"Good. You can be useful at once. I have some papers that I want delivered to the brigadier general. You may follow Lieut. Gibbons' automobile and learn the way. He goes past the brigadier general's headquarters."
A motorcycle was soon produced and Irving, after a hurried examination of it, announced that he understood it thoroughly. A minute later he was in the saddle and "lickety-chugging" along after the intelligence official's automobile.
And meanwhile there was buzzing in his brain this new wonder with eager expectation:
"What was the real purpose of Col. Evans in keeping him at headquarters"? Was that officer likely to have further army detective work for him to do?
Already he was beginning to feel like a government secret service man, and he longed to be of further service to his country and the cause of world freedom in this romantic line.
He little dreamed how far beyond the scope of his saner imagination his patriotic longing was to be realized.
CHAPTER XVI
A STARTLING ANNOUNCEMENT
Three days later Col. Evans summoned Irving into his dugout office and said to him: "Well, the cubist cryptogram has been read."
The officer smiled with a kind of grim exultation as he spoke. Then he added: