Quite evidently, however, he wanted to cover his tracks for he had not gone a half dozen blocks before he stopped, paid and tipped the driver generously, and disappeared into the theatre crowd.

Back again in the Prince Henry, whither the fussy little old man made his way as quickly as he could through a side street, he went quietly up to his room.

His door was now locked. He did not have to deny himself to visitors, for he had none. Still, his room was cluttered by a vast amount of paraphernalia and he was seated before a table deep in work.

First of all he tied a handkerchief over his nose and mouth. Then he took up a cartridge from the table and carefully extracted the bullet. Into the space occupied by the bullet he poured a white powder and added a wad of paper, like a blank cartridge, placing the cartridge in the chamber of a revolver and repeating the operation until he had it fully loaded. It was his own invention of an asphyxiating bullet.

Perhaps half an hour later, the old gentleman, his room cleaned up and his immaculate appearance restored, sauntered forth from the hotel down the street like a veritable Turveydrop, to show himself.

. . . . . . .

Elaine seemed quite impressed with our new friend, Del Mar, as we made our way to the library, though I am not sure but that it was a pose on her part. At any rate he seemed quite eager to help us.

"What do you suppose has become of Mr. Kennedy?" asked Elaine.

Del Mar looked at her earnestly. "I should be glad to search for him," he returned quickly. "He was the greatest man in our profession. But first I must execute the commission of the Secret Service. We must find his torpedo model before it falls into foreign hands."

We talked for a few moments, then Del Mar with a glance at his watch excused himself. We accompanied him to the door, for he was indeed a charming man. I felt that, if in fact he were assigned to the case, I ought to know him better.

"If you're going down-town," I ventured, "I might accompany you part of the way."

"Delighted," agreed Del Mar.

Elaine gave him her hand and he took it in such a deferential way that one could not help liking him. Elaine was much impressed.

As Del Mar and I walked down the avenue, he kept up a running fire of conversation until at last we came near the La Coste.

"Charmed to have met you, Mr. Jameson," he said, pausing. "We shall see a great deal of each other I hope."

I had not yet had time to say good-bye myself when a slight exclamation at my side startled me. Turning suddenly, I saw a very brisk, fussy old gentleman who had evidently been hurrying through the crowd. He had slipped on something on the sidewalk and lost his balance, falling near us.

We bent over and assisted him to his feet. As I took hold of his hand, I felt a peculiar pressure from him. He had placed something in my hand. My mind worked quickly. I checked my first impulse to speak and, more from curiosity than anything else, kept the thing he had passed to me surreptitiously.

"Thank you, gentlemen," he puffed, straightening himself out. "One of the infirmities of age. Thank you, thank you."

In a moment he had bustled off quite comically.

Again Del Mar said good-bye and I did not urge him to stay. He had scarcely gone when I looked at the thing the old man had placed in my hand. It was a little folded piece of paper. I opened it slowly. Inside was printed in pencil, disguised:

"BE CAREFUL. WATCH HIM."

I read it in amazement. What did it mean?

. . . . . . .

At the La Coste, Del Mar was met by two of his men in the lobby and they rode up to his room.

Imagine their surprise when they opened the door and found the valet lying bound on the floor.

"Who the deuce did this?" demanded Del Mar as they loosened him.

The valet rose weakly to his feet. "A little old man with gray whiskers," he managed to gasp.

Del Mar looked at him in surprise. Instantly his active mind recalled the little old man who had fallen before us on the street.

Who—what was he?

"Come," he said quickly, beckoning his two companions who had come in with him.

Some time later, Del Mar's car stopped just below the Dodge house.

"You men go around back of the house and watch," ordered Del Mar.

As they disappeared he turned and went up the Dodge steps.

. . . . . . .

I walked back after my strange experience with the fussy little old gentleman, feeling more than ever, now that Craig was gone, that both Elaine and Aunt Josephine needed me.

As we sat talking in the library, Rusty, released from the chain on which Jennings kept him, bounded with a rush into the library.

"Good old fellow," encouraged Elaine, patting him.

Just then Jennings entered and a moment later was followed by Del Mar, who bowed as we welcomed him.

"Do you know," he began, "I believe that the lost torpedo model is somewhere in this house and I have reason to anticipate another attempt of foreign agents to find it. If you'll pardon me, I've taken the liberty of surrounding the place with some men we can trust."

While Del Mar was speaking, Elaine picked up a ribbon from the table and started to tie it about Rusty's neck. As Del Mar proceeded she paused, still holding the ribbon. Rusty, who hated ribbons, saw his chance and quietly sidled out, seeking refuge in the conservatory.

Alone in the conservatory, Rusty quickly forgot about the ribbon and began nosing about the palms. At last he came to the pot in which the torpedo model had been buried in the soft earth by the thief the night it had been stolen from the fountain.

Quickly Elaine recalled herself and, seeing the ribbon in her hand and Rusty gone, called him. There was no answer, and she excused herself, for it was against the rules for Rusty to wander about.

In his haste the thief had left just a corner of the handkerchief sticking out of the dirt. What none of us had noticed, Rusty's keen eyes and nose discovered and his instinct told him to dig for it. In a moment he uncovered the torpedo and handkerchief and sniffed.

Just then he heard his mistress calling him. Rusty had been whipped for digging in the conservatory and now, with his tail between his legs, he seized the torpedo in his mouth and bolted for the door of the drawing-room, for he had heard voices in the library. As he did so he dropped the handkerchief and the little propeller, loosened by his teeth, fell off.

Elaine entered the conservatory, still calling. Rusty was not there. He had reached the stairs, scurrying up to the attic, still holding the torpedo model in his mouth. He pushed open the attic door and ran in. Rusty's last refuge in time of trouble was back of a number of trunks, among which were two of almost the same size and appearance. Behind one of them, he had hidden a miscellaneous collection of bones, pieces of biscuit and things dear to his heart. He dropped the torpedo among these treasures.

Del Mar, meanwhile, had followed Elaine through the hall and into the conservatory. As he entered he could see her stooping down to look through the palms for Rusty. She straightened up and went on out.

Del Mar followed. Beside the palm pot where Rusty had found the torpedo, he happened to see the old handkerchief soiled with dirt. Near-by lay the little propeller. He picked them up.

"She has found it!" he exclaimed in wonder, following Elaine.

By this time Rusty had responded to Elaine's calls and came tearing down-stairs again.

"Naughty Rusty," chided Elaine, tying the ribbon on him.

"So—you have found him at last?" remarked Del Mar looking quickly at Elaine to see if she would get a double meaning.

"Yes. He's had a fine time running away," she replied.

Del Mar was scarcely able to conceal his suspicion of her. Was she a clever actress, hiding her discovery, he wondered?

. . . . . . .

Outside, on the lawn, Del Mar's men had been looking about, but had discovered nothing. They paused a moment to speak.

"Look out!" whispered one of them. "There's some one coming."

They dropped down in the shadow. There in the light of the street lamps was the fussy old gentleman coming across the lawn. He stole up to the door of the conservatory and looked through. Del Mar's men crawled a few feet closer. The little old man entered the conservatory and looked about again stealthily. The two men followed him in noiselessly and watched as he bent over the palm pot from which the dog had dug up the torpedo. He looked at the hole curiously. Just then he heard sounds behind him and sprang to his feet.

"Hands up!" ordered one of the men covering him with a gun.

The little old man threw up his hands, raising his cane still in his right hand. The man with the gun took a step closer. As he did so, the little old man brought down his cane with a quick blow and knocked the gun out of his hand. The second man seized the cane. The old man jerked the cane back and was standing there with a thin tough steel rapier. It was a sword-cane. Del Mar's man held the sheath.

As the man attacked with the sheath, the little old man parried, sent it flying from his grasp, and wounded him. The wounded man sank down, while the little old man ran off through the palms, followed by the other of Del Mar's men.

Around the hall, he ran, and back into the conservatory where he picked up a heavy chair and threw it through the glass, dropping himself behind a convenient hiding-place near-by. Del Mar's man, close after him, mistaking the crash of glass for the escape of the man he was pursuing, went on through the broken exit. Then the little old man doubled on his tracks and made for the front of the house.

. . . . . . .

With Aunt Josephine I had remained in the library.

"What's that?" I exclaimed at the first sounds. "A fight?"

Together we rushed for the conservatory.

The fight followed so quickly by the crash of glass also alarmed Elaine and Del Mar in the hallway and they hurried toward the library, which we had just left, by another door.

As they entered, they saw a little old gentleman rushing in from the conservatory and locking the door behind him. He whirled about, and he and Del Mar recognized each other at once. They drew guns together, but the little old man fired first.

His bullet struck the wall back of Del Mar and a cloud of vapor was instantly formed, enveloping Del Mar and even Elaine. Del Mar fell, overcome, while Elaine sank more slowly. The little old man ran forward.

In the conservatory, Aunt Josephine and I heard the shooting, just as one of Del Mar's men ran in again. With him we ran back toward the library.

