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Page 51
As General Wood left the peace conference (in reply to our urgent
summons) and walked slowly across the Mount Vernon lawn to join us in the
summer house, he looked haggard and dejected.
"What is it?" he asked.
"Good news, General," I whispered, but he shook his head wearily.
"No, it's all over. They have worn us down. Our fleet is destroyed, our
army is beaten. We are on the point of ceding New England and New York to
Germany. There is nothing else to do."
"Wait! We have information that may change everything. Let me introduce
Lieutenant Ryerson and Mr. Widding--General Wood." They bowed politely.
"Mr. Widding has just seen Thomas A. Edison."
That was a name to conjure with, and the General's face brightened.
"I'm listening," he said.
We settled back in our chairs and Lemuel A. Widding, with awkward
movements, drew from his pockets some papers which he offered to the
American commander.
"These speak for themselves, General," he began. "Here is a brief
description of my invention for destroying the German fleet. Here are
blueprints that make it clearer. Here is the written endorsement of
Thomas A. Edison."
For a long time General Wood studied these papers with close attention,
then he sat silent, looking out over the broad Potomac, his noble face
stern with care. I saw that his hair had whitened noticeably in the last
two months.
"If this is true, it's more important than you realise. It's so important
that--" He searched us with his kind but keen grey eyes.
"Thomas A. Edison says it's true," put in Widding. "That ought to be good
enough evidence."
"And Lieutenant Ryerson tells me that Admiral Fletcher spoke favourably
of the matter," I added.
"He did, General," declared the lieutenant. "It was on the _Pennsylvania_
a few hours before we went into battle. The admiral had been looking over
Mr. Widding's specifications the night before and he said--I remember his
words: 'This is a great idea. If we had it in operation now we could
destroy the German fleet.'"
At this moment there came a fateful interruption in the form of an urgent
call for General Wood from the conference hall and he asked us to excuse
him until the next day when he would take the matter up seriously.
We returned at once to Washington and I spent that evening at the Cosmos
Club listening to a lecture by my oceanographical friend, Dr. Austin H.
Clark, on deep-sea lilies that eat meat. At about nine o'clock I was
called to the telephone, and presently recognised the agitated voice of
Miss Ryerson, who said that an extraordinary thing had happened and
begged me to come to her at once. She was stopping at the Shoreham, just
across the street, and five minutes later we were talking earnestly in
the spacious blue-and-white salon with its flowers and restful lights.
Needless to say, I preferred a talk with this beautiful girl to the most
learned discussion of deep-sea lilies.
Her message was brief but important. She had just been telephoning in a
drug-store on Pennsylvania Avenue when she was surprised to hear the name
of Thomas A. Edison mentioned several times by a man in the next booth
who was speaking in German. Miss Ryerson understood German and, listening
attentively, she made out enough to be sure that an enemy's plot was on
foot to lay hold of the great inventor, to abduct him forcibly, so that
he could no longer help the work of American defence.
Greatly alarmed she had called me up and now urged me to warn the
military authorities, without wasting a moment, so that they would take
steps to protect Mr. Edison.
In this emergency I decided to appeal to General E.M. Weaver, Chief of
Coast Artillery, whom I knew from having played golf with him at Chevy
Chase, and, after telephoning, I hurried to his house in a taxicab. The
general looked grave when I repeated Miss Ryerson's story, and said that
this accorded with other reports of German underground activities that
had come to his knowledge. Of course, a guard must be furnished for Mr.
Edison, who was in Baltimore at the time, working out plans for the
scientific defences of Washington in the physical laboratories of the
Johns Hopkins University.
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