“No.”
“Then the Jap wasn’t telling you a straight story. It’s my impression he hired out to you just to get the packet of papers.”
“Bosh!” scoffed Glennie. “You’re giving him credit for more cunning than he deserves. Take it from me, he just saw how careful I was of those papers and made up his mind, on the spur of the moment, that he could make a few dollars by stealing them and selling them back to me, or else to Brigham at Para.”
“There’s more to it than that,” averred Bob.
He was somewhat worried, for, if there was a plot, it was possible it was not aimed at Ensign Glennie alone, but perhaps at the Grampus as well. This suspicion was only vaguely formed in Bob’s mind, but it was one of those strange, inexplicable “hunches” which sometimes came to him and which events occasionally proved to be warranted by results.
It must have been generally known in Belize that the Grampus had been sold to the United States government for a large sum, conditional upon her safe delivery at Mare Island; and perhaps it was equally well known, on the Seminole, at least, and maybe in La Guayra, that Ensign Glennie was to accompany the submarine on her passage around the Horn. All this knowledge, of course, could have been picked up, and perhaps used by unscrupulous persons. But what could such unscrupulous persons be hoping to gain by any crooked work?
Bob’s thoughts were carrying him far afield. Not only that, but they were bumping him into a stone wall. Giving over his useless speculations, he once more turned to the ensign.
“As I said before, Mr. Glennie,” he remarked, “this cruise of ours is not going to be a picnic. A whole lot depends on its success, and every man on board must be——”
At that moment he was interrupted by a sudden roar from below—a detonation that shook the steel fabric of the submarine in every part. The peculiar smell of burned gasoline rolled into the periscope room through the open bulkhead door.
“Great Cæsar!” gasped Glennie, leaping up. “What was that?”