The past twelve hours had been filled with puzzling anxiety for Dixie Mason. Since the moment she had read the scribbled page from the note-book of Heinric von Lertz in the dressing room of the Ten Mile Mouse, her efforts had been spent on solving the mystery of its meaning, for all it said, though Dixie was not at all misled by its briefness into confusing brevity with innocence, was this:
| Report for Von Lertz. | |
| Fire bombs manufactured | 400 |
| Fire bombs delivered to agents for coming use | 72 |
| —— | |
| Balance | 328 |
That was all. Where the bombs had been placed, when they would explode, where it was intended others should be placed could not be told. It had been with difficulty that Dixie in her preoccupation had retained Von Lertz's attention on the ride home from the Ten Mile House the night before. Her mind had been a seething mass of conjectures and forebodings. And with them had been linked her knowledge of the necessity for occupying Von Lertz's attention so that he would not discover the loss of the report book. In this she had been successful, and when he at last deposited her at the door of her apartment, it was with a feeling of relief that she bid him good night.
Dixie in the quiet of her room chided herself for not being able to make more of this report. She told herself that she had no right to be one of the Secret Service if she could do no better than this, but the information was meager—there was nothing to work on. Her smooth forehead was furrowed by a frown of anxiety. For the fiftieth time she read the report and then she shook her head.
"No use," she mused. "There's only one thing for me to do with this and that is send it to Harrison Grant without his knowing who it came from. He can start an investigation." She folded the page torn from the book and slipped it into an envelope. Then in a painfully disguised handwriting she directed it to Harrison Grant, at the Criminology Club. She held up the envelope and surveyed the writing. "He doesn't know my writing, but if he did he would never guess this was mine. Mamette!" she called sharply.
In a moment the curtain of her room was parted and a grinning black face looked in on her. Mamette had been Dixie's maid for years; in spite of her self-selected name smacking as she thought, of all that was French and gay and fashionable, she was pure African.
"Mamette," Dixie repeated, "Take this letter down to the telegraph office in the next block and have a messenger deliver it at once. Be sure not to say who is sending it. Remember!"
"Yas'm!" Mamette's dark hand grasped the envelope which was startingly white by contrast, and in a few minutes Dixie heard the door of the apartment slam and knew that the report which she rightfully guessed savored of intrigue boding ill for the peace of the land she served, was on its way to Harrison Grant.
It reached him a half hour later by messenger, at his office.
It was Jimmy McAdams, shock haired, and dreamy eyed, who ambled in and presented him with the message, and while he waited to see whether Grant wished to send an answer, Jimmy made himself comfortable in the depths of a leather chair with the nickel novel which never left him. Grant frowned over the brief report which had been the cause of Dixie Mason's dilemma. A triumphant chuckle from Jimmy aroused him. But the chuckle was merely induced by the successful effort of Old King Brady to capture the last of the counterfeiters as set forth between the lurid covers of Jimmy's nickel thriller. Grant's glance rested on him with tolerant amusement.