Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns Part 10

"Say!" murmured the eager Ikey Rosenmeyer, "there's a side door. I'll call Abe, the waiter, out there and tell him. If those fellows have gone into one of the booths----"

"Bully!" cried Torry. "Maybe he can sneak us into one next to 'em. How about it, Whistler?"

"Just the thing," agreed Morgan, nodding his head emphatically.

Ikey ran down the alley beside the restaurant while his mates waited at the corner. The side door was not used save by the restaurant help; but Ikey insinuated himself in by that entrance and in half a minute poked his head out of the door again and beckoned furiously to the other boys.

"Oi, oi!" he chuckled in high feather, when they joined him. "We are in luck all right. Those fellows got a booth, and Abe is layin' the table in the one next to it, this side, for us. Come on! They won't see us."

"If they take a look out of the curtains they will," declared Torry.

"Have a care, now, about talking," Whistler advised earnestly. "Say nothing about boats or the sea. No whispering, remember! Talk right out when you talk at all."

"All right, me lud," said Frenchy. "Anything else?"

"Yes," said Whistler grimly. "This is a Dutch treat. Every fellow pays for his own eats. Last time we were in a restaurant you all wished the check on to me."

At that his mates chuckled much. Each had excused himself and gone out "just for a minute," and Whistler found himself, after waiting half an hour, expected by the waiter to pay the whole score.

The four got into the booth the waiter had prepared for them, and Whistler sat with his back against the part.i.tion dividing it from that in which Blake and his companion sat. Between the clatter of dishes, the waiter's calls to the order man, and the talking of his own friends, Whistler could not hear much at first. But he knew the two men whom he suspected were talking in English.

Of course they would not be unwise enough to speak in German. By this time the German language when spoken in public places was beginning to cause remark. Wise Germans, whether friendly or enemy aliens, were not using it.

One of the voices Whistler heard in the other booth, however, was distinctly German in its accent. This he was quite sure was the skipper of the oil tender. The other man used perfect English.

"They would not be likely to select a man too obviously German for a big part in any plot," thought Whistler. "And that Blake looks like a suave, well educated fellow."

The latter man spoke low, too. The other had a bluff and coa.r.s.e voice.

He was a typical old sea-dog in his way. Only, a German sea-dog!

"Are you going back there yet?" Whistler heard him ask.

"For just one thing. You know what that is, Braun."

"_Ach!_ Yes."

"My work is done there," said the man, Blake, with pride in his voice.

"Oh, it will be taken note of, don't fear."

"I bet you!" growled the other, in evident admiration. "Undt so she goes oop, yes? Boom!"

"s.h.!.+" warned the other. "Never mind any talk about it."

But the other was inclined to be voluble. Whistler thought the skipper of the oil tender, Braun, had been drinking. "And when alcohol is in the brain wit is very likely to move out," he muttered.

"Grand work!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "_Ach_, yes! Undt there will be more grand work when two-fifty is joined by the others."

"s.h.!.+" warned Blake again. "You talk too much, Braun. The wise man keeps a still tongue."

Ordinarily Whistler Morgan would have found nothing in this overheard conversation to fan suspicion into a blaze. He quite realized this fact.

But what he had seen at Elmvale, and the presence of Blake on the oil tender, led in his mind to but one conclusion.

Blake and his companion referred to the former's work in Elmvale. And what was that work? Not merely the peaceful occupation of chemist in the laboratory of the munition factory. He was convinced that Blake referred to something entirely different when he said: "My work is done there."

Nor was Blake merely an inventor, hiding away the actual working model of an invention until he could secure its patent, for instance. No, indeed!

Yet Morgan could not imagine what that water wheel was for. To what end could it have been placed under the rock on the edge of the overflow-stream from the Elmvale Dam?

Whistler had little to say himself during that meal at Yancey's. He heard nothing more from the next booth, for Blake seemed to manage the half drunken skipper of the _Sarah Coville_ with better judgment. By and by the two men left the restaurant.

"Say! are we going to follow them?" asked the excited Frenchy.

"Aw, you poor fis.h.!.+" scoffed Torry. "Where'd we follow them to? Back to that stinking oiler? And how would we follow them to sea? We haven't a boat."

"That's so," Frenchy admitted, crestfallen.

"No good to try to keep tabs on them," admitted Phil. "I hope Ensign MacMasters will pick up news of that boat again. Just think of his chaser coming right in here and not seeing the oiler in the fog. Tough luck!"

"Say!" queried Ikey, "what did you hear, Whistler?"

"Just about what you did," returned the older lad. "Nothing much."

"What are we going to do?" demanded Torry.

"Pay our bills and go to the train. It is almost time," said Whistler rather grumpily.

And this they did. The train for Seacove came along in a few minutes.

The boys got aboard. Ikey ran ahead down the aisle of the car and got into a seat by an open window. The first thing he did was to thrust his head out of the window and look back along the platform as the train started.

"Oi, oi!" he cried, under his breath. "Here he comes!"

"Here who comes?" demanded Al Torrance.

"The German spy," declared Ikey.

"Hush up!" commanded Frenchy. "Want everybody to hear you?"

"What do you mean?" asked Whistler.

"That man," said Ikey. "He got aboard. He went into the last car."

"You don't mean Blake?"

"That's who I mean," declared Ikey with conviction.

"Aw, he's crazy," scoffed Frenchy.

But Torry went back through the train after it was well under way and the conductor had taken their tickets. He peered through the gla.s.s in the door of the rear car.