“Of course,” grinned Andy. “I’d forgotten the name for a moment. What does he look like?”
“Fine looking sort of a fellow,” replied Bert. “He’s just about our own age; not quite as tall as you are and dark; brown eyes and hair that is almost coal black.”
“If you don’t mind running back to the office,” said Andy, “tell him that I’ll be along presently. I want to make sure that the assembly of the gondola starts smoothly.”
Andy became engrossed in the direction of the subforemen and their crews and he even forgot Harry, much less the newcomer who was waiting for him in the office.
An hour later Bert returned.
“What’s the idea?” he demanded. “I thought you said you’d be along right away. Blatz has been cooling his heels for more than an hour.”
“Sorry,” grinned Andy, who had been helping with the assembly. “I was so interested I forgot all about him. I’ll come along with you.”
The young engineer crawled out from beneath the duralumin frame on which he had been working, wiped his hands on a piece of waste, brushed off his dungarees, the universal uniform of engineers, foremen and mechanics at the Bellevue plant.
Andy stepped into his office, blinked his eyes to accustom them to the dark interior, and looked into the face of Lieut. Serge Larko, secret agent of Alexis Reikoff’s Grega, who had been assigned the task of bringing about the destruction of the Goliath. But Andy was to know the visitor as Herman Blatz, civilian observer from Friedrichshafen, and he stepped forward with a cordial greeting.
“We shall be delighted to have you with us,” said Andy, “and I must apologize for my tardiness in greeting you. We have just started the assembly of the main gondola and I have been giving it my personal supervision.”