found Nicky, what evidence had they against
him, except Mamise's uncorroborated statement that he had discussed
certain plots with her? Enemy aliens could be interned without trial,
but that meant a halcyon existence for Nicky and every comfort except
liberty. This was not to be considered. Davidge had a personal grudge,
too, to satisfy. He owed Nicky punishment for sinking the ship named
after Davidge's mother and for planning to sink the ship he was naming
after the woman he hoped to make his wife.

Davidge was eager to seize Nicky in the very act of planting his
torpedo and hoist him with his own petard. So he counseled a plan of
waiting further developments. Mamise was the more willing, since it
deferred the hateful moment when Jake Nuddle would be exposed. She had
a hope that things might so happen as to leave him out of the
denouement entirely.

And now Davidge and Mamise were in perfect agreement, conspirators
against a conspiracy. And there was the final note of the terrible in
their compact: their failure meant the demolition of all those growing
ships, the nullification of Davidge's entire contribution to the war;
their success would mean perhaps the death of Easton and the
blackening of the name of Mamise's sister and her sister's children.

The solemnity of the outlook made impossible any talk of love. Davidge
left Mamise at her cottage and rode back to his office, feeling like
the commander of a stockade in the time of an Indian uprising. Mamise
found that his foresight had had the house warmed for her; and there
were flowers in a jar. She smiled at his tenderness even in his wrath.
But the sight of the smoke rolling from the chimney had caught the eye
of her sister, and she found Abbie waiting to welcome her.

The two rushed to each other with the affection of blood-kin, but
Mamise felt like a Judas when she kissed the sister she was planning
to betray. Abbie began at once to recite a catalogue of troubles. They
were sordid and petty, but Mamise shivered to think how real a tragedy
impended. She wondered how right she was to devastate her sister's
life for the sake of a cause which, after all, was only the imagined
welfare of millions of total strangers. She could not see the nation
for the people, but her sister was her sister, and pitifully human.
That was the worst wrench of war, the incessant compulsions to tear
the heart away from its natural moorings.

CHAPTER II

Davidge thought it o