. Then he took out his money, quietly, and counted it,
with meditative and pursed-up lips.
His eyes fell on a paltry handful of silver, with the dulled gold of one
worn napoleon showing from its midst. He remembered, suddenly, that
it was the third time he had counted that ever-lightening handful since
partaking of his frugal coffee and rolls that morning. So he dropped the
coins back into his pocket, dolefully, one by one, and took the deep
breath of a man schooling himself to face the unfaceable.
Then he looked about the room, almost vacuously, as though the
old-fashioned wooden bed and the faded curtains and the blank walls
might hold some oracular answer to the riddle that lay before him.
Then he went to the open window, and looked out, almost as vacuously,
over the unbroken blue distance of the Mediterranean, trembling into
soft ribbons of silver where the wind rippled its surface, yellowing into
a fluid gold towards the path of the lowering sun, deepening, again,
into a brooding turquoise along the flat rim of the sea to the southward
where the twin tranquilities of sky and water met.
It was the same unaltering Mediterranean, the same expanse of eternal
sapphire that he had watched from the same Riviera window, day in
and day out, with the same vague but unceasing terror of life and the
same forlorn sense of helplessness before currents of destiny that week
by week seemed to grow too strong for him. He turned away from the
soft, exotic loveliness of the sea and sky before him, with a little
gesture of impatience. The movement was strangely like that of a
feverish invalid turning from the ache of an opened shutter.
Durkin took up the newspaper once more, and unfolded it with
listlessly febrile fingers. It was the Paris edition of "The Herald," four
days old. Still again, and quite mechanically now, he read the familiar
advertisement. It was the same message, word for word, that had first

caught his eye as he had sipped his coffee in the little palm-grown
garden of the Hotel Bristol, in Gibraltar, nearly three weeks before.
"Presence of James L. Durkin, electrical expert, essential at office of
Stephens & Streeter, patent solicitors, etc., Empire Building, New York
City, before contracts can be culminated. Urgent."
Only, at the first reading of those pregnant words, all the even and
hopeless monotony, all the dull and barren plane of life had suddenly
erupted into one towering and consuming passion