Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/30

 I want quietness and decency and an acre or two of lawn with a tennis-court at one end and a Japanese tea-house at the other!"

"Which is exactly what I've been trying to argue you into," promptly pointed out the chief. "You get all those things when you get your rosewood desk at the Embassy—with a silk hat and a state carriage thrown in!"

"My experience with Embassies," suggested Kestner, "hasn't precisely fixed them in my mind as abodes of quietude."

"But instead of stewing along the undercrust, you'll be a monument on the upper," said the chief, with a repeated heavy gesture that was almost one of impatience. "And we can leave the Embassies out, for we've got troubles closer than that. We've got one of the shrewdest and completest systems of espionage ever organized to break up. As I've already told you, we've founds leaks from the Navy and from the Aviation Corps. Our cipher codes have been stolen and our wireless adaptations lifted. Our canal fortification plans have been dug out, and we know two different foreign powers are trying to get the secret of our new balanced turbines, to say nothing of the Cross torpedo for which, we know