Her eyes shining with pity, Dorothy spoke gently. “I’m so glad to see you, Richard. Don’t you remember you are Richard Regnier, and that I am Dorothy Haldane? You know Tom, here, my brother, well, and this is Jim Orrington whom you met one night in Washington.”
At Dorothy’s low voice, the clouded brow cleared. The curtain rolled from the darkened eyes, and the bent form straightened. “Thank God. I am Richard Regnier. But where am I, and how did I get here?” he asked.
“You are on the coast of Holland, near The Hague,” responded Dorothy quietly. “I don’t know how you got here.”
“How did you come to be here?” asked Regnier eagerly.
“We came to The Hague to the Peace Congress, and we came down here to try to find the man who has stopped all war,” answered Dorothy.
“The man who destroyed the Alaska and the Dreadnought Number 8?” queried Regnier, in great excitement. “I have known nothing since that time. Has he done anything since?”
“Many things,” said Dorothy sadly. “He is doing great harm now, and that is why we are trying to reach him. We ought not to lose a minute more, Jim. If you and Tom will go to work again, I will sit down and tell Richard about the happenings of the last two months.”
Back we went to our tasks and, as I pounded out the message, waited five minutes and pounded it out again, I thought of the strange suspicion under which Regnier had lain. I had believed him the man who had sunk every battleship on that fatal day. I had felt convinced that he was the man for whom we had searched so diligently for weeks. And while we searched, he had been wandering along the sands of the Holland coast.