Every action of the sign of the ring had been carried out.
The woman raised her thick veil, disclosing the face of—a man!
It was the same face, also, that had appeared in the photograph sent to the old fisherman by Woodward.
Awkwardly, the man searched in the front of his shirtwaist and drew forth a paper which Del Mar almost seized in his eagerness. It was a pen and ink copy of a Government map, showing a huge spit of sand in the sea before a harbor, Sandy Hook and New York. On it were indicated all the defenses, the positions of guns, everything.
Together, Del Mar and Smith bent over it, while the renegade clerk explained each mark on the traitorous map. They were too occupied to see a face flattened against the pane of a window near-by.
The chauffeur had no intention of remaining inactive outside while he knew that something that interested him was transpiring inside. He had crept up by the side of the house to the window. But he could see little and hear nothing.
A moment he strained every sense. It was no use. He must devise some other way. How could he get into that room? Slowly he returned to his car, thinking it over. There he stood for a moment revolving in his mind what to do. He looked up the road. An idea came to him. There he saw a little runabout approaching rapidly.
Quickly he went around to the front of his car and lifted up the hood.
Then he bent over and pretended to be tinkering with his engine.
As the car was about to pass he deliberately stepped back, apparently not seeing the runabout, and was struck and knocked down.
The runabout stopped, the emergency brakes biting hard.