By this time the whole house was aroused. Jennings and Marie were hurrying down-stairs, crying for help and making their way to the library also.

In the library, the little old man bent over Del Mar and Elaine. But it was only a moment later that he heard the whole house aroused. Quickly he shut and locked the folding-doors to the drawing-room, as, with Del Mar's man, I was beating at the rear library door.

"I'll go around," I suggested, hurrying off, while Del Mar's man tried to beat in the door.

Inside the little old man who had been listening saw that there was no means of escape. He pulled off his coat and vest and turned them inside out. On the inside he had prepared an exact copy of Jennings' livery.

It was only a matter of seconds before he had completed his change. For a moment he paused and looked at the two prostrate figures before him. Then he took a rose from a vase on the table and placed it in Elaine's hand.

Finally, with his whiskers and wig off he moved to the rear door where Del Mar's man was beating and opened it.

"Look," he cried pointing in an agitated way at Del Mar and Elaine. "What shall we do?"

Del Mar's man, who had never seen Jennings, ran to his master and the little old man, in his new disguise, slipped quietly into the hall and out the front door, where he had a taxicab waiting for him, down the street.

A moment later I burst open the other library door and Aunt Josephine followed me in, just as Jennings himself and Marie entered from the drawing-room.

It was only a moment before we had Del Mar, who was most in need of care, on the sofa and Elaine, already regaining consciousness, lay back in a deep easy chair.

As Del Mar moved, I turned again to Elaine who was now nearly recovered.

"How do you feel?" I asked anxiously.

Her throat was parched by the asphyxiating fumes, but she smiled brightly, though weakly.

"Wh-where did I get that?" she managed to gasp finally, catching sight of the rose in her hand. "Did you put it there?"

I shook my head and she gazed at the rose, wondering.

Whoever the little man was, he was gone.

I longed for Craig.



CHAPTER VII

THE GRAY FRIAR

So confident was Elaine that Kennedy was still alive that she would not admit to herself what to the rest of us seemed obvious.

She even refused to accept Aunt Josephine's hints and decided to give a masquerade ball which she had planned as the last event of the season before she closed the Dodge town house and opened her country house on the shore of Connecticut.

It was shortly after the strange appearance of the fussy old gentleman that I dropped in one afternoon to find Elaine addressing invitations, while Aunt Josephine helped her. As we chatted, I picked up one from the pile and mechanically contemplated the address:

"M. Del Mar, Hotel La Coste, New York City."

"I don't like that fellow," I remarked, shaking my head dubiously.

"Oh, you're—jealous, Walter," laughed Elaine, taking the envelope away from me and piling it again with the others.

Thus it was that in the morning's mail, Del Mar, along with the rest of us, received a neatly engraved little invitation:

Miss Elaine Dodge requests the pleasure of your presence at the masquerade ball to be given at her residence on Friday evening June 1st.

"Good!" he exclaimed, reaching for the telephone, "I'll go."

In a restaurant in the white light district two of those who had been engaged in the preliminary plot to steal Kennedy's wireless torpedo model, the young woman stenographer who had betrayed her trust and the man to whom she had passed the model out of the window in Washington, were seated at a table.

So secret had been the relations of all those in the plot that one group did not know the other and the strangest methods of communication had been adopted.

The man removed a cover from a dish. Underneath, perhaps without even the waiter's knowledge, was a note.

"Here are the orders at last," he whispered to the girl, unfolding and reading the note. "Look. The model of the torpedo is somewhere in her house. Go to-night to the ball as a masquerader and search for it."

"Oh, splendid!" exclaimed the girl. "I'm crazy for a little society after this grind. Pay the check and let's get out and choose our costumes."

The man paid the check and they left hurriedly. Half an hour later they were at a costumer's shop choosing their disguises, both careful to get the fullest masks that would not excite suspicion.

It was the night of the masquerade.

During the afternoon Elaine had been thinking more than ever of Kennedy. It all seemed unreal to her. More than once she stopped to look at his photograph. Several times she checked herself on the point of tears.

"No," she said to herself with a sort of grim determination. "No— he IS alive. He will come back to me—he WILL."

And yet she had a feeling of terrific loneliness which even her most powerful efforts could not throw off. She was determined to go through with the ball, now that she had started it, but she was really glad when it came time to dress, for even that took her mind from her brooding.

As Marie finished helping her put on a very effective and conspicuous costume, Aunt Josephine entered her dressing-room.

"Are you ready, my dear?" she asked, adjusting the mask which she carried so that no one would recognize her as Martha Washington.

"In just a minute, Auntie," answered Elaine, trying hard to put out of her mind how Craig would have liked her dress.

Somewhat earlier, in my own apartment, I had been arraying myself as Boum-Boum and modestly admiring the imitation I made of a circus clown as I did a couple of comedy steps before the mirror.

But I was not really so light-hearted. I could not help thinking of what this night might have been if Kennedy had been alive. Indeed, I was glad to take up my white mask, throw a long coat over my outlandish costume and hurry off in my waiting car in order to forget everything that reminded me of him in the apartment.

Already a continuous stream of guests was trickling in through the canopy from the curb to the Dodge door, carriages and automobiles arriving and leaving amid great gaping from the crowd on the sidewalk.

As I entered the ballroom it was really a brilliant and picturesque assemblage. Of course I recognized Elaine in spite of her mask, almost immediately.

Characteristically, she was talking to the one most striking figure on the floor, a tall man in red—a veritable Mephistopheles. As the music started, Elaine and his Satanic Majesty laughingly fox-trotted off but were not lost to me in the throng.

I soon found myself talking to a young lady in a spotted domino. She seemed to have a peculiar fascination for me, yet she did not monopolize all my attention. As we trotted past the door, I could see down the hall. Jennings was still admitting late arrivals, and I caught a glimpse of one costumed as a gray friar, his cowl over his head and his eyes masked.

Chatting, we had circled about to the conservatory. A number of couples were there and, through the palms, I saw Elaine and Mephisto laughingly make their way.

As my spotted domino partner and I swung around again, I happened to catch another glimpse of the gray friar. He was not dancing, but walking, or rather stalking, about the edge of the room, gazing about as if searching for some one.

In the conservatory, Elaine and Mephisto had seated themselves in the breeze of an open window, somewhat in the shadow.

"You are Miss Dodge," he said earnestly.

"You knew me?" she laughed. "And you?"

He raised his mask, disclosing the handsome face and fascinating eyes of Del Mar.

"I hope you don't think I'm here in character," he laughed easily, as she started a bit.

"I—I—well, I didn't think it was you," she blurted out.

"Ah—then there is some one else you care more to dance with?"

"No—no one—no."

"I may hope, then?"

He had moved closer and almost touched her hand. The pointed hood of the gray friar in the palms showed that at last he saw what he sought.

"No—no. Please—excuse me," she murmured rising and hurrying back to the ballroom.

A subtle smile spread over the gray friar's masked face.

Of course I had known Elaine. Whether she knew me at once I don't know or whether it was an accident, but she approached me as I paused in the dance a moment with my domino girl.

"From the—sublime—to the ridiculous," she cried excitedly.

My partner gave her a sharp glance. "You will excuse me?" she said, and, as I bowed, almost ran off to the conservatory, leaving Elaine to dance off with me.

. . . . . . .

Del Mar, quite surprised at the sudden flight of Elaine from his side, followed more slowly through the palms.

As he did so he passed a Mexican attired in brilliant native costume. At a sign from Del Mar he paused and received a small package which Del Mar slipped to him, then passed on as though nothing had happened. The keen eyes of the gray friar, however, had caught the little action and he quietly slipped out after the Mexican bolero.

Just then the domino girl hurried into the conservatory. "What's doing?" she asked eagerly.

"Keep close to me," whispered Del Mar, as she nodded and they left the conservatory, not apparently together.

Up-stairs, away from the gayety of the ballroom, the bolero made his way until he came to Elaine's room, dimly lighted. With a quick glance about, he entered cautiously, closed the door, and approached a closet which he opened. There was a safe built into the wall.

As he stooped over, the man unwrapped the package Del Mar had handed him and took out a curious little instrument. Inside was a dry battery and a most peculiar instrument, something like a little flat telephone transmitter, yet attached by wires to ear- pieces that fitted over the head after the manner of those of a wireless detector.

He adjusted the head-piece and held the flat instrument against the safe, close to the combination which he began to turn slowly. It was a burglar's microphone, used for picking combination locks. As the combination turned, a slight sound was made when the proper number came opposite the working point. Imperceptible ordinarily to even the most sensitive ear, to an ear trained it was comparatively easy to recognize the fall of the tumblers over this microphone.

As he worked, the door behind him opened softly and the gray friar entered, closing it and moving noiselessly over back of the shelter of a big mahogany high-boy, around which he could watch.

At last the safe was opened. Rapidly the man went through its contents. "Confound it!" he muttered. "She didn't put it here— anyhow."

The bolero started to close the safe when he heard a noise in the room and looked cautiously back of him. Del Mar himself, followed by the domino girl, entered.

