Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/314

 the moment, place the name. But he was on his feet by this time, confronting the calm-eyed girl.

"I guess you'd know Watchel by some name or other, as soon as you lamped his mug. He's the big yellow-haired guy who gathered in that Coast Defence stuff for the Tokio people an' sold your Navy's colloiding process secret for big gun smokeless to the Germans. Cambridge Charlie says this guy can get a cool half million for the Flamenco an' Perico blue-prints an' the Canal defence plans. But he's canned for America. He can't even get in. An' he wants somebody, Charlie says, who's able to. An' a woman who's a good looker'd be worth a few thousand to him for that job alone. An' with what she knows o' languages, an' that face o' hers, an' bein' able to copy any paper that's needed, she'd soon be worth more to 'im than any other woman in Europe."

"Do you mean to say this man has been hounding Maura Lambert?" was Kestner's curt demand.

"Watchel never hounds anybody. He's too smooth for that. He jus' does the spider-act, runnin' out a web an' waitin' his chance. An' when he thinks he's got his fly he jus' kicks out one little thread after another, until he's got her tied up like a blue-bottle. An' that's the way he's goin' to tie up our friend Maura."

"How do you know this?"

"I made it my business to know 't. Even Cambridge Charlie's wise to what's goin' on. They've got a plant on foot."

"A plant?"