XIX
The Submarine Mystery
THE Star was not far from right, Walter," he added seriously. "If the battleship plans could be stolen, other things could be—other things were. You remember Burke of the secret service? I'm going up to Lookout Hill on the Connecticut shore of the Sound with him to-night. The rewrite men on the Record didn't have the facts, but they had accurate imaginations. The most vital secret that any navy ever had, that would have enabled us in a couple of years to whip the navies of the world combined against us, has been stolen."
"And that is?" I asked.
"The practical working-out of the newest of sciences, the science of telautomatics."
"Telautomatics?" I repeated.
"Yes. There is something weird, fascinating about the very idea. I sit up here safely in this room, turning switches, pressing buttons, depressing levers. Ten miles away a vehicle, a ship, an aeroplane, a submarine obeys me. It may carry enough of the latest and most powerful explosive that modern science can invent, enough, if exploded, to rival the worst of earthquakes. Yet it obeys my will. It goes where I direct it. It explodes where I want it.
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