"I've opened it," whispered the emissary stepping out of the closet and meeting them, "but I can't find the—"

"Hands up—all of you!"

They turned in time to see the gray friar's gun yawning at them. Most politely he lined them up. Still holding his gun ready, he lifted up the mask of the domino girl.

"So—it's you," he grunted.

He was about to lift the mask of the Mexican, when the bolero leaped at him. Del Mar piled in. But sounds down-stairs alarmed them and the emissary, released, fled quickly with the girl. The gray friar, however, kept his hold on Mephistopheles, as if he had been wrestling with a veritable devil.

. . . . . . .

Down in the hall, I had again met my domino girl, a few minutes after I had resigned Elaine to another of her numerous admirers.

"I thought you deserted me," I said, somewhat piqued.

"You deserted me," she parried, nervously. "However, I'll forgive you if you'll get me an ice."

I hastened to do so. But no sooner had I gone than Del Mar stalked through the hall and went up-stairs. My domino girl was watching for him, and followed.

When I returned with the ice, I looked about, but she was gone. It was scarcely a moment later, however, that I saw her hurry down- stairs, accompanied by the Mexican bolero. I stepped forward to speak to her, but she almost ran past me without a word.

"A nut," I remarked under my breath, pushing back my mask.

I started to eat the ice myself, when, a moment later, Elaine passed through the hall with a Spanish cavalier.

"Oh, Walter, here you are," she laughed. "I've been looking all over for you. Thank you very much, sire," she bowed with mock civility to the cavalier. "It was only one dance, you know. Please let me talk to Boum-Boum."

The cavalier bowed reluctantly and left us.

"What are you doing here alone?" she asked, taking off her own mask. "How warm it is."

Before I could reply, I heard some one coming down-stairs back of me, but not in time to turn

"Elaine's dressing-table," a voice whispered in my ear.

I turned suddenly. It was the gray friar. Before I could even reach out to grasp his robe, he was gone.

"Another nut!" I exclaimed involuntarily.

"Why, what did he say?" asked Elaine.

"Something about your dressing-table."

"My dressing-table?" she repeated.

We ran quickly up the steps. Elaine's room showed every evidence of having been the scene of a struggle, as she went over to the table. There she picked up a rose and under it a piece of paper on which were some words printed with pencil roughly.

"Look," she cried, as I read with her:

Do honest assistants search safes? Let no one see this but Jameson.

"What does it mean?" I asked.

"My safe!" she cried moving to a closet. As she opened the door, imagine our surprise at seeing Del Mar lying on the floor, bound and gagged before the open safe. "Get my scissors on the dresser," cried Elaine.

I did so, hastily cutting the cords that bound Del Mar.

"What does it all mean?" asked Elaine as he rose and stretched himself.

Still clutching his throat, as if it hurt, Del Mar choked, "I found a man, a foreign agent, searching the safe. But he overcame me and escaped."

"Oh—then that is what the—"

Elaine checked herself. She had been about to hand the note to Del Mar when an idea seemed to come to her. Instead, she crumpled it up and thrust it into her bosom.

On the street the bolero and the domino girl were hurrying away as fast as they could.

Meanwhile, the gray friar had overcome Del Mar, had bound and gagged him, and trust him into the closet. Then he wrote the note and laid it, with a rose from a vase, on Elaine's dressing-table before he, too, followed.

More than ever I was at a loss to make it out.

. . . . . . .

It was the day after the masquerade ball that a taxicab drove up to the Dodge house and a very trim but not over-dressed young lady was announced as "Miss Bertholdi."

"Miss Dodge?" she inquired as Jennings held open the portieres and she entered the library where Elaine and Aunt Josephine were.

If Elaine had only known, it was the domino girl of the night before who handed her a note and sat down, looking about so demurely, while Elaine read:

MY DEAR MISS DODGE,

The bearer, Miss Bertholdi, is an operative of mine. I would appreciate it if you would employ her in some capacity in your house, as I have reason to believe that certain foreign agents will soon make another attempt to find Kennedy's lost torpedo model.

Sincerely, M. DEL MAR.

Elaine looked up from reading the note. Miss Bertholdi was good to look at, and Elaine liked pretty girls about her.

"Jennings," she ordered, "call Marie."

To the butler and her maid, Elaine gave the most careful instructions regarding Miss Bertholdi. "She can help you finish the packing, first," she concluded.

The girl thanked her and went out with Jennings and Marie, asking Jennings to pay her taxicab driver with money she gave him, which he did, bringing her grip into the house.

Later in the day, Elaine had both Marie and Bertholdi carrying armsful of her dresses from the closets in her room up to the attic where the last of her trunks were being packed. On one of the many trips, Bertholdi came alone into the attic, her arms full as usual. Before her were two trunks, very much alike, open and nearly packed. She laid her armful of clothes on a chair near-by and pulled one of the trunks forward. On the floor lay the trays of both trunks already packed. Bertholdi began packing her burden in one trunk which was marked in big white letters, "E. Dodge."

Down in Elaine's room at the time Jennings entered. "The expressman for the trunks is here, Miss Elaine," he announced.

"Is he? I wonder whether they are all ready," Elaine replied hurrying out of the room. "Tell him to wait."

In the attic, Bertholdi was still at work, keeping her eyes open to execute the mission on which Del Mar had sent her.

Rusty, forgotten in the excitement by Jennings, had roamed at will through the house and seemed quite interested. For this was the trunk behind which he had his cache of treasures.

As Bertholdi started to move behind the trunk, Rusty could stand it no longer. He darted ahead of her into his hiding-place. Among the dog biscuit and bones was the torpedo model which he had dug up from the palm pot in the conservatory. He seized it in his mouth and turned to carry it off.

There, in his path, was his enemy, the new girl. Quick as a flash, she saw what it was Rusty had, and grabbed at it.

"Get out!" she ordered, looking at her prize in triumph and turning it over and over in her hands.

At that moment she heard Elaine on the stairs. What should she do? She must hide it. She looked about. There was the tray, packed and lying on the floor near the trunk marked, "E. Dodge." She thrust it hastily into the tray pulling a garment over it.

"Nearly through?" panted Elaine.

"Yes, Miss Dodge."

"Then please tell the expressman to come up."

Bertholdi hesitated, chagrined. Yet there was nothing to do but obey. She looked at the trunk by the tray to fix it in her mind, then went down-stairs.

As she left the room, Elaine lifted the tray into the trunk and tried to close the lid. But the tray was too high. She looked puzzled. On the floor was another tray almost identical.

"The wrong trunk," she smiled to herself, lifting the tray out and putting the other one in, while she placed the first tray with the torpedo concealed in the other, unmarked, trunk where it belonged. Then she closed the first trunk.

A moment later the expressman entered, with Bertholdi.

"You may take that one," indicated Elaine.

"Miss Dodge, here's something else to go in," said Bertholdi in desperation, picking up a dress.

"Never mind. Put it in the other trunk."

Bertholdi was baffled, but she managed to control herself. She must get word to Del Mar about that trunk marked "E. Dodge."

. . . . . . .

Late that afternoon, before a cheap restaurant might have been seen our old friend who had posed as Bailey and as the Mexican. He entered the restaurant and made his way to the first of a row of booths on one side.

"Hello," he nodded to a girl in the booth.

Bertholdi nodded back and he took his seat. She had begged an hour or two off on some pretext

Outside the restaurant, a heavily-bearded man had been standing looking intently at nothing in particular when Bertholdi entered. As Bailey came along, he followed and took the next booth, his hat pulled over his eyes. In a moment he was listening, his ear close up to the partition.

"Well, what luck?" asked Bailey. "Did you get a clue?"

"I had the torpedo model in my hands," she replied, excitedly telling the story. "It is in a trunk marked 'E. Dodge.'"

All this and more the bearded stranger drank in eagerly.

A moment later Bailey and Bertholdi left the booth and went out of the restaurant followed cautiously by the stranger. On the street the two emissaries of Del Mar stopped a moment to talk.

"All right, I'll telephone him," she said as they parted in opposite directions.

The stranger took an instant to make up his mind, then followed the girl. She continued down the street until she came to a store with telephone booths. The bearded stranger followed still, into the next booth but did not call a number. He had his ear to the wall.

He could hear her call Del Mar, and although he could not hear Del Mar's answers, she repeated enough for him to catch the drift. Finally, she came out, and the stranger, instead of following her further, took the other direction hurriedly.

. . . . . . .

Del Mar himself received the news with keen excitement. Quickly he gave instructions and prepared to leave his rooms.

A short time later his car pulled up before the La Coste and, in a long duster and cap, Del Mar jumped in, and was off.

Scarcely had his car swung up the avenue when, from an alleyway down the street from the hotel, the chug-chug of a motor-cycle sounded. A bearded man, his face further hidden by a pair of goggles, ran out with his machine, climbed on and followed.

On out into the country Del Mar's car sped. At every turn the motor-cycle dropped back a bit, observed the turn, then crept up and took it, too. So they went for some time.

