Gaskell leaned over.
"Then I don't mind telling you, Professor Kennedy," he said in a low tone, "that I am letting a friend of mine from London use that yacht to supply some allied warships on the Atlantic with news, supplies and ammunition, such as can be carried."
Kennedy looked at him keenly, but for some moments did not answer. I knew he was debating on how he might properly dove-tail this with Burke's case, ethically.
"Someone is trying to find out from eavesdropping just what your plans are, then," remarked Craig thoughtfully, with a significant tap on the detectaphone.
A moment later he turned his back to us and knelt down. He seemed to be wrapping the detectaphone up in a small package which he put in his pocket and closing the hole in the wall as best he could where he had ripped the paper.
"All I ask of you," concluded Gaskell, as we left a few minutes later, "is to keep your hands off that phase of things. Find the incendiary—yes; but this other matter that you have forced out of me—well—hands off!"
On our way downtown to keep the appointment Kennedy had made with Burke the night before, he stopped at the laboratory to get a heavy parcel which he carried along.
We found Burke waiting for us, impatiently, at the Customs House.
"We've just discovered that the liners over at Hoboken have had steam up for a couple of days," he said excitedly. "Evidently they are waiting to make a break for the ocean—perhaps in concert with a sortie of the fleets over in Europe."
"H-m," mused Kennedy, looking fixedly at Burke, "that complicates matters, doesn't it? We must preserve American neutrality."