"The safety of the Atlantic fleet depends on us! Don't lose sight of that machine for an instant! Where it goes—we're going—and the man who is in it must not know we're following!"
"Don't worry, Lady," came the quiet answer of the chauffeur. "I'll keep him in sight."
Dixie Mason leaned back in the machine again. Once more she brought forth the note book. Again she looked at the line which had burned itself into her brain; a line that read:
"Examine torpedo before fleet sails."
A half hour later, Von Lertz's machine was on the ferry, crossing to Staten Island, while Von Lertz himself dozed in the tonneau, little knowing that just behind him, on the same ferry was another machine containing a person very much awake, Dixie Mason, determined to learn just exactly where he was going and who he intended to see there.
So much for the Ally who was working for the said Harrison Grant. And in the meantime, the person upon whom he had really counted was having his difficulties.
Far over on Staten Island, the spy whom Dick Stewart had trailed from the Criminology Club had turned into thick underbrush, circled, seen the man behind him, lain in wait, and then, with one powerful blow, felled him, hurrying on toward the shack and workers on the torpedo.
But that delay, while it had placed Dick Stewart in a position where he could no longer follow the spy from the Hohenzollern Club, had saved Dixie Mason from an embarrassing position. For that delay had been just long enough for Dixie Mason to see Heinric von Lertz enter the shack, to watch him leave again, then to allow the little daredevil of the secret service to creep to the shack, ascend an old ladder which she found leaning against the building, and peep through the old trap in the roof. And there she saw——
Two men busily engaged upon the torpedo, which they were making ready to lower through the manhole into the sewer. One of them was talking:
"Von Lertz looked like he'd been out all night——"