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Phantom Wires A Novel By: Arthur Stringer (1874-1950) |
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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... Continue reading book >>
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Fiction |
Literature |
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