"Not so loud, Gassen," said some one hurriedly. "Your voice carries so."
"I wish it would carry to that cursed Englishman and bring him here to the old lunatic's rescue."
"We have no proof. It's only your guess work."
"I want no more proof than we have. Who else was likely to betray us? Tell me that. Who else would have been able to get that cursed news into the papers and have the plans about the ship changed? Wasn't he a newspaper man of some sort? Tell me that. And how else could he get the news except from that blabbering old fool in the corner there when he was at his house."
"The news came from Paris."
"Paris be hanged," he cried fiercely with an oath. "How could they know in Paris if some one here hadn't told them from Berlin. Tell me that."
There was a long pause during which one of the men struck a match and began to smoke.
So Althea's father was there all the time, and this meeting had apparently been held for my punishment rather than in connexion with the meditated outrage. He was suspected of having betrayed everything to me; and my trick of getting the news published had been guessed.
"We shall have to give it up for to-night, Gassen," said the man who had spoken before. "They have failed to get him to come."
"Why don't they come back and say so then?"