gimental finery, he was simply
irresistible.

"A joke?" she repeated. "Do explain, I'm dying to know all about it."

"It wasn't half as difficult a job as one might imagine, you know. Our
censor chaps at home have got to be quite expert at reading letters,
invisible ink and all that sort of thing. Hoff for months had been
sending cipher messages to the war office in Berlin. He kept urging them
to act on his all-wonderful plan for blowing up New York. They decided
finally to try it and notified old Otto they were sending over an
officer to supervise the job."

"What became of him? The officer they sent over?"

"Our people picked him off a Scandinavian boat and locked him up. They
took his papers and turned them over to me. Clever, wasn't it?"

"And you took his name and his papers and came here in his place? Oh,
that was a brave, brave thing to do."

"I wouldn't say that," said Seymour modestly. "I fancy I look a bit like
the chap, and I speak the language perfectly."

"But it was such a terrible risk to take," cried Jane with a shudder.
"Suppose they'd found you out?"

"No danger of that," laughed Frederic. "Old Otto never had seen the chap
who was coming. His real nephew, Frederic Hoff, whose American birth
certificate was used, died years ago. Besides I had the German officer's
papers and knew just what his instructions were. The worst of it was
when old Otto insisted every night on toasting the Kaiser, and when he
kept trying to get me mixed up in his dirty schemes. I had to go
through with the former once in a while, but on the latter, I--how do
you Americans say it--just stalled along. My orders were to land him
only on the big thing--his wonder-workers."

"But how did you explain to him that British uniform?"

"Now that was really an idea. The old fellow was getting a bit cross and
suspicious with me because he thought I wasn't doing enough while they
were getting his 'wonder-workers' ready. At one time he was so
distrustful of me that he had me followed."

"Oh, yes, I know," said Jane quickly. With a thrill she remembered the
scene she had witnessed from her window the night K-19, her predecessor
on Chief Fleck's staff, had been murdered. In her relief at discovering
that Frederic was no German spy, she had forgotten that for weeks and
weeks she had all but believed him guilty of murder. Now, something told
her, surely and confidently, that he could explain it all.

"I saw you from my window one nig