"Then, if I can, I am going to help you to escape them," promised the submarine boy. "Yet that can happen only on your most solemn word—given, pardon me, in a moment of absolute honesty—that you will never again play the spy, for the secrets of the United States Government."
"Oh, I will promise that," replied Mlle. Nadiboff, quickly. "Yet I hardly need to. After what I have done, just now, no one in my peculiar line of work would ever trust me again. I shall be shunned, hereafter, if not destroyed, by those who have worked with me."
"I shall do my best to get you safely away from Spruce Beach," promised
Jack Benson. "Have you more to say to me, Mademoiselle?"
"Nothing, but good-bye, my Captain."
She held out her hand. Once more Jack took it, bending low over it. Tears shone in her eyes, but Jack did not see them, for he turned, going back to his friends.
Not until they were well away from the parlor did Jack Benson offer any account of the interview that had just taken place.
"Let me have that envelope, then," requested Jacob Farnum, gravely.
"What are you going to do with it, sir?" Jack asked, as he passed it over.
"Do with it?" repeated his employer. "I'm going to take it to the nearest druggist, and find out what the stuff is."
"We'd better take this latest news to our friend Trotter," suggested
David Pollard.