"I don't like it," exclaimed Hobin, suddenly. He was pouring the Commander another cup of black-looking tea. "I don't like the look of things at all."
"Nor do I," said the Commander, "but the responsibility is yours, and I think you did well to communicate with the powers that be."
"The powers that be will do nothing," complained Colonel Hobin; "they never do."
"If things are wrong at all," said the old naval lieutenant, "somebody in the fort's wrong, for I'll bet my hat nobody can get in and out without us knowing it."
"That's what is really troubling me," said the Colonel, the frown deepening on his brow. "It's damnable, Grieves, to think that we are being outwitted. I have turned every man in the fort inside out, and they all seem to me honest as the day."
"Wasn't one of the men in the lower fort reported to have a foreign accent?"
"He was," answered the Colonel, with a bitter laugh, "and I had him up and put him through a third degree examination, with the result that his accent turned out to be nothing more dangerous than an Irish brogue. He's as loyal as I am, and when I mentioned the fact of the signal book I believe if I hadn't been in uniform he would have hit me."
"If we were one of those tin-pot forts over there," returned the Lieutenant-Commander, jerking his thumb contemptuously in a certain direction, "I wouldn't mind, but we really count in the defences."
"We are the heart of this system of defence," returned Hobin tartly, "and yet we go and lose a signal book. If it was only that," he went on, "I might have thought there was carelessness in it, but there are other things, queer things, Grieves, that I cannot formulate into words even to you. I put it all before the authorities. Whiston listened as politely as he always does, and said he'd speak to the Intelligence Department about it, but nothing will be done."
"They'll have to do something."