“Mr. Secretary? Good-morning,” he said. “Mr. Tompkins received a confidential message for you this morning just as he was leaving the office in response to a telegram saying that his wife, who is out of town, had been taken seriously ill. The poor man was distracted, for he felt that he must deliver this message to you in person, yet he hadn’t a moment to spare to catch his train. I told him to go to his wife, and promised I would deliver the message to you at once. So I sent it round by a trustworthy messenger. It was just as he handed it to me with the seal unbroken.”
Mortimer pondered the question. Could there be a mistake? Evans had assured him that his system was as proof against error as was humanly possible, safeguarded by a method of double-checking to ensure it against the misspelling of names. It had never failed. And there before him was this surprising message in Tompkins’s own hand. Why should Fraser be recalled? There must be a good reason. Having excluded every possible source of error he could imagine, he concluded that he had best maintain his faith in Evans who had never yet failed him. He therefore arranged to have orders cabled to Punta Delgada detaching Captain Fraser to return immediately to Washington.
That afternoon, at the end of the day’s work, Tompkins had just arrived at his rooms when he was called to the telephone. Again he recognized Secretary Mortimer’s voice.
“Mr. Tompkins, I want to see you about a matter of great importance. I will send my car to your rooms to bring you to my house. The car will be there in about ten minutes; please be ready for it.”
In ten minutes a limousine drew up in front of the door. The chauffeur wore a smart livery. Seated in the tonneau was another man. Tompkins stepped in and sat down beside him.
“Good-evening,” said the man. “I wonder what this conference is about; the Secretary merely asked me to come to his house. I’m in the electrical manufacturing business.”
The car started rapidly and soon turned into an unfrequented street; there it slowed down. Two men ran out from the sidewalk, jumped on the running-board, and the car sped on. One of the men got into the tonneau beside Tompkins, and instantly seized his hands, while the electrical manufacturer threw a gag over his mouth. He was also blindfolded, so that thenceforth he knew not where they were going. For seven hours the car sped on through the night, and toward the end of the journey the sound of the engine told him it was climbing a considerable grade. The road became rougher, then rougher still. At last, some time after midnight, the car stopped, and Tompkins was taken out and conducted through an overgrown wood road for some distance to an abandoned lumberman’s shack where the gag and blindfold bandage were removed, and he found himself surrounded by six armed men. He had not the remotest idea where he was, but evidently it was far from Washington. The hut in reality was in the vastnesses of the Shenandoah Mountains. It would have been a simple matter to seal his lips for all time, but Rich had instructed that instead he be carefully guarded in the hope that by appropriate treatment useful information might be extracted from him. And here let us leave him.
The next morning, early, before any one else had arrived at the Bureau, Commander Rich was in his office, pacing up and down. Presently there was a knock at the door, and a man with a sallow face entered.
“How about it?” said Rich quickly.
“They got him off, all right. I’ve just been talking with Calvani by long-distance phone. He had just got down out of the mountains, and says they’ve lodged the beggar where you told ’em to.”