A TASK ACCOMPLISHED
Two hours later the party was grouped around Chief Flynn, who had
remained in his office to learn the result of the raid. Both
motor-boats had been left in charge of the New Rochelle road-house
keeper, and the entire party had returned to New York in the two
motor-cars--the secret service motor and Sanders' car, for Sanders had
left it at the road-house and slipped away into the darkness at
midnight. The clerk from Hoboken was under arrest, too. He had been
taken up by the man who was watching him. Sanders had eluded his
shadow by leaving his car late in the afternoon, at a garage,
ostensibly to have it washed, and by later leaving his house
surreptitiously in the dark. He had not been able to reach the
Balaklavan rendezvous in time to join his companions. But they had a
wireless equipment aboard their boat and he had made a later
appointment with them. And, even as Captain Hardy had suspected, he
had been nosing around Fort Slocum in the darkness.
But this was all the secret service ever learned as to the operations
of this gang of wireless spies. The prisoners refused to name those
higher up, and the Chief could only guess whose might be the master
minds behind the plot.
As for the various wireless agents who were relaying the spy messages
to Mexico, several were caught by decoy messages and shared the fate of
Sanders and the others.
Even the mystery of the sudden flight of Sanders and his crew was
cleared up. Following the Chief's orders, his men on the border had
taken the three silver coins away from the Mexican. And, sure enough,
the coins contained messages. One was the message from New York
concerning the sailing of transports. The other messages were about
army secrets, and it is not yet known where they came from or how they
got into the hands of the Mexican.
The latter protested violently when asked for his silver dollars, and
they had to be taken from him by force. The next day one of his guards
discovered that the left cuff of his shirt was missing. The shirt had
been intact when he was arrested. No trace of the cuff could be found
anywhere. The window of the room where the Mexican was confined
overlooked a public street. And it was believed by the secret service
men that the spy had written a message on his cuff in some way and
dropped it out of the window to a confederate. Thereupon a warning had
been flashed back along the wireless line--a warning message in the new
cipher that had so puzzled the lads of the wireless patrol.
"It's all clear enough now," sighed Willie, when the story had been put
together, "but when you have only one piece of a jig-saw puzzle you
can't make much out of it. And one piece was about all we had for a
long time. I see it all now, but there's one thing I don't yet
understand. Why didn't they use a more difficult cipher?"
"I suppose," explained the Chief, "that this very pursuit and capture
of the spies answers that question. They knew that if the secret
service picked up their messages, we could sooner or later decipher
anything they sent. But even a very simple cipher might baffle one
unaccustomed to such things. Always there was the danger that some one
would pick up their messages. So they chose ciphers that would bother
the ordinary man but that they themselves could read readily. They
didn't dare use a cipher that would require a long time to unravel,
because they foresaw that they might have to flee on short notice, just
as it happened."
"I see," said Willie.
"And now," said the Chief, "I want to tell you boys and your good
leader here how much you have done for me and your country. I didn't
have faith in your accomplishing much, but I thought that you might be
able to pick up wireless messages, if any were abroad, and so I agreed
to take you. You see we were almost desperate over the situation. We
knew what was going on, but we were so terribly short handed that we
could not spare men to run the spies down. I think that we shall have
no more trouble. The system is broken up. If we do have trouble, I'm
going to send for you boys at once. Meantime, you can now go back
home, knowing that few boys have done as much for America and Freedom
as you. I am more grateful to you than I can tell you."
The little wireless patrol passed out into the night, its labors ended.
Now that the excitement was past, the boys realized how tired and
sleepy they were. As they crossed the Bay to their temporary home on
Staten Island, they had their last view of the harbor. Now it was
almost silent. Only a few boats were ploughing through its waters.
The great office-buildings were dark. The fiery lights of the city
were extinguished. But bright above the Bay flamed the torch of
Liberty. There, in that flickering light, was symbolized the thing
that millions of men were giving their lives to protect--the greatest
heritage of the ages. And as the boys from Central City looked at the
symbolic illumination, their hearts beat exultantly and their eyes grew
dim with joy at the thought that they, too, had been able, through
months of self-denial and rigid self-discipline, to prepare themselves
for the task that was now so happily ended.