18
started anything of consequence since the early part of the year would appear to point to renewed activity very shortly. It's up to you
and the other men already in New York to prevent the success of any of these plots."
Walters listened patiently to all the dope that had been gathered and then figured, as had every new man, that it was up to him to do
a little sleuthing of his own.
The headquarters of the German agents was supposed to be somewhere in Greenwich Village, on one of those[46] half-grown al-leys that always threatens to meet itself coming back. But more than a score of government operatives had combed that part of the town without securing a trace of anything tangible. On the average of once a night the phone at headquarters would ring and some one at the other end would send in a hurry call for help up in the Bronx or in Harlem or some other distant part of the city where he thought he had turned up a clue. The men on duty would leap into the machine that always waited at the curb and fracture every speed law ever made--only to find, when they arrived, that it was a false alarm.
Finally, after several weeks of that sort of thing, conditions commenced to get on Dick's nerves.
"I'm going to tackle this thing on my own," he announced. "Luck is going to play as much of a part in landing von Ewald as anything else--and luck never hunted with more than one man. Good-by! See you fellows later."
But it was a good many weeks--August, to be precise--before the men in the Federal Building had the opportunity of talking to Walters. He would report over the phone, of course, and drop down there every few days--but he'd only stay long enough to find out if there was any real news or any orders from Washington. Then he'd disappear uptown.
"Dick's sure got a grouch these days," was the comment that went around after Walters had paid one of his flying visits.
"Yeh," grunted Barry, who was on duty that night, "either the von Ewald case's got on his nerves or he's found a girl that can't see
him."
Neither supposition missed the mark very far.
Walters was getting sick and tired of the apparently[47] fruitless chase after an elusive German. He had never been known to flinch in the face of danger--often went out of his way to find it, in fact--but this constant search for a man whom nobody knew, a man of whom there wasn't the slightest description, was nerve-racking, to say the least.
Then, too, he had met Mary McNilless.
He'd wandered into the Public Library one evening just before closing time, and, like many another man, had fallen victim to Mary's red hair and Mary's Irish eyes. But a brick wall was a soft proposition compared to Mary McNilless. Snubbing good-looking young men who thought that the tailors were missing an excellent model was part of the day's work with the little library girl--though she secretly admitted to herself that this one was a bit above the average.
Dick didn't get a rise that night, though, or for some days after. Every evening at seven found him at the desk over which Miss McNilless presided, framing some almost intelligent question about books in order to prolong the conversation. Mary would answer politely and--that was all.
But, almost imperceptibly, a bond of friendship sprang up between them. Maybe it was the fact that Dick's mother had been Irish, too, or possibly it was because he admitted to himself that this girl was different from the rest, and, admitting it, laid the foundation for a deep-souled respect that couldn't help but show in his manner.
Within the month Dick was taking her home, and in six weeks they were good pals, bumming around to queer, out-of-the-way restaurants and planning outings which Dick, in his heart, knew could never materialize--not until von Ewald had been run to cover, at any rate.
Several times Mary tried to find out her companion's[48] profession--diplomatically, of course, but nevertheless she was curious. Naturally, Dick couldn't tell her. Said he had "just finished a job on the Coast and was taking a vacation in New York." But Mary had sense enough to know that he wasn't at leisure. Also that he was working on something that kept his mind constantly active--for several times he had excused himself in a hurry and then returned, anywhere from half an hour to an hour later, with a rather crestfallen expression.
19
After they had reached the "Dick and Mary" stage she came right out one night and asked him.
"Hon," he told her, "that's one thing that I've got to keep from you for a while. It's nothing that you would be ashamed of, though, but something that will make you mighty proud. At least," he added, "It'll make you proud if I don't fall down on the job almighty hard. Meanwhile, all I can do is to ask you to trust me. Will you?"
The tips of her fingers rested on the back of his hand for just a moment before she said, "You know I will, Dick"--and neither of them mentioned the subject from that time on.
On the night of the Black Tom explosion, early in August, Dick didn't show up at the Library at the usual hour, and, while this didn't worry Mary, because it had happened several times before, she began to be annoyed when three nights passed the same way. Of course, she had no way of knowing that the Service had received a tip from a stool pigeon on the pay roll of the New York police force that "a bunch of Germans were planning a big explosion of some kind" just a few hours before the earth rocked with the
force of the blow-up in Jersey. Every government operative in the city had been informed of the rumor, but few of them had taken it seriously and not one[49] had any reason to expect that the plot would culminate so close to New York. But the echo of the first blast had hardly died away before there were a dozen agents on the spot, weaving a network around the entire district. All they got for their pains, however, was a few suspects who very evidently didn't know a thing.
So it was a very tired and disgusted Dick who entered the Library four nights later and almost shambled up to Mary's desk. "I'll be off duty in half an hour," she told him. "From the way you look, you need a little comforting."
"I do that," he admitted. "Don't make me wait any longer than you have to," and he amused himself by glancing over the late seekers
after knowledge.
When they had finally seated themselves in a cozy corner of a little restaurant in the upper Forties, Dick threw caution to the winds
and told Mary all about his troubles.
"I haven't the least business to do it," he confessed, "and if the chief found it out I'd be bounced so fast that it would make my head swim. But, in the first place, I want you to marry me, and I know you wouldn't think of doing that unless you knew something more about me."
There was just the flicker of a smile around Mary's mouth as she said, almost perfunctorily, "No, of course not!" But her intuition told her that this wasn't the time to joke, and, before Walters could go on, she added, "I know you well enough, Dick, not to worry about that end of it."
So Walters told her everything from the beginning--and it didn't take more than five minutes at that. Outside of the fact that his people lived in Des Moines, that he had been in the Secret Service for eight years, and that he[50] hadn't been able to do a thing to-ward the apprehension of a certain German spy that the government was extremely anxious to locate, there was pitifully little to tell.
"The whole thing," he concluded, "came to a head the other night--the night I didn't show up. We knew that something was going to break, somewhere, but we couldn't discover where until it was too late to prevent the explosion across the river. Now that they've gotten away with that, they'll probably lay their lines for something even bigger."
"Well, now that I've told you, what d'you think?"
"You mean you'd like to marry me?" Mary asked with a smile.
"I don't know how to put it any plainer," Dick admitted--and what followed caused the waiter to wheel around and suddenly commence dusting off a table that already was bright enough to see your face in.