THE PLOT
Mechanically Steve put up one hand and brushed away the water that
trickled down from his soaked hair. He was wet to the skin, but he
fairly tingled all over with the thrill of his discovery. He was not
mistaken; he could not be. That mental picture was much too clear to
admit any doubt.
He was still ignorant of the man’s actual identity. But his presence
with the ambassador that night, the friendly touch of the latter’s hand
upon his shoulder, the earnest undertone of their conversation carried
on in German, all pointed to an unusual degree of intimacy. And many
months ago the ambassador, his staff and all his other associates,
official and otherwise, were supposed to have left the country or to be
safely interned.
This one had evidently escaped the net. Steve wasted no time speculating
how he had done it, or where he had spent the intervening time. He was a
spy, doing a spy’s work; everything pointed to that. His objective must
be the shipyard, too, for there was nothing else worth destroying within
a score of miles. Inwardly Haddon bitterly blamed his own stupidity in
not having thoughts of that before. The tins contained powerful
explosive, no doubt; enough, perhaps, to blow up both buildings and dry
docks. They had planned the thing with their usual infernal care,
waiting, perhaps for this very night of storm and blackness to make the
attempt doubly sure. And they would succeed, the boy told himself with a
dry sob of mingled rage and nervousness, unless he could outwit them.
He ground his teeth in helpless fury. He ought to be up and away
immediately to carry the warning. But the plotters were so close that he
could scarcely stir without detection. There was a chance that by edging
back cautiously he might safely reach a point where he could take to his
heels, but so much depended on him that he dared not risk it. He must
wait until they moved away a little and then, by speeding down the
opposite side of the point, he might gain the mainland and the shipyard
ahead of them and give the alarm.
Presently another lightning flash showed up the group again, and Steve’s
eyes widened in astonishment. Instead of four men there were six. Where
the other two had come from he did not know, but it seemed as if they
must have made their way out along the beach. So he was faced by a new
difficulty. There might be others still, stationed along the way, and if
he tried to reach the shipyard ahead of the gang, he was as likely as
not to run straight into hostile arms.
Nevertheless, he meant to try it, for by this time he was desperate with
anxiety and impatience. He was about to creep back without further
waiting, when suddenly there came one of those curious lulls which occur
sometimes at the very height of a storm. Abruptly the shriek of the wind
died down and he could hear the voices clearly.
“—all in the guard house. As long as the storm holds there won’t be a
soul around.”
“But the rain!” put in another voice with a harsh, guttural accent.
“Will not that eggtinguish the fire?”
“Not this fire,” returned another confidently, and Steve recognized one
of the voices he had overheard that afternoon. “There ain’t enough water
up above to drown this stuff once she gets started. Besides, it’s
letting up. By the time we get things going it won’t be more than a
drizzle; and if the wind holds the whole shebang will go up in smoke.
What we want is to get busy right—”
The rest was inaudible, scattered by the storm, which broke out again
with a fresh strength. But Steve had heard enough. Fire, then, was to be
their weapon, and not explosives. The tins must contain gasoline, or
some even more powerful inflammable. But it made little difference in
the result, for the destruction would be as great or greater. With
sudden decision the boy made up his mind to delay no longer.
His every muscle tense, he waited impatiently for the next flash. The
instant it had come and gone, he began to edge backward, slowly,
silently, with infinite care, over the wet, yielding sand. It took a
long time to worm past the length of the canoe, but after that he made
better progress. At length, a hundred feet or more from the end of the
point and on the opposite side, he rose to his feet and hurried along
the beach toward the mainland.
Anyone who has tried walking in the dark will realize something of his
difficulties. Actually Steve could not see his hand before his face, and
he had not gone twenty feet before he found himself splashing in the
water. He edged away from that and presently tripped and almost fell
over a hummock of beach grass. Then, very swiftly, all sense of
direction left him. His only guidance was the splash of waves about his
ankles and the tingle of salt spray against his face.
It was a nightmare, that blind struggle through the storm; a nightmare
of pelting, lashing rain, of stumbling, falling, wading through surf, of
pounding over hard sand. And like a nightmare little things grew big and
big things little; time seemed to stand still or stretch out into
infinity. Worst of all was the blackness, thick and suffocating, that
pressed upon his eyeballs and tangled about his feet. And behind that
blackness there was fear. Not fear for self so much; he was past that
now. The thing that dominated and urged him on, that kept him going in
spite of weariness and doubt and panting breath, was fear lest he should
be too late to reach his goal before the others. And in the end he was
too late!
His first inkling of it was the sight of those three spots of light
twinkling low over to the left. At first they meant nothing to his weary
brain. Then, watching them dazedly, he realized all at once that they
were electric flashlights, and with a sudden, bitter pang he understood.
The men were almost opposite him, moving rapidly along the other side of
Cobb’s Point, which here was some two hundred yards across. Unhampered
by the darkness, they had caught up to him, were really ahead of him, in
fact, for Steve had to cross the base of the point to reach the shipyard
a mile or more to the westward.
With a discouraged droop to his shoulders, the boy plodded on
mechanically for a little way and then halted. The spots of light had
suddenly shifted. He could still make out a faint, luminous glow, but it
was obscured by moving shadows. And then it came to him that for some
minutes past he had felt no water sloshing around his feet.
“It’s the mainland,” he muttered. “They’ve left the point and turned up
the other shore.”
It was no time for caution and delay, and Steve went after them at once.
Though his attempt to reach the shipyard first had failed, there was
still a chance, though not nearly so sure, of gaining his end by
following close behind the plotters and giving the alarm before they had
time to carry out the details of their plan.
In the brief interval of waiting a number of other possibilities had
flashed through his mind, only to be discarded. He might make his way
back to Shelbourne and get help. There was a good road leading through
the woods from the village which was used by workmen going to and from
their quarters; a motor car could make the distance in five minutes. But
Shelbourne was quite as far from Cobb’s Point as the shipyard, and there
were sure to be delays in rousing people and getting out a car. He
thought, too, of pushing straight through the woods from where he was
and trying to hit that road, but the chances of getting lost in even
that short stretch of scrub and tangled undergrowth were too great to be
risked. The open beach was really the only sure way, and Steve took it
without hesitation.
With stumbling, uncertain steps he felt his way across the point and
gained the other shore. Far, far ahead of him, it seemed, wavered the
faint glow of the flashlights, and their apparent distance startled him.
He had planned to follow as close behind the plotters as he dared; it
had not occurred to him that they might outdistance him altogether. With
a sharp catching of his breath, he plunged forward and began to run. A
moment later the lights blinked out abruptly.