Part 23 (1/2)

As gently as I could, I told her of the chase, of leaving Craig, of the explosion, of the marks of the struggle and of the finding of Wu Fang.

As I finished, I thought she would faint.

”And you--you went over everything about the wharf?”

”Everything. The men even dragged for the--”

I checked myself over the fateful word.

Elaine looked at me wildly. I thought that she would lose her reason.

She did not cry. The shock was too great for that.

Suddenly I remembered the note. ”Before I left him--the last time,” I blurted out, ”he wrote a note--to you.”

I pulled the crumpled paper from my pocket and Elaine almost tore it from me--the last word from him--and read:

DEAREST:

I may not return until the case is settled and I have found the stolen torpedo. Matters involving millions of lives and billions of dollars hang on the plot back of it. No matter what happens, have no fear.

Trust me.

Lovingly, CRAIG.

She finished reading the note and slowly laid it down. Then she picked it up and read it again. Slowly she turned to me.

I think I have never seen so sublime a look of faith on any one's face before. If I had not seen and heard what I had, it might have shaken my own convictions.

”He told me to trust him and to have no fear,” she said simply, gripping herself mentally and physically by main force, then with an air of defiance she looked at me. ”I do not believe that he is dead!”

I tried to comfort her. I wanted to do so. But I could do nothing but shake my head sadly. My own heart was full to overflowing. An intimacy such as had been ours could not be broken except with a shock that tore my soul. I knew that the poor girl had not seen what I had seen. Yet I could not find it in my heart to contradict her.

She saw my look, read my mind.

”No,” she cried, still defiant, ”no--a thousand times, no! I tell you--he is not dead!”

CHAPTER VI

THE LOST TORPEDO

From the rocks of a promontory that jutted out not far from the wharf where Wu Fang's body was found and Kennedy had disappeared, opened up a beautiful panorama of a bay on one side and the Sound on the other.

It was a deserted bit of coast. But any one who had been standing near the promontory the next day might have seen a thin line as if the water, sparkling in the sunlight, had been cut by a huge knife.

Gradually a thin steel rod seemed to rise from the water itself, still moving ahead, though slowly now as it pushed its way above the surface.

After it came a round cylinder of steel, studded with bolts. It was the hatch of a submarine and the rod was the periscope.