"Sh!" warned the other. "Never mind any talk about it."
But the other was inclined to be voluble. Whistler thought the skipper of the oil tender, Braun, had been drinking. "And when alcohol is in the brain wit is very likely to move out," he muttered.
"Grand work!" he ejaculated. "Ach, yes! Undt there will be more grand work when two-fifty is joined by the others."
"Sh!" warned Blake again. "You talk too much, Braun. The wise man keeps a still tongue."
Ordinarily Whistler Morgan would have found nothing in this overheard conversation to fan suspicion into a blaze. He quite realized this fact. But what he had seen at Elmvale, and the presence of Blake on the oil tender, led in his mind to but one conclusion.
Blake and his companion referred to the former's work in Elmvale. And what was that work? Not merely the peaceful occupation of chemist in the laboratory of the munition factory. He was convinced that Blake referred to something entirely different when he said: "My work is done there."
Nor was Blake merely an inventor, hiding away the actual working model of an invention until he could secure its patent, for instance. No, indeed!
Yet Morgan could not imagine what that water wheel was for. To what end could it have been placed under the rock on the edge of the overflow-stream from the Elmvale Dam?
Whistler had little to say himself during that meal at Yancey's. He heard nothing more from the next booth, for Blake seemed to manage the half drunken skipper of the Sarah Coville with better judgment. By and by the two men left the restaurant.
"Say! are we going to follow them?" asked the excited Frenchy.