“Surely there could not be anybody else watching the sparking upon the pole!” I exclaimed in quick apprehension.
“That’s just what I believe has happened,” Ashton replied seriously. “We’ve been watched—as I suspected we were.”
“You’ve said so all along, I know.”
“And now I’m quite convinced of it. And whoever has watched us making our experiments now knows that to-night our efforts have been crowned with success.”
“Well,” I remarked after a pause. “If what you say is true, Teddy, we shall have to be very wary in future. I know there are a great many unscrupulous persons who would be ready to go to any length in order to learn this secret discovery of ours which, when fully developed, will, I feel convinced, mean the buckling-up of the Zeppelin menace.”
“That’s quite true, Claude,” Roseye declared. “At Hendon and elsewhere there are, I know, a number of men intensely jealous of your success, and of the one or two ideas which you have patented, and which are now adopted in the construction of our military aeroplanes.”
“It’s really astonishing how many enemies one makes quite unintentionally!” declared Teddy, leaning against the bench. “Claude has more than I have, I believe—and I never disguise from myself that I’ve got a really fine crop.”
“Only the other day, when Lionel dined with us, he was speaking to dad about spies,” Roseye said. “He told us that he felt sure that we had men in our air-service who sent every new development and idea to Germany. Do you think that’s really a fact?”
“A fact!” I echoed. “Why, dearest, of course it is! We’ve seen the result of it many times. As soon as we had that integral propeller the Germans knew, and copied us; the secret of Jack Pardon’s new dope was known in a few days, and the enemy are using it on every one of their machines to-day. Nothing is secret from those brutes.”
“But who does all this?” asked Roseye.