“Say!” declared Al vigorously, “the British War Office makes a clam look like it had a tongue hung in the middle and running at both ends!”
“Now you’ve said something!” muttered Frenchy.
“That’s right! The world doesn’t even know how many submarines have been sunk and captured, already yet,” declared Ikey excitedly. “And we won’t know, it’s likely, till the end of the war.”
“What’s the odds?” growled Al.
“You got to hand it to them,” sighed Whistler. “The British have great powers of self-restraint.”
“You said it!” again put in Frenchy.
“Well,” Ikey said, more moderately, “if that chap that came near sending Belding here west, was that schmardie’s brother——”
“Cousin!” interposed Whistler.
“Well—anyhow and anyway—Emil Eberhardt—I say!” cried Ikey, “he might have got free and gone over to New York by submarine, or someway, like Whistler says.”
“What do you suppose he’d do if he wanted to get that money off the Redbird?” asked Frenchy, big-eyed.