He lost his paddle, but managed to retain a grip on the canoe, and swimming in a sort of daze, he finally dragged himself and it ashore. There, utterly done up, he flung himself face downward on the sand and lay for he knew not how long, drawing in the air in long, gasping gulps.
At length, still panting, he raised his head and slowly gained his feet. The surface of the bay was torn into a sea of angry, tossing whitecaps. The wind shrieked past him, driving gusts of fine spray into his face. Darkness was falling fast, relieved now and again by a vivid flash of lightning.
Uncertain whether the men would venture across in the teeth of the storm, Steve felt that if they did make the attempt they might appear at any moment. So he made haste to drag the canoe back of a mass of beach grass.
It was as well he did. Scarcely had he flung himself down beside the upturned keel and hunched his shoulders against the driving rain which had begun to pelt him, when out of the curtain of mist and shadow the dory flashed suddenly into his startled consciousness. He heard nothing of the engine; the shrieking of the wind and the first rattle of thunder drowned every sound. He simply saw, by the aid of the lightning and his straining vision, the bow of the dory, billows of foam spreading out on either side, cleaving the waves not fifty feet from shore. In another moment he heard the crunch and grating of the boat beaching, followed by a confused mingling of voices.
It was not yet absolutely dark and by this time his eyes were accustomed to the scene. Presently he could make out a number of shadowy figures bunched together and bending over. They were dragging the dory up the beach; he could tell that by their strained attitudes and their slow approach. Nearer they came to the screen of grass and nearer still, for not so much by chance as from the extreme narrowness of the point, they had landed at almost the same spot as Steve. Now he could make out the party quite clearly, black silhouettes against the grayish black of the sea behind them.
They had halted now, not half a dozen feet from his hiding place, and were bending over the dory taking out the tins. Their backs were toward him, but as Steve lay there blinded by the flashes of lightning and deafened by the rolls of thunder, he felt, somehow, that on the contents of those tins hung the solution of his mystery. If he could only find out that, and the identity of the man who had drawn him hither, he would know something of where he stood.
Though he could distinguish nothing save their outlines, his eyes had not left the four men for an instant. He even raised himself a little and parted the screen of beach grass in an effort to keep track of their movements. Presently he saw that they had straightened up. Apparently they had removed all the tins, and he wondered eagerly what would be the next step. Then, of a sudden, as they stood there, another jagged fork of light flashed through the dark storm clouds, and Steve caught his breath and narrowly escaped crying out in sheer amazement.
The blinding glare showed him two of the men erect and partly facing him; but it did more than that. It awakened memory at last. And as the blackness settled down again, thick and stifling, the rain, the wind, the whole wild, storm-swept strip of coast vanished. The darkness remained, but it was the tempered darkness of a street in Washington the night of that thrilling day over a year ago—the day after the declaration of war. Back of some iron palings loomed the outlines of the German embassy. Beside the curb stood a limousine from which two men had just alighted. As Steve, hurrying home from a belated engagement, came opposite them, their faces were illumined brilliantly for a moment by the glare of a passing headlight. One of those men was the German Ambassador himself. The other—
No wonder Steve Haddon had almost betrayed himself at what that lightning flash revealed. No wonder he asked himself breathlessly, excitedly, what sinister business could have brought that other—here.