. . . . . . .

On the level of the Grand Central where the trains left for the Connecticut shore where Elaine's summer home was located, Bailey was now edging his way through the late crowd down the platform. He paused before the baggage-car just as one of the baggage motor trucks rolled up loaded high with trunks and bags. He stepped back as the men loaded the luggage on the car, watching carefully.

As they tossed on one trunk marked "E. Dodge," he turned with a subtle look and walked away. Finally he squirmed around to the other platform. No one was looking and he mounted the rear of the baggage-car and opened the door. There was the baggageman sitting by the side door, his back to Bailey. Bailey closed the door softly and squeezed behind a pile of trunks and bags.

. . . . . . .

Finally Del Mar reached a spot on the railroad where there were both a curve and a grade ahead. He stopped his car and got out.

Down the road the bearded and goggled motorcyclist stopped just in time to avoid observation. To make sure, he drew a pocket field- glass and leveled it ahead.

"Wait here," ordered Del Mar. "I'll call when I want you."

Back on the road the bearded cyclist could see Del Mar move down the track though he could not hear the directions. It was not necessary, however. He dragged his machine into the bushes, hid it, and hurried down the road on foot.

Del Mar's chauffeur was waiting idly at the wheel when suddenly the cold nose of a revolver was stuck under his chin.

"Not a word—and hands up—or I'll let the moonlight through you," growled out a harsh voice.

Nevertheless, the chauffeur managed to lurch out of the car and the bearded stranger, whose revolver it was, found that he would have to shoot. Del Mar was not far enough away to risk it.

The chauffeur flung himself on him and they struggled fiercely, rolling over and over in the dust of the road.

But the bearded stranger had a grip of steel and managed to get his fingers about the chauffeur's throat as an added insurance against a cry for help.

He choked him literally into insensibility. Then, with a strength that he did not seem to possess, he picked up the limp, blue-faced body and carried it off the road and around the car.

. . . . . . .

In the baggage-car, the baggageman was smoking a surreptitious pipe of powerful tobacco between stations and contemplating the scenery thoughtfully through the open door.

As the engine slowed up to take a curve and a grade, Bailey who had now and then taken a peep out of a little grated window above him, crept out from his hiding-place. Already he had slipped a dark silk mask over his face.

As he made his way among the trunks and boxes, the train lurched and the baggageman who had his back to Bailey heard him catch himself. He turned and leaped to his feet. Bailey closed with him instantly.

Over and over they rolled. Bailey had already drawn his revolver before he left his hiding-place. A shot, however, would have been fatal to his part in the plans and was only a last resort for it would have brought the trainmen.

Finally Bailey rolled his man over and getting his right arm free, dealt the baggageman a fierce blow with the butt of the gun.

The train was now pulling slowly up the grade. More time had been spent in overcoming the baggageman than he expected and Bailey had to work quickly. He dragged the trunk marked "E. Dodge" from the pile to the door and glanced out.

. . . . . . .

Just around the curve in the railroad, Del Mar was waiting, straining his eyes down the track.

There was the train, puffing up the grade. As it approached he rose and waved his arms. It was the signal and he waited anxiously. Had his plans been carried out?

The train passed. From the baggage-car came a trunk catapulted out by a strong arm. It hurtled through the air and landed with its own and the train's momentum.

Over it rolled in the bushes, then stopped—unbroken, for Elaine had had it designed to resist even the most violent baggage- smasher.

Del Mar ran to it. As the tail light of the train disappeared he turned around in the direction from which he had come, placed his two hands to his mouth and shouted.

. . . . . . .

From the side of the road by Del Mar's car the bearded motor- cyclist had just emerged, buttoning the chauffeur's clothes and adjusting his goggles to his own face.

As he approached the car, he heard a shout. Quickly he tore off the black beard which had been his disguise and tossed it into the grass. Then he drew the coat high up about his neck.

"All right!" he shouted back, starting along the road.

Together he and Del Mar managed to scramble up the embankment to the road and, one at each handle of the trunk, they carried it back to the car, piling it in the back.

The improvised chauffeur started to take his place at the wheel and Del Mar had his foot on the running-board to get beside him, when the now unbearded stranger suddenly swung about and struck Del Mar full in the face. It sent him reeling back into the dust.

The engine of the car had been running and before Del Mar could recover consciousness, the stranger had shot the car ahead, leaving Del Mar prone in the roadway.

. . . . . . .

The train, with Bailey on it, had not gained much speed, yet it was a perilous undertaking to leap. Still, it was more so now to remain. The baggageman stirred. It was now a case of murder or a getaway.

Bailey jumped.

Scratched and bruised and shaken, he scrambled to his feet in the briars along the track. He staggered up to the road, pulled himself together, then hurried back as fast as his barked shins would let him.

He came to the spot which he recognized as that where he had thrown off the trunk. He saw the trampled and broken bushes and made for the road.

He had not gone far when he saw, far down, Del Mar suddenly attacked and thrown down, apparently by his own chauffeur. Bailey ran forward, but it was too late. The car was gone.

As he came up to Del Mar lying outstretched in the road, Del Mar was just recovering consciousness.

"What was the matter?" he asked. "Was he a traitor?"

He caught sight of the real chauffeur on the ground, stripped.

Del Mar was furious. "No," he swore, "it was that confounded gray friar again, I think. And he has the trunk, too!"

. . . . . . .

Speeding up the road the former masquerader and motor-cyclist stopped at last.

Eagerly he leaped out of Del Mar's car and dragged the trunk over the side regardless of the enamel.

It was the work of only a moment for him to break the lock with a pocket jimmy.

One after another he pulled out and shook the clothes until frocks and gowns and lingerie lay strewn all about.

But there was not a thing in the trunk that even remotely resembled the torpedo model.

The stranger scowled.

Where was it?



CHAPTER VIII

THE VANISHING MAN

Del Mar had evidently, by this time, come to the conclusion that Elaine was the storm centre of the peculiar train of events that followed the disappearance of Kennedy and his wireless torpedo.

At any rate, as soon as he learned that Elaine was going to her country home for the summer, he took a bungalow some distance from Dodge Hall. In fact, it was more than a bungalow, for it was a pretentious place surrounded by a wide lawn and beautiful shade trees.

There, on the day that Elaine decided to motor in from the city, Del Mar arrived with his valet.

Evidently he lost no time in getting to work on his own affairs, whatever they might be. Inside his study, which was the largest room in the house, a combination of both library and laboratory, he gave an order or two to his valet, then immediately sat down to his new desk. He opened a drawer and took out a long hollow cylinder, closed at each end by air-tight caps, on one of which was a hook.

Quickly he wrote a note and read it over: "Install submarine bell in place of these clumsy tubes. Am having harbor and bridges mined as per instructions from Government. D."

He unscrewed the cap at one end of the tube, inserted the note and closed it. Then he pushed a button on his desk. A panel in the wall opened and one of the men who had played policeman once for him stepped out and saluted.

"Here's a message to send below," said Del Mar briefly.

The man bowed and went back through the panel, closing it.

Del Mar cleaned up his desk and then went out to look his new quarters over, to see whether everything had been prepared according to his instructions.

From the concealed entrance to a cave on a hillside, Del Mar's man who had gone through the panel in the bungalow appeared a few minutes later and hurried down to the shore. It was a rocky coast with stretches of cliffs and now and then a ravine and bit of sandy beach. Gingerly he climbed down the rocks to the water.

He took from his pocket the metal tube which Del Mar had given him and to the hook on one end attached a weight of lead. A moment he looked about cautiously. Then he threw the tube into the water and it sank quickly. He did not wait, but hurried back into the cave entrance.

. . . . . . .

Elaine, Aunt Josephine and I motored down to Dodge Hall from the city. Elaine's country house was on a fine estate near the Long Island Sound and after the long run we were glad to pull up before the big house and get out of the car. As we approached the door, I happened to look down the road.

"Well, that's the country, all right," I exclaimed, pointing down the road. "Look."

Lumbering along was a huge heavy hay rack on top of which perched a farmer chewing a straw. Following along after him was a dog of a peculiar shepherd breed which I did not recognize. Atop of the hay the old fellow had piled a trunk and a basket.

To our surprise the hay rack stopped before the house. "Miss Dodge?" drawled the farmer nasally.

"Why, what do you suppose he can want?" asked Elaine moving out toward the wagon while we followed. "Yes?"

"Here's a trunk, Miss Dodge, with your name on it," he went on dragging it down. "I found it down by the railroad track."

It was the trunk marked "E. Dodge" which had been thrown off the train, taken by Del Mar and rifled by the motor-cyclist.

"How do you suppose it ever got here?" cried Elaine in wonder.

"Must have fallen off the train," I suggested. "You might have collected the insurance under this new baggage law!"

"Jennings," called Elaine. "Get Patrick and carry the trunk in."

Together the butler and the gardener dragged it off.

"Thank you," said Elaine, endeavoring to pay the farmer.

