"Gosh! that's so," muttered Tubby. "Seems you're getting a move on, too, with observing things. I'll have to hurry and do something myself, if I don't want to find that I'm no first-class scout, after all, but only a dub."
Finally Rob was seen to press a coin in the calloused palm of the peasant, who took off his cap and bowed several times, as though grateful, and then he continued on his way along the road.
"What luck?" asked Tubby immediately; while Merritt, more deeply interested than any of them, silently waited to listen.
"Oh! he gave me quite some information," replied Rob; "and, so far as I can see, it looks good for us. I didn't learn anything about Steven Meredith, because the farm laborer probably never heard of such a person; but he did tell me that the chemical works have been kept going full blast ever since the Germans occupied Brussels."
"That must be because certain things are made there that they can use in their war game, eh, Rob?" Merritt conjectured, and the other nodded.
"No question about it," he said, "though the peasant couldn't say why certain things were done, only that they did happen. But, if the factory is running wide open, there seems to be a chance that we may find Steven still on deck, and keeping his finger on the pulse."
"I'm only afraid that if he really is what we think, a secret agent of the government," Merritt suggested uneasily, "that he may have been transferred to some other point where his smartness would be apt to count, perhaps away down in France, so that he could send up valuable information about the making of artillery, or how the conscription of the Nineteen-Fifteen boy recruits is coming on."
"Still, to find the works open, and doing business right along, looks like a piece of good luck to me," said Tubby.
"It is," added Rob positively. "We agreed long ago that we'd consider it such, if we learned there had been no shutdown. We hoped it would be that way, for we already knew that German capital had been back of the chemical works. I wouldn't be much surprised if it was learned that somewhere about the place, unknown to most people, these clever Germans had long ago built a heavy concrete floor, to be used in their business; but which would make the best kind of foundation for one of those big siege guns they used to knock down the Liège and Namur forts."