Page:The Zeppelin Destroyer.djvu/45

 'Did you find anyone?' Roseye asked.

'Nobody—yet I'm quite certain I heard voices,' he insisted.

'Some of the men from the market-garden perhaps,' I remarked.

'I don't think so,' was Teddy's reply.

'Why not?' I demanded in surprise.

'Well—because what I heard—and I tell you, Claude, I heard it quite distinctly—was a sudden exclamation of surprise.'

'Surprise!'

'Yes. As though somebody had made an unexpected discovery,' Teddy said. 'I had just been watching the effect on the pole through your glasses, and had returned inside when I heard an exclamation, followed by some quick words of surprise that I could not catch. It was a man's voice.'

'Surely there could not be anybody else watching the sparking upon the pole!' I exclaimed in quick apprehension.

'That's just what I believe has happened,' Ashton replied seriously. 'We've been watched—as I suspected we were.'

'You've said so all along, I know.'

'And now I'm quite convinced of it. And whoever has watched us making our experiments now knows that to-night our efforts have been crowned with success.'

'Well,' I remarked after a pause. 'If what you say is true, Teddy, we shall have to be very wary in future. I know there are a great many unscrupulous persons who would be ready to go to any length in order to learn this secret discovery of ours which,