They sat down to a delightful dinner. Salad made from fruit just taken from the trees, delicious crabmeat, fried sea bass, hot corn bread, sweet potatoes and coffee, a great urnful—enough for three cups apiece.
Dinner over, Miss Storm took up some knitting that lay in a chair and settled down by herself, because she knew her brother wished it, and she had sensed that there was some serious business in the air.
“It’s not that my sister cannot be trusted,” Silent Storm half apologized when he and Sally were seated in a small, secret den, quite evidently all his own. “She is to be trusted completely. However, it is a rule of war that a military secret is to be shared with no outsider, and the thing you were about to tell me up there in the tower is something of a military secret.”
“Not—not yet—but it might, be.” She hesitated. “It’s really C. K. Kennedy’s secret. He confided it to me because he hoped he could trust me.”
“And he can.”
“Yes, that’s right. He is a wonderful man. There is nothing I would not do for him.”
“But such an invention should be of great service to our country.”
“He thought it might be. He wasn’t sure.”
“So he wanted it tried out? I see. Tell me only what you think he would like to have me know.” Lighting his pipe, he settled back in his chair. “I have very little curiosity left in me,” he went on. “I’ve seen too much for that. I’m interested in only one thing, to see this war brought to a successful end. I have many fine friends back there.” He swept the west with his hand. “I shall never be able to go back to them, but I can serve where I am.”
“Then you have already seen service.” Sally’s eyes lighted.