LITMIR.BIZ

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      Chapter 2

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      CHAPTER TWO

      IT was six days after his conference in Washington that Kestner was breakfasting in his rooms overlooking San Diego Bay. He had his reasons for privacy, and nursed no inclination, apparently, to mingle with the gayer company thronging the wide verandas and corridors of that huge hostelry which seemed to exist only for laughter and music and dancing and love-making.

      Yet the table was laid for two, and as Kestner sat before his iced Casaba he might have been seen to glance repeatedly and impatiently down at his watch. His look of anxiety, in fact, did not pass away until a telephone-bell rang and the hotel-office announced the arrival of Lieutenant Keays.

      "I'm sorry to be late," proclaimed this young lieutenant, as Kestner admitted him and at the same moment dismissed the waiter.

      The newcomer, who bore a startling resemblance to Wilsnach of the Paris office, inspected the laden breakfast table with evident relief. It was, ​however, a rejuvenated Wilsnach, an airy and summery Wilsnach in white cricketer's flannel, carrying a roll-brim Panama and a bamboo swagger-stick. "But to rig out in this get-up takes time."

      Kestner, as they took their seats, cast a somnolently critical eye over his younger colleague. "You'll do!" he finally announced.

      "But just why am I Lieutenant Keays?" inquired the man in cricketer's flannel.

      "Because, my dear fellow, your arrival has been duly heralded in the evening papers," Kestner announced, "and there are one or two persons, quite outside official circles, who are rather interested in your new war-plane."

      "My new war-plane?"

      "Yes; which you have brought with you from the Brooklyn Navy Yard—at least, the specifications are now with you."

      Kestner handed an oblong packet of papers across the table to his inquiring-eyed colleague.

      "Then you've actually been finding something out?" Wilsnach asked.

      "I've found out quite a number of things," was Kestner's quiet-toned answer, as he squeezed a slice of lemon over his fried sand-dabs. "And not the ​least important is the fact that Wallaby Sam is working with Keudell."

      Wilsnach looked up in astonishment.

      "That's a sweet pair to have against us!" he solemnly affirmed.

      "But this seems to be only a side-show," Kestner explained. "The main-top, we must remember, is back in New York. It's only outpost work we're doing here, Wilsnach, for it's Sadie they've planted at the center of things."

      A shadow crossed Wilsnach's face.

      "But will it be safe for that girl, working alone there?"

      Kestner smiled.

      "You'd rather have her here?" he inquired.

      "Couldn't she help us out, on a case like this?"

      "But this case, Wilsnach, is off the main line. And you needn't worry about Sadie Wimpel not being able to take care of herself. In the meantime, however, we've got our own work cut out for us."

      "Along what lines?"

      "I'm not quite sure myself, yet. You see, I've had to keep under cover and remain a purely nocturnal animal, so to speak. And that's counted against me."

      ​"Why under cover?"

      "Because one of the facts I've dug out is that the sweet-scented couple we spoke of a moment ago have got Anna Makaieff operating for them, and operating right here in this hotel."

      "Makaieff?" cogitated Wilsnach. "That name's new to me."

      "Well, it isn't to me—and I've had the dictaphone annunciator on the end of this jointed bamboo fishing-pole covering her window every night it was open."

      "Where does she come from?"

      "Her father was an Anglicized Pole and her mother a music-hall singer in Paris. She was trained for the stage herself, but married before she was twenty. Then she went to India with an English army-officer who knew nothing of her antecedents. There she hitched up with a Russian grand-duke and ran away to the Orient, where she was soon deserted, and had to live by her wits. Keudell found her there when he was buying up German coast-defense data, and took her to Vienna, where she learned two or three more languages, and how to dress, and a few of the tricks of the international spy trade. She was four years in Petrograd, and ​those four years, I'd venture, cost the Russian government a good many million rubles in military leaks. Then she rather dropped out of things for a few years, for she actually fell in love with a young artist and stuck to him like a bur until the family railroaded the boy out of the country. To-day she's an exceptionally adroit and attractive woman of the panther type, at the dangerous age of thirty, and with her claws this time set in the flesh of a Lieutenant-Colonel Diehms out here."

      "And has Diehms been—?" Wilsnach seemed reluctant to put his fellow-officer's fall into words,

      "I'm afraid so."

      "Poor devil!"

      "Yes, poor devil, for he has a wife and two children at Wilmington, and Shrubb wires me they're the right sort!"

      "And does the Makaieff woman dream you're on her trail?"

      "Naturally not, or she'd even let Diehms out of her claws to get away. It makes me sick to see that poor devil dancing about with her. He's like a man in a trance."

      "Could she care for him?"

      "Not a rap! What she's after is Navy ​information. Why, she had possession of every detail of our L-1 ten days after it was launched at the yards of the Fore River Shipbuilding Company and three weeks before its acceptance trials by the Navy people themselves. And now she's after our new airship specifications. That seems to be her main object. But incidentally she's picking up any Army or Navy secret that she can get her hands on. So the only thing for this man Diehms to do, when the truth comes out, is to shut himself up and quietly blow his brains out."

      "But can you afford to let him do that?"

      "I can't exactly say, just yet. But our panther has hypnotized him. For example, you read last week about the aviation tests over here at the North Island school? You probably read how Lieutenant Taylor, of the Aviation Corps, established an endurance record for eleven hours and twelve minutes on only thirty gallons of gasoline. That was with our new Farlow motor. Keudell and his people to-day have full specifications of that motor in their possession. Anna Makaieff is the agent who got it for them—though it didn't come from Diehms. And inside another ten days, if no one interferes with ​her activities, she'll know as much about our secret adaptation of the Crozier-Buffington disappearing carriage for coast-defense guns as the Chief of Ordnance himself. So that gives you a slight hint of why this very handsome young lady from Austria has to be rounded up."

      Wilsnach poured himself out a second cup of coffee. "She won't be easy to corner, I imagine."

      "The hardest part is Diehms, with that decent family to pull down after him," was Kestner's meditative reply. "The poor devil can't be saved, of course. But I find it isn't easy to get the thought of that Wilmington home out of my head."

      "And the woman doesn't worry you ?"

      "What good is a woman of that type? She's like a cat in a squab-pen. The sooner her hide is nailed to the aviary door, the better. She's merely a sneak-thief in spangles. She's nothing more than a penny-weighter with a Paris accent, or a lush-dip with the grande dame air." Kestner's gesture was one of half-wearied disgust. "She's just panther—which means cat written large. What I'm trying to

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