"Then I was entrapped by that woman Julie, eh?" I exclaimed, my head still feeling sore and dizzy.
"Without a doubt. The spies have made yet another attempt upon your life, Mr. Jacox," Vera remarked.
"But why did they take me out in a motor-car to Hitchin?"
"To make it appear like a case of suicide," Ray said. "Remember that both of us, old chap, are marked men by Hartmann and his unscrupulous friends. But what does it matter if we have managed to preserve the secret of our new gun? We'll be even with our enemies for this one day ere long, mark me," he laughed, as he lit a fresh cigarette.
CHAPTER X
THE SECRET OF THE CLYDE DEFENCES
A curious episode was that of the plans of the Clyde Defences. It was a February evening. Wet, tired, and hungry, I turned the long grey touring car into the yard of the old "White Hart," at Salisbury, and descended with eager anticipation of a big fire and comfortable dinner.
My mechanic Bennett and I had been on the road since soon after dawn, and we yet had many miles to cover. Two months ago I had mounted the car at the garage in Wardour Street and set out upon a long and weary ten-thousand-mile journey in England, not for pleasure, as you may well imagine—but purely upon business. My business, to be exact, was reconnoitring, from a military stand-point, all the roads and by-roads lying between the Tyne and the Thames as well as certain districts south-west of London, in order to write the book upon similar lines to The Invasion of 1910.
For two months we had lived upon the road. Sometimes Ray and Vera had travelled with me. When Bennett and I had started it was late and pleasant autumn. Now it was bleak, black winter, and hardly the kind of weather to travel twelve or fourteen hours daily in an open car. Day after day, week after week, the big "sixty" had roared along, ploughing the mud of those ever-winding roads of England until we had lost all count of the days of the week; my voluminous note-books were gradually being filled with valuable data, and the nerves of both of us were becoming so strained that we were victims of insomnia. Hence at night, when we could not sleep, we travelled.