She remembered passing a motor service station down the road. If she could reach that she might still be able to interfere with the electrician's orders. She would telephone back to the factory—to Harrison Grant! One idea after another flew through her mind as she hurried over the endless labyrinth of tracks and down the rough road, but when she reached the little building, to her breathless inquiries the keeper shook his head. "No telephone here," he said, "there's one about a mile down the road."
"But I've got to get word back to town somehow," Dixie urged desperately. He shook his head as though dismissing the subject.
Then Dixie brought out her Secret Service Commission.
"Let me have a motorcycle, quick," she ordered. The man visibly impressed hurried inside.
A moment later he had brought out a motorcycle and was holding it in position.
Dixie clambered up on it. Slipping a bill into the man's hand she waved good-bye and amid a swirl of dust disappeared down the road. The throbbing of her engine grew steadier as with a set purpose she rushed on in the blackness to her errand of salvation.
While Dixie Mason sped over the dark and tortuous passes of the road to town; while the electrician she was seeking to outwit was being carried to the fulfillment of his evil intent by the freight train to which he clung, Harrison Grant and the president of the munitions works were listening to Slakberg's confession, wrung at last from him by a series of cleverly tendered questions. As in the past he had entrapped others, so the spy was being entrapped. His very simple plan, worked out so carefully and seemingly flawless, had rebounded to trip him up. He had worked out every detail, had forged perfectly, had overlooked nothing as he had thought, to be at last betrayed by the innocent appearing watermark of the parchment.
He was breaking down under the strain of the cross examination. Reluctantly the details had been wrung from him.
"We wanted munitions. We didn't care how we got them. If we could make America our unwilling ally, we were more than glad to do it. We knew that if we could get these shells to the Western front they would be saved for the French drive. And we knew that just as surely as that drive came, it would fail and our soldiers would rush through the French lines without danger from barrage to find the shells waiting for them—to open the way to Paris!" He stopped with a gasp.
They waited but he did not resume his talk.