"No, no, Miss," he demurred as he clucked to his horses.

We waved to the old fellow. As he started to drive away, he reached down into the basket and drew out some yellow harvest apples. One at a time he tossed them to us as he lumbered off.

"Truly rural," remarked a voice behind us.

It was Del Mar, all togged up and carrying a magazine in his hand.

We chatted a moment, then Elaine started to go into the house with Aunt Josephine. With Del Mar I followed.

As she went Elaine took a bite of the apple. To her surprise it separated neatly into two hollow halves. She looked inside. There was a note. Carefully she unfolded it and read. Like the others, it was not written but printed in pencil:

Be careful to unpack all your trunks yourself. Destroy this note.- -A FRIEND.

What did these mysterious warnings mean, she asked herself in amazement. Somehow so far they had worked out all right. She tore up the note and threw the pieces away.

Del Mar and I stopped for a moment to talk. I did not notice that he was not listening to me, but was surreptitiously watching Elaine.

Elaine went into the house and we followed. Del Mar, however, dropped just a bit behind and, as he came to the place where Elaine had thrown the pieces of paper, dropped his magazine. He stooped to pick it up and gathered the pieces, then rejoined us.

"I hope you'll excuse me," said Elaine brightly. "We've just arrived and I haven't a thing unpacked."

Del Mar bowed and Elaine left us. Aunt Josephine followed shortly. Del Mar and I sat down at a table. As he talked he placed the magazine in his lap beneath the table, on his knees. I could not see, but he was in reality secretly putting together the torn note which the farmer had thrown to Elaine.

Finally he managed to fit all the pieces. A glance down was enough. But his face betrayed nothing. Still under the table, he swept the pieces into his pocket and rose.

"I'll drop in when you are more settled," he excused himself, strolling leisurely out again.

. . . . . . .

Up in the bedroom Elaine's maid, Marie, had been unpacking.

"Well, what do you know about that?" she exclaimed as Jennings and Patrick came dragging in the banged-up trunk.

"Very queer," remarked Jennings, detailing the little he had seen, while Patrick left.

The entrance of Elaine put an end to the interesting gossip and Marie started to open the trunk.

"No, Marie," said Elaine. "I'll unpack them my self. You can put the things away later. You and Jennings may go."

Quickly she took the things out of the battered trunk. Then she started on the other trunk which was like it but not marked. She threw out a couple of garments, then paused, startled.

There was the lost torpedo—where Bertholdi had stuck it in her haste! Elaine picked it up and looked at it in wonder as it recalled all those last days before Kennedy was lost. For the moment she did not know quite what to make of it. What should she do?

Finally she decided to lock it up in the bureau drawer and tell me. Not only did she lock the drawer but, as she left her room, she took the key of the door from the lock inside and locked it outside.

. . . . . . .

Del Mar did not go far from the house, however. He scarcely reached the edge of the grounds where he was sure he was not observed when he placed his fingers to his lips and whistled. An instant later two of his men appeared from behind a hedge.

"You must get into her room," he ordered. "That torpedo is in her luggage somewhere, after all."

They bowed and disappeared again into the shrubbery while Del Mar turned and retraced his steps to the house.

In the rear of the house the two emissaries of Del Mar stole out of the shelter of some bushes and stood for a moment looking. Elaine's windows were high above them, too high to reach. There seemed to be no way to get to them and there was no ladder in sight.

"We'll have to use the Dutch house-man's method," decided one.

Together they went around the house toward the laundry. It was only a few minutes later that they returned. No one was about. Quickly one of them took off his coat. Around his waist he had wound a coil of rope. Deftly he began to climb a tree whose upper branches fell over the roof. Cat-like he made his way out along a branch and managed to reach the roof. He made his way along the ridge pole to a chimney which was directly back of and in line with Elaine's windows. Then he uncoiled the rope and made one end fast to the chimney. Letting the other end fall free down the roof, he carefully lowered himself over the edge. Thus it was not difficult to get into Elaine's room by stepping on the window-sill and going through the open window.

The man began a rapid search of the room, turning up and pawing everything that Elaine had unpacked. Then he began on the little writing-desk, the dresser and the bureau drawers. A subtle smile flashed over his face as he came to one drawer that was locked. He pulled a sectional jimmy from his coat and forced it open.

There lay the precious torpedo.

The man clutched at it with a look of exultation. Without another glance at the room he rushed to the window, seized the rope and pulled himself to the roof, going as he had come.

. . . . . . .

It did not take me long to unpack the few things I had brought and I was soon back again in the living-room, where Aunt Josephine joined me in a few minutes.

Just as Elaine came hurriedly down the stairway and started toward me, Del Mar entered from the porch. She stopped. Del Mar watched her closely. Had she found anything? He was sure of it.

Her hesitation was only for a moment, however. "Walter," she said, "may I speak to you a moment? Excuse us, please?"

Aunt Josephine went out toward the back of the house to see how the servants were getting on, while I followed Elaine up-stairs. Del Mar with a bow seated himself and opened his magazine. No sooner had we gone, however, than he laid it down and cautiously followed us.

Elaine was evidently very much excited as she entered her dainty little room and closed the door. "Walter," she cried, "I've found the torpedo!"

We looked about at the general disorder. "Why," she exclaimed nervously, "some one has been here—and I locked the door, too."

She almost ran over to her bureau drawer. It had been jimmied open in the few minutes while she was down-stairs. The torpedo was gone. We looked at each other, aghast.

Behind us, however, we did not see the keen and watchful eyes of Del Mar, opening the door and peering in. As he saw us, he closed the door softly, went down-stairs and out of the house.

. . . . . . .

Perhaps half a mile down the road, the farmer abandoned his hay rack and now, followed by his peculiar dog, walked back. He stopped at a point in the road where he could see the Dodge house in the distance, sat on the rail fence and lighted a blackened corn-cob pipe.

There he sat for some time apparently engrossed in his own thoughts about the weather, the dog lying at his feet. Now and then he looked fixedly toward Dodge Hall.

Suddenly his vagrant attention seemed to be riveted on the house. He drew a field-glass from his pocket and levelled it. Sure enough, there was a man coming out of a window, pulling himself up to the roof by a rope and going across the roof tree. He lowered the glasses quickly and climbed off the fence with a hitherto unwonted energy.

"Come, Searchlight," he called to the dog, as together they moved off quickly in the direction he had been looking. Del Mar's men were coming through the hedge that surrounded the Dodge estate just as the farmer and his dog stepped out in front of them from behind a thicket.

"Just a minute," he called. "I want to speak to you."

He enforced his words with a vicious looking gun. It was two to one and they closed with him. Before he could shoot, they had knocked the gun out of his hand. Then they tried to break away and run.

But the farmer seized one of them and held him. Meanwhile the dog developed traits all his own. He ran in and out between the legs of the other man until he threw him. There he stood, over him. The man attempted to rise. Again the dog threw him and kept him down. He was a trained Belgian sheep hound, a splendid police dog.

"Confound the brute," growled the man, reaching for his gun.

As he drew it, the dog seized his wrist and with a cry the man dropped the gun. That, too, was part of the dog's training.

While the farmer and the other man struggled on the ground, the torpedo worked its way half from the man's pocket. The farmer seized it. The man fell back, limp, and the farmer, with the torpedo in one hand, grasped at the gun on the ground and straightened up.

He had no sooner risen than the man was at him again. His unconsciousness had been merely feigned. The struggle was renewed.

At that point, the hedge down the road parted and Del Mar stepped out. A glance was enough to tell him what was going on. He drew his gun and ran swiftly toward the combatants.

As Del Mar approached, his man succeeded in knocking the torpedo from the farmer's hand. There it lay, several feet away. There seemed to be no chance for either man to get it.

Quickly the farmer bent his wrist, aiming the gun deliberately at the precious torpedo. As fast as he could he pulled the trigger. Five of the six shots penetrated the little model.

So surprised was his antagonist that the farmer was able to knock him out with the butt of his gun. He broke away and fled, whistling on a police whistle for the dog just as Del Mar ran up. A couple of shots from Del Mar flew wild as the farmer and his dog disappeared.

Del Mar stopped and picked up the model. It had been shot into an unrecognizable mass of scrap. In a fury, Del Mar dashed it on the ground, cursing his men as he did so. The strange disappearance of the torpedo model from Elaine's room worried both of us. Doubtless if Kennedy had been there he would have known just what to do. But we could not decide.

"Really," considered Elaine, "I think we had better take Mr. Del Mar into our confidence."

"Still, we've had a great many warnings," I objected.

"I know that," she persisted, "but they have all come from very unreliable sources."

"Very well," I agreed finally, "then let's drive over to his bungalow."

Elaine ordered her little runabout and a few moments later we climbed into it and Elaine shot the car away.

As we rode along, the country seemed so quiet that no one would ever have suspected that foreign agents lurked all about. But it was just under such a cover that the nefarious bridge and harbor- mining work ordered by Del Mar's superiors was going ahead quietly.

