"More engine trouble," I sighed. "Pull up along the road and I'll see if I can fix it."
We stopped and both got out. There was no fake about this trouble or about the dirt and grease I acquired on my hands and face, tinkering with that motor. For, regardless of my immaculate flannels, I had to set to work. A huge spot of grease spattered on me. Elaine laughed outright.
"Here, let me powder your nose, Walter," she cried undismayed at our trouble, gayly opening her bag. "Well—of all things—what's this, and where did it come from?"
I turned from the engine and looked. She was holding some kind of plan or document in her hand. In blank surprise she examined it. It looked like a fort or a series of forts. But I was sure at a glance that it was not Fort Dale.
"What do you think it is, Walter?" she asked, handing it to me.
I took it and examined it carefully. Incredible as it seemed, I figured out quickly that it must be nothing short of a plan of the new defenses at Sandy Hook.
"I don't know what it all means," I said. "But I do know that we won't get any dinner till I get this engine running again."
I fell to work again, eager to get away with our dangerous prize, Elaine now and then advising me. Finally I turned the engine over. For a wonder it ran smoothly. "Well, that's all right, at last," I sighed, wiping the grease off my hands on a piece of waste.
"What's the matter now?" exclaimed Elaine, turning quickly and looking up the road along which we had just come.
There, lurching along at full speed was a car. Two men were actually fighting on the front of it regardless of speed and safety. As it neared us, I saw it was the taxicab that had been standing before Del Mar's. I looked closer at it. To my utter amazement, who should be driving it but the very chauffeur whom we had left at Del Mar's only a few minutes before, apparently unconscious. He could not have been hurt very badly, for he was not only able to drive but was fighting off a man clinging on the running-board.