"Good!" he exclaimed, reaching for the telephone, "I'll go."
In a restaurant in the white light district two of those who had been engaged in the preliminary plot to steal Kennedy's wireless torpedo model, the young woman stenographer who had betrayed her trust and the man to whom she had passed the model out of the window in Washington, were seated at a table.
So secret had been the relations of all those in the plot that one group did not know the other and the strangest methods of communication had been adopted.
The man removed a cover from a dish. Underneath, perhaps without even the waiter's knowledge, was a note.
"Here are the orders at last," he whispered to the girl, unfolding and reading the note. "Look. The model of the torpedo is somewhere in her house. Go to-night to the ball as a masquerader and search for it."
"Oh, splendid!" exclaimed the girl. "I'm crazy for a little society after this grind. Pay the check and let's get out and choose our costumes."
The man paid the check and they left hurriedly. Half an hour later they were at a costumer's shop choosing their disguises, both careful to get the fullest masks that would not excite suspicion.
It was the night of the masquerade.
During the afternoon Elaine had been thinking more than ever of Kennedy. It all seemed unreal to her. More than once she stopped to look at his photograph. Several times she checked herself on the point of tears.
"No," she said to herself with a sort of grim determination. "No—he IS alive. He will come back to me—he WILL."