"Not a sign of them," he said, as he entered, to the others. "I expect the plan has missed fire. If I thought he was still fooling us, I’d shoot the old fool off hand." He left the door wide open, and I could hear distinctly.
"Not so loud, Gassen," said some one hurriedly. "Your voice carries so."
"I wish it would carry to that cursed Englishman and bring him here to the old lunatic’s rescue."
"We have no proof. It’s only your guess work."
"I want no more proof than we have. Who else was likely to betray us? Tell me that. Who else would have been able to get that cursed news into the papers and have the plans about the ship changed? Wasn’t he a newspaper man of some sort? Tell me that. And how else could he get the news except from that blabbering old fool in the corner there when he was at his house."
"Paris be hanged," he cried fiercely with an oath. "How could they know in Paris if some one here hadn’t told them from Berlin. Tell me that."
There was a long pause during which one of the men struck a match and began to smoke.
So Althea’s father was there all the time, and this meeting had apparently been held for my punishment rather than in connexion with the meditated outrage. He was suspected of having betrayed everything to me; and my trick of getting the news published had been guessed.
"We shall have to give it up for to-night, Gassen," said the man who had spoken before. "They have failed to get him to come."
"Why don’t they come back and say so then?"
"They may have been stopped in some way. Or perhaps they came while we were away."
"Schmidt has been here all the time taking care of the old fool there. Or are you another of the white-livered ones?"
"I’ve been here all through, of course. You needn’t talk like that to me," said a man who had not spoken before.
Gassen laughed. "I shall say what I please and you can do what you like."
I wished with all my heart that the man would have started a quarrel; but he appeared to be afraid, and held his tongue.
"I don’t mean to stay here all night," said the former speaker, whom I judged by his voice to be an older man than the others. "It isn’t safe."
"What will you do with our precious ’leader’ then?" was the reply with a very scornful reference to the unfortunate Baron.