Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/100

 "But when? And how?"

"There were boats going back and forth all the time—they could have slipped down the accommodation-ladder at any moment before daybreak. No, it wasn't that steward. Some one else must have given the tip. You know these Sicilians—they all have a wireless system of their own, a crook of the arm or the shift of an eye can always mean something we can't understand. And they got the tip—wherever it came from!"

"So we are not to sail together," meditated Kestner.

"And we can't go back," was Wilsnach's dolorous amendment.

Kestner sat up again, deep in thought. Through the intricacies of that thought Wilsnach was incapable of following him, for the man from the Paris Office had always been content to travel behind his trail-blazing leader.

"We don't want to go back!" Kestner announced with sudden energy. "We can't go back any more than Lambert can. He can't stay in Palermo, for he knows he's been dug out of his warren there. Paris is impossible. England is out of the question. He was headed for America, equipped for an American campaign. And to America he will go. Only, he'll go by a quicker route than this. This southern route will take us eleven days from Gibraltar to New York. Before we're two days out in the Atlantic Lambert can get through Paris and land at Dover, scoot across to Fishguard, and catch the Lusitania for the other side."