As our car climbed a hill on the other side of which, in the valley, was a bridge, we could not see one of Del Mar's men in hiding at the top. He saw us, however, and immediately wigwagged with his handkerchief to several others down at the bridge where they were attaching a pair of wires to the planking.

"Some one coming," muttered one who was evidently a lookout.

The men stopped work immediately and hid in the brush. Our car passed over the bridge and we saw nothing wrong. But no sooner had we gone than the men crept out and resumed work which had progressed to the point where they were ready to carry the wires of an electric connection through the grass, concealing them as they went.

In the study of his bungalow, all this time, Del Mar was striding angrily up and down, while his men waited in silence.

Finally he paused and turned to one of them. "See that the coast is clear and kept clear," he ordered. "I want to go down."

The man saluted and went out through the panel. A moment later Del Mar gave some orders to the other man who also saluted and left the house by the front door, just as our car pulled up.

Del Mar, the moment the man was gone, put on his hat and moved toward the panel in the wall. He was about to enter when he heard some one coming down the hall to the study and stepped back, closing the panel. It was the butler announcing us.

We had entered Del Mar's bungalow and now were conducted to his library. There Elaine told him the whole story, much to his apparent surprise, for Del Mar was a wonderful actor.

"You see," he said as she finished telling of the finding and the losing of the torpedo, "just what I had feared would happen has happened. Doubtless the foreign agents have the deadly weapon, now. However, I'll not quit. Perhaps we may run them down yet."

He reassured us and we thanked him as we said good-bye. Outside, Elaine and I got into the car again and a moment later spun off, making a little detour first through the country before hitting the shore road back again to Dodge Hall.

On the rocky shore of the promontory, several men were engaged in sinking a peculiar heavy disk which they submerged about ten or twelve feet. It seemed to be held by a cable and to it wires were attached, apparently so that when a key was pressed a circuit was closed.

It was an "oscillator", a new system for the employment of sound for submarine signalling, using water instead of air as a medium to transmit sound waves. It was composed of a ring magnet, a copper tube lying in an air-gap in a magnetic field and a stationary central armature. The tube was attached to a steel diaphragm. Really it was a submarine bell which could be used for telegraphing or telephoning both ways through water.

The men finished executing the directions of Del Mar and left, carefully concealing the land connections and key of the bell, while we were still at Del Mar's.

We had no sooner left, however, than one of the men who had been engaged in installing the submarine bell entered the library.

"Well?" demanded Del Mar.

"The bell is installed, sir," he said. "It will be working soon."

"Good," nodded Del Mar.

He went to a drawer and from it took a peculiar looking helmet to which was attached a sort of harness fitting over the shoulders and carrying a tank of oxygen. The head-piece was a most weird contrivance, with what looked like a huge glass eye in front. It was in reality a submarine life-saving apparatus.

Del Mar put it on, all except the helmet which he carried with him, and then, with his assistant, went out through the panel in the wall. Through the underground passage the two groped their way, lighted by an electric torch, until at last they came to the entrance hidden in the underbrush, near the shore.

Del Mar went over to the concealed station from which the submarine bell was sounded and pressed the key as a signal. Then he adjusted the submarine helmet to his head and deliberately waded out into the water, further and further, up to his head, then deeper still.

As he disappeared into the water, his emissary turned and went back toward the shore road.

. . . . . . .

The ride around through the country and back to the shore, road from Del Mar's was pleasant. In fact it was always pleasant to be with Elaine, especially in a car.

We were spinning along at a fast clip when we came to a rocky part of the coast. As we made a turn a sharp breeze took off my hat and whirled it far off the road and among the rocks of the shore. Elaine shut down the engine, with a laugh at me, and we left the car by the road while we climbed down the rocks after the hat.

It had been carried into the water, close to shore and, still laughing, we clambered over the rocks. Elaine insisted on getting it herself and in fact did get it. She was just about to hand it to me, when something bobbed up in the water just in front of us. She reached for it and fished it out. It was a cylinder with air- tight caps on both ends, in one of which was a hook.

"What do you suppose it is?" she asked, looking it over as we made our way up the rocks again to the car. "Where did it come from?"

We did not see a man standing by our car, but he saw us. It was Del Mar's man who had paused on his way to watch us. As we approached he hid on the other side of the road.

By this time we had reached the car and opened the cylinder. Inside was a note which read:

"Chief arrived safely. Keep watch."

"What does it mean?" repeated Elaine, mystified.

Neither of us could guess and I doubt whether we would have understood any better if we had seen a sinister face peering at us from behind a rock near-by, although doubtless the man knew what was in the tube and what it meant.

We climbed into the car and started again. As we disappeared, the man came from behind the rocks and ran quickly up to the top of the hill. There, from the bushes, he pulled out a peculiar instrument composed of a strange series of lenses and mirrors set up on a tripod.

Eagerly he placed the tripod, adjusting the lenses and mirrors in the sunlight. Then he began working them, and it was apparent that he was flashing light beams, using a Morse code. It was a heliograph.

Down the shore on the top of the next hill sat the man who had already given the signal with the handkerchief to those in the valley who were working on the mining of the bridge. As he sat there, his eye caught the flash of the heliograph signal. He sprang up and watched intently. Rapidly he jotted down the message that was being flashed in the sunlight:

Dodge girl has message from below. Coming in car. Blow first bridge she crosses.

Down the valley the lookout made his way as fast as he could. As he approached the two men who had been mining the bridge, he whistled sharply. They answered and hurried to meet him.

"Just got a heliograph," he panted. "The Dodge girl must have picked up one of the messages that came from below. She's coming over the hill now in a car. We've got to blow up the bridge as she crosses."

The men were hurrying now toward the bridge which they had mined. Not a moment was to be lost, for already they could see us coming over the crest of the hill.

In a few seconds they reached the hidden plunger firing-box which had been arranged to explode the charge under the bridge. There they crouched in the brush ready to press the plunger the moment our car touched the planking.

One of the men crept out a little nearer the road. "They're coming!" he called back, dropping down again. "Get ready!"

. . . . . . .

Del Mar's emissaries had not reckoned, however, that any one else might be about to whom the heliograph was an open book.

But, further over on the hill, hiding among the trees, the old farmer and his dog were sitting quietly. The old man was sweeping the Sound with his glasses, as if he expected to see something any moment.

To his surprise, however, he caught a flash of the heliograph from the land. Quickly he turned and jotted down the signals. As he did so, he seemed greatly excited, for the message read:

Dodge girl has message from below. Coming in car. Blow first bridge she crosses.

Quickly he turned his glasses down the road. There he could see our car rapidly approaching. He put up his glasses and hurried down the hill toward the bridge. Then he broke into a run, the dog scouting ahead.

We were going along the road nicely now, coasting down the hill. As we approached the bridge, Elaine slowed up a bit, to cross, for the planking was loose.

Just then the farmer who had been running down the hill saw us.

"Stop!" he shouted.

But we did not hear. He ran after us, but such a chase was hopeless. He stopped, in despair.

With a gesture of vexation he took a step or two mechanically off the road.

Elaine and I were coming fast to the bridge now.

In their hiding-place, Del Mar's men were watching breathlessly. The leader was just about to press the plunger when all of a sudden a branch in the thicket beside him crackled. There stood the farmer and his dog!

Instantly the farmer seemed to take in the situation. With a cry he threw himself at the man who had the plunger. Another man leaped at the farmer. The dog settled him. The others piled in and a terrific struggle followed. It was all so rapid that, to all, seconds seemed like hours.

We were just starting to cross the bridge.

One of the men broke away and crawled toward the plunger box. Our car was now in the middle of the bridge.

Over and over rolled the men, the dog doing his best to help his master. The man who had broken away reached toward the plunger.

With a shout he pushed it down.

. . . . . . .

Our car had just cleared the bridge when we were startled by a terrific roar behind us. It was as though a thousand tires had blown out at once. Elaine shut off the engine automatically and we looked back.

The whole bridge had been blown up. A second before we had been in the middle of it.

As the explosion came, the men who had been struggling in the thicket, paused, startled, and stared out. At that instant the old farmer saw his chance. It was all over and he bolted, calling the dog.

Along the road to the bridge he ran, two of the men after him.

"Come back," growled the leader. "Let him go. Do you want us all to get caught?"

As the farmer ran up to the bridge, he saw it in ruins. But down the road he could see Elaine and myself, sitting in the car, staring back at the peril which we had so narrowly escaped. His face lighted up in as great joy as a few moments before it had showed despair.

"What can that have been?" asked Elaine, starting to get out of the car. "What caused it?"

"I don't know," I returned, taking her arm firmly. "But enough has happened to-day. If it was intended for us, we'd better not stop. Some one might take a shot at us. Come. We have the car. We can get out before any one does anything more. Let's do it. Things are going on about us of which we know nothing. The safest thing is to get away."

Elaine looked at the bridge in ruins and shuddered. It was the closest we could have been to death and have escaped. Then she turned to the wheel quickly and the little car fairly jumped ahead.

