“I don’t understand how,” replied the puzzled boy.
“Well, through that bomb business at the cottage. You see, it leaked out. When the attempt to blow up the place was reported, the men naturally asked what the dickens the scamps wanted to blow up a crowd of sightseers for, and then it came out that you came here with Lieutenant Gordon, and that’s about all.”
It was at this time that the lights suspended operation. Welch glanced about the busy scene for an instant and sat down on a box which contained tools.
“No use,” he said. “The electric men work as they please. We’ll wait here and lose our record. Did you say where Lieutenant Gordon is to-night?”
“I did not, because I wasn’t asked,” was the reply, “and because I don’t know where he is.”
“He’s a good fellow, Gordon,” Welch exclaimed. “I’d go far and fast to do him a favor. I hope he’s coming out of this game all right.”
Then Ned sat down on the tool-box and told Welch the story of the abduction of the lieutenant, and also the story of what was going on there that night, as he understood it. To say that Welch was profoundly excited does not half express the foreman’s state of mind as he listened.
“My God!” he cried, when Ned paused. “To think of the wickedness of the thing. To destroy the work of years. To delay the completion of the canal for a decade. What can we do? In this darkness, the spoilers can work their will.”
“I think I know who they are,” Ned said. “We must find them.”
“It is too bad that the lights should fail us just at this time,” the foreman said.