Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/73

 right weight, and then soldering the tops on. It's as neat a scheme as I've stumbled on for some time and the Treasury Department's got to get busy on that Morello brand of oil!"

"And would this mean that you'd be on the Pannononia yourself?"

"I'd have to slip aboard at the last moment."

Wilsnach was on his feet, pacing perplexedly up and down the barren little room. "You land your woman in New York, of course, but what do you get out of it?"

"First I get the woman."

"But what do you mean by getting her?" interrupted the other. "And what will you do with her when you've got her?"

"Heaven only knows," finally admitted the man with the helmet of wire across the top of his head.

"I'll confess the woman is more interesting than—"

"Wait!" cried Kestner. His voice was sharp and quick. "There's some one on the wire. That's the pass-word! They're going to talk again."

Once more silence reigned in the barren little room. Wilsnach sat watching the other man's face. There seemed something grotesque in the pose of the forward-stooping body, in the inclined head, in the vacant stare of the eyes that encompassed nothing of their surroundings.

But Wilsnach knew by the fine moisture lending a scattering of high-lights to the intent face before him, that things of moment were trickling in along that tiny rivulet of silk-covered copper.