Nervously Mortimer and Rand waited, discussing the ominous possibilities of this crisis, till the message from Punta Delgada arrived. Then Mortimer broke all records for speed in doing two things: one was to tell the Chief of Naval Intelligence what had happened; the other was to cable Punta Delgada canceling the orders recalling Fraser and directing him to return at once to the fleet.
Captain Fraser, turning over his duties to the assistant chief of staff, had boarded a fast scout cruiser and left the harbor of Punta Delgada for the open sea late in the evening. The night was dark, and by midnight the island of Saint Michael’s had disappeared astern, when Fraser was roused from his sleep by a messenger with word that an important radio message for him had just been received. To his surprise he found that he had been directed to return at once to Punta Delgada.
“Well, what next, I wonder?” he said to himself. “Something damn funny seems to be going on.”
He sent back a radio ordering the arrangements to be made for opening the gates in the nets to allow the cruiser to return to harbor, and then, going up on the bridge, told the officer of the deck to change course one hundred and eighty degrees and return to port. Before dawn the cruiser was back at her moorings in the harbor.
Barton and Evans had both agreed that they had best continue to keep to themselves the secret of Evans’s confidential relations with Mortimer, and especially his secret method of communicating with Washington. Barton therefore called on Fraser and merely explained that he had been advised through secret channels from Washington that Fraser’s recall had resulted in some way from the intrigue of a group of spies, and that their plot had been discovered in time to cancel the orders immediately after they were issued.
Meanwhile in Washington, Mortimer, as soon as he received the message from Punta Delgada revealing the trick and casting suspicion on Rich, went to Admiral Rallston, Chief of Naval Intelligence, and discussed the problem with him. This officer cautioned him against taking anything for granted.
“Clearly a dangerous spy is at work,” he said, “but let us not be too hasty in placing the guilt. It behooves us to be cautious about concluding that a man in Commander Rich’s position is guilty of treason. The spy, whoever he is, will use every means he can think of to make the blame appear unmistakably to fall on some one else. It is easy to tap wires, you know.”
“That’s so,” said Mortimer. “What is the best move?”
“I advise you to go to Commander Rich to-morrow morning and, without intimating that anything is amiss, refer to your telephone conversation. If he does not deny having had such a conversation, ask him to explain the discrepancy about Tompkins. You can judge from his conversation whether he’s in a hole or whether some one else has framed the thing up.”
Mortimer passed an uneasy night. The next morning he went to the office of Commander Rich. While he had been in bed the message which caused Fraser to turn back to Punta Delgada had been sent and received, and his ship, turning back, had already reached the harbor. It was by no miracle that these facts had found their way to certain persons in Washington who had to do with radio apparatus; nor was it surprising that the man who controlled all radio apparatus at its source got wind of them before Mortimer made his call.