"Oh, if Craig were only here," she murmured. "He would know what to do."

As we disappeared over the crest of the next hill, safe, the old farmer and his dog looked hard at us.

The silence after the explosion was ominous.

He glanced about. No one was pursuing him. That seemed ominous, too. But if they did pursue he was prepared to elude them. They must never recognize the old farmer.

As he turned, he deliberately pulled off his beard, then plunged again into the woods and was lost.



CHAPTER IX

THE SUBMARINE HARBOR

It was not long after the almost miraculous escape of Elaine and myself from the blowing up of the bridge on the shore road that Del Mar returned from his mysterious mission which had, apparently, taken him actually down to the bottom of the sea.

The panel in the wall of his library opened and in the still dripping submarine suit, holding under his arm the weird helmet, Del Mar entered. No sooner had he begun to remove his wet diving- suit than the man who had signalled with the heliograph that we had found Del Mar's message from "below," whatever that might mean, entered the house and was announced by the valet.

"Let him come in immediately," ordered Del Mar, placing his suit in a closet. Then to the man, as he entered, he said, "Well, what's new?"

"Quite a bit," returned the man, frowning still over Elaine's accidental discovery of the under-water communication. "The Dodge girl happened to pick up one of the tubes with a message just after you went down. I tried to get her by blowing up the bridge, but it didn't work, somehow."

"We'll have to silence her," remarked Del Mar angrily with a sinister frown. "You stay here and wait for orders."

A moment later he made his way down to a private dock on his grounds and jumped aboard a trim little speed boat moored there. He started the motor and off the boat feathered in a cloud of spray.

It was only a moment by water before he reached the Dodge dock. There he tied his boat and hurried up the dock.

. . . . . . .

Elaine and I arrived home without any further experiences after our hairbreadth escape from the explosion at the bridge.

We were in doubt at first, however, just what to do about the mysterious message which we had picked up in the harbor.

"Really, Walter," remarked Elaine, after we had considered the matter for some time, "I think we ought to send that message to the government at Washington."

Already she had seated herself at her desk and began to write, while I examined the metal tube and the note again.

"There," she said at length, handing me the note she had written. "How does that sound?"

I read it while she addressed the envelope. "Very good," I replied, handing it back.

She folded it and shoved it into the envelope on which she had written:

Chief, Secret Service, Washington, D. C.

I was studying the address, wondering whether this was just the thing to do, when Elaine decided the matter by energetically ringing the bell for Jennings.

"Post that, Jennings, please," she directed.

The butler bowed just as the door-bell rang. He turned to go.

"Just a minute," I interrupted. "I think perhaps I'd better mail it myself, after all."

He handed me the letter and went out.

"Yes, Walter," agreed Elaine, "that would be better. Register it, too."

"How do you do?" greeted a suave voice.

It was Del Mar. As he passed me to speak to Elaine, apparently by accident, he knocked the letter from my hand.

"I beg your pardon," he apologized, quickly stooping and picking it up.

Though he managed to read the address, he maintained his composure and handed the letter back to me. I started to go out, when Elaine called to me.

"Excuse me just a moment, Mr. Del Mar?" she queried, accompanying me out on the porch.

Already a saddle horse had been brought around for me.

"Perhaps you'd better put a special delivery stamp on it, too, Walter," she added, walking along with me. "And be very careful."

"I will," I promised, as I rode off.

Del Mar, alone, seized the opportunity to go over quietly to the telephone. It was the work of only a moment to call up his bungalow where the emissary who had placed the submarine bell was waiting for orders. Quickly Del Mar whispered his instructions which the man took, and hung up the receiver.

"I hope you'll pardon me," said Elaine, entering just as Del Mar left the telephone. "Mr. Jameson was going into town and I had a number of little things I wanted him to do. Won't you sit down?"

They chatted for a few moments, but Del Mar did not stay very long. He excused himself shortly and Elaine bade him good-bye at the door as he walked off, apparently, down the road I had taken.

. . . . . . .

Del Mar's emissary hurried from the bungalow and almost ran down the road until he came to a spot where two men were hiding.

"Jameson is coming with a letter which the Dodge girl has written to the Secret Service," he cried pointing excitedly up the road. "You've got to get it, see?"

I was cantering along nicely down the road by the shore, when suddenly, from behind some rocks and bushes, three men leaped out at me. One of them seized the horse's bridle, while the other two quickly dragged me out of the saddle.

It was very unexpected, but I had time enough to draw my gun and fire once. I hit one of the men, too, in the arm, and he staggered back, the blood spurting all over the road.

But before I could fire at the others, they knocked the gun from my hand. Frightened, the horse turned and bolted, riderless.

Together, they dragged me off the road and into the thicket where I was tied and gagged and laid on the ground while one of them bound up the wounded arm of the man I had hit. It was not long before one of them began searching me.

"Aha!" he growled, pulling the letter from my pocket and looking at it with satisfaction. "Here it is."

He tore the letter open, throwing the envelope on the ground, and read it.

"There, confound you," he muttered. "The government 'll never get that. Come on, men. Bring him this way."

He shoved the letter into his pocket and led the way through the underbrush, while the others half-dragged, half-pushed me along. We had not gone very far before one of the three men, who appeared to be the leader, paused.

"Take him to the hang-out," he ordered gruffly. "I'll have to report to the Chief."

He disappeared down toward the shore of the harbor while the others prodded me along.

. . . . . . .

Down near the Dodge dock, along the shore, walked a man wearing a broad-brimmed hat and a plain suit of duck. His prim collar and tie comported well with his smoked glasses. Instinctively one would have called him "Professor", though whether naturalist, geologist, or plain "bugologist", one would have had difficulty in determining.

He seemed, as a matter-of-fact, to be a naturalist, for he was engrossed in picking up specimens. But he was not so much engrossed as to fail to hear the approach of footsteps down the gravel walk from Dodge Hall to the dock. He looked up in time to see Del Mar coming, and quietly slipped into the shrubbery up on the shore.

On the dock, Del Mar stood for some minutes, waiting. Finally, along the shore came another figure. It was the emissary to whom Del Mar had telephoned and who had searched me. The naturalist drew back into his hiding-place, peering out keenly.

"Well?" demanded Del Mar. "What luck?"

"We've got him," returned the man with brief satisfaction. "Here's the letter she was sending to the Secret Service."

Del Mar seized the note which the man handed to him and read it eagerly. "Good," he exclaimed. "That would have put an end to the whole operations about here. Come on. Get into the boat."

For some reason best known to himself, the naturalist seemed to have lost all interest in his specimens and to have a sudden curiosity about Del Mar's affairs. As the motor-boat sped off, he came slowly and cautiously out of his hiding-place and gazed fixedly at Del Mar.

No sooner had Del Mar's boat got a little distance out into the harbor than the naturalist hurried down the Dodge dock. There was tied Elaine's own fast little runabout. He jumped into it and started the engine, following quickly in Del Mar's wake.

"Look," called the emissary to Del Mar, spying the Dodge boat with the naturalist in it, skimming rapidly after them.

Del Mar strained his eyes back through his glass at the pursuing boat. But the naturalist, in spite of his smoked glasses, seemed not to have impaired his eyesight by his studies. He caught the glint of the sun on the lens at Del Mar's eye and dropped down into the bottom of his own boat where he was at least safe from scrutiny, if his boat were not.

Del Mar lowered his glass. "That's the Dodge boat," he said thoughtfully. "I don't like the looks of that fellow. Give her more speed."

. . . . . . .

Del Mar had not been gone long before Elaine decided to take a ride herself. She ordered her horse around from the stables while she donned her neat little riding-habit. A few minutes later, as the groom held the horse, she mounted and rode away, choosing the road by which I had gone, expecting to meet me on the return from town.

She was galloping along at a good clip when suddenly her horse shied at something.

"Whoa, Buster," pacified Elaine.

But it was of no use. Buster still reared up.

"Why, what is the matter?" she asked. "What do you see?"

She looked down at the ground. There was a spot of blood in the dust. Buster was one of those horses to whom the sight of blood is terrifying.

Elaine pulled up beside the road. There was a revolver lying in the grass. She dismounted and picked it up. No sooner had she looked at it than she discovered the initials "W. J." carved on the butt.

"Walter Jameson!" she exclaimed, realizing suddenly that it was mine. "It's been fired, too!"

Her eye fell again on the blood spots. "Blood and—footprints— into the brush! "she gasped in horror, following the trail." What could have happened to Walter?"

With the revolver, Elaine followed where the bushes were trampled down until she came to the place where I had been bound. There she spied some pieces of paper lying on the ground and picked them up.

She put them together. They were pieces of the envelope of the letter which we had decided to send to Washington.

"Which way did they take him?" she asked, looking all about but discovering no trail.

She was plainly at a loss what course to pursue.

"What would Craig do?" she asked herself.

