“I’ll be careful. I’ll be back inside of two hours,” he promised.
But two hours, four hours, six hours passed and he did not come. I dined alone, sick at heart, wondering if I had made a ghastly mistake.
It was nearly ten o’clock that night when Ryerson came back after seven hours’ absence. We went to our room immediately, and he told me what had happened, the gist of it being that he had discovered important news that might change our plans.
“These people trust me absolutely,” he said. “They tell me everything.”
“You mean—German spies?”
“Yes. Pittsburg is full of ‘em. They’re plotting to wreck the big steel plants and factories here that are making war munitions. I’ll know more about that later, but the immediate thing is Niagara Falls.”
Then Ryerson gave me my first hint of a brilliant coup that had been preparing for months by the Committee of Twenty-one and the American high command, its purpose being to strike a deadly and spectacular blow at the German fleet.
“This is the closest kind of a secret, it’s the great American hope; but the Germans know all about it,” he declared.
“Go on.”
“It’s a big air-ship, the America, a super-Zeppelin, six hundred feet long, with apparatus for steering small submarines by radio control—no men aboard. Understand?”