by to consider the main
business of the session--what was to be done to save the shipyard from
destruction?

Mamise had to repeat most of what she had told, point by point:

Nicky was not going to wait till the ships were launched or even
finished. He was impatient to strike a resounding blow at the American
program. Nicky was going to let Mamise know just when the blow was to
be struck, so that she might share in the glory of it when triumphant
Germany rewarded her faithful servants in America. Jake Nuddle was to
take part in the ship-slaughter for the double privilege of protesting
against this capitalistic war and of crippling those cruel capitalists
to whom he owed all his poverty--to hear him tell it.

When Mamise had finished this inventory of the situation Davidge
pondered aloud:

"Of course, we ought to turn the case over to the Department of
Justice and the Military and Naval Intelligence to handle, but--"

"But I'd like to shelter my poor sister if I could," said Mamise. "Of
course, I wouldn't let any tenderness for Jake Nuddle stand in the way
of my patriotic duty, for Heaven knows he's as much of a traitor to my
poor sister as he is to everything else that's decent, but I'd like to
keep him out of it somehow. Something might happen to make it
possible, don't you suppose?"

"I might cripple him and send him to a hospital to save his life,"
said Davidge.

"Anything to keep him out of it," said Mamise. "If I should tell the
authorities, though, they'd put him in jail right away, wouldn't
they?"

"Probably. And they'd run your friend Nicky down and intern him. Then
I'd lose my chance to lay hands on him as--"

"As he did on you," was what he started to say, but he stopped in
time.

This being Davidge's fierce desire, he found plenty of justification
for it in other arguments. In the first place, there was no telling
where Nicky might be. He had given Mamise no hint of his headquarters.
She had neglected to ask where she could reach him, and had been
instructed simply to wait till he gave her the signal. No doubt he
could be picked up somewhere in the enormous, ubiquitous net with
which America had been gradually covered by the secret services and by
the far-flung line of the American Protective League made up of
private citizens. But there would be a certain unsatisfactoriness
about nipping his plot so far from even the bud. Prevention is wisdom,
but it lacks fascination.

And supposing that they