Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/40

. Why, she had possession of every detail of our L-1 ten days after it was launched at the yards of the Fore River Shipbuilding Company and three weeks before its acceptance trials by the Navy people themselves. And now she's after our new airship specifications. That seems to be her main object. But incidentally she's picking up any Army or Navy secret that she can get her hands on. So the only thing for this man Diehms to do, when the truth comes out, is to shut himself up and quietly blow his brains out."

"But can you afford to let him do that?"

"I can't exactly say, just yet. But our panther has hypnotized him. For example, you read last week about the aviation tests over here at the North Island school? You probably read how Lieutenant Taylor, of the Aviation Corps, established an endurance record for eleven hours and twelve minutes on only thirty gallons of gasoline. That was with our new Farlow motor. Keudell and his people to-day have full specifications of that motor in their possession. Anna Makaieff is the agent who got it for them—though it didn't come from Diehms. And inside another ten days, if no one interferes with