“Never mind that now,” laughed the officer. “I’m too busy at present to speak the advice you’ll all forget before I’m out of the room. Where is Frank Shaw? I came here to see him.”
“He was coming down to-night,” George Tolford replied, “but it is so late now that he may not be here. Anything special?”
“Why, yes,” was the reply. “I want to know what he has been saying to his father about the difficulty in the Canal Zone.”
“Why, he doesn’t know anything to tell,” said Nestor, “not even as much as the boys here now know, for I have talked the situation over with them but not with him.”
“What do they know regarding the situation?” asked the lieutenant, apprehensively.
“Nothing except that the Panama canal is threatened by some unknown influence.”
“Well,” said the lieutenant, thoughtfully, “some one has been leaking, and it seems as if our first move in the game must be made right here in New York.”
“It wasn’t Frank that leaked,” Jimmie asserted, in defense of his friend. “He wouldn’t do such a thing, and he couldn’t tell what he didn’t know, anyway,” with which logical conclusion the boy turned his back to the group.
“There is something wrong somewhere,” Lieutenant Gordon said. “Wait until I tell you what took place this afternoon and you will agree with me.”