‘Bert?’ The quick question forestalled the savage growl I was summoning as I leaned over the transmitter. I straightened instantly from my belligerent slouch, for it was the one voice in the world I most wanted to hear.
‘Jigger!’ I exclaimed, as wide awake suddenly as if it had been noon. ‘Where are you? Where have you been? I’d given you up for dead two months ago!’ This was literally the truth, for Masters had been out of town nearly four months, and because I knew his sledge-hammer methods in dealing with his quarries and the risks he delighted in taking, I had pictured him lying somewhere in the mud of the East River, or hacked to pieces by some of the alien criminals he sought.
‘Not yet, Hoffman!’ he chuckled. ‘Can’t answer your questions over the wire, though. Are you very busy?’
‘Lord no!’ If I had been painting the Queen of England at the moment, I would have answered in the same way. As it was, I had two portrait appointments for the following week, but I knew these could be postponed.
‘Same old Bert!’ he laughed. ‘Well, meet me at the 5:32 Grand Central.’
‘This morning?’
‘Yes. Oh, and bring your golf sticks, if you can find them. We may be able to get in eighteen holes. I’m anxious for a game.’
‘All right.’ I knew that Masters was chaffing, for he scarcely knew a driver from a sammy iron, but behind the lightest of his jests there lay always a serious side. ‘Any – other weapons?’ I asked, thinking of the two automatics that had lain unused in my bureau drawer for so long.
‘Of course,’ he replied. ‘That’s always understood.’ As he dropped the receiver. I sprang to my feet, thrilling with delight at the prospect of action. I needed it badly, for my work had fallen off in quality of late. The impetus and inspiration of an adventure with Masters was just what I wanted.
****
I gathered a few pieces of clean linen, in case I should be away longer than the day, and crammed them into my leather bag. I started to put the automatics on top, but changed my mind. Masters’s affairs often developed with such startling suddenness that it was unwise not to be fully prepared. I placed one in the pocket of my jacket and the other on my right hip. My breakfast was a hurried affair, not because there was any particular reason for rush but because I was burning with impatience. As a result I got to Grand Central nearly a half-hour early.
I was lighting my second panatella when I spied Masters. He was approaching briskly from the subway stairs, dressed as I had never seen him before. His angular frame was revealed more than usual by a back-fitted tweed coat, and the material advertised by garish checks the fact that the new American dyes were not yet complete successes. The soft collar of his shirt, though pinned together carefully over the tie, left his bony neck unprotected. Always previously he had worn the highest linen procurable. Completely engulfing his mat of black hair was a checked cap, pulled down too far toward his ears. I thought he seemed a little paler and thinner than on the last occasion I had accompanied him – the time we chased the family ghost for Lew Macey.
‘Jigger!’ I cried, seizing his hand warmly. He did not speak for a second, but I saw the curious expression creep into his blue eyes that was his nearest approach to sentiment.
‘I’m glad to see you, old man!’ he answered, a moment later, crushing my fingers. ‘Thought I never was going to get back to New York.’
‘So did I! Well, what’s the assignment that gets us up before the roosters this morning?’
And this was all the spoken greeting between us. I think that it would have been the same had Masters been away for ten years instead of a few months; each of us knew exactly what the other thought and felt, yet both were unable to phrase our genuine gladness.
Masters purchased our tickets, signifying by a gesture that he would tell me the story as soon as possible. When he came back, we made for the smoker, and took the seat farthest forward. The train had just been made up, so we were the first in the car.
‘It has been a tangled skein, Bert,’ began Masters, when we had arranged our baggage, ‘the hardest case to get at I’ve ever tackled. I have one end of the thread in hand now, and because I know how you delight in being on hand at the finish, I’ve asked you out with me.
‘Over fourteen weeks ago I was called to Washington. I couldn’t tell you, for I was asked to keep my own counsel strictly. It seems that for some months they have been cognizant of certain information leaks. News reached the Germans before our own troops in France knew it.’
‘You mean that there were spies in our own departments?’
‘Yes, were and are!’ he nodded emphatically. ‘That’s nothing unusual, of course. Every nation has to contend with that problem. The feature about it that caused me to be called in was that such a quick and comprehensive chain for the revealing of ordnance and construction secrets had been established that the Germans actually were using our newest war weapons against us about as quickly as we could bring them into play ourselves.
‘One of the most striking examples of this was the chloropicrin-phosgene gas mine. This was an American invention, but the Germans knew all about it and brought it up on the Toul front only ten days after we used it first. Since it takes at least a month to make one of these terrible agents of destruction, you can see readily how
