There was reason enough why Norma’s report of the plane and the sub had not come in. The phone at the Granite Head spotter shed was dead. Beyond a doubt the wires had been cut.
While they were finding this out, Beth had received a more complete report from her grandfather. He had been hearing sounds from the sea for a full half hour. Someone was working on a motor or some other thing. At first he thought some fisherman’s boat was stalled.
As the craft was carried in by the tide, he caught words spoken in German. Then he made out the long, low bulk of the sub. Now he was telling of a mysterious plane that had appeared from just nowhere and was soaring out over the sea.
“I’ve got my bike!” Norma exclaimed excitedly. “I’ll ride like mad. Be at the Sea Tower in no time at all!” She was away at once.
As Norma sped down those winding stairs she was thinking of the old man and the child out there on Black Knob and their great peril. “Those men were rigging out a boat,” she told herself. “They were going ashore on the island. And then—”
She coasted down the hill at a terrific speed. Only a miracle saved her from a crash at the bottom.
She got her crash all the same. Having covered a quarter of the distance to the Sea Tower, she rounded a curve when to her consternation she saw a ghost-like figure, all in white, standing in the middle of the road.
Swinging as far as she could to the right, she attempted to pass when, with an astonishing leap, the figure landed upon the back of her bicycle and wrapped long arms about her. Instantly they went down in a heap.
“It’s a spy,” she thought. “He cut the wire. Now he means to stop me. But he won’t.”
Summoning all her courage and drawing heavily on her feeling of sudden desperation, she threw all her strength into tearing away those arms.