“This is a pretty pickle for me,” he said aloud. “I suppose they’ll be having the Intelligence officers out here to put me through the third degree. Then what’ll happen?”
The guard heard, and, when relieved, reported his remarks to the executive officer.
“Well, I think the best medicine for him is to let his fears come true,” said this officer.
He did not consider it worth while to do anything that evening, but early next morning he dispatched a note ashore, requesting of the Intelligence Bureau an officer to investigate some suspicious conduct on the part of one of the ship’s company. On receipt of this message a young lieutenant attached to Commander Barton’s office was sent aboard the flagship to make the investigation.
Now Barton, as is the way of some Intelligence officers, did not confide all he knew to his colleagues. No one in his entire force knew the nature of his relations with Evans; few of them even knew of the latter’s existence. Therefore, when the young lieutenant undertook his mission he had wholly new ground to break.
The night had been for Evans one of acute mental torture. Visions of Long’s possible revelations to the enemy kept rising before him. Suddenly it flashed on his mind that Long was the same radio gunner that had been on the Sheridan when she was wrecked. Out of the depths of his subconscious memories came the words of the operator whom he had questioned on his visit to the wrecked ship in the Boston Navy Yard:
“He was here in the shack and sent me to get some wire or something from the main radio room an hour or so before we struck.”
What a dunce he had been not to think of it before! Long had gone aboard the Sheridan to shift the position of that circular scale, after first showing the navigator how well the radio compass worked, so that he would trust it. It wasn’t his own idea, either; Rich had sent him—Evans would bet his last dollar on that. Of course, it all fitted in with that gallant officer’s denunciation of radio compasses in general to Mortimer as soon as the Sheridan went aground. What about the Gloucester station? Ten to one some one else had been tampering with that at the same time, only there he had had an opportunity to cover his tracks by putting things back in their proper adjustment afterwards, whereas on the Sheridan the operator had stayed in the shack till they took to the boats, and Long had had no chance to put the scale back where it belonged.
Now this devil was here in the flagship’s radio room at the behest of Rich, with a free hand for nearly twenty-four hours. And Evans had lost his chance to trip him up. Never had he suffered so in all his life. At last, realizing the hopelessness of attempting to do anything before morning, he tried to sleep. But sleep would not come. Toward morning he dozed occasionally only to wake with a start as apprehension began to assume the reality of a dream image, and the nightmare sense that his fears had come true roused him again to full consciousness.
In the morning, when the young officer from the Intelligence Bureau arrived, he found Evans looking haggard and worn, with deep circles under his eyes, like one haunted by a bad conscience. Evans welcomed his arrival and endeavored to explain the situation, but the officer cut short his explanations, rebuking him sharply for trying to shift the blame to a fellow warrant officer. It soon became evident that his investigator had his mind made up that Evans was engaged in some plot, and could not be made to listen to anything he said. Evans also became convinced that specific information about Long would not only be disbelieved, but was apt to be repeated indiscreetly to some one who would pass it on to others, till Long would hear of it and be put on his guard. Clearly, then, the less he told this officer the better. He therefore abandoned his attempt to explain matters and became as noncommittal as possible.