I thanked him again and left. I was well repaid for the visit. The scheme had been shrewdly planned. When the vessel lay within so short a distance of the wharf, the attack would be comparatively easy, and success quite attainable. A bomb with a time fuse attached could easily be thrown on board her.
How could I prevent it? That was the rub. I went up to the Press Club thinking this out.
If I could have been certain that the bomb which I had thrown into the river was really that which was to be used, I should almost have been willing to let the matter rest where it was, for I had already prevented disaster.
But a little further consideration almost made my flesh creep. The bomb I had given the Baron would do no harm to the vessel, but it might very well blow me into prison. It would be found, of course; inquiries would follow, and the obliging young man who had made it for me, "for private theatricals," would give a description of me and an account of the transaction which I should be unable to explain away; while the agreeable fellow at the wharf would be able to tell how I had gone down to "inquire about the untenanted premises."
That wouldn't do; so with a curse at the Baron and all his works--except paternity of Althea--I turned to think of some other plan.
There was only one way. I must get such information to the authorities as would induce them to choose some other moorings for the warship. And I must do it at once.
My old press connexions must find the means. There were plenty of German newspaper men who would have given their ears for such a story as I could tell them; but I could not trust them to hold their tongues as to the source of the information. And that was of course essential.
The story must come from London, or better, from Paris; and the only man I dared to trust in the matter was Bassett--the correspondent who had taken my place. I telephoned him to come to me at the club, and when he arrived I told him as much of the case as was necessary.
I explained that I had stumbled on the information by chance, but in a manner which rendered it impossible for my name to be mentioned. He was anxious enough to get a "scoop," and readily promised to keep my connexion absolutely secret. Together we drew up such a paragraph as would set the ball rolling, and he agreed to warn the naval authorities in his own name that the object of attack was the Wundervoll, and that her safety depended upon her not being taken to the proposed moorings.
It was a common enough thing for newspaper men to get hold of information a long way ahead of the authorities, and for the sources of it to be kept secret.