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Rh way just to stare at the closed door, thinking how much I'd like to see what lay on the other side, and if that man could really be your Adolph Tuessig."

"Well, a little while ago, after you left me to go up and walk the hurricane-deck with Bessie Gleason, I had occasion to go to our stateroom for my binoculars, and who should I see coming out of Number Seventy-seven but Potzfeldt!"

Jack uttered an exclamation of mingled surprise and delight.

"Good for you!" he ejaculated. "That settles it, I should say! The pretended sick man is Adolph Tuessig all right; and he's in thick with this boastful naturalized American citizen who wears Old Glory in his buttonhole and tells how much he wishes he were a younger man so he could enlist under Uncle Sam. It makes me sick!"

"As they say in the story books, the plot thickens," Tom continued. "Somehow or other Adolph doesn't seem to take much stock in our crossing over to fly for the country we in America admire above all others just now. He thinks all Yankees must be mercenary, and that I'm carrying the completed design of father's wonderful invention with me, to sell it for a vast sum to the Allies."