“Meaning?” he asked.
“That I am afraid I am going to make you place me right in the catalogue of ‘queer folks.’”
“Yes?”
His gravity and evident interest encouraged her to go on. Briefly she told him of what she had overheard that morning at daybreak. And this time she did not refuse to identify clearly the woman passenger who had talked so familiarly with the flaxen-haired stoker on the afterdeck.
CHAPTER X—WHAT WILL HAPPEN?
Ruth Fielding was not a busybody, but the peculiar attitude of the woman, Irma Lentz, toward America’s cause in the World War and what she had overheard on deck that morning, as well as the advice the Red Cross officer had given her, urged the girl to take Mr. Dowd, first officer of the Admiral Pekhard, fully into her confidence.
He listened with keen interest to what the girl had to say. He was sure Ruth was not a person to be easily frightened or one to spread ill-advised and unfounded tales. Useless suspicions were not likely to be born in her mind. She was too sane and sensible.
The chance that there were actually spies aboard the Admiral Pekhard was by no means an idle one. In those days of desperate warfare between the democratic governments of the world and the autocratic Central Powers, no effort was neglected by the latter to thwart the war aims of the former.
To deliberately plan the destruction of this ship, although it was not, strictly speaking, a war ship, was quite in line with the frightfulness of Germany and her allies. Similar plotting, however, had usually to do with submarine activities and mines.
That German agents were aboard the Admiral Pekhard with the intention of bringing about the wrecking of the ship was, however, scarcely within the bounds of probability. Notably because by carrying through such a conspiracy the plotters must of necessity put their own lives in jeopardy.