But the listeners caught enough from that wild torrent of words to know that their darkest suspicions were more than justified. The man was gloating over his wickedness, over the deaths that had already resulted, and the deaths he hoped to cause through his diabolical discovery.
He stopped at length, and others in the party had their turn. Here was something beyond what the raiding party had looked for. They had stumbled upon a nest of conspirators who, in their way, as the doctor in his, were deadly enemies of society in general and the Americans in particular.
Through this secret passage into the alley, for how long none of them knew, these desperate men had been going to and fro, avoiding attention and hatching in the doctor's office a plot that had kept the entire zone of the American Army of Occupation in a state of unrest. The proof was all-sufficient, and the conspirators were weaving the noose for their own necks.
The lieutenant lifted his hand, swung the door wide open, and, followed by his men, rushed into the room.
CHAPTER XXV
THE TREATY SIGNED
It was a scene of wild confusion. Men jumped from their seats with shouts and execrations. One man leaped for the electric switch to turn out the light, but Frank reached him at a bound and felled him to the floor. Pistols were drawn, but the doughboys knocked them out of the conspirators' hands, and in a twinkling had the men gripped and powerless.
The doctor crammed some papers into his mouth with the evident intention of swallowing them, but Tom's sinewy hands were at his throat and choked them out.
It was all over in a few moments. The surprise had been so great that resistance was futile. The baffled conspirators stood huddled together, disarmed, and under guard.
The doctor's rage was fearful as his eyes rested on Frank, for whom he had cherished bitter enmity since their first encounter, and who he felt instinctively was the cause of his undoing.