“If you have to leave in a hurry, leave money and any directions at S——’s.
“I’m going to be laid off here, anyway, on account of my eardrums.
“Hope B—— will give you this all right. Guess that’s all now.”
Tom read this twice and out of its scrappiness and incompleteness he gathered this much! that somebody who was about to be dismissed from an aeroplane factory for the very usual reason that he could not stand the terrific noise, had succeeded in either making or procuring plans of Uncle Sam’s new aeroplane engine, the Liberty Motor.
He understood the letter to mean that it was very important that these drawings reach Germany before the motors were in service, since then it would be too late for the Germans to avail themselves of “Yankee ingenuity,” and also since they would in all probability succeed in capturing one of the planes.
He gathered further that the sender of the letter was prepared to go himself with these plans, working his way on an American ship, and to do something else (doubtless of a diabolical character) on the way. The phrase “same idea as a periscope” puzzled him. It appeared, also, that the sender of the letter, whoever he was and wherever he was (for no place or date or signature was indicated and the envelopes were not the original ones) had not sent his communications direct to this alien grocer, but to someone else who had delivered them to Schmitt.
“It isn’t anything for me to be mixed up in, anyway,” Tom thought. He was almost afraid to carry papers of such sinister purport with him and he quickened his steps in order that he might turn them over to Mr. Burton, the manager of Temple Camp office.
But when he reached the office he did not carry out this intention, for there was waiting for him a letter which upset all his plans and made him forget for the time being these sinister papers. It took him back with a rush to his experiences on shipboard and he read it with a smile on his lips.
“Dear Tommy—I don’t know whether this letter will ever reach you, for, for all I know, you’re in Davy Jones’s locker. Even my memo of your address got pretty well soaked in the ocean and all I’m dead sure of is that you live in North America somewhere near a bridge.”
Tom turned the sheet to look at the signature but he knew already that the letter was from his erstwhile friend, Mr. Carleton Conne.