CHAPTER XXI
DAISY HUSTON DECIDES FOR THE FLAG
"It is a somewhat lonely place, on the outskirts of the city," warned the girl. "Mr. Graves had thought that, if no other chance offered, he might possibly get away by leaving that house and taking to the country roads. For he knows that, if he takes a train at any point, he won't ride five miles before he'll find himself in the clutches of a Secret Service man. Oh, he knows how well the trains and the steamboats will be watched. He dreads, even, that the country roads will be watched."
"I don't know anything about the Secret Service lines that are out," Jack confessed, honestly. "Yet I imagine that every possible precaution has been taken to capture Millard—or Graves."
"You do not know my name," cried the girl, as though struck by a sudden thought. "Mr. Benson, you have been wrapped in so much mystery, so much deceit, so much lying and treachery that I won't even have you guess whether I am telling you the truth. Here is my card-case. Take out a card for yourself."
The request was so much like a command that Benson obeyed. On the card, in Old English script, he read:
"Miss Daisy Huston."
"I thank you, Miss Huston," he acknowledged, gravely, handing back her card-case.
"Will you signal the driver to stop?" she requested. They were now driving through the western part of Washington.
When the driver found himself signaled he reined up, then came to the cab door.
"You know where to go?" she said.
"Yes," nodded the man.
"Drive there, then."
The driver whipped up his horses to a better speed, the vehicle bowling along now.
"I very much fear that I am running you into danger," declared Daisy Huston, soberly. "Mr. Benson, if you decide to leave the cab, or to have me take you back to the center of the city, I shall not imagine you to be lacking in courage."
"I cannot be in any greater danger than you are, Miss Huston," Benson ventured, with a smile.
"Oh, it is much different in my case," argued the girl. "Donald Graves would not attack a woman, especially the woman he had professed to love."
"Miss Huston, do you feel like discussing this matter any further?" hazarded the young acting naval lieutenant.
"Yes; as much as you wish."
"I confess to being a bit curious."
"About what?"
"Did Millard—Graves, I mean, have any great reason to need money?
More, I mean, than he could earn by honest work?"
"Yes," admitted Miss Daisy. "My mother is dead. Under her will I inherit a considerable little fortune when I am twenty-five. But it is solely on condition that I have my father's permission to marry the man of my choice. I could remain single until twenty-five, but I am only nineteen, and Mr. Graves complained that it would be an eternity to wait."
"Then your father did not approve Millard? I am going to call him that because the other name is unfamiliar."
"My father feared that Donald was a fortune hunter. He said he would be satisfied if Donald could show that he were rich in his own name."
"So, then, Graves, or Millard, hit upon the plan of stealing our harbor fortification secrets and selling them to another government," said Jack, meditatingly. "Yet I am puzzled to understand how he found the chance. There are no foreigners openly engaged in buying our national secrets."
"I think I can explain all that, though it will be but guess-work," replied Daisy Huston, thoughtfully. "My father was for some years minister to Sweden. He is still well acquainted among foreign diplomats here in Washington. Some of them are often at our house. Donald must have met one there who tempted him, or pointed the way to a fortune. Yes; I am certain that must be the answer."
"Did—but perhaps you don't like my asking such questions?"
"No; I do not mind—now," replied Daisy Huston. "I began to feel as though I had been an innocent party to Donald Graves's wrongdoing. When I went to try to see you, this afternoon, I supposed only that Donald had gotten into trouble through some filibustering expedition to Central America. I did not look upon that as so serious, you see. But selling the national secrets is quite another matter," she added, bitterly. "I shall never care for the man again. I have wrenched him from my heart in these last few minutes. So you may ask me any questions that will help to clear up the matter."
"Thank you, Miss Huston. Then did Graves, or Millard, as I call him, express any hope of becoming suddenly well to do?"
"Yes; and now I can understand how he has lied to me. He let me believe that he hoped to profit through mining concessions to Americans that would follow the overthrow of one of the petty despots in Central America."
"Yet Millard has been away from Washington much, has he not?"
"Most of the time during the last four months. He generally managed to get over here for one day out of the seven; sometimes two days at a time."
"I believe the whole matter is becoming rather clear in my mind. I do not mind telling you, Miss Huston, how I first came to know the fellow. He was over at our shipyard in Dunhaven, trying to get employment on the construction of submarine boats. But something in his manner made us suspect him, and he didn't get near the secrets of any of our boats."
There was one other thing, however, that Benson felt he would like to have cleared up. So he inquired:
"How did you know that I was at the United Service Club? Did Millard know? Did he tell you to go there?"
"He guessed where you might be. He asked me to drive to the club first; if you were not there, then I was to drive to the Arlington. Failing to find you at either place, I was to go back to the hotel in the evening. In the event of my finding you at the hotel I was to see you in the ladies' parlor. But, oh! What can you think of me, Mr. Benson, to have come to you on such an errand—on a mission to save a betrayer of his Flag?"
"You came innocently, Miss Huston; that is all that I can understand. And your whole attitude, since you discovered the truth, has been that of a loyal American girl who would crush her heart, even, for her country's honor."
"It isn't going to be as hard as you think, perhaps," she smiled, bitterly, "to cast the man out of my heart. The man that I now know Donald Graves to be never was in my heart. There is no room, there, for a traitor."
She glanced out of the cab at the scene through which they were passing.
Jack Benson looked at the same time.
"I am terribly uneasy," she confessed. "Perhaps, even now, Mr. Benson, you had much better leave this carriage and let me go forward alone. I am a woman, and therefore safe. But I fear—yes, actually fear for your life when he finds out!"
"Don't be at all uneasy about me, Miss Huston," begged Jack, with cool confidence. "I have had rather a sturdy training in the art of taking care of myself."
Though he did not allow the girl to see the motion, Jack felt stealthily at his right hip pocket. Yes; the loaded revolver was there. Jack did not believe much in the practice of carrying concealed weapons. He had great contempt both for the nerve and the judgment of fool boys who carried revolvers, loaded or otherwise. But just now the situation was different. Jack Benson was an acting lieutenant in the United States Navy. Just before leaving the Navy Department he and his comrades had each been advised to take a proffered weapon and carry it against the chance that they might find Millard—or Graves—in Washington, and find themselves under the necessity of taking him prisoner.
"Spies and traitors are taken alive or dead," the official had remarked who had handed them the weapons.
"How much further have we to go?" Jack inquired, as the cab turned down a country lane.
"Only a very short distance, now," replied Daisy Huston.
"Jove, but she's a stunning girl for nerve and principle," thought Lieutenant Jack, admiringly. "She's going, now, to what must be the tragedy of her plans and hopes, yet she has her color back again, and looks as composed as though out only for an airing!"
"There is the house," almost whispered the girl, at last, resting a steady, cool hand on his arm.
Jack looked and saw the place—a little, oldfashioned house, standing in among trees, some hundred feet from the road. In that swift glance he also noted that there were no ether buildings near.
Daisy Huston did not ask whether the young man at her side proposed to try to arrest the man he sought. She was too discreet to pry into his plans.
Up into the little yard before the house the horses trotted. Then, just as the cab was coming to a stop, the driver cracked his whip-lash twice.
Immediately the door flew open. Millard, as Jack Benson knew him, stepped out jauntily, a smile of delight on his face.
"Good enough, Daisy," he cried, as he strode toward the cab. "I see that you have won Benson over to our side. He shall be my friend, after this. But, Daisy, what—"
For the girl had sprung lightly out ere Jack Benson could assist her. The girl now stood, drawn to her full height, yet without affecting any theatrical pose. But over her lips hovered a smile of cool disdain that the look in her eyes heightened.
"Don't lie to me any more, Donald Graves," commanded the girl, steadily, "and don't deceive yourself. Both tasks, I know, will be hard for a man so vile that he'd sell his country's Flag!"
Millard stared at her in growing horror. Then anger rushed to his face.
"Daisy!" he gasped. "Have you betrayed me? Have you brought Benson here as an enemy?"
Daisy did not answer her former lover. She continued to gaze at him with an irony of expression that sent the hot blood mounting to his head.
"Can't you speak?" he demanded. "Then, Benson, why don't you talk?"
"Because," replied Jack, "I am waiting for Miss Huston to say to you all, or as little, as she cares to say."
"Speak, then!" commanded Millard, turning imperiously to the girl.
"And my command to you," retorted the girl, "is different. Silence!
Never again address me, you traitor to your Flag!"
Millard was swift to realize the fullness of the girl's contempt. He knew that everything between them was over.
"Come, come, then, girl!" he uttered, harshly. "It is time for you to be gone! Step to the cab and get away from here, for I would spare you what is to follow—my reckoning with Benson!"
He clapped his hands. The door opened, and four men stepped out. Their type was not hard to determine. They were of the scum of humanity—ready for any desperate deed.