Finding no answer, she stood thinking a moment, slowly tearing the envelope to pieces. If she were to do anything at all, it must be done quickly. Suddenly an idea seemed to occur to her. She threw the pieces of paper into the air and let them blow away. It was unscientific detection, perhaps, but the wind actually took them and carried them in the direction in which the men had forced me to walk.

"That's it!" cried Elaine to herself. "I'll follow that direction."

. . . . . . .

Meanwhile, the men had hurried me off along a trail that led to the foot of a cliff. Then the trail wound up the cliff. We climbed it until we reached the top.

There in the rock was a rude stairway. I drew back. But one man drew a gun and the other preceded me down. Along the steep stone steps cut out in the face of the rock, they forced me.

Below, in a rift in the very wall of the cliff, was a cave in which already were two more of Del Mar's men, talking in low tones, in the dim light.

As we made our way down the breakneck stairway, the foremost of my captors stepped on a large flat rock. As he did so, it gave way slightly under his foot.

A light in the cave flashed up. Under the rock was a secret electric connection which operated a lamp.

"Some one coming," muttered the two men, on guard instantly.

It was a somewhat precarious footing as we descended and for the moment I was more concerned for my safety from a fall than anything else. Once my foot did slip and a shower of pebbles and small pieces of rock started down the face of the cliff.

As we passed down, the man behind me, still keeping me covered, raised the flat stone on the top step. Carefully, he reset the connection of the alarm rock, a series of metal points that bent under the weight of a person and made a contact which signalled down in the cavern the approach of any one who did not know the secret.

As he did so, the light in the cavern went out. "It's all right," said one of the men down there, with a look of relief.

We now went down the perilous stairway until we came to the cave.

"I've got a prisoner—orders of the Chief," growled one of my captors, thrusting me in roughly.

They forced me into a corner where they tied me again, hand and foot. Then they began debating in low, sinister tones, what was to be done with me next. Once in a while I could catch a word. Fear made my senses hypersensitive.

They were arguing whether they should make away with me now or later!

Finally the leader rose. "It's three to one," I heard him mutter. "He dies now."

He turned and took a menacing step toward me.

"Hands up!"

It was a shrill, firm voice that rang out at the mouth of the cave as a figure cut off what little light there was.

. . . . . . .

Elaine passed along, hunting for the trail. Suddenly a shower of pebbles came falling down from a cliff above her. Some of them hit her and she looked up quickly.

There she could see me being led along by my captors. She hid in the brush and watched. During all the operations of the descent of the rock stairway and the resetting of the alarm, she continued to watch, straining her eyes to see what they were doing.

As we entered the cave, she stepped out from her concealment and looked sharply up at us, as we disappeared. Then she climbed the path up the cliff until she came to the flight of stone steps leading downward again.

Already she had seen the man behind me doing something with the stone that formed the top step. She stooped down and examined the stone. Carefully she raised it and looked underneath before stepping on it. There she could see the electric connection. She set the stone aside and looked again down the dangerous stairway.

It made her shudder. "I must get him," she murmured to herself. "Yes, I must. Even now it may be too late."

With a supreme effort of determination she got herself together, drew my gun which she had picked up, and started down the cliff, stepping noiselessly.

At last Elaine came to the cave. She stood just aside from the door, gun in hand, and listened, aghast.

Inside she could hear voices of four men, and they were arguing whether they should kill me or not. It was four against one woman, but she did not falter.

They had just decided to make away with me immediately and the leader had turned toward me with the threat still on his lips. It was now or never. Resolutely she took a step forward and into the cave.

"Hands up!" she demanded, firmly.

The thing was so unexpected in the security of their secret hiding-place protected by the rock alarm that, before they knew it, Elaine had them all lined up against the wall.

Keeping them carefully covered, she moved over toward me. She picked up a knife that lay near-by and started to cut the ropes which held me.

As she did so, one of the men, with an oath, leaped forward to rush her. But Elaine was not to be caught off her guard. Instantly she fired. The man staggered back, and fell.

That cooled the ardor of the other three considerably, especially now as I was free, too. While she held them up still, with their hands in the air, I went through their pockets, taking out their weapons.

Then, still keeping them covered, we backed out of the cave. Backward we made our way up the dangerous flight of steps again with guns levelled at the cave entrance, Elaine going up first.

Once a head stuck itself out of the cave entrance. I fired instantly and it jerked itself back in again just in time. That was the only trouble we had, apparently.

Cautiously and slowly we made our way toward the top of the cliff.

. . . . . . .

One look backward from his motor-boat was enough for Del Mar. He must evade that inquisitive naturalist. He turned to his man.

"Get out that apparatus," he ordered.

The man opened a locker and brought out the curious submarine rescue helmet and suit. Del Mar took them up and began to put the suit on, stooping down in the shelter of the boat so that his actions could not be seen by the naturalist in the pursuing boat.

The naturalist was all this time peering ahead keenly at Del Mar's boat, trying to make it out. He bent over and adjusted the engine to get up more speed and the boat shot ahead faster.

By this time, Del Mar had put on the submarine apparatus, all except the helmet, and was crouching low in the boat. Hastily, he rolled a piece of canvas into the semblance of a body, put his coat and hat on it and set it on the seat which he had occupied before.

Just then Del Mar's boat ran around the promontory where Wu Fang had met the submarine that had brought Del Mar into the country and landed him so strangely.

The boat slowed down under shelter of the rocks and Del Mar added a pair of heavy lead-soled shoes to his outfit in order to weight himself down. Finally he put on the helmet, let himself over the side of the boat, and disappeared into the water.

His aide started the motor and the boat shot ahead again, with the dummy still occupying Del Mar's seat. As the boat swung out and made a wide sweeping curve away from the point at which Del Mar had gone overboard, the naturalist in the Dodge boat came around the promontory and saw it, changing his course accordingly, and gaining somewhat.

. . . . . . .

Del Mar sank, upright and rapidly, down in the shallow water to the bottom. Once having his feet on something approaching firm ground, he gazed about through the window-like eye of the helmet until he got his bearings. Then he began to walk heavily along the bottom of the harbor, over sand and rocks.

It was a strange walk that he took, half stumbling, slowly and cumbersomely groping his way like a queer under-water animal.

If any one could have seen him, he would have noted that Del Mar was going toward the base of a huge Focky cliff that jutted far out into the harbor, where the water was deep, a dangerous point, avoided by craft of all kinds. Far over his head the waves beat on the rocks angrily. But down there, concealed beneath the surface of the harbor, was a sort of huge arch of stone, through which a comparatively rapid current ran as the tide ebbed and flowed.

Del Mar let himself be carried along with the current which was now running in and thus with comparative ease made his way, still groping, through the arch. Once under it and a few feet beyond, he deliberately kicked off the leaden-soled shoes and, thus lightened, rose rapidly to the surface of the water.

As he bobbed up, a strange sight met his eyes—not strange however, to Del Mar. Above, the rocks formed a huge dome over the water which the tides forced in and out through the secret entrance through which he came. No other entrance, apparently, except that from the waters of the harbor led to this peculiar den.

Lying quietly moored to the rocky piers lay three submarine boats. Further back, on a ledge of rocks, blasted out, stood a little building, a sort of office or headquarters. Near-by was a shed where were kept gas and oil, supplies and ammunition, in fact everything that a submarine might need.

This was the reason for Del Mar's presence in the neighborhood. It was the secret submarine harbor of the foreign agents who were operating in America!

Already a sentry, pacing up and down, had seen the bubbles in the water that indicated that some one had come through the archway and was down "below," as Del Mar and his men called it.

Gazing down the sentry saw the queer helmeted figure float up from the bottom of the pool. He reached out and helped the figure clamber up out of the water to the ledge on which he stood. Del Mar saluted, and the sentry returned the secret salute, helping him remove the dripping helmet and suit.

A moment later, in the queer little submarine office, Del Mar had evidently planned to take up the nefarious secret work on which he was engaged. Several men of a naval and military bearing were seated about a table, already, studying maps and plans and documents of all descriptions. They did not seem to belong to any nation in particular. In fact their uniforms, if such they might be called, were of a character to disguise their nationality. But that they were hostile to the country under which they literally had their hidden retreat, of that there could be no doubt.

How high Del Mar stood in their counsels could have been seen at a glance from the instant deference exhibited at the mere mention of his name by the sentry who entered with the submarine suit while Del Mar got himself together after his remarkable trip.

The men at the council table rose and saluted as Del Mar himself entered. He returned the salute and quietly made his way to the head of the table where he took a seat, naturally.

"This is the area in which we must work first of all," he began, drawing toward him a book and opening it. "And we must strike quickly, for if they heed the advice in this book, it may be too late for us to take advantage of their foolish unpreparedness."

It was a book entitled "Defenseless America", written by a great American inventor, Hudson Maxim.

Del Mar turned the pages until he came to and pointed out a map. The others gathered about him, leaning forward eagerly as he talked to them. There, on the map, with a radius of some one hundred and seventy miles, was drawn a big segment of a circle, with Peekskill, New